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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