A secure and sustainable Arctic

Rachael Lorna Johnstone and Sigrún Sigurðardóttir have just completed an 18 months research collaboration for the Arctic Fulbright Initiative IV. The project concluded with participation in the Arctic Encounter conference that took place in Anchorage, Alaska on April 15-17, https://www.arcticencounter.com/. At the conference, the three working groups involved presented the policy briefs that they have been working on for the past few months. https://fulbrightscholars.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/Fulbright-Arctic-Policy-Brief-2026.pdf .

The conference included other participants from Iceland, including the Icelandic Ambassador to the US, Svanhildur Hólm Valsdóttir. She joined the Head of the Greenland Representation to the United States and Canada, Jacob Isbosethsen on the panel,"The World Is Watching: Iceland and Greenland on Power, Sovereignty, and What Comes Next" during which they discussed the importance of cooperation between Iceland and Greenland. Meanwhile, Eiríkur Björn Björgvinsson, former Mayor of Akureyri spoke on the panel "The Arctic Speaks: A Global Dialogue of Elected Leaders on the Future of the North". Anna Karsldóttir from University of Iceland was also a Fulbright Scholar and was in a group with Rachael.

The Fulbright Arctic Initiative (FAI) is a broad network of experts and researchers from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Their work from 2024 to 2026 focuses on key research questions related to creating a secure and sustainable Arctic.

The scholars come from a wide range of disciplines, spanning the physical sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, and health sciences, as well as including representatives of Indigenous and local knowledge, and professionals working across various fields and sectors connected to the Arctic.