ARCTIC: Alaska's Economic Struggles & more – 18th Feb 2025

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 18th of February twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Life in the Arctic is tough, and Alaskans are now facing economic trouble. On Thursday the 13th, the Anchorage Daily News revealed how a risky state-backed investment in seafood processing has cost Alaskans millions of dollars. The $80 billion dollar Alaska public investment fund is used to support local people and infrastructure while investing in worldwide industries.

To support locals better, the state government decided to invest in its local seafood industry, including almost $30 million dollars invested in the Peter Pan Seafood Plant in King Cove, southern Alaska. The deal collapsed when Peter Pan was liquidated last year, leaving the town struggling and the fund losing over twenty percent of its value.

Outraged residents and industry leaders have blamed poor state oversight for the disaster, demanding accountability for an investment that promised so much but instead ended up making things so much worse.

However, Alaska’s economy might be getting a helping hand from Japan. For years, Alaska has been trying to develop a natural gas export facility, but last year the project was given a cost estimate of over $40 billion US dollars, due to the remote and treacherous Alaskan terrain.

On Tuesday the 11th, news agency High North News reported that President Trump and Shigeru Ishiba, Japan’s Prime Minister, agreed to develop the project together. This is still the first stage and the earliest predictions have the project running by twenty thirty-one, but, if successful, this could transform energy markets across the Arctic and boost Alaska’s struggling economy.

Russia’s own struggles with selling natural gas continue. The country’s flagship new gas plant, Arctic LNG2, has still yet to find a single buyer for a drop of gas due to widespread international sanctions. However, Bloomberg reported on Monday the 17th that Russia is trying to convince India to purchase its energy.

Last year, India announced it would follow Western sanctions and not buy natural gas from Russia’s Arctic, but Bloomberg reported that India is willing to change this stance if it gets a significant discount on the energy.

Analysts say this move challenges Western efforts to isolate Moscow’s Arctic fossil fuel industry.

The energy industry in the Norwegian Arctic is looking forward to a record year. On Thursday the 13th, Reuters reported that a recent flurry of investment has made twenty twenty-five a record year for investments in oil and gas projects in Norway, with a large part of the money focused on oil and gas fields in the northern region. The investment has reached over $22 billion US dollars, over $200 million dollars above last year’s record.

With Arctic economics in the spotlight, a strong message has been sent from Canada about the expansionist rhetoric from the US. On Thursday the 13th, the territorial premiers of Canada’s Arctic territories, Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories released a joint statement with a simple declaration: the Arctic is not for sale.

The statement came after a meeting was held between Canadian and US leaders in Washington on Wednesday the 12th, where President Trump continued to assert that Canada should become the fifty-first state of the US. In the face of this, the Arctic leaders in Canada are taking a stand against Trump's statements, saying that they will control their own futures.

Still, the Canadian Arctic might be changing very soon. On Monday the 10th, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, currently on track to win the country's upcoming national elections, announced that if he won, he would dramatically cut foreign aid spending and use the money to build a military base in the Arctic and boost regional security in Canada’s northern regions.

This statement has come days after US President Trump cut his own country’s foreign aid and has led to Poilievre’s political opponents accusing him of parroting Trump’s decisions.

With Trump deeply unpopular in Canada, it remains to be seen whether a politician acting in a similar fashion can win the coming election.

Some welcome change is coming to the Swedish Arctic in the form of a new train line. On Wednesday the 12th, the news agency North Sweden Business reported that the Swedish government has decided to start building a coastal railway that will cover the entire of Sweden’s northern coastline.

Many towns and cities in this region have never enjoyed long-distance public transport. As well as improving transport links for people, in a boost to Sweden’s economic prospects, a line will be built especially for transporting iron ore from Kiruna, in northern Sweden, which contains the largest iron mine in the world but has relied on a single train line for decades.

North Sweden’s Indigenous Sami community is worrying about serious discrimination. On Thursday the 13th, Håkan Jonsson, the Chairman of the Swedish Sami Parliament, revealed that on Sunday the 9th, three reindeer were found dead outside Umeå, eastern Sweden, where a Sami gathering is currently taking place.

The Sami Parliament has called the case frightening, with worries that reindeer are being targeted for hate crimes as they are the most treasured possessions and companions of the Sami people.

On Monday the 10th, local police confirmed they are investigating but cannot yet confirm the cause of death or criminal intent.

Some Nordic nations are cooperating in new ways. On Monday the 10th, NATO announced the first deployment of the Finnish air force to Iceland. Iceland is a NATO member, but since it doesn’t have a standing military force, other member nations take responsibility for patrolling Icelandic territory. Finland, as NATO’s newest member, has joined in, securing and defending Iceland from any threats.

Iceland is trying to improve its defense against climate change as well. According to a government climate assessment published on Saturday the 15th, the previous Icelandic government’s climate plan has proved insufficient, and Iceland is currently on track to fail to meet the twenty thirty Paris Climate Accord targets. As a result, the government will create a new climate plan that aims to undertake a few large-scale measures, rather than many smaller ones as was previously done.

Among the new climate actions are the widespread restoration of wetlands, which trap huge amounts of methane gas, and improving electric car charging infrastructure around the country to encourage the transition from petrol to electric vehicles.

On another note, on Wednesday the 12th, research published by a huge, international team of researchers in the journal Nature identified unique genetic variants found only in Greenlanders, revealing how their ancestors adapted to the Arctic environment. The study highlights genetic traits related to cold tolerance, metabolism, and diet, shaped by thousands of years of survival in extreme conditions.

Researchers say the findings could improve medical care for Greenlanders by tailoring treatments to their specific genetic makeup. The discovery also deepens understanding of how Indigenous Arctic populations have thrived in one of the planet’s harshest climates.

To read more about the impacts of this groundbreaking study, take a look at the link in the show notes.

Finally, just living in the Arctic is hard enough but the annual Yukon Ultra Race, an extreme ultramarathon held in Canada's Yukon Territory, has proven to be the hardest race in the world. The Canadian national broadcaster CBC published the race results on Wednesday the 12th, with only six of the original forty-six competitors managing to complete the 600-kilometer, or over 370-mile, race.

Beginning on the 2nd of February, Harm Feringa of the US was the overall winner, crossing the line on Saturday the 8th on a bike, with Kasper Vanherpe, the sixth and final remaining racer, crossing the finish line on Wednesday morning. Extreme cold dropping below minus forty degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit and tough terrain caused ten cases of frostbite, many cases of trench foot, and three emergency medical helicopters to whittle the racers to just six.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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