Is the Future Arctic?
The Arctic Circle Forum, a roaming regional offshoot of the annual Arctic Circle Assembly, came to Scotland in November 2017 and Nordic Horizons ran a packed out Fringe event, with a great panel of speakers from across the Arctic.
Our panellists were –
- Tukumminnguaq Nykjaer Olsen, a young student and campaigner from Greenland, who won this 2017 Arctic Innovation prize.
- Scots-born Rachael Johnstone, Professor of Law, Arctic Oil and Gas Studies at Greenland University
- Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, Iceland’s former Foreign Minister, who took Iceland into EFTA and was the first to recognise the sovereignty of the Baltic states
- Rune Rafaelson, mayor of Sør-Varanger, Norway’s most northerly municipality, former Director of the Barents Secretariat and an expert on oil, fishing stocks and Russian politics
- Andy Wightman MSP, responding from a Scottish perspective.
As a packed audience at the University of Edinburgh found out, the answer to the question “Is the Future Arctic?” is ‘yes’. You can view the proceedings in two videos from Democracy TV below to get a flavour of what the debate was like. But first; we asked some primary school children to pose their ‘own’ questions to the panel. And we also got a very short video response to the central question too. You can view all the videos below.
Arctic Circles Forum Pupil Questions
Is the Future Arctic? – our panelists answer
Is the Future Arctic? from Nordic Horizons on Vimeo.
Whole Meeting Proceedings
The whole meeting proceedings – Part 1
The whole meeting proceedings – Part 2