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Human Capital and Sustainable Development in the Arctic: Towards Intellectual and Empirical Framing

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Northern Sustainabilities: Understanding and Addressing Change in the Circumpolar World

Part of the book series: Springer Polar Sciences ((SPPS))

Abstract

One of the aspects of sustainable development in the Arctic is shifting the region’s reliance from non-renewable resources and the public sector to economies increasingly based on knowledge and innovation. Knowledge, creative, and cultural economies represent economic sectors heavily embedded into internal community capacities and intangible competitive advantages. This chapter extends the discussion of the relevance of formal and informal education and knowledge to sustainable development in the Arctic. It discusses patterns and trends in post-secondary educational attainment and attendance in the last decade and provides an assessment of human capital and knowledge production in the Arctic. It also identifies and discusses persistent and emerging human formal education gaps in the Arctic (spatial, gender, Indigenous/non-Indigenous, formal/informal and entrepreneurial). The chapter offers conceptual and qualitative links between human capital accumulation, the knowledge economy and sustainable regional development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For this particular assessment we only included colleges and universities in cities located in the Canadian territories, Alaska, Greenland, northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as in Murmansk Oblast’, and Nenets, Yamal-Nenets, Taimyr and Chukchi autonomous okrugs of Russia. We also considered only institutions with publically available enrollment data.

  2. 2.

    In Russia and Scandinavia undergraduate university degrees historically require more time than in North America and may lead to roughly the same qualification as North American masters degree. However, according to the definition, these degrees are not considered tertiary since they represent a first post-secondary degree for students.

  3. 3.

    Location quotient (LQ) refers to a relative proportion of adults in a certain occupation or education group compared to a baseline (national level). It is an advantageous measure, because it compares all regions (communities) with a single common denominator (their country’s baseline), whether a national benchmark or some other chosen indicator. Most measures are computed for the labour force of 15 years and over.

    $$ L{Q}_i=\frac{\lambda_n}{\lambda_C}, $$

    where LQ i is a location quotient of i (occupation, education, etc.), λ n is the share of population having the measured characteristic i in region n and λ C is the share of population having the same characteristic in the reference region (nation).

    The following indices are utilized in this study:

    • Talent Index (TI) – is a LQ of adult population who have a university degree.

    • Bohemian Index (BI) – is a LQ of people with artistic and creative occupations.

    • Leadership Index (LI) – a LQ of people with leadership and managerial occupations.

    • Entrepreneurship Index (EI) – a LQ of people with business occupations.

    • Applied Science Index (ASI) – a LQ of people with occupations in applied and natural science, computer science and engineering (not used in this study due to data constraints).

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Acknowledgement

This research was partially supported by NSF PLR# 1338850 and 1360365.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, USA

    Andrey N. Petrov

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  1. Andrey N. Petrov
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Correspondence to Andrey N. Petrov .

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  1. University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada

    Gail Fondahl

  2. University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada

    Gary N. Wilson

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Petrov, A.N. (2017). Human Capital and Sustainable Development in the Arctic: Towards Intellectual and Empirical Framing. In: Fondahl, G., Wilson, G. (eds) Northern Sustainabilities: Understanding and Addressing Change in the Circumpolar World. Springer Polar Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46150-2_16

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