The global Arctic: unprecedented change, global stakes (2026)

The Arctic is undergoing some of the fastest and most wide-ranging environmental transformations on the planet. Over the past decades, this region has become a hotspot of global change, where warming has occurred nearly four times faster than the global average over the last 40 years. These rapid changes are reshaping landscapes, ecosystems, climate feedbacks, and the ways of life of Arctic societies—particularly Indigenous communities who have stewarded these lands for millennia. The consequences of Arctic change are felt most strongly locally, but it is now understood that they extend far beyond the Arctic region, with implications for climate stability, sea-level rise, biodiversity and weather patterns globally. In this context, the Arctic must be viewed as a sentinel region for Earth's stability, where anticipating, understanding of, and responding to abrupt and potentially irreversible shifts is of critical importance.