The Northern Circumpolar World

First Published in 1978, The Circumpolar North is designed for anyone with a more than superficial interest in the northern regions of our planet, geographical, economic, social, or political. The primary importance of North today is as a source of raw materials, as a world crossroads, and as a touchstone of the way nations behave towards their minority groups. Strategic considerations have led to the expenditure of vast sums of money; but world population expansion has not yet affected the northlands and their preservation in a natural state is still a feasible objective. The authors are experts in their own areas and have provided regional chapters on each of the land and ocean areas. The book compares the different approaches of the countries involved and deals also, in the context of the northern seas, with another political dimension – the relations between nations and their success in achieving international management of resources. This is an interesting read for scholars of geography, international relations and international economics.

This edited volume examines the multiple dimensions of sustainability in the Circumpolar North, a territory facing unprecedented environmental and social challenges at the start of the 21st century. The chapters explore the cultural, economic, political and environmental aspects of sustainability, as well as examples of successful research collaboration with northern and indigenous communities. By examining a wide range of issues and places, the contributions highlight the diversity of the Circumpolar North, the challenges and opportunities it faces, and the ways in which people and communities are adapting to and influencing the changing circumstances of this dynamic region. Contributors include both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers from eleven different countries and from across the career spectrum. This book will appeal to an academic audience interested in the manifold facets of sustainability in the Arctic and sub-arctic regions of the world.

Rather than a single national perspective, The Fast-Changing Arctic brings together circumpolar viewpoints from North America, Europe and Asia for an integrated discussion of strategic military, diplomatic, and security challenges in the high North. Thoughtful analyses are included of different regions, climate issues, institutions, and foreign and security policies."--Pub. desc.

This edited volume examines the multiple dimensions of sustainability in the Circumpolar North, a territory facing unprecedented environmental and social challenges at the start of the 21st century. The chapters explore the cultural, economic, political and environmental aspects of sustainability, as well as examples of successful research collaboration with northern and indigenous communities. By examining a wide range of issues and places, the contributions highlight the diversity of the Circumpolar North, the challenges and opportunities it faces, and the ways in which people and communities are adapting to and influencing the changing circumstances of this dynamic region. Contributors include both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers from eleven different countries and from across the career spectrum. This book will appeal to an academic audience interested in the manifold facets of sustainability in the Arctic and sub-arctic regions of the world.

From bestselling author James Raffan comes an enlightening and original story about a polar bear’s precarious existence in the changing Arctic, reminiscent of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce. Nanurjuk, “the bear-spirited one,” is hunting for seals on Hudson Bay, where ice never lasts more than one season. For her and her young, everything is in flux. From the top of the world, Hudson Bay looks like an enormous paw print on the torso of the continent, and through a vast network of lakes and rivers, this bay connects to oceans across the globe. Here, at the heart of everything, walks Nanurjuk, or Nanu, one polar bear among the six thousand that traverse the 1.23 million square kilometers of ice and snow covering the bay. For millennia, Nanu’s ancestors have roamed this great expanse, living, evolving, and surviving alongside human beings in one of the most challenging and unforgiving habitats on earth. But that world is changing. In the Arctic’s lands and waters, oil has been extracted—and spilled. As global temperatures have risen, the sea ice that Nanu and her young need to hunt seal and fish has melted, forcing them to wait on land where the delicate balance between them and their two-legged neighbors has now shifted. This is the icescape that author and geographer James Raffan invites us to inhabit in Ice Walker. In precise and provocative prose, he brings readers inside Nanu’s world as she treks uncertainly around the heart of Hudson Bay, searching for nourishment for the children that grow inside her. She stops at nothing to protect her cubs from the dangers she can see—other bears, wolves, whales, human beings—and those she cannot. By focusing his lens on this bear family, Raffan closes the gap between humans and bears, showing us how, like the water of the Hudson Bay, our existence—and our future—is tied to Nanu’s. He asks us to consider what might be done about this fragile world before it is gone for good. Masterful, vivid, and haunting, Ice Walker is an utterly unique piece of creative nonfiction and a deeply affecting call to action.

The North American Arctic addresses the emergence of a new security relationship within the North American North. It focuses on current and emerging security issues that confront the North American Arctic and that shape relationships between and with neighbouring states (Alaska in the US; Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada; Greenland and Russia). Identifying the degree to which ‘domain awareness’ has redefined the traditional military focus, while a new human rights discourse undercuts traditional ways of managing sovereignty and territory, the volume’s contributors question normative security arrangements. Although security itself is not an obsolete concept, our understanding of what constitutes real human-centred security has become outdated. The contributors argue that there are new regionally specific threats originating from a wide range of events and possibilities, and very different subjectivities that can be brought to understand the shape of Arctic security and security relationships in the twenty-first century.