Speaking Plainly about Research, Governance, and Policy for Sustainable Living

摘要

There are challenges to sustainable living in northern Canada, including dependence on nonrenewable resource development, on financial support from various levels of government with or without land claim agreements, and on reliable sources of appropriate goods and services in the areas of health, environment, business, and technology that are, for the most part, far from our remote communities. These dependencies affect all aspects of human security and livelihood in the North. Remoteness creates policy and governance challenges. Other challenges include adapting to climate warming and its impacts on traditional ways of life and work. In a sense, every northerner who wishes to live in a sustainable way must become an entrepreneur, and must seek ways of mastering current dependencies. There is considerable research knowledge available to inform governance and policy for many aspects of entrepreneurial sustainable living in the North. The challenge is to find the knowledge that is relevant to us, and to make this knowledge available to community-based researchers and directly applicable to northern communities in practical, plain language that does not depend on academic terminology or business lingo.