Newsletter: Promises of prosperity
Northern Norway has negative population growth, the region’s population is ageing and large values are shipped south. There is also increased security policy tension in the High North. (Photo: Screenshot from the Labor Party launch)
This week, a sub-committee of the Norwegian Labor Party submitted its proposal for a new High North policy, and it is not found lacking in neither will nor words. Time will show how much weight the full document will have to lose in order to be realized. Here is the passing week in the High North.
Northern Norway has negative population growth, the region’s population is ageing and large values are shipped south. There is also increased security policy tension in the High North.
When Labor Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre presented the party’s draft of new Arctic policy at Nord University last Wednesday, he stressed the importance of having people live in the High North. A view probably shared by most parties in Parliament, yet no one have managed to do anything about it so far.
Cautious excitement
High North News Editor-in-Chief Arne O. Holm is both excited about and skeptical of the report. Because if the people of the north are to believe Jonas Gahr Støre, this is when the High North is to boom to the benefit of both the nation as well as the international society.
Arne O. Holm
Again. We who live and work in the High North have heard it all before.
Of course people in and of the north hope that Labor will succeed in doing what the report says it wants to do when they talk about creating knowledge growth, creating new jobs based on resources located here, and solving the climate crisis.
And perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky to have had a taste of normalcy during the Labor Party’s launch campaign.
He has tasted that feeling, our Editor-in-Chief Arne O. Holm. The intrusive feeling of distance between us and those in power when meetings between actors in politics and business are reduced to text messages and digital monologues.
Challenging future
The Nussir copper mine in Hammerfest municipality, near the North Cape, is still awaiting permission from the Norwegian Directorate of Environment to use a chemical widely used in the extraction of copper ore.
Friends of the Earth Norway is monitoring the process and argues it would be irresponsible to allow emissions of SIPX.
Broken back
Corona keeps ravaging the Arctic – in every possible way.
“Covid-19 has decimated the industry”, says a Nunavut travel manager in despair.
And this is only the beginning. The tourist industry expects things to get much worse in the future.
Lacks surface vessel
This week, the US Coast Guard announced that it has cancelled its patrol voyages in the Arctic following a fire onboard the icebreaker ‘Healy’.
The USA is thus left with no surface vessel in the Arctic for the summer 2020, which draws attention to the country’s lack of an icebreaker fleet.
This week’s saddest news story from the Arctic must be today’s news that a man died after being attacked by a polar bear just outside Longyearbyen. The polar bear was shot and killed.
Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
Please tip us of whatever is happening in your area.
All the best,
News editor of High North News
Trine Jonassen