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Environment & Empire
Teaching Resources for GCSE and A-Level Geography
Cold Environments

Arctic

The British Empire sent many voyages to the Arctic. Colonial explorers were tasked with searching for valuable natural resources as well as new sea routes. In doing so, they set the scene for a longer history of resource extraction, exploitation, and overdevelopment.

GCSE Resources

Cold Environments - GCSE - SlidesCold Environments - GCSE - Worksheet

A-level Resources

Cold Environments - A-Level - SlidesCold Environments - A-Level - Worksheet

The Arctic Region

The Arctic is a polar region at the north of the Earth. It includes territory that is part of the following countries: the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Russia. The Arctic is a cold environment which features snow and ice cover, permafrost, sea ice, glaciers. The average winter temperature in the Arctic is −40° C

People in the Arctic

The Arctic is home to around 4 million people. Of those, there are around 400,000 Indigenous people living in the Arctic today. Indigenous people are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the region. These include the Inuit, Chukchi, Yupik, Sami, Evenks, Yakuts, Aleut, Nenets, and other groups.

Arctic Life

Indigenous people, such as the Inuit, had already adapted their ways of living to suit the cold environment of the Arctic. The Inuit understood the interdependence of the climate, soil, plants, animals, and people living in the Arctic. They built seasonal winter and summer houses, and they studied snow patterns and ice flows to help navigate. The Inuit trained dogs to pull sledges and hunt, and they made fur clothing to keep warm. European explorers relied on Indigenous people in order to navigate and survive in the Arctic.

Caspar David Friedrich, "The Sea of Ice", 1823-4. Credit: Wikimedia.
Caspar David Friedrich, "The Sea of Ice", 1823-4. Credit: Wikimedia.

Arctic Empires

European countries colonised the Arctic from around 1600 onwards. They wanted to extract valuable resources from the Arctic, including: fur, fish, whale blubber, coal, and other minerals. Europeans also wanted to find a northern sailing route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, known as the 'Northwest Passage'.

Arctic Development

Today, the Arctic is seen as a development opportunity. European and North American countries still want to extract resources from the Arctic. However, the Arctic is also under threat from climate change and overdevelopment. Indigenous people are rarely properly consulted on development, and they rarely benefit from development.

Indigenous Knowledge

Today, Indigenous people continue to play a significant role in contributing to our understanding of the Arctic. They monitor and record the effects of climate change and development on the Arctic. They also propose alternative solutions, based on traditional Indigenous knowledge, to climate change and development. Yet Indigenous contributions are not always properly acknowledged or valued.

Click the image above to watch a video about the role of First Nations people in addressing climate change.
Click the image above to watch a video about the role of First Nations people in addressing climate change.

References

Climate Atlas of Canada, First Nations and Climate Change, https://climateatlas.ca/indigenous/first-nations

James Poskett, Horizons: A Global History of Science (2022)

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet (2015)

 

Key Figures

Nikolai Daurkin
  • Born into a Chukchi family in Siberia around 1730.
  • Captured by a Russian explorer as a boy.
  • Trained at the Irkutsk Navigational School in Siberia.
  • Surveyed the Bering Strait in the 1760s.
  • Worked as a navigator for Russian navy. Helped map the Siberian-Alaskan coastline.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
  • Born into a Canadian Inuit family in 1953.
  • Studied at McGill University, Canada in 1970s.
  • Elected as President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council in 1995.
  • Campaigned for legal and scientific action on climate change in the Arctic.
  • Published influential book The Right to Be Cold in 2015.