Beyond Greenland's White Gold

Gorm Winther, MSc in Economics, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at Aalborg University and a former faculty member of the University of Greenland. For more than four decades, he has been a leading scholar of political economy, governance, and development in Greenland and the Arctic, combining rigorous research with practical engagement in policy and institutional design. His work is widely recognized for its depth, rigor, and real-world impact. Winther has led major international research programs, including the consortium behind Political Economy of Northern Regional Development (POENOR), and served as Project Leader and Consultant for the SEPA project (Human Security, Models of Codetermination, and Arctic Peoples’ Participation in Decision-Making). His expertise has guided governments, municipalities, trade unions, and corporations across the Arctic, including the Greenland Home Rule Government, Tele Greenland Inc., the Greenland Trade Union, and parliamentary groups in Denmark. An influential voice in Arctic and development studies, he has contributed to international expert groups on Arctic economies and livelihoods and helped develop innovative curricula at Finland’s University of the Arctic. He chaired the Working Group on Sustainable and Economic Development under ICARP II for the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and led Denmark’s Power and Democracy Project (Magtudredningen), underscoring his longstanding commitment to democracy, governance, and participatory decision-making. Earlier in his career, he served as Course Director and resource person for postgraduate programs on participation, workers’ control, and economic democracy at the Interuniversity Centre of Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik (1984–1999) and was a Visiting Researcher at Cornell University’s Department of Economics in 1984/85 and 1990/91. From 1998 to 2015, he served on the Board of the European Federation of Employee Share Ownership in Brussels, where he is now an Honorary Member. This book draws on a lifetime of research and field experience to confront a central question: who controls development, who benefits from it, and how democratic can an economy truly be—especially at the edges of the global system.