SCOTLAND will host a summit on the challenges facing northern European nations.
Starting tomorrow, ministers and delegates from Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands will be in Edinburgh to speak at the Arctic Circle Forum.
The three-day conference entitled Scotland and the New North will be hosted by the Scottish Government and is a spin-off event of the main Arctic Circle Assembly, held annually in Iceland.
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The focus will be the respective experiences of the nations in helping remote and island communities become more successful, as well as how to be more resilient to challenges and threats.
Rachael Lorna Johnstone, Professor of Law at the University of Akureyri, Iceland, and at the University of Greenland, said she hopes the forum can remind attendees that the Arctic is not an empty frontier but home to four million people.
“I hope that participants will see beyond the ‘wilderness’ discourse and recognise that the threats are not only environmental (though those are very real and immediate) but social,” she said.
“For example, challenges of food security, health security, educational security, job and economic security, and community security. “
One of the discussions — Is The Future Arctic? — will be chaired by National columnist Lesley Riddoch. The Nordic Horizons panel debate, of which Lesley is director, will ask if the region has the political power required to develop sustainably and explore Scotland’s future role as a North Atlantic nation.
Lesley will be joined at the free public meeting by an expert panel, including the Scots-born Johnstone, who in 2012 published a report titled An Arctic Strategy For Scotland, and the former leader of Iceland’s Social Democratic Party, Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, among others.
“I hope [those in attendance] will be open-minded to the different cultural and value-systems of Arctic peoples, especially towards use of living resources, and that they will learn a little about colonialism of indigenous peoples and the persistent damage that has been done and consider their reasons for seeking greater autonomy and control over their collective futures,” added Johnstone.
The discussion takes place in Lecture Theatre A of the David Hume Tower at the University of Edinburgh and will start at 1pm. Tickets for the free event are available from the Eventbrite website.
Nicola Sturgeon will open the weekend of events at the Assembly Rooms after she attended the Arctic Circle Assembly last year.
The First Minister said at the time while Scotland was not geographically part of the Arctic Circle there was shared heritage, culture and policy approach.
Johnstone believes there is much to be gained from Scotland strengthening its ties with the region.
“At a pragmatic level, Scotland, as a non-state nation (ie a country that is not independent) can cooperate directly with sub-state governments around the Arctic,” she said. “As something less than a state but with a fair degree of autonomy, it is less threatening.
“It can share its experience in delivery of education to rural communities, including through distance learning, competences and technology on healthcare delivery, revival of a struggling minority language, and renewable energy, among plenty other areas.
“From a political/strategic point of view, Scotland is carving a niche for itself as a self-standing actor in international affairs. It is demonstrating that it has something to offer the world and that it is not ‘too wee’.”
The Edinburgh event will also include talks from the former president of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, and a delegation from the Finnish government, led by their foreign trade minister, Kai Mykkanen, will also be present. They will be joined by Greenland’s minister for education, culture, research and church Doris Jakobsen Jensen and Faroe Islands’ minister of foreign affair Poul Michelsen.
The forum will also be addressed by Scottish External Affairs Secretary Fiona Hyslop and the chairman of the UK Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben.
The Arctic Circle Assembly takes place in the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, starting tomorrow and runs until Tuesday, November 21
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