The Bioeconomy of the Arctic
Haraldur Hallgrímsson
Sigrún Elsa Smáradóttir
Torfi Jóhannesson
Nice barley field
Why are the mountains white?
The harvest
Growing conditions in EU and Iceland
250
2000
Good condtions
200
Severly limiting
1500
150
Very severly limiting
1000
100
500
50
0
0
Viðmið
Ísland
Day-degrees
Viðmið
Ísland
Growth Days
Why are we doing this?
• Food security
• Rural development
• ...
• And how do we do this?
State support
1. To stimulate production
•
production based direct supprt
2. To secure agricultural land use
•
Hectare support
3. To increase productivity
•
Investment support
4. To facilitate sustainable production methods
• Environmental payments
Food security
1. Are the tomatoes fresh?
2. Are there any tomatoes?
3. Is there any food?
Food security
• Generally high levels of self-sufficiency in
Iceland and the rest of Scandinavia due to
high support level and import restrictions
• Lower levels in Faroe Islands and Greenland
• Different situation in Russia, Canada and
Alaska
The challenge is competitievness
• How can barley production
in Iceland become
competitive with barley
from the EU?
Uniqueness
Specialization and food security
• Specialization does not provide food security
but it gives the potential
• ....and it gives positive rural development
Population density
1,400.00
1,200.00
Inhabitants/km2
1,000.00
800.00
600.00
400.00
1/6 of
Finland
200.00
0.00
MT NL BE UK DE
IT LU CZ DK PL PT SK HU FR
SI AT RO ES
EL CY BG IE
LT LV EE SE
FI
IS
Agricultural communities
Population development
2,331
Dalir – far from Reykjavík
1,246
Borgarfjörður- close to Reykjavík
2,882
2,716
1901
1950
3,572
3,533
1980
2011
1,194
684
1901
West Iceland
14,884
9,772
1950
1980
2011
15,379
9,975
Fishing communities
Snæfellsnes - far from Reykjavík
4,356
1901
1950
1980
2011
2,993
Akranes - close to Reykjavík
7,240
3,922
5,762
2,848
3,165
1,566
1901
1950
1980
2011
1901
1950
1980
2011
Bottom line:
• Bigger cities are the drivers of population
development
• Agriculture and fisheries alone cannot be the
backbones of future population development
Primary production has the general
tendency to increase efficiency =
reduce labor
CAPITAL
LABOR
TIME
When resources are fixed,
employment is bound to go down
CAPITAL
LABOR
TIME
Solutions
A. To find new resources
B. To get larger share of the value chain
Bioeconomy of the Arctic
• Research project funded by the Nordic Council
of Ministers
• Will feed into the Icelandic Chairmanship of
the Nordic Council in 2014.
What is the Bioeconomy of the Arctic?
fishing
Semi-wild food and fur production
Fresh water
Animal husbandry
Bioeconomy
Main Elements of the Project
• Mapping of renewable biological
resources
• Food Security: Mapping food
production, food export and food
import
• Evaluation of utilization of biological
resources and food security in the
Arctic
• High level conference
Arctic Bio-economy: Status
Framework for analysis of a bio-economy:
1. Identify and quantify the biological resources available.
2. Mapping of production, import and export of goods from biological
resources.
3. Evaluate the utilization of biological resources with regard to economic
factors as well as the society and the environment.
•The goal is to evaluate to what extent this kind of analysis is possible for
the arctic countries and to suggest metrics to use for the analysis.
•The framework will make comparison between countries possible.
Arctic bioeconomy
For further information on the Artic Bioeconomy project please contact:
Sveinn Margeirsson, CEO (sveinn.margeirsson@matis.is)
Haraldur Hallgrímsson, division director (hari@matis.is)
Sigrún Elsa Smáradóttir, research group leader (sigrun@matis.is)