Societal Impacts of a Rapidly Changing Arctic

Arctic inhabitants face a multitude of impacts from processes of climate change and globalization; reindeer herders in Yamal, Russia. Photo: Oldag Caspar

Change has been termed a normal state of affairs in the Arctic, but the pace and extent of current ecological and societal transformations are unprecedented. Climate change is seen as the most pervasive and powerful driver of change, with temperatures in the Arctic having risen twice as rapidly as the global average over the past 50 years. In addition, rapid social and economic developments, such as migration, tourism, resource extraction, shifting political relations, geopolitics, and more generally the forces of globalisation, have far-reaching impacts on the Arctic’s social, ecological, and socio-ecological systems.

Against this background, six observations can be made as to the societal impacts of climate change and globalisation on the Arctic:

• First, climate change and globalisation are the dominant drivers of societal impacts in the Arctic.
• Second, many contributions focus on the impacts in concrete sectors of society, often from an opportunities-and-risks perspective, which tends to blur the boundary to more policy-oriented work.
• Third, the mantra of the sustainable development of the Arctic or Arctic sustainability pervades considerations of Arctic societal impacts.
• Fourth, societal and environment change in the Arctic is increasingly analysed using the image of the Global Arctic, highlighting the inextricable linkages between Arctic and global processes and systems and thus the entangled fate of the North and the entire globe.
• Fifth, an increasing number of actors is seen as being involved in societal and environmental transformations in the Arctic, often conveyed through the (often ill-defined) stakeholder concept.
• Sixth, Arctic indigenous peoples are depicted as the group most vulnerable to the societal impacts of a changing Arctic, but are increasingly the subject of research in the form of rights-holders and active participants in governance, law, politics, and research.

Societal impacts of a rapidly changing Arctic can be analysed in form of three categories: (1) impacts on specific societal sectors, (2) impacts on Arctic peoples and players, and (3) cross-cutting themes of Arctic societal impacts, comprising the mantra of sustainable development and sustainability and the tale of the Global Arctic.

The original article has been published by Current Climate Change Reports in July 2018 and is freely accessible here.