Blue economy plays a vital role in futures exploit of the marine resources in the Nordic countries. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

Creative industries and bioeconomy key to future Arctic job market

February 06, 2017

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Sustainable development will replace the traditional primary production in nothern regions in the future, says a report published by Nordregio. The report Future Regional Development Policy for the Nordic Arctic: Foresight Analysis 2013–2016 introduces future business opportunities in the Arctic area. 
 
“Sustainable development will create a foundation for new business opportunites such as bioeconomy and other industires requiering higher lever knowledge, as research, development and innovations. New possibilities in growth lie particulary in sustainable tourism and in creative industry: organizing events, local food production, arts and crafts and film industry”, says the senior researcher Anna Karlsdóttir. 
 
In the Arctic coastline and especially in the West Nordic region the so called blue economy plays a vital role in futures exploit of the marine resources. To reach to creating a higher value products in bioeconomy one should be able to optimize the utilisation of the already used marine resources and residual biomass. According to report bioeconomy has a potential to create new jobs at the same time as maintaining the old ones. Seaweed farming could be one of the industries creating new jobs in bioeconomy.
 
Norway and Iceland are main seaweed producers in Europe, but still hold only one percent of the global seaweed market. 

Youth is the key

Youth living in Arctic regions is the key to reach the growth in sustainable development. Main challenge is to find solutions to prevent youth moving away to bigger cities in southern areas after education and jobs. However, young people living in North are already used to long distances and travellin in between friends, family, schools and jobs. This multilocational lifestyle should extend to youth’s future plans - at the moment only a small porpotion of young people see themeselves living in their arctic home area after ten years from now. 
 
In addition to blue economy and bioeconomy the creative industries and sustainable tourism are also main businesses in future. Both braches also fill the criteria of the sustainable development since utilising mainly human resources instead of nature’s ones. Different kind of festivals already play a big role in creative industries employment and there is still growth to be as especially Nordic music business is still expanding. Local food works well within sustanaible tourism. In northern Norway different kinds of festivals are already a firm part of the creative businesses. 

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