Toward Just, Ethical and Sustainable Arctic Economies, Environments and Societies

The project will merge justice theories with sustainable development goals to enable EU policy coherence toward just transitions. This will be integrated with an investigation of the empirical realities of existing Arctic economic activities in 18 case studies using innovative research methodology, through conceptual, comparative, descriptive, correlation, policy, legal and interview-based analysis techniques.

Though this, JUSTNORTH will offer policy, legal and regulatory pathway recommendations, by developing a frameworks from the reconciliation of the various ethics and value systems present in the Arctic, which can serve as a cornerstone for determining the viability of economic activities in the Arctic in line with the goals of sustainable development.

Ultimately, JUSTNORTH will provide both a negotiation tool for stakeholders to Arctic development (and a potential labelling standard for just/ethical regulatory standards) in its JUSTscore framework, which will create both transparency, documentation and standardisation for sustainable development across the Arctic (and the EU market).

Adhering to coproduction of knowledge with stakeholders throughout, JUSTNORTH will bring insights from indigenous, local, business, State and NGO perspectives of the social, economic and environmental complexities of the Arctic into the realm of policymaking for just sustainable development.