Critical Geopolitics of the Polar Regions

An Inter-American Perspective

Dorothea Wehrmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138485815
• eBook ISBN: 9781351048064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Focusing on both Polar Regions, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of political processes related to the rapidly changing Arctic and Antarctic, where the environmental impacts of human activities are extremely visible.

Environmental changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic are increasingly seen as barometers of the global impact of human activities, while newly arising economic opportunities in both Polar Regions prompt predictions that they will be the site of future conflicts. This book maps and analyses the different actors involved in the politics of the Polar Regions to explain why similar patterns of interpretation of such major issues have become dominant in practical, popular and formal geopolitical discourses. Disentangling the politics, the author illustrates how the ordering principles have evolved, explains recent dynamics in political processes and provides the groundwork needed to better forecast future trends. By focusing on the Americas, the only continent that borders both Polar Regions, the author shows how geographic proximity inspires interaction and cooperation among state and non-state actors in very different ways.

This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, political geography, international relations, global governance and cultural studies. It will have an international appeal particularly in the Americas, and other countries with growing interests in the Polar Regions.

1
Introduction

Critical Geopolitics of the Polar Regions and an inter-American perspective

1.1 Significance of the changing Polar Regions and of polar politics

“Poles apart” and “antipodes” are popular expressions that derive from, and have often been applied to, the Arctic and its counterpart and opposite, the Antarctic. Both the “ends of the earth” are known for their remote and icy environments and increasingly for their profound impacts on the earth’s climate. The multiple disparities between the Arctic and the Antarctic that have to do, amongst other things, with the governance of the regions are often identified as the reason why most social scientists focus on either the one or the other when analysing the politics of the Polar Regions. This book challenges this widespread point of view.

It is true that the two poles are not identical, but they do have a lot in common and much can be learned by comparing the two.

(Jorge Taiana, on behalf of the Argentine delegation on the occasion of the 32nd Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, 2009)

It builds instead on the perspective promoted by the former Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Taiana, and argues that to talk about and compare the Arctic and the Antarctic solely from the point of view of their being mutual opposites is to ignore the many entanglements that shape political processes connected with them. Why, for instance, are both the Arctic and the Antarctic most often regarded as regions that attract either political cooperation or political conflict? Why do political actors in the Arctic and Antarctic emphasise their polar identity despite the fact that both regions are predominantly known for being icy cold places and are represented as the world’s final “frontiers”, whose exploration, exploitation and investigation have always been challenging to humans due to their difficult accessibility? Why too have concerns relating to sovereignty, resource exploration, environmental conservation, international cooperation and sustainable development been so much discussed at different points of time in the politics of the Arctic and Antarctic?

While probably in terms of sheer numbers, the largest scale human impacts of future climate instabilities will affect the poor in ‘the South’, it is now becoming clear that some of the most dramatic climate impacts and environmental consequences of carbon-fueled industrialization are affecting the polar regions.

(Dalby, 2003, p. 189)

In focusing on both Polar Regions, this book provides a more comprehensive understanding of political processes that relate to the rapidly changing Arctic and Antarctic – two regions which, as Simon Dalby observes, exhibit the environmental impacts of human activities to the most extreme degree. As early as the year 2000, Monica Tennberg had already concluded that “the problem of the environment is, above all, a problem of order” (p. 125), which is also why this study is driven by the aim of exemplifying how the prioritisation of environmental concerns in the Polar Regions is entangled with the geopolitical reasoning that has shaped their politics. This book, therefore, helps its readers understand how the ordering principles operate that ultimately affect and guide policy making and influence collective and individual actions at a time when the effects of climate change and the related environmental changes in the Polar Regions are increasingly considered as matters of global concern.

More specifically, the aims of this work are threefold. First, it examines systematically how actors represent the changing Arctic and Antarctic in discourses in order to outline corresponding and conflicting positions and views and trace their emergence in different contexts over a period of more than 25 years. Second, by taking a relational perspective,¹ it sketches different patterns of interpretation that have become dominant in the politics of both Polar Regions and shows how a similar reasoning has been applied to both at different points in time and how this has influenced negotiations on policies and political actions to manage the changing Arctic and Antarctic. Third, unlike the majority of studies, which derive predominantly from a focus on either the Arctic or the Antarctic, this book applies an inter-American regional perspective and consequently also considers the space in between both Polar Regions. The examples from the Americas show how political dynamics originating outside the Polar Regions have an impact on policy making in them and concerning them – one example being the experience of domination during a colonial past. In focusing on the double continent of the Americas – the only continent that borders both Polar Regions – this book, moreover, shows how geographic proximity inspires interaction and cooperation among state and non-state actors in American polar-rim countries very differently. Overall, and especially by addressing these central gaps in research, the book identifies entanglements (and disentanglements) among actors and discourses that help to explain why representations and actor constellations in the politics of the Polar Regions have changed.

But what exactly characterises the “changes” that are taking place in the Polar Regions? In terms of climate, the mean average temperature in the Arctic and Antarctic is rising at twice the rate that it is in other regions, which is why both Polar Regions are increasingly depicted as “climate change barometers” (cf. Hansom and Gordon, 2014; Shadian, 2014). Although manifest in particular localities, the warming effects relate to the phenomenon called Global Environmental Change (GEC), by which the Polar Regions are considered to be most vulnerable to and most affected (cf. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014). The record lowest seasonal minimum ice extents observed almost annually in the Arctic are arguably the most widely known effect of the warming climate. The environmental and ecological changes caused by the warming climate are numerous and range from melting sea ice and glaciers and collapsing ice shelves to rising sea levels, coastal erosion, the migration of species and changing ecosystems. In Antarctica, these changes are “comparably dramatic” although they attract “less international attention” (Ali and Pincus, 2015, p. 1). Environmental changes in the Arctic, however, have already led “to more radical social and economic consequences” (Duyck, 2015, p. 27). In this regard, environmental changes in the Polar Regions are, to different degrees, considered a key driver – or a “threat multiplier” (Bratspies, 2015, p. 175) – of a variety of economic, social and political changes as well as of security concerns that have also been addressed in Arctic and Antarctic politics over the past decades.

Economically, the Polar Regions are often depicted as being rich in resources. The often cited U.S. Geological Survey (2008), still considered the most telling contribution of its kind, states that the Arctic is “the largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on earth” with oil and gas deposits that account for “almost 10 percent of the world’s known conventional petroleum resources” (p. 1) of which 84 percent are presumed to be located in offshore areas. The loss of sea ice and consequently the easier access to offshore fossil fuels creates the so-called “Arctic Paradox” (see e.g. Palosaari, 2016) as the use of fossil fuels enhances global warming and thus further contributes to the ice melting. Extensive seismographic examinations are still needed to verify these estimates and offshore exploration is associated with significant environmental risks in the Arctic. However, these predictions and the growing accessibility of resources have already fostered the interest of various actors in conducting explorations. This interest in Arctic oil and gas development has caused political struggles between corporate actors, environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs), regulators and Indigenous peoples groups. Oil, gas, iron ore, chromium, copper, gold, nickel, platinum, other minerals and coal are also presumed to exist in the Antarctic (U.S. Geological Survey, 2016). And although the development of mineral resources is prohibited in Antarctica, the exploitation of oil is also a topic of concern in the sub-Polar Regions (cf. the Islas Malvinas/Falkland Islands dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom). Fishing and whaling are perennially discussed in both Polar Regions, particularly regulation of both the scientific and the traditional use of these living resources, as well as the increasingly observable amount of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Both regions have experienced an almost constant increase in tourism in recent decades while, in the Arctic, freight navigation is also expected to grow in the mid term as the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route are becoming more reliably negotiable in the summer season, which will shorten travel distances and be of considerable significance for the transportation of extracted resources.

In both regions too, social changes are being triggered by the transformation and changing use of land and sea. Coastal erosion and the migration of species, for instance, are forcing the about four million people who live in the Arctic – about one tenth of whom are Indigenous peoples – to alter their ways of life: to change their diet because reindeer and fish are more difficult and dangerous to hunt and catch, and because pollutants, released by the melting ice, are contaminating the food chain; to move to other regions because the melting permafrost no longer provides solid ground for their settlements; and to adapt to growing Arctic industries, which are able to develop resources formerly covered by ice, bring new employment opportunities, motivate labourers to migrate to the Arctic regions and encourage investments in local infrastructure. While Antarctica, on the other hand, has no permanent population, social changes are visible in the sub-Antarctic regions and are, for example, related to the observation and scientific exploration of the changing environment. Expeditions to Antarctica mostly depart from Punta Arenas (Chile) and Ushuaia (Argentina), where Antarctica is increasingly outlined as a reference point for cultural identity. The growing numbers of tourists and scientists departing from both cities facilitate the identification of Ushuaia and Punta Arenas as “gateway cities to Antarctica” and have generated investments in the local infrastructure, such as tourist accommodation, university courses, air-and seaports.

In terms of security, journalists, politicians and scholars have often depicted the geopolitical interests associated with the economic potential ascribed to the Polar Regions and also overlapping territorial claims as eventually leading to an escalation of conflict (e.g. Potapov, 2009; Byers, 2009; Beck, 2014). For the Arctic, these predictions boomed particularly in the years 2007 and 2008, when a scientific expedition from Russia planted a flag on the North Pole, when the U.S. Geological Survey was published and the Canadian Navy and Coast Guard resumed their annual Arctic exercise (Operation Nanook). Against this backdrop, the remilitarisation of the Arctic has often been associated with the emergence of a new Cold War. Newspaper articles published in the 2000s and early 2010s in American polar-rim states, for instance, carried headlines such as “An Ice-Cold War”, “El Ártico se derrite y desata otra Guerra Fría entre varios países”, “Race Is On as Ice Melt Reveals Arctic Treasures”, “El Ártico, en peligro”, or “As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound”.

These “Cold War” and “Gold Rush” narratives, as the researchers Le Mière and Mazo (2013, p. 9) label them – Palosaari (2012) uses the term “Arctic ‘boom’ perspective” instead – also played a significant role in public political and scientific discourses in regard to the Antarctic more than 20 years earlier. The Antarctic Treaty (a “product of cold war rivalry”, Press, 2014, p. x) had already provided one answer to the question of “Who owns Antarctica?” in 1959, as its signatories accepted that all territorial claims in Antarctica would be treated as “frozen” from that point on. In the 1980s, however, a debate similar to the more recent one on the Arctic evolved around the “Gold Rush for South Pole Wealth” (Beck, 2014). Particularly during the negotiations for the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA), the consultative parties to the Antarctic Treaty faced much criticism for their interest in developing resources there. Ultimately, the ratification of CRAMRA failed due to the resistance of two of the consultative parties, Australia and France, whose disapproval was later traced to the major international “World Park” campaigns conducted by environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fun (WWF) and Greenpeace (British Antarctic Survey, 2015). Antigua and Barbuda together with Malaysia raised the “Question of Antarctica” at the United Nations in 1983 on the basis of their opposition to mineral resource development. They demanded “a more democratic, accountable, and transparent management regime” for Antarctica than that defined in the Antarctic Treaty System. As a consequence of this debate, between 1983 and 2005 the governance of Antarctica was placed on the General Assembly’s agenda on a regular basis (cf. Beck, 2004, p. 210). After CRAMRA had failed in 1991, the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (the so-called Environmental/Madrid Protocol) was signed, under the terms of which the exploitation of non-living resources is prohibited in Antarctica until at least 2048. Since then, only a minority has been still of the opinion that conflicting geopolitical interests will inevitably provoke a future war in or over the Antarctic (cf. Abdel-Motaal, 2016; The Economist, 2015). In the sub-Polar Regions, however, the disputed ownership of the islands Picton, Lennox and Nueva in the Beagle Channel nearly led to war between Argentina and Chile in the late 1970s. The conflict was resolved in 1984. The Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas conflict between the United Kingdom and Argentina, though, escalated in 1982 and resulted in a war that lasted 74 days. Since then, the islands have remained under British control, which Argentina and its regional partners regard as “a case of colonialism” (Argentine Republic, 2015). They have constantly addressed this matter in all the international forums of which both Argentina and the United Kingdom are members. More recently, applications handed in to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) by various polar-rim states that aim to extend their exclusive economic zones (EEZs) link the dominating public debates on the governance of resource extraction and territorial sovereignty in the Polar Regions.²

As the different processes mentioned earlier demonstrate, the melting “polar caps” not only have an impact on the Earth’s climate but are also associated with social, economic and political interests that have been formulated by different actor groups located remote from the Arctic and Antarctic (as illustrated, for instance, by the numerous policy and strategy papers published by non-polar-rim states, such as Germany, France, China and the Netherlands). Moreover, these interests are to different degrees entangled with and shaped by processes, visions and events that relate to and occur in places far away from the Polar Regions. In this regard, Bratspies (2015, p. 171) introduced the term “feedback loops” to describe how, in the case of the changing Arctic, the region is connected to “events unfolding in other parts of the world” as “decisions made elsewhere increasingly influence changes driven by the twin pressures of climate change and globalization”. In a similar vein, Stokke (2015, p. 334) argues that “[m]any of the governance challenges drawing the attention of more and more Arctic or global institutions derive from processes and developments outside the region”.

Although both Polar Regions have long been described as regional and international arenas, it is particularly against this backdrop that they are increasingly being examined in “global perspectives” and as being “globally embedded” (cf. Keil and Knecht, 2017; Triggs and Riddell, 2007). Nevertheless, political processes in the Arctic and Antarctic are still mostly analysed separately. Although the term “Arctic [not Polar!] Change” (see Stepien et al., 2015; Tennberg, 2015), is, for instance, related to “a combination of complex, interrelated environmental, social, cultural, economic and political transformations and efforts to tackle them and adapt to them” (Tennberg, 2015, p. 408), its focus is mostly limited to the Arctic region even though the Arctic’s “internal networks” are acknowledged to be “connected to global markets” (ibid., p. 411).

This book does not challenge the perception that some processes apply solely in the Arctic or the Antarctic, nor does it neglect the various disparities between the two Polar Regions or the fact that both are shaped by “differing currents of change” (Hemmings, 2015, p. 66). It argues, however, that, in order to understand the political dynamics in the Polar Regions that shape the above-mentioned transformations, it is also necessary to speak about and investigate polar entanglements. Against this backdrop, this book provides evidence that the social changes, economic changes and security concerns are not solely inspired by actors and discourses in and beyond the Polar Regions, but also by a similar and recurring geopolitical reasoning. In this respect, and following the approach of Critical Geopolitics, this book does not regard “geopolitics” as being solely about power over territory but as also covering the geographical understandings and reasonings that influence representations of environmental changes in the Polar Regions. The more rapidly changing environment is increasingly addressed in positions and priorities negotiated in the politics of the Polar Regions in and beyond the Arctic and the Antarctic and is understood as triggering all the social and economic changes and security concerns touched upon before. The changing environment thus constitutes a common denominator in the politics of the Polar Regions, in the shape of recognition of a “shared responsibility” (cf. Bastmeijer, 2015; Murray and Nuttall, 2014; Tanaka, 2014). As is shown throughout this book, this common denominator has strengthened cooperation among state and non-state actors even in times of crisis. This cooperation has been formalised in the regional and international governance structures that focused particularly on the protection of the environment and were formed in increasing numbers after 1989 (Palosaari and Tynkkynen, 2015; Stokke, 2015).

To put this into context. The end of the Cold War is widely regarded as having laid the foundation for improved dialogue and collaboration among Arctic states. President Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous Murmansk speech of 1987 is often considered to have been a turning point in international relations and a “catalytic event” for institutional dynamics in the Arctic (Dodds and Nuttall, 2016, p. 109). The year 1989, however, marked a significant shift for both Polar Regions, because, as outlined earlier, the end of the Cold War and the failure of CRAMRA are generally regarded as having had a significant impact ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Critical Geopolitics of the Polar Regions and an inter-American perspective
• 2 Investigating the politics of the Polar Regions: research gaps and a new perspective
• 3 Practical geopolitics: representing the changing Polar Regions in regional and domestic politics
• 4 Popular geopolitics: the changing Polar Regions in newspaper reporting
• 5 Formal geopolitics: the changing Polar Regions in assessments by non-governmental theorists and strategists
• 6 Conclusion: entangled/disentangled actors and discourses in the politics of the Polar Regions
• 7 Annex
• Bibliography
• Index