The mission for the Mistra-funded programme Arctic Sustainable Development – New Governance, which runs from April 2014 to 2018, has been to provide a framework for nuanced understanding of the conditions for development in the European Arctic by focusing on the historical construction of resources, the emergence and effectiveness of governance structures, and the local and regional impacts of global trends. The programme focus has been on the construction of the European Arctic through three research questions that address the links between processes at international, national, regional and local levels in key resource use activities:
- How have particular resource-based activities been established and legitimized, and which actors have played key roles in these processes?
- How are these patterns continued in current governance processes, and what are the possibilities for changing these?
- What are the effects on sub-regional and local levels, and how can governance for sustainable development be supported?
SEI has primarily worked on the changing global context of the European Arctic and analyzed the broader, global context of governance and sustainable development in the European Arctic, with particular attention to interactions between environmental change, resource demand, the global economy, and geopolitical changes. A major focus has been on developing a scenario methodology
Arctic Sustainable Development – New Governance is led by Umeå University and also includes collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
- Creating a safe operating space for business: the changing role of Arctic governance
- Towards extended shared socioeconomic pathways: a combined participatory bottom-up and top-down methodology with results from the Barents region
- Global context of mineral resources in northern Europe: geopolitical and sustainability dynamics
