New approaches to the North: Global aspects

During the past few years interest in the North and especially in the Arctic has increased noticeably throughout the world. Views as to the means, scale, and nature of developing the region are changing significantly. The reason for this lies primarily in the global changes in the environment itself, in attitudes to it, as well as in a re‐examination of many value priorities in the life of society and of man, and the advancement of social and ecological origins. The North is seen as a territorial‐ecological reserve. With the development of the economy of the North it is also being advanced as the last major storehouse of resources. Interest in the region has intensified amazingly on the international level; this has been enormously encouraged by the famous Murmansk initiatives of the Soviet government (in the fall of 1987) on collaboration in the North, especially in the Arctic. All of this has brought about the need for new approaches to the North, its resources, its area, and its global role. In the USSR the need for new approaches has also been seriously stimulated by the radical political and economic reforms which are being implemented in the country.