Rural Communities Responding to Territorial Challenges in the Nordic Region

Rural territory makes up around 77% of the Nordic Region and is home to 25% of the population. Rural areas are an important source of food, timber, minerals, fresh water, and recreational spaces, but also struggle with depopulation, economic benefit retention from extractive resource industries and climate change-induced permafrost degradation. The aim of this study is to assess how rural communities respond to these territorial challenges in the Nordic Region. The research design is inspired by a mixed method approach, with data acquisition involving semi-structured interviews, community workshops, questionnaire data, register data and desktop research.

This Ph.D. thesis is based on three different research projects that collaborate with community members and local authorities to support local development in rural areas. The results show that many of the emerging rural community responses can be described as social innovations, and they are primarily driven by community members, local authorities and civil society organisations. Community members are rated as the most important when it comes to developing ideas, while local civil society organisations are rated as the most important in terms of decisionmaking.

To ensure more local benefit retention from resource-based industries, local smart specialisation strategies, can contribute to community engagement by collaborating with small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs. A key outcome of the strategy process was enhanced knowledge of population change, land-use planning, and approaches to local economic diversification. The results from the adaptive capacity assessment to manage permafrost degradation show that community members and local authorities generally respond to permafrost degradation via autonomous and ad-hoc adaptation practices. Typical challenges include deformations and changes in ground structure, leading to slanting floors, doors or windows that do not close, and cracking windows due to differential settlement of houses. Furthermore, climate-driven projections show that 42% of Arctic permafrost communities will no longer be underlaid by permafrost by 2050.

This study of rural community responses contributes to an understanding of the enabling factors that can address territorial challenges. Across the empirical examples, three enabling factors emerge as important for rural community responses: civic agency, institutional organisation and long-term cooperation. By assessing the presence of these enabling factors in place- and network-based local development, this study provides an approach to generate and sustain rural community responses that address territorial challenges in the Nordic Region.