What Does All This Mean? - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 316

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Part IV What Does All This Mean?
In this section, we take stock of where we are. Our knowledge of the state of the Arctic
environment ultimately depends on universities producing scientists capable of conducting
focused interdisciplinary research, on Arctic peoples being willing to enrich such work with
their own indigenous cultural knowledge and on governments providing adequate funding
and infrastructure. In the chapter entitled “The Long and the Short of It,” we will revisit
our six environmental stressors by asking the following three questions: (1) When was the
stressor anticipated, (2) when was it perceived (detected) and (3) what did we as a regional
or global community do about it? This exercise enables us to evaluate how successful gov-
ernments have been in organising international cooperative remedial actions and to identify
future needs. Climate change is the most foreboding issue we face, but it remains the only
stressor lacking any promising international cooperative action founded on a science-based
approach. In the Epilogue, the possibility of more direct involvement by the Arctic Council
in addressing climate change remedial actions is discussed.