PRPI Director Dr Dwayne R Menezes speaks to Devex about the key development challenges in the Far North.
SEATTLE — Remote villages that lack reliable electricity access. Poorly built homes with no indoor plumbing. Food insecurity in a community practicing traditional subsistence hunting and fishing. Stubbornly persistent poverty in rural pockets. Environmental concerns as multinationals hunt for oil, gas, and minerals.
This slate of issues sounds like textbook development challenges afflicting low- and middle-income countries. But the ones in question here can be found in the United States, Canada, Russia, and to a lesser extent the Nordics — among the richest countries on the planet.
“Because the northern bits of these highly developed countries are not recognized as developing … there is a problem when it comes to funding from infrastructure to research.”
— Dwayne Menezes, founder and managing director, Polar Research and Policy Initiative