Sustainability in the Changing Arctic: Interdisciplinary Insights for Policy

The Arctic is among the most rapidly changing places in the world, posing both challenges and opportunities. These rapid and dramatic changes are affecting the well-being and way of life of Arctic peoples; while from the south, many nations and multinational corporations view these changes as opening the North for economic development, including shipping, resource extraction, and fisheries. Evidence-based decision-making and policies are necessary to balance or find common ground between these diverging visions of the Arctic, such that sustainable development can proceed in a way that addresses ongoing social and environmental injustices. In this discussion session, experts on Arctic change will present new policy-focused Arctic systems research in Alaska and Canada that link studies of sea ice, human migration, socioeconomic and ecological change, and food, water, and energy security. The session will start with the 10-minute short film Sea Ice Secure, to illustrate ethnographic film as a medium by which research and local knowledge can inform policy. Led by an Arctic policy expert, the panel will include brief presentations on the changes affecting Northern communities at different scales and discuss ways that both indigenous knowledge and Western science can help policymakers understand these serious problems, support sustainable development, and enable local people to strengthen, rather than sacrifice, their security and self-determination.