The Global Land Rush and the Arctic

Abstract

This chapter discusses the recent Arctic land rush from the viewpoint of the larger literature on the global land rush and land grabbing, little of which has focused on the Arctic. This global view on the Arctic offers theoretical-methodological insights from a burgeoning literature on notable land control changes in different parts of the world (but not the Arctic) and can offer valuable knowledge on two key global/Arctic dimensions. First, looking at the Arctic from the viewpoint of scholarship on global land grabs can contribute to our understanding of world politics and the political economy of natural resources, since the land-grabbing research has not yet focused on the Arctic. Bringing together scholarship focused either on the Arctic/global North countries or the Tropics/global South countries has tremendous potential for a fuller understanding of their similarities and differences in front of a globally felt new focus on investing in resource extraction. Second, studying the Arctic does not mean simply adding one more case study region to complete the global picture in the sense of no longer having any unobserved cases, logical remainders, in a quantitative database. Instead, the Arctic case, and similar other cases undergoing major and rapid climatic changes from icy to less icy environments, are special because of their natural conditions and their change trajectories, and can be therefore used to specify how a global process -the land rush -operates in a different context and dynamics. Are there differences and, if so, are there more or fewer differences than we could hypothesize? Accordingly, the Arctic case is a qualitative one that may be used to offer insights into a number of theories about socio-environmental and political economic change processes; for example, to see the extent to which they can or cannot be generalized. This is of interest to scholars of global issues, as well as to specialists focusing on the Arctic or, for example, on the Tropics, offering them understanding of their regions' specificities.In the present chapter, I focus on carving out some potentially fruitful avenues for investigation, offering a panorama of different research focuses, questions, and hypotheses, that researchers should pay attention to in future empirically grounded research. The research for this article included a review of the research on the global land rush, to see how the Arctic has been treated or not treated therein, and a review of the literature on the Arctic resource rush of the past years, with a focus on land areas rather than maritime areas. Particular attention was paid to the literature on Arctic mining and forestry. Some empirical cases that are illustrative of the phenomenon are also mentioned in order to direct future research attention towards them. Empirical research for this contribution included field research and participant observation on mining governance and expansion in Finland and Canada during recent years. The global land rushThe world has seen a massive increase in land inv...

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