An increasing scientific focus on the Arctic is reporting on changes and foreseeing future environmental consequences, paralleled by reporting from the Arctic population emphasizing different implications and consequences. While some are seeing the changes as challenges to the traditional lifestyles, others are envisioning new opportunities.

While the international focus on present climate change has drawn the attention to one set of constraints for the future, it at the same time to some extend tends to take away the attention from other fact of life in the far north that adds to the complexity in perspectives for the future.

The increased interests in the Arctic, right now intensified by the economic prospects opened up by the melting of ice that previously limited the accessibility, have called for further attention. And it is quite clear that both the economic and the social life in the Arctic already has been – and in the future will be – exposed to marked economic and social impact.

Increasingly the international attention has been drawn toward the rich mineral and energy resources in the north. Most of these activities are promoted and supported by external sources of capital, and are therefore also subject to decisions made by outsiders with very limited influence by local communities or authorities. Such activities are first and foremost related to world markets, as opposed to local communities, and usually generate very few jobs in the area. As a consequence, the benefits rarely remain in the region.

Similarly new transportation routes may serve the European and North American markets, but may also cause negative effects on traditional fishing and hunting in the region. Also here some of the benefits are retained, productively for instance through wages and contracts for local enterprises, but more often as transfer payment based on royalties which in many cases are resulting in adverse effects, such as social stratification, inequity in wealth distribution, and perceived deprivation.

Economies in the North, however, are not determined by the one dimensional capital/wage and transfer payment rationality, but very much influenced by other rationalities. So besides the dominating formal economy, the informal economy and subsistence activities with individual and family based activities in hunting and fishing ensuring basic supply, are still playing an important role.

The changes in the overall economic structure and the influence of globalization are affecting the household structures as well as the settlement pattern. An increase in the general pattern of out-migration of both males and females, looking for education and work opportunities outside the villages and smaller towns, are contributing to an increased urbanization in the Arctic. And these years the process has been accelerated by a higher rate of out-migrating females, eventually leading to a substantial increase in the number of households consisting of single men in the villages.

The question of opportunities has very much to do with availability of educational options, first of all through national programmes, but increasingly through new initiatives regarding circumpolar cooperation in education such as University of the Arctic, providing a new world of possibilities. It has, however, also much to do with the difference in gendered approaches to education and responses to issues such as globalization and knowledge societies. Already in the 1990s women had become a majority group in relation to higher education in many parts of the Arctic. This very much contrasts with ten to fifteen years ago, when men were dominating the higher education sector and women’s opportunities were limited to vocational training.

It is important to react to changes in the Arctic! But it is also important to realize that the ongoing changes are multi-dimensional. Changes in climate and the environment are important factors, but in relation to the future of settlements, communities and cultures, in the end it is the people in the Arctic that are decisive!