On Wednesday the 11th of January at the Arctic Institute, Arctic Consensus hosted the North Denmark Arctic Dialogue meeting in Copenhagen. The topic of the meeting: One or several Arctic? Definitions, opportunities and interdisciplinary cooperation.
Lise-Lotte Terp, director at Arctic Consensus, welcomed the participants and opened the meeting with a presentation of Arctic Consensus’ work, the concept of the North Denmark Arctic Dialogue, as well as, an introduction to the recently opened Arctic House in Aalborg. Several speakers gave presentations at the meeting: Stine Bylin Bundgaard – Ph.d., Aalborg University, Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen – Professor at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway, and Jesper Stig Andersen – Chief Consultant at the Foreign Ministry.
In her presentation, Bundgaard focused on knowledge sharing across cultural differences. Amongst other topics, she touched upon how a network can function as a link between cultures.
Bertelsen took his starting point in Taksøes’ statement about Denmark/Greenland being an Arctic major power and the significance of this. Based on this, he discussed the demographic, economic and geographical key figures belonging to the eight Arctic states. These key figures formed the base for a short discussion on “the four Arctics”. Bertelsen spoke of what characterizes each of these in terms of society, economy, politics, infrastructure, education, etc.
Following Bertelsen, Andersen discussed different definitions of the Arctic. He spoke of the political interests underlying the different definitions and divisions of the Arctic. Andersen continued to elaborate on the elements present in this issue.
Each presentation fostered a debate and elaborating questions were asked to each speaker. This created the basis for a lively dialogue amongst the participants following the presentations. The dialogue meeting was characterized by having very committed speakers and participants, and everyone showed a great interest in discussing the current topic.
After the meeting, Arctic Consensus hosted a networking reception where new connections were made between the participants while discussing the afternoon’s topic and presentations.
