| Summary: | "The Sustainable Development Working Group was established with the task to carry out work in the area of human development. The results of this work feed into the ongoing comprehensive work of the AC. The focus of the SDWG on Human Development and the wellbeing of the indigenous peoples and other Arctic residents have been reflected in all ministerial mandates to date including the current mandate of the Arctic Council. Focus on human health and human development is overall an important component of various policy documents including chairmanship programmes, conference statements and declarations: The Common objectives and priorities for the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish chairmanships of the Arctic Council (2006-2012) states that: “The work that the AC has done on health issues thus far has been useful. The newly created health cluster needs to be further strengthened to increase knowledge about the connections between specific diseases and social, cultural and environmental parameters, and about the relationships between conditions during childhood and health patterns and wellbeing, with a view to developing methods of intervention. The use of distance-spanning technologies and renewable energy sources in the Arctic to counteract the difficulties caused by sparse populations should be further explored.” Elected representatives of Canada, Denmark/Greenland, the European Parliament, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States of America, in collaboration with indigenous peoples of the Arctic at their Eighth Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region in Fairbanks, Alaska August 12-14, 2008 in their conference statement asked governments in the Arctic Region, the Arctic Council and the institutions of the European Union, among other things, to:" /./
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