Climate change is rapidly transforming the Arctic geographic, economic and social landscape. Melting ice and longer periods of ice-free waters are opening up for opportunities for resources extraction, shipping and other economic activity. The developments are putting a potentially enormous pressure on the Arctic environment. To improve and enhance the future governance of the Arctic region, Trinomics, together with GRID-Arendal and Ecorys, supported the European Commission (DG ENV) to launch an NGO forum to discuss the changing Arctic.

The forum, called the Arctic NGO Forum (http://arcticngoforum.org/), consists of a large number of environmental NGOs working on Arctic issues such as biodiversity, resource extraction, shipping, pollution and sustainable development. The central tasks of the consortium members have been to organize forums and thematic workshops related to environmental issues in the Arctic. The Arctic NGO Forum include large organizations such as WWF and Bellona, and several companies such as Shell and institutes have been invited to present and discuss at the workshops. Workshops have been held mainly, but not exclusively, in the Arctic region, often back-to-back with meetings between the Senior Arctic Officials.