Why support UArctic

The Arctic is a region with only 0.06% of the world’s population, but nearly 20% of many of its vital resources: minerals, energy, fish, freshwater, the most pristine nature. The Arctic is also where we see the strongest impacts of the climate change today.

The changing climate, the world dependent on resources and access to the North, the globalization of local northern economies. Access to quality education and skilled workforce, ensuring food security and proper health care, getting internet access and sustainable energy for our homes. Across the Arctic, we face many of the same challenges, but we also see these as opportunities.

With the Arctic warming nearly four times as fast as the rest of the world, what happens to this region is of great concern to everyone. It is also vitally important to those who call the Arctic home. To find solutions that both serve the Arctic and benefit the whole world, we must bring together different academic fields, interdisciplinary approaches, and Indigenous and traditional knowledge systems.

UArctic is a cooperative network of 200+ universities, colleges, research institutions and other organizations based in all Arctic countries and beyond. We work across borders, across disciplines and across cultures. This diversity is our strength: it is everyone working together to meet the challenges and create more ideas, more solutions, better answers than any researcher, institution or nation could do on their own.

We are of the Arctic and in the Arctic. Our members are part of the life, the people and the communities who face climate change. We believe that the people in the Arctic must have a central role in defining the future of the region, and have sufficient knowledge and capacity to do so. That is the most effective way to ensure sustainable development in ways that mutually benefit the people of the North and the South – to ensure a healthy and prosperous future for all of us.