What defines a good life in the Arctic?

In 1996 the Arctic Council was established as prominent evidence of what was possible.

Looking back four decades later, one idea from those early years remains surprisingly unchanged. To govern the Arctic, you need to understand the region on its own terms by paying attention to how people experience life there.

That question was at the heart of the Arctic Human Development Report, an Arctic Council initiative, presented at the Ministerial Meeting in Reykjavík in 2004, where Oran Young was one of the co-chairs and lead authors.

More than GDP per capita

The team behind the Arctic Human Development Report used the United Nations conceptual framework as a point of departure, as it acknowledged that human development was more than GDP per capita. Nevertheless, the dominant language of development at the time was still largely economic and Young and his colleagues argued that GDP could never tell the whole story of life in the Arctic.

“Arctic communities may appear remote and relatively poor compared with places outside the region if you only look at GDP per capita. But if you take a closer look, the picture is quite different and the quality of life in the Arctic is often very good,” Young Says.

Human development in the Arctic had to encompass more dimensions. It had to capture aspects of life that conventional economic and social indicators would otherwise overlook, such as regular and satisfying contact with nature, strong and supportive communities, and a sense of social and cultural belonging.

“Quality of life for people in small Arctic communities is high because people there have a sense that they can control their own fate and destiny. They experience life in quite meaningful ways that don’t show up in statistics that the outside world uses,” he explains.

The group argued for a broader way of measuring quality of life that captured what was actually happening in the Arctic, rather than simply applying criteria developed elsewhere.

Changed the conversation

More than twenty years after its publication, Young believes the report's most important legacy is the framework it created for organizing our thinking about human development and quality of life in the Arctic and beyond.

It did not simply describe the Arctic. It challenged people to see it differently.

“The report became part of the intellectual foundation for the Arctic Council's work on sustainable development. And some of the thinking developed through the process reached beyond the Arctic itself, contributing to a broader understanding of human development in other regions of the world as well,” he says.

The Arctic Council as an agenda setter

According to Young, the Arctic has many lessons that the rest of the world can learn from, and the Arctic Council plays an important role in bringing these lessons and emerging challenges to the attention of people outside the region.

Not because they can be solved overnight, but because they need to be understood and taken into account.

As the Arctic is changing rapidly, communities are experiencing environmental changes firsthand and adapt to these changes as they emerge. One example is the increasingly unreliable sea ice, which has enormous effects on transportation systems along the coast of Greenland.

“These very local experiences and adaptation strategies can help the rest of the world understand how societies can adapt when the environment around them changes. That makes the Arctic more than a region to study, but a place to learn from,” says Young.

He argues that this gives the Arctic Council an important role, not only a facilitator of cooperation, but also as an agenda setter. The Council can help identify lessons with important policy implications and explore ways to bring them onto policy agendas, while also communicating about them to the wider world.

“The Arctic Council draws attention to emerging issues that are already part of everyday life in the Arctic and offers an early warning to societies elsewhere,” he argues.

Think in terms of the long game

Young has watched the Arctic move through moments of extraordinary optimism and periods of profound difficulty. He has seen expectations for Arctic cooperation rise and fall.

His advice is not to be carried away by either.

After more than 40 years of thinking about Arctic governance, he argues for something less dramatic but potentially more enduring.

“We need to keep looking for opportunities to do useful and constructive things, and not mistake either a moment of success or a period of crisis for the final chapter. It’s a long game of dealing with issues of continued importance, where circumpolar cooperation is essential,” he says.

As the Arctic Council marks 30 years of cooperation, Young's key takeaway from the Human Development Report remains true - understanding the Arctic means going beyond pre-defined criteria and notions developed outside the region.

He emphasizes the importance of not getting caught up in the securitized discourse that has become prominent in these times but instead speaking truthfully about the realities of what’s going on in the Arctic. In this regard he points to the continued existence of international cooperation across a range of issues. The Arctic Council’s Working Groups remain active, while arrangements concerning fisheries, shipping and scientific cooperation continue despite the current challenges.

“Of course, we currently experience challenges such as impediments to the free flow of people and data across national boundaries arising from the diplomatic rupture we’re experiencing. But there are opportunities for constructive dialogue moving forward, and we have to think in terms of the long game, for the benefit of the people who live their everyday lives in the Arctic,” Young notes.