Resource Extraction and Arctic Communities

Abstract

For decades, a post-Cold War narrative heralded a 'new Arctic', with melting ice and snow and accessible resources that would build sustainable communities. Today, large parts of the Arctic are still trapped in the path dependencies of past resource extraction. At the same time, the impetus for green transitions and a 'new industrialism' spell opportunities to shift the development model and build new futures for Arctic residents and Indigenous peoples. This book examines the growing Arctic resource dilemma. It explores the 'new extractivist paradigm' that posits transitioning the region's long-standing role of delivering minerals, fossil energy, and marine resources to one providing rare earth elements, renewable power, wilderness tourism, and scientific knowledge about climate change. With chapters from a global, interdisciplinary team of researchers, new opportunities and their implications for Arctic communities and landscapes are discussed, alongside the pressures and uncertainties in a region under geopolitical and environmental stress.

Fishy windows to an Arctic city: Urban (in)visibilities of global fisheries in Tromsø

“…By critically scrutinising the subjugative practices and mentalities of contemporary globalised fisheries in the urban Arctic context, this study also connects with the recent scholarly contributions on extractivism (Gudynas, 2021;Chagnon et al, 2022;Hanaček, Kröger, Acheidel, Rojas, & Martinez-Alier, 2022;Sörlin, 2023;Willow, 2018), with a specific aim to build on the emerging empirical and conceptual openings on urban extractivism (Arboleda, 2016;Streule, 2023). Indeed, the ways in which a city-and the economic activities and life modes that are organised through it-interacts with nature and ecological systems is intrinsically a contextual and political issue.…”