The Bioeconomy of the Arctic Haraldur Hallgrímsson Sigrún Elsa Smáradóttir Torfi Jóhannesson

Nice barley field

Why are the mountains white?

The harvest

Growing conditions in EU and Iceland Day-degrees Growth Days Very severly limiting Good condtions Severly limiting

Why are we doing this? Food security Rural development... And how do we do this?

State support 1.To stimulate production production based direct supprt 2.To secure agricultural land use Hectare support 3.To increase productivity Investment support 4.To facilitate sustainable production methods Environmental payments

Food security 1.Are the tomatoes fresh? 2.Are there any tomatoes? 3.Is there any food?

Food security Generally high levels of self-sufficiency in Iceland and the rest of Scandinavia due to high support level and import restrictions Lower levels in Faroe Islands and Greenland Different situation in Russia, Canada and Alaska

The challenge is competitievness How can barley production in Iceland become competitive with barley from the EU?

Uniqueness

Specialization and food security Specialization does not provide food security but it gives the potential....and it gives positive rural development

Population density 1/6 of Finland

Farm size

Population development Agricultural communities Fishing communities

Bottom line: Bigger cities are the drivers of population development Agriculture and fisheries alone cannot be the backbones of future population development

Primary production has the general tendency to increase efficiency = reduce labor CAPITAL LABOR TIME

When resources are fixed, employment is bound to go down CAPITAL LABOR TIME

Solutions A.To find new resources B.To get larger share of the value chain

Bioeconomy of the Arctic Research project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers Will feed into the Icelandic Chairmanship of the Nordic Council in 2014.

What is the Bioeconomy of the Arctic? Animal husbandry Semi-wild food and fur production fishing

Bioeconomy

Main Elements of the Project Mapping of renewable biological resources Mapping of renewable biological resources Food Security: Mapping food production, food export and food import Food Security: Mapping food production, food export and food import Evaluation of utilization of biological resources and food security in the Arctic Evaluation of utilization of biological resources and food security in the Arctic High level conference High level conference

Arctic Bio-economy: Status Framework for analysis of a bio-economy: 1.Identify and quantify the biological resources available. 2.Mapping of production, import and export of goods from biological resources. 3.Evaluate the utilization of biological resources with regard to economic factors as well as the society and the environment. The goal is to evaluate to what extent this kind of analysis is possible for the arctic countries and to suggest metrics to use for the analysis. The framework will make comparison between countries possible.

Arctic bioeconomy For further information on the Artic Bioeconomy project please contact: Sveinn Margeirsson, CEO Haraldur Hallgrímsson, division director Sigrún Elsa Smáradóttir, research group leader