Observing trends and assessing data for Arctic mining

Abstract

This paper reviews and assesses the state of data to describe and monitor mining trends in the pan-Arctic and their social effects, and discusses drivers of change in Arctic mining. Trends in mining activity can be characterized as stasis or decline in mature regions of the Arctic, with strong growth in the frontier regions. World prices and the availability of large, undiscovered and untapped resources with favorable access and low political risk are the biggest drivers for Arctic mining, while climate change is a minor and locally variable factor. The widely available measures of mineral production and value are poor proxies for social and economic effects on Arctic communities. Historical data on mineral production and value are unavailable in electronic format for much of the Arctic, specifically Scandinavia and Russia; completing the historical record back to 1980 will require work with paper archives. The most critically needed improvement in data collection and reporting is to develop comparable measures of employment. The eight Arctic countries each use different definitions of employment and different methodologies to collect the data. Furthermore, many countries do not report employment by county and industry, so the Arctic share of mining employment cannot be identified.

Acknowledgements

This article is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF OPP0638408. The authors thank Larisa Abryutina for collecting documents from government archives in Anadyr Chukotka.

Notes

1. Canadian diamond price, as deduced from Canadian mining data are only reported for the last 10 years. Prior to this time diamond prices were determined in a monopolistic market and were not representative of production costs and social impacts.

2. This analysis was prepared in early 2010. We note that recently there has been large growth in mining in Northern Finland and Sweden during the 2010s. New mines opened in Finland in Kainuu and Lappi area in the late 2000s, and new mines will be introduced in the early 2010s in arctic Sweden and Finland. See e.g. Mining Journal, November 19, 2010.

3. Based on information presented by Alaska Department of Natural Resources officials during the Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference in Nome, Alaska, April 9, 2009.