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challenged and a picture emerged of the complexity of natural resource management and response:
some adaptation measures can contradict one another and indeed even undermine mitigation
efforts. Underlined in many presentations was another essential entanglement – that in this ‗Age of
Diminishing Returns‘ it is very difficult to predict how one change in natural resource exploitation
will be affected by climatic change as well as by other shifts in natural resource management
elsewhere and in other stocks, as feedback mechanisms and uneven and emerging socioeconomic
development unfold in unpredictable manners.
Emerging Directions: Sustainable Planning
In order to address the challenges and opportunities outlined above, an interrogation of what is
‗sustainable planning‘, and how to enable it, was an overarching motive of the assembly, framed by
two particular conclusions. Firstly, the dismantling of the local/global dichotomy and an
acknowledgement of the multiscalar nature of sustainability was flagged as critical. Rather than focus
attention on unpicking and categorizing, drawing lines and frames, there was motivation to see
beyond classification and beyond traditional armatures and timescales. Secondly, the notion of
uncertainty, of accepting that the future is unpredictable and unknowable, was prevalent. This
uncertainty must be taken into account by scientists and researchers. It seems to demand closer
communication between those on the ground actively experiencing climatic change in the northern
territories and scientists and other professionals who are looking upon the same sites and issues
from a distance. Combined these two conclusions – thinking in multiple scales and working with
uncertainty – point towards a redefinition of sustainable planning: planning as an ongoing,
reiterative, flexible practice rather than a fixed mechanism.
Assembling Open Research Networks
The Open Assembly 2013 was characterised by an open and experimental atmosphere where
researchers of all disciplines and experience were invited to freely discuss their work framed only by
the indistinct boundary of the circumpolar north. In addition to an Assembly dinner, there was a
chance to participate in an organised excursion in the north of Iceland to experience first-hand some
of the issues discussed during the conference, specifically the infrastructural and socioeconomic
challenges for rural communities in the north. Combined these factors created an inclusive,
informal, welcoming environment that is especially valuable for early career scientists and young
researchers.
The NRF, the YR programme, and the ENECON ESPON Collaboration
The NRF was launched by Dr.Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, President of Iceland, in 1998. Based in
Iceland, the forum is led by a steering committee of international senior researchers since 1999. In
its function as research platform the NRF cooperates closely with the University of the Arctic. Its
discourses bring to light the challenges and the opportunities faced by communities in the
Circumpolar North and the Nordic Region. The NRF acts as a platform for international and
interdisciplinary exchange of research and experiences concerning topics that are of specific interest