BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

Two international visions have been articulated for the region, in the establishment of the Arctic Council and the Ilulissat Declaration, which named the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as the legal regime for the Far North.

Both visions are reflected in concepts and initiated processes.

The 1996 Ottawa Declaration established the Arctic Council with the modest vision of "promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction, with the involvement of indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic".  The core membership is made up of the littoral five Arctic states, together with Iceland, Finland, and Sweden. Six organizations representing indigenous peoples have the status of Permanent Participants with "full consultation rights".  Voting is by consensus of the eight core states. Following the Kiruna ministerial meeting of May 2013, the permanent observer states have been expanded to 12 members.

The core mission of the Arctic Council is scientifically driven, and the accession of a widening circle of observer states and institutions was determined by what states could bring to the table in the physical or social sciences. In the early years the Arctic Council was a small outfit, but important expertise and assessments were developed there.  In the first 16 years of the Council its importance has grown. At the 2013 Kiruna meeting, a new shared vision was articulated for the next 16 years with a greater emphasis on human development. The Kiruna Vision for the Arctic stresses core principles and aims for peaceful cooperation, a safe home for indigenous peoples, prosperity, sustainable development, economic cooperation, the development of knowledge, and further strengthening of the Arctic Council.  Almost all national Arctic policies and strategies echo these principles. The increased global interest in the Arctic Council is also a breakthrough and testimony to its success and strategic importance.

The most important legal vision and concept agreed by the Arctic Five was articulated at the Arctic Ocean Conference in May 2008 in Ilulissat, Greenland. An underappreciated milestone and breakthrough, the Ilulissat Declaration affirmed two core principles: firstly, that the adequate legal regime and mechanism for settling disputes in the Far North is the international law of the sea for all "rights and obligations concerning the delineation of the outer limits of the continental shelf, the protection of the marine environment, including ice-covered areas, freedom of navigation, marine scientific research, and other uses of the sea".  The Declaration also implied that it was not necessary to develop any other general legal regime for the region. It definitively put to rest the idea of an 'Arctic Treaty’, analogous to the Antarctic Treaty of 1958, that was the fantasy of certain environmentalists.  

What is not included in these overarching visions, however, is any security concept. A footnote in the original 1996 declaration clarifies that the Arctic Council "should not deal with matters related to military security," but two legally binding operational-level agreements for safety have been concluded under its auspices: a search-and-rescue (SAR) agreement in 2011, and an agreement on oil-spill prevention and response in 2013,  strengthening existing SAR cooperation already present in the Arctic. As constabulary and safety tasks, it was not controversial to take these up in the Arctic Council, which cannot host a military committee.

In practice, however, safety and security will overlap. To carry out constabulary responsibilities over large areas with difficult access, coastguards will have to call upon air forces or navies with greater reach. But in the absence of a regional concept for an international security framework for the region, ad-hoc military-to-military meetings, and joint exercises have taken shape.

Outside the Arctic Council an informal arrangement of an annual meeting of Northern Chiefs of Defence (ChoDs) has recently filled this vacuum.  The first two 'Arctic ChoDs’ dialogues took place in April 2012 and June 2013, which focused on developing guidelines for cooperation and the practicalities of search-and-rescue capabilities and support for civil authorities. In addition, the coastguards of all Arctic states meet at the North Atlantic Coast Guard Forum.

Admiral Bruun-Hanssen, the Norwegian Chief of Defence, described this new inclusive role for the armed forces: "This is a regional focus, it is not a single-sector focus on a region. We see different parties and different approaches to the entire region, and that’s what gives us armed forces an interesting and inclusive role, because we become a sort of Swiss army knife – a multiple tool for a lot of purposes".

This ChoDs network is consciously not a NATO project in order to prevent any Russian allergic reaction, but this forum will be vulnerable unless over the long term it is embedded in a more solid concept of an institutional framework to enable its development into a regional security architecture. After two productive gatherings, however, there had been no meeting in 2014. But the creation of this military dialogue still represents an important breakthrough that derived from the national dialogue initiated by the Arctic Council.  These efforts are also complemented by joint military exercises.  All these are useful steps, but a stronger institutional basis will be needed for a genuine integrated and allied security framework, if the outcome is to be more than the sum of its parts.

Beside the Law of the Sea and the work of the Arctic Council, additional topic-specific concepts are being developed in a variety of institutions. The International Maritime Organization is developing a mandatory Polar Code for shipping standards.  As Chair of the Arctic Council for 2013-2015, Canada prioritized supporting the IMO in the development and passage of the code.  The European Union and NATO have also shown interest in the region and the circle of observer states is growing. Cooperation has also increased for deepening scientific understanding, for the protection of the northern environment and ecosystems, and the well-being of the peoples of the North. Converging natural and political trends are bringing about a number of innovations and international breakthroughs.

The Ilulissat Declaration articulated a shared international legal vision and declared an existing treaty the legal concept for the region. Pointing to an existing concept solved and prevented many problems, and UNCLOS is treated as a general framework and ‘constitution’ for the region. The treaty provides for a framework of environmental protection and resolving maritime boundaries. The establishment of the Arctic Council articulated a shared environmental, developmental, and economic vision, and it has been followed up with joint research efforts, development programmes, and two safety agreements. But with a limited scope on economic and environmental matters, the Arctic Council has no decision-making authority. Neither vision can pave the way to regional concepts of either governance or security.

Security and governance concepts are carried out on the national level, bilaterally or improvised informally. We next consider the resource claims, national visions, policy concepts, and strategies. The natural process has awoken expressions of international vision, but these are still largely carried out within states whose priorities differ. Individual nations and subnational groups pursue their interests in cooperation and competition with each other. In the history of the pursuit of resource exploitation, competition for the riches of the region, however, is nothing new. The receding ice is creating access to both resources and trade routes. What are the players competing for?