The emergence of global change science and sustainability science, both based on concerns about global trends, coincided with the ICARP II planning process, which was intended to address arctic dimensions of global environmental change. Vulnerability and resilience have become major bridging concepts within sustainability science. The field of vulnerability studies leveraged multiple research traditions, among them hazards and disaster research, the sustainable livelihoods framework and political economy/ecology. Resilience has emerged as another integrative concept in sustainability science and research. Resilience theory posits four interrelated system functions in an adaptive cycle metaphor: release, reorganization, growth, and conservation. The Arctic Resilience Report recently articulated a "state of resilience science" for the circumpolar Arctic. In addition to the governance aspects in context of vulnerability and resilience, a literature on Arctic sustainability governance is evolving, mostly since the establishment of the Arctic Council in 1996.