The Arctic is experiencing substantial increases in human activity in areas ranging from fossil fuel and mineral extraction to transport along Arctic waterways. Such actions may yield new sources of economic benefits and further objectives to promote national defense, yet they may also generate potential risks to the Arctic environment. As such, concerns from various stakeholders have been raised regarding how to make Arctic operations better meet sustainability goals and balance defense and economic objectives with environmental degradation. This article describes how decision analytical tools, such as multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA), may help identify policies and project proposals that minimize the potential for environmental degradation within a framework of maximizing economic, industrial, and defense objectives. Specifically, MCDA conducts value tradeoffs to assess the utility of various decision alternatives against disparate criteria; for this case, this includes the evaluation of Arctic operation sustainability. This article demonstrates through an example of industrial mining in Greenland how MCDA might serve as a tool to guide uncertain decisions for various Arctic projects, and potentially indicate opportunities to structure such projects to provide greater sustainability for their longer-term operations.

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This paper analyzes the Greenlandic business community and the recently established cluster relevant to extractive industries in Greenland, Arctic Cluster of Raw Materials (ACRM), to enhance local business development in mining projects in Greenland. The analysis directs toward a transition from an economic cluster to a collaborative community in order to increase business potential and to overcome limitations of smallness and inadequate competencies of the Greenlandic business community in the mining industry. Transitioning into a collaborative community creates more value by enabling member firms to realize business development that each single firm could not achieve with its own efforts by being a part of a cluster. Managing the transition process emphasizes the facilitating role for the reason that a shared service provider is required in every collaborative community. I develop a conceptual model for the transition from an economic cluster to a collaborative community based on the architectural elements of the collaborative community design. The conceptual model considers the five proximity dimensions that influence inter-firm linkages both as enablers and barriers to the transition process and collaboration. Collaboration represents a new approach to business and industrial development in remote regions of the Arctic, as challenges evident for Greenland can be found throughout the entire Arctic.