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Arctic Yearbook 2014
impacts on Greenland, where experiences from e.g. Canada and Alaska point to the need to counter
the marginalization of local communities due to the growing social problems and disruptions of
families and communities that have been shown.
This puts demands on the way the Greenland government sets its societal targets in the changes to
come and how public consultation must include issues of social change and new ways of organising
everyday life for the potential workforce. This goes beyond the mere training of miners and
consultations framed by given single projects. Instead, it must include much broader questions of
competence building and new ways of organizing work in mines not leaving behind the security and
competence demands that result from potentially complex and dangerous work situations.
Recently the Greenlandic government has announced that potential Greenlandic labour can only be
expected to provide transport to and from the mine from a major city, while they themselves must
pay for any transportation to smaller settlements, and the government encourages people to move
towards the major cities. This illustrates that the government at the outset has a rather narrow
approach to the social challenges, and has operated from the assumption that the separation of
habitat and work place and migrant working conditions is not to be questioned.
New Perspectives for Governance
There is a great need for more research as well as development of dialogue and planning tools in this
area, involving a systematic exploration of experiences from similar projects in areas with indigenous
peoples within and outside the Arctic.
It is essential to explore how the local population can be involved constructively in the Greenlandic
mineral extraction projects, and how work can be organized so that it will not undermine the
existing cultural context, but will be included as a positive element in sustainable development
dynamics. In this context, it is necessary to analyse the socio-cultural implications of establishing
settlements with an expected service life limit, and how the settlements can be soundly closed when
livelihoods are exhausted. Already in the start-up phase, it should be assessed whether the site has
other potentials that can enable a long-term establishment and continued run of the settlements or
parts thereof. The culture of the Inuit is originally a nomadic culture, and parts of the population
have maintained a high mobility. It should therefore be examined to what extent the general mobility
can be included as a positive factor in the establishment of settlements of a temporary nature.
In addition, an assessment of the individual mines’ socio-economic potentials under different
operating modes is needed, including a much broader analysis than just the financial return for the
mining company.
Finally, there are a number of technical challenges to the establishment of settlements, which are
expected to have a limited lifespan, so that most elements can be reassembled and reused at another
settlement, and so that the settlement can also be environmentally sustainable in the operation
phase, and that there may be an environmentally sound dismantlement.
Hendriksen, Hoffmann & Jørgensen