Abstract

The topic of fishing and access rights to marine resources is extremely important to coastal communities in the Arctic, as they are in the rest of the world for fishing societies from Ghana to Galicia. One of the major changes taking place, one could call it a social and historical transformation, is the privatisation of formerly common property resources, linking local livelihoods and community vibility to economic and financial processes of national and global markets and financial capitalism. Very little has been written about the social, indigenous and other Arctic residents‘ human rights, and economic and political implications of this recent shift in governance paradigm. This talk reports on ongoing anthropological and interdisciplinary research and deals with some of the aspects of this very rapid social change which is also coupled to processes of climate change and prospects of transarctic shipping and development of industrial megaprojects. The focus is on Iceland, Greenland and Norway but with data from other Arctic societies and fisheries.