Collaborative Research: Forging Collaboration and Encouraging Research on the Arctic Economy

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Unprecedented ice melt in the Arctic Ocean is opening a "new ocean," creating the potential for new and expanded economic opportunities. To date, there has been little research on developing Arctic economies and the potential effects on the social, cultural, and ecological system of the Arctic. This award would support a workshop of environmental, natural resource, international, finance, and subsistence economists to discuss changing Arctic economies and how economic research can contribute to our understanding of these changes. The research agenda shaped during this workshop has relevance in other regions; while there are many unique issues in the Arctic, the challenges of balancing economic uses and environmental health are similar to those being addressed in coastal regions around the world. This award will support a small exploratory workshop to define an agenda for economic research related to the Arctic. The project will a) define key research issues and appropriate methodologies, b) identify gaps in existing data systems that need to be filled for research and policy purposes, and c) form the nucleus of a network of experts that will improve the opportunities for scholars to collaborate and encourage more professional journal articles and conference presentations. Over two days of discussions, 10-12 experts will address a set of questions that will be sent to attendees in advance of the workshop, and respond to a commissioned paper intended to stimulate the discussions from different fields of economic research. These fields include regional, environmental, natural resource, international, finance, and subsistence economics. The workshop will also include representatives from the practitioner community with knowledge of the important policy-relevant questions that would benefit from economic research; potential funders of economic research; and an Arctic ecologist to assist with making the linkages between the environment and economics. The event will be held in Monterey, California, and hosted by the Center for the Blue Economy.