Joan Nymand Larsen

		Dr. Joan Nymand Larsen is senior scientist with the Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland. She has a PhD in economics from the University of Manitoba, Canada, specializing in economic development and natural resource-based economies of the North. Her background includes many years of research on the Arctic economy and quality-of-life in the North, including the impacts of industrial development and global change processes for Northern regions and local and coastal communities. Current research focuses on the study and assessment of living conditions and quality-of-life across the circumpolar region, and the construction, measurement and testing of Arctic specific social indicators - Arctic Social Indicators (ASI - I and II) and AHDR-II (Arctic Human Development Report: Regional Processes and Global Linkages. She was Project Manager and co-editor of the first Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR).
She is coordinating lead author of the Polar Regions chapter, for the 5th assessment report, WG-II, of the IPCC. She is member of the international steering committee of LOICZ – Land Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone, and board member on the Arctic Futures Program with the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. She was President of the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA), 2008-2011.

Economy, Climate, and the Human Face of Arctic Futures

The presentation “Economy, Climate, and the Human Face of Arctic Futures” will address the converging challenges of climate change, the accelerating pace of resource development, and environmental and human impacts, and reflect on ways to limit the trade-offs between growth, sustainability and human wellbeing. The contributions made by the Arctic Social Indicators (ASI) project and the work on the next volume of the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) will be highlighted.  ASI has designed and applied a set of Arctic specific indicators to monitor trends in human development, and offers an alternative way forward in monitoring for a sustainable future with a focus on people.