Throughout this course, we've covered a lot of ground. First, we got to know a bit about each major region of the Arctic, exploring the people, culture, geography, history, economy and political organization of each one. We imagined what it would be like to grow up in some of those places, visualizing lifestyles that might be quite different from our own. Since the ultimate goal of this course is to explore how Arctic societies may seek environmental, cultural and social sustainability while taking part in global processes, this thought experiment is an all important first step. Before we can begin to accurately define both the problems and opportunities that globalization presents to Arctic societies, let alone envision possible plans of action, we must be able to empathize with others. In some cases, the mass media makes this easier since there are articles, photographs and film clips about almost anything on earth, just a Google search away. Yet amidst this wealth of information, it's easy to settle for glib, simplistic, Tweeter, Facebook or Instagram sized ideas that are really more about what we expect to find than about what's really there. Taking the time to sit with the facts, with the simple descriptions of places we might never visit and people we may never meet, but because of globalization are actually closely tied to our own well-being and ultimately survival is time well spent, both as a warm-up exercise and as a goal in and of itself. We also explored globalization as the emergent reality for virtually everyone on Earth, no matter where they live. The forces of globalization bring with them both opportunity and hardship. This is true around the globe and although the isolation and relative political and cultural marginalization of some Arctic communities can exacerbate some of the hardships, there is very little going on in the Arctic that is not also happening elsewhere. The challenge for the people of the Arctic, along with the rest of humanity is to grab hold of the opportunities while neutralizing the hardships. This is where things get tricky. When it comes to human activity, it's hard to imagine any action, drilling for oil, regulating the fishery, hunting reindeer, mining uranium that does not have some negative impact on the environment, the economy, the global community, or some combination of all three. Because of this, it is extremely difficult to imagine an ideal of truly comprehensive sustainable development, much less achieve it. There are so many factors to consider, so many different groups of people, so many environmental issues, so many connections most of us aren't even aware of that it's enough to make you want to throw up your hands in defeat and walk away from the problem. Yet, over the course of history, what has humanity shown about itself, if not it's nearly miraculous ability to change and adjust when the shifting world demands it. We have survived ice ages, super volcanoes, floods, famines and disease and always we have survived by working together, using communication and cooperation to come up with new solutions to the ever-changing threats we face. It is true that at the moment we stand toe-to-toe with climate change, dying seas, threatened ecosystems along with massive income disparity, hunger, disease, and the multiple traumas left in the still churning wake of colonialism, to name a few. However, we have many powerful tools at our disposal. We have the collected wisdom and philosophy of indigenous communities around the globe, including those of the Arctic, we have modern science and the potential for discovery it brings, we have human creativity, but most importantly, we have the ability to share these things with each other, to combine and synthesize new ideas out of old ones. However, for this to work, we all have to do a lot of listening. This is why we ended this course on the forms of governance that we find around the Arctic. Those organizations represent the best of what we can do as people to find new creative solutions to the problems we have created for ourselves. We can come together with a willingness to learn from each other, listen to each other and work as one to create through a slow process of trial and error, truly sustainable development. For this process to work, the people involved, which turns out to be all of us, need to develop three kinds of knowledge. First, people who live outside the Arctic need to learn how culturally environmentally complex and rich the Arctic really is and how precarious its position in the world can be. Second, the people who live in the Arctic need to learn about the processes of globalization and the market capitalism that drives it, so that they can be fully equipped to work within that system to advocate for their own rights and agendas. Finally, the people of the Arctic and of the rest of the world must work together to create new knowledge so that we can all move forward together as respectful partners in a single project concerned with the well-being of all. It is our hope that the information and perspectives in this MOOC, will start each of you on the path to creating new knowledge that will help foster sustainable development in the Arctic and around the world. Looking at the various obstacles that stand in the way of sustainable development in the Arctic, it is easy to get pessimistic, but we could also look at it this way, so far, whenever humanities back has been up against the wall, we found a way to keep going, otherwise you wouldn't be watching this MOOC right now. Odds are, if we don't give up, if we don't give into cynicism and instead focus on the common fate we all share, we will move ever closer to a sustainable future, which is good, because whatever solutions we find, we'll probably need them to deal with whatever comes next.
