POENOR was established owing to the initiative of the Arctic Council on Arctic human development and owing to the working group on sustainable development and Arctic economies under the International Conference on Arctic research Planning II (ICARP II) in Copenhagen in 2005 and in Potsdam in 2006.
After two years of work the final research plan was forwarded to sponsors in 2007 and 2008. In 2005, the international consortium (IPY ID: 227) on the Political Economy of Northern Regional Development was endorsed by the Joint Committee for the International Polar Year and later in 2007 the project received financial support from the Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland, the Nordic council of Ministers (NCM) Arctic Cooperation Program, The Greenland Home Rule Re-search Unit and the Obel Family Foundation.

The planning for the IPY consortium 227 was established during a workshop in Ilulissat in 2005 that was financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers. The three-day workshop assembled researchers, who through forming a workgroup, agreed to endeavor on a project on comparative development in all Arctic regional Economies.
The international consortium consists of 28 participants, and it embraces philosophical, social, geographical, sociological, statistical and economic disciplines. The consortium has participants from all countries with Arctic regions except Sweden and Finland. As part of the funding conditions, the consortium will cooperate with the Arctic Social Indicators project (ASI) – another IPY project financed by the NCM in 2007.

The POENOR consortium met at an inaugural workshop at the Klitgården in Skagen, Denmark in 2007, and this book is an anthology of the papers presented by POENOR participants. In November 2008, the second annual workshop took place in Akureyri in Iceland. As a result of both workshops – books this one being the first – will be published in 2010.

For further information about this first publication, please visit the website: http://www.norden.org/en/publications/publications/2010-521?set_language=en.