This field of interest encompasses research about various regimes of natural resource management: traditional, colonial, post-colonial and sustainable management based on scientific advice. The programme also includes studies on the social and historical construction of knowledge on the northern natural and cultural environment.
This research area includes the impact of globalisation on regional life opportunities in the far north. Issues of this kind are strongly related to basic questions of political democracy and the dynamics of the global market economy. In this context it is interesting to look at the results of contemporary Barents Cooperation, people-to-people collaboration and its future potential. General methodological approaches to region-building projects are part of the research scope.
This field of interest is related to the fact that the Barents Institute is located in the border town of Kirkenes. It motivates research on transcultural exchange in the circum polar arctic, on obstacles and alleviations to border region trade and to economical development, and on how cross-border collaboration may further conflict prevention and peace.
New scenarios on security issues and economic development have been launched in recent years regarding the seas and the vast continental shelf beyond the northern coasts of Europe, Asia and North America. Military perspectives have changed but are still part of the basic picture. To this is added the global interest of the hydrocarbon reserves of the northern shelf as technology for off-shore extraction in sub-arctic waters develops. The long-standing importance of the fisheries of these highly productive seas is a stable economic factor in the context.
Related to its main business of research the Barents Institute takes an interest in cultural issues. The regional cultural interest is well established in the Barents north. It has been successful in bringing people together crossways borders and language barriers for planning and collaborating on common projects such as: exchanging visits of musician and artists, organisations of sports tournaments, learning from each other on handicraft, and in reviving and sustaining folk and indigenous culture.
