UNESCO, 2009 Climate Change and Arctic Sustainable Development: Scientific, Social, Cultural and Educational Challenges, Paris, UNESCO Publishing, 357 pages.

Global climate change is heavily impacting the Arctic environment and is affecting Arctic economic development, international relations, and day-to-day living conditions in northern communities. Because of these far-reaching and diverse implications, climate change is experienced and dealt with in a variety of partly competing realities. The current situation calls for decided and concerted action, but who is going to shape the future, and how? On the basis of what kind of knowledge and values should we act? What do we have to learn? These questions have led to several recent publications, such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and the Arctic Human Development Report, and now they are addressed in a similar fashion by the UNESCO publication Climate Change and Arctic Sustainable Development: Scientific, Social, Cultural and Educational Challenges (2009). It aims to help develop effective and socially just ways of understanding and dealing with the challenges of climate change, mainly through the establishment of extensive structures and programs that interconnect scientists and also local communities and policy-makers. The publication evolved from the international meeting, “Climate Change and Arctic Sustainable Development” held in 2009 in Monaco, which representatives of the scientific community, civil society, governments, and national and international organisations attended as contributors and panellists. The resulting 35 papers are organised into eight sections: oceans and atmosphere; biodiversity and ecosystem services; community-level impacts and adaptation; health and well-being; economic development and social transformations; education; ethics, responsibility and sustainability; and monitoring systems. Each paper both introduces the findings of a specific field or perspective and, to various degrees, discusses them in light of the interdisciplinary themes of education and sustainable development, monitoring and observing systems, environmental ethics, and global connections to change in the Arctic. The papers are mostly based on materials already published elsewhere, but also include new insights gleaned from the International Polar Year (IPY), local monitoring and educational projects, recent scientific data, and perspectives from political initiatives, such as Indigenous progress toward self-government. The annex contains an excellent overview of the results and proposed projects and developments, while subjecting them to critical reflections. It is perhaps in this annex that the intended integrative perspective on climate change is best brought to bear. The summary effectively highlights the interrelatedness of Arctic realities and thus argues strongly for establishing and funding future projects as well as large-scale collaborative programs and structures. If you are new to the issue of Arctic climate change or want to broaden your perspective, I recommend browsing through all of the papers and selectively reading at least those that are of particular interest to you, in combination with a careful study of the annex. Most of the authors share a wish to improve communication, be it in the form of scientific (interdisciplinary) data-generating and data-sharing networks, effective dissemination of findings to the wider public, or advancements in understanding and levelling the playing fields between various Arctic and international stakeholders, especially with regard to research, economic development, and decision-making. Although power relationships arguably shape the dynamics and contents of communication, they at best remain implicit in most of the papers, except for the ones by Indigenous leaders and social scientists. Most of the papers actually stress the unequal allocation of voices in climate-change discourses. Other papers reflect on the epistemological opportunities and difficulties of integrating various kinds of knowledge, without suggesting concrete ways of dealing with diversity within a framework of fair and equitable conduct in and between societies and communities. Power is a complex issue. It cuts across politics, cultural and historic assumptions, economic interests, and, especially …