The Arctic: Current Issues and Challenges

"The importance of the Arctic in many fields of human activity strongly increased over the past decades.

The academic scientific research demonstrates a 3-fold increase in the number of journal articles dealing with "Arctic": from 1,400 in 2000 to 4,200 in 2018.

This increase is not fortuitous but certainly stems from double importance of Arctic regions for humanity.

The first importance is the role that the Arctic plays in the on-going environmental changes, mostly linked to climate warming and environmental pollution.

Here, the first key issues are the Arctic Ocean, ice melt, permafrost thaw, greenhouse gases emission, and organic carbon mobilization from soils to rivers.

From the other hand, highly fragile Arctic ecosystems and biota are strongly affected by environmental pollution, be it organic compounds or toxic metals and radionuclides.

The rising concern of humanity to the key role of the Arctic in climate regulation on the plan