The Arctic

What Everyone Needs to Know

By: Klaus Dodds, Mark Nuttall

Narrated by: Paul Heitsch

Conversations defining the Arctic region often provoke debate and controversy - for scientists, this lies in the imprecise and imaginary line known as the Arctic Circle; for countries like Canada, Russia, the United States, and Denmark, such discussions are based in competition for land and resources; for indigenous communities, those discussions are also rooted in issues of rights. These shifting lines are only made murkier by the threat of global climate change. In the Arctic Ocean, the consequences of Earth's warming trend are most immediately observable in the multi-year and perennial ice that has begun to melt, which threatens ice-dependent microorganisms and, eventually, will disrupt all of Arctic life and raise sea levels globally.

In The Arctic, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall offer concise answers to the myriad questions that arise when looking at the circumpolar North. They focus on its peoples, politics, environment, resource development, and conservation to provide critical information about how changes there can, and will, affect our entire globe and all of its inhabitants. Dodds and Nuttall explore how the Arctic's importance has grown over time, the region's role during the Cold War, indigenous communities and their history, and the past and future of the Arctic's governance, among other crucial topics.

©2019 Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall (P)2019 Tantor

Dated and just listing of common knowledge

This was disappointing. With the recent interest in the Arctic I was looking forward to some enlightenment, but came away extremely disappointed. It is a very long list of issues with boilerplate text generously added. But no real news. Coverage stops in 2017 and let's say there have been some changes since then. No mention of the spy infiltrations at the University of Tromsoe, or of the seismic shifts introduced by the current administration in Washington. No real depth to the discussions on resource extraction or any real insights into the depth of some of the challenges faced by resource rights. No mention of the DNA findings (of David Reich et al at Harvard) timing the arrival of the Sami in the arctic regions of Eurasia to 2-3000 years ago, which could invalidate their status as "indigenous". I mean for sure they are local, but the timing might stretch definitions of indigenous. So at least for me this was a waste of time.