Arctic peoples are presently experiencing significant environmental, social, and economic impacts caused by changes in climate, resource use, and globalization. The Arctic is confronted by critical policy challenges related to issues of community health and wellbeing, energy resources, environmental protection, sustainable use of the Arctic Ocean, infrastructure, indigenous rights, and regional governance. To address some of the key challenges in relation to health and infrastructure and develop policy recommendations to promote community wellbeing in the Arctic, a full-day workshop on wellbeing in the Arctic communities was held in Nuuk, Greenland, on 3 October 2016.
A working group on health and infrastructure, associated with the Fulbright Arctic Initiative, initiated the workshop. The workshop was arranged in collaboration with NORDREGIO,1 Stockholm, Sweden, AAU Arctic,2 at Aalborg University, Denmark, and the Arctic Oil and Gas Research Centre,3 at Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland), with financial support from the Nordic-Arctic Collaboration Programme of the Nordic Council of Ministers.
In this report, we provide background and context for wellbeing in the Arctic, we then introduce the Fulbright Arctic Initiative (FAI) programme, and the health and infrastructure working group.
The workshop is the focus of the report and we describe the workshop organisation, share preliminary results, and conclusions. Finally we provide direction for future work.