Emerging Arctic Landscapes

Landscapes in Change: Expectations

The Barents region has been an area of political dispute and subject of rivalry in high politics since the Danes claimed the region until today with the prospect of oil, gas, fishing rights and the opening up of the North-East Passage. The dispute has historically taken place in places geographically far away from the areas in question, in the political centers of the nations that claimed the rights to the region. The disputes have also to a large extent not taken into consideration the "facts-on-the-ground" and the different groups of people living in the area. Groups that, in small windows of political stability and agreement, have lived together in relative peaceful and prosperous interaction with each other. Notions of conflict and rivalry between these groups has in many cases been constructed by governments with agendas that did not necessarily have the locals best interests in mind, or at least as the most important driving factor.

Today many await the prospect of riches from the oil and gas industry to trickle down on the region as a whole. This is at best a overly optimistic, naive and definitely a passive approach to look at the future of the Barents Region. This optimism should rather be directed towards the true resource of the region; the people living there. History shows that when left alone to self-governance like during the Pomor trade, the multitude of different groups living next to each other and overlapping each other have been the most prosperous periods. With the common agreement between the neighboring countries in the region the question should not be "When do we get our oil-money?", but "What are our possibilities and how can we achieve them with the resources at hand?".