The resourceful North: divergent imaginaries from the European Arctic

• Main Authors: Tennberg, Monica, Lempinen, Hanna, Pirnes, Susanna
• Other Authors: Department of Forest Sciences, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: 519 Social and economic geography; Arctic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/329139

As Gail Fondahl and Gary Wilson (2017) have pointed out, “there are numerous sustainabilities and numerous norths.” This diversity is seldom reflected in the scholarly literature or popularized debates, which tend to depict the Arctic region as one, not many. The notions of sustainability and sustainable development are typically treated in equally elusive and ubiquitous ways, ignoring both the conceptual complexity and the practical challenges that “successfully” applying these notions in practice entail. In this chapter we draw conclusions from individual contributions in the book and argue that the European Arctic is not only rich in resources, but also resourceful in terms of its social and cultural resources and their potentialities. Our conclusions set forth an understanding of multiple Norths and understandings of (social) sustainability as a practice beyond the politics of sustainable development: as a social practice, as a social imaginary and as a way to understand resources, societies and their present and future potentialities. Peer reviewed