The year 2020 has urged Humanity to rethink the sustainable development agenda. The COVID-19 pandemic rearticulated the gaps in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to benefit remote regions and and their populations including Arctic Indigenous Peoples. In this brief communication, we want to draw attention to the need of reshaping UN SDGs in light of the ‘new normal’ to promote sustainable development of Arctic Indigenous communities. The UN Agenda 2030 sets priorities that have relevance to the Arctic, with its rapidly changing environmental and social systems that are interlinked to other parts of the globe. Successful implementation of SDGs in the Arctic can only be accomplished through an open and pluralistic dialog among global and Arctic stakeholders with the engagement, equal partnership, and under the guidance of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples. This process, we argue, could start by revising the existing 17 goals and creating five new ones (Sustainable Governance and Indigenous Rights, Resilient Indigenous Societies, Livelihoods and Knowledge systems, Life on Ice and Permafrost, Equity and Equality in Access to Natural Resources, and Investment in Youth and Future Generations) that represent Indigenous People’s knowledge and aspirations for sustainable development. By indigenizing SDGs in the Arctic, we will not only build the Arctic’s own sustainable development framework but attain greater equity and expand the knowledge base of sustainable development globally.

The Arctic is among the world’s regions most affected by ongoing and increasing cultural, socio-economic, environmental and climatic changes. Over the last two decades, scholars, policymakers, extractive industries, local, regional and national governments, intergovernmental forums, and non-governmental organizations have turned their attention to the Arctic, its peoples and resources, and to challenges and benefits of impending transformations. The International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP) has now transpired three times, most recently in April 2015 with ICARP III. Arctic sustainability is an issue of increasing concern within the Arctic and beyond it, including in ICARP endeavors. This paper reports some of the key findings of a white paper prepared by an international and interdisciplinary team as part of the ICARP-III process, with support from the International Arctic Science Committee Social and Human Sciences Working Group, the International Arctic Social Sciences Association and the Arctic-FROST research coordination network. Input was solicited through sharing the initial draft with a broader network of researchers, including discussion and feedback at several academic and community venues. This paper presents a progress report on Arctic sustainability research, identifies related knowledge gaps and provides recommendations for prioritizing research for the next decade.

This perspective presents a statement of the 10th International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences Indigenous Knowledge and knowledge co-production panel and discussion group, 20 July 2021. The statement is designed to serve as a characterization of the state-of-the-art and guidance for further advancement of Indigenous Knowledge and knowledge co-production in the Arctic. It identifies existing challenges and provides specific recommendations for researchers, Indigenous communities, and funding agencies on meaningful recognition and engagement of Indigenous Knowledge systems.

Indigenous understanding of sustainability is embedded in close relations to land and environment, Indigenous Knowledge systems, Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, and Indigenous languages. However, the sustainability of Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods is significantly affected by various global change drivers. In the Arctic, Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods are impacted by environmental, social, and cultural changes, including climate change, environmental pollution, economic processes, and resource extraction. This paper aims to review and synthesize recent academic and gray literature on the sustainability of Indigenous communities in Sakha Republic, Northeast Siberia, Russia in the face of global change with a particular focus on land- and water-based traditional activities, native language, and the Indigenous Knowledge system.

Since February 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic has been unfolding in the Arctic, placing many communities at risk due to remoteness, limited healthcare options, underlying health issues and other compounding factors. Preliminary analysis of available COVID-19 data in the Arctic at the regional (subnational) level suggests that COVID-19 infections and mortality were highly variable, but generally remained below respective national levels. Based on the trends and magnitude of the pandemic through July, we classify Arctic regions into four groups: Iceland, Faroe Islands, Northern Norway, and Northern Finland with elevated early incidence rates, but where strict quarantines and other measures promptly curtailed the pandemic; Northern Sweden and Alaska, where the initial wave of infections persisted amid weak (Sweden) or variable (Alaska) quarantine measures; Northern Russia characterised by the late start and subsequent steep growth of COVID-19 cases and fatalities and multiple outbreaks; and Northern Canada and Greenland with no significant proliferation of the pandemic. Despite limitations in available data, further efforts to track and analyse the pandemic at the pan-Arctic, regional and local scales are crucial. This includes understanding of the COVID-19 patterns, mortality and morbidity, the relationships with public-health conditions, socioeconomic characteristics, policies, and experiences of the Indigenous Peoples. Data used in this paper are available at https://arctic.uni.edu/arctic-covid-19.