Driven by Nature: The Future of the Arctic
Because of climate change, the Arctic is transitioning to an ice-free future that will open new trade routes and exploit the polar region's vast natural resources amid the receding ice pack. Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada, the United States, and international organizations are all vying to access these resources. Read the qualitative analysis in this chapter to explore the complexities of international treaties that govern the Arctic and the prospects of innovative multilateral agreements.
How does the changing landscape create a need for political and environmental balance? What are some new opportunities for businesses, economies, and human development?
Evaluation
We have considered the large-scale natural trends and a range of international and national initiatives that seek to catch up with innovations to adapt to a breakthrough process driven by nature. We can see that the natural breakthrough has spurred processes at the international and national levels. The Far North is a moving target and in recent years there has been a large number of new publications, policy statements, and strategy documents by national and international actors. The Arctic reveals surprising cooperation between rivals, and at times an equally surprising lack of cooperation within governments and among allies.
The race for resources and access is ongoing, but we do not see the hostile competition of the time when Spitsbergen was terra nullius. While there is good reason to believe there will be no open conflict, it remains an open question as to whether capabilities will be matched to requirements in safety and security, and whether some countries will fail to grasp the opportunities available to them.
Despite many positive developments, we should not forget that the situation today is still far from desirable. There are still great shortcomings in technology, access, logistics, communications, governance, and scientific knowledge about environmental trends, both in climate and in the resilience of ecosystems. There is also a lack of high-detail geographical data publicly available. This sort of proprietary research is privately held by energy and shipping companies, but without a wider availability there is a greater risk of cruise ships running into trouble, or running aground as happened in 2010.
The Arctic Council is an important success story, and a part of this success was its relative unimportance in the early years since 1996. Bernard Funston, the Chairman of the Canadian Polar Commission who has been a part of the first 16 years of the Arctic Council's evolution, noted that "its weakness was its strength. It was non-threatening. It was consensus. It required people to get along. Issues percolated".
In the first decade, the Arctic Council operated below the radar and worked on developing scientific expertise and a series of very important assessments. Today with the greater interest in the Arctic Council, the policy community is taking over, and the center of gravity has shifted from science to national interests. Nonetheless, the Arctic Council admits new members on the basis of what they bring to the table, and this is often measured by their scientific contributions.
The Arctic is a complex mechanism and efforts are being made to synchronize its many components to create a new and stable future. We have seen that the stabilizing factors which lead to greater cooperation have been economic interests. Another important stabilizing factor is that all parties recognise that they cannot meet the responsibilities they have for security and safety on their own, and they are working to cooperate. The informal Arctic ChoDs dialogue, while not a part of the Arctic Council, is very much its offspring.