Politics of Sustainability in the Arctic: A Research Agenda

Abstract

The concept of sustainability has become central in arctic politics. However, there is little agreement on what ‘sustainable’ means. For different actors (governments, indigenous people, NGOs, etc.) the concept implies different sets of opportunities and precautions. Sustainability, therefore, is a much more fundamental idea to be further elaborated depending on contexts than a definable term with a specific meaning. This paper suggests a set of theoretical questions, which can provide the first steps toward a research agenda on the politics of sustainability. The approach aims to map and analyze the role of sustainability in political and economic strategies in the Arctic. Sustainability has become a fundamental concept that orders the relationship between the environment (nature) and development (economy), however, in the process rearticulating other concepts such as identity (society). Hence, we discuss, first, how, when meeting the Arctic, sustainability changes its meaning and application from the global ecosphere to a regional environment, and, second, how sustainability is again conceptually transformed when meeting Greenlandic ambitions for postcoloniality. This discussion leads us to outline an agenda for how to study the way in which sustainability works as a political concept.