Arctic Yearbook 2014 | Page 579

579 Arctic Yearbook 2014   Thematic Area 1st stage: Global > Arctic 2nd stage: Arctic > Global I. Resources, Energy, Economics, Infrastructures, and Technology Pressure to extract of oil, gas and minerals in the Arctic; Pressure to increase fisheries in Northern waters; Development of corresponding infrastructures and technology; Mining project expansion dynamics and possible impact of the global land rush; Development of Arctic shipping; New ICT, esp. Internet; Growing role of TNCs and SOEs; Pressure for regional (economic) development. Significant oil, gas and minerals reserves for further industrial development; Shortening of sea routes facilitating global trade; Roles of resources extracting SOEs and TNCs in global economic development; Self-determination of indigenous peoples effecting the global land rush. II. Environment, Environmental degradation, and Climate Change The Arctic as a sink of pollutants; Impacts of warming / rapid climate change on Arctic ecosystems and in the social and political spheres (e.g. rationale and potential for industrial and other economic development and shipping); The ‘Arctic Paradox’; Potential risk to sustainability and threat to state sovereignty. Environmental ‘awakening’; Climate forcing due to loss of sea ice (albedo effect, methane release); Biodiversity; Laboratory / workshop for research on the environment, climate change and the Anthropocene; Ecology as a new discipline for ‘disciplining’; Model for cooperation. III. (Geo)Politics, Security, and Governance Regionalism, region-building and international cooperation; Environmental and Human security; Growing global interest in Arctic resource geopolitics and governance; Shaped by industrial civilization; Weakening of the states’ ability to protect their sovereignty. Innovations in Arctic governance essential to addressing climate change; Arctic stability-building as a model and common ground for a paradigm shift of security; Military training and exercises; The Arctic Ocean as a ‘global commons’; Reinterpretation of security; New kind of space for innovations in legal and political arrangements. IV. Peoples, Cultures, Well-being and Societies Recognition of the transcultural nature of the Arctic and indigenous peoples’ rights; Threat to well-being, human health and food security; Challenge of well-being in big cities; Need for education; Migration to the Arctic; Urbanization; Challenge of deindustrialization. Human capital and capacity. The role of indigenous peoples and selfdetermination in resource governance and sustainability; Knowledge as power based on ICT/Internet; The Arctic as a knowledge-based (political) space; The role of ‘paradiplomacy’; Reconceptualization of sovereignty; Workshop for research on governance and human security. The GlobalArctic project aims to foster a comprehensive and trans-disciplinary approach of the Arctic in a global ecological, cultural, economic and political context. In particular, it aims, on the one hand, at understanding the dynamics of the Arctic, as it increasingly becomes part of global changes, the world-wide resources and transportation economy, as well as global geopolitics and geo-economics with a danger of an ‘irreversible collapse’ of industrial civilization. Yet, on the other hand, the Arctic already is, and increasingly will be, a key agent of global changes, as it is also a place from where a paradigmatic change in global governance, as well as that in security, can emerge. Here the Project, hence, will respond to urgent political and scientific needs to gain a better understanding of the globalized Arctic with rapid regional and world-wide changes. To address this, the GlobalArctic project aims to become an international and interdisciplinary research project, as well as an international center of excellence, on the globalized Arctic with sites in several Arctic states and regions, and partners from all over the Northern Hemisphere. The objectives of the Project are as follows: The Global Arctic Project