Socio-Economic Drivers of Change in the Arctic

The Arctic is undergoing rapid and fundamental change. Recent decades have seen rising temperatures and reduced sea ice, and these present substantial uncertainties to local communities. Overlaid on these climatic shifts are changes in other factors such as resource demand, globalization, transportation, economic development, and demographics, factors which are to varying degrees themselves affected by the changing climate. This report presents an overview of the potential directions of non-climate drivers affecting the Arctic, and explicitly excludes discussion of potential impacts and responses. In this report, the non-climate drivers have been split into two perspectives: Global and Arctic.