Saqqummersitaq

The long-term economic performance of Greenland has been shaped by factors like climate change and global commodity prices but more importantly by the change and persistence of economic and political institutions. This chapter discusses the combination of these factors ranging from natural-resource transitions, historical legacies, and state developmental policies. It provides a general overview to understand the interplay of endogenous and exogenous factors that have influenced the historical evolution of the Greenlandic economy.

The chapter introduces a method of qualitative analysis which builds on socialpsychological theory about structures and relations in social practice. Conditions-, meanings- and reasoning analysis integrates societal and institutional structures in the conduct of everyday life of the citizens and in professional practice. The purpose of the analysis is to show the connections between institutional practice and the citizens’ everyday conduct of life with e.g. health problems, how the different practices influence each other, and what opportunities and challenges they include. By the use of examples from empirical research in patients’ perspectives on health practice in Greenland, it is shown how the method of analysis can be used on empirical material, what forms of knowledge and practice it analyses, and what kind of knowledge and action possibilities it generates.

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis assumes there is an inverted U-shape relationship between pollution and income per capita, implying an improvement in environmental quality when a growing economy reaches a high level of economic development. This study evaluated empirically the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve in Greenland for the period 1970–2018. Using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach, the results show evidence of a U-shaped EKC in Greenland instead of the hypothesized inverted U-shape. The findings indicate that Greenland had initially experienced a decoupling transition during an early development stage associated with structural conditions of a small subsistence economy. However, once the country began to expand its industry, the trend began to reverse, creating a positive and significant relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP per capita that are potentially detrimental to the Arctic natural environment.