Pardee Center Co-Hosts Webinar Titled “Greening the Arctic”

“Arctic greening” describes the alarming increase of vegetation around the Northern world, which accelerates global warming and permafrost thaw. But greening in the Arctic also inspires economic, political, and imaginative innovation among local and Indigenous Arctic peoples, who are “experts of change,” as Mininnguaq Kleist (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Greenland) affirmed at the Arctic Circle Assembly of 2023.

“Greening” thus means different things to different people. For social scientists, it is a deliberate introduction of plants into built environments. Ecologists and geographers each observe plants transforming Arctic lands through different lenses, with different results. For Arctic farmers, the increasing ability of plants to grow brings both new opportunities and unpredictability. How do we make sense of these different visions of greening?

On November 19, 2024, Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute co-hosted the latest event in the Arctic Environmental Humanities Workshop Series, titled “Greening the Arctic.” The panel discussion examined the dramatic expansion of plant life across the Arctic from a variety of viewpoints, considering the sciences and arts, and farms, forests, and tundra together.

The panel included Hannah Bradley (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Engineering and Society, University of Virginia); Inuk Silis Høegh, (Filmmaker & Visual Artist); Jeff Kerby (Senior Research Associate, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge); Kim Neider (Head Gardener, Upernaviarsuk Experimental Station, Greenland); and Ross Virginia (Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science, Dartmouth College).

The Arctic Environmental Humanities Workshop Series is co-convened by Adriana Craciun, the Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Chair of Humanities at Boston University, and Michael Bravo, Professor of the History and Geography of Science at the University of Cambridge.