Our future is directly dependent on the Arctic’s future.

The presence of human habitation, and its right to security and survival is the essential focus of the emerging Arctic consensus. There is no question that the needs of those communities will be addressed.

The whole thing seemed like a coded conversation about the control of inevitable exploitation of Arctic resources, justified by high-minded agreement and theoretical application to the economic, social, and cultural needs of indigenous peoples referred to often but represented there in very few numbers.