The Arctic Council

Governance within the Far North

Douglas C. Nord, Douglas Nord

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138799202
• eBook ISBN: 9781317629436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book helps us to think carefully about how this area of the world should be best handled in the future by offering a concise and accessible introduction to the Arctic Council. Over the past two decades, the Arctic has evolved from being a remote region in international affairs to becoming an increasingly central concern of the global community. The issues of climate change, access to new energy resources, the development of new global trade routes, the protection of the natural environment and the preservation of indigenous cultures and languages have all come to be focused within this formerly neglected region.

Now in its nineteenth year of operation the Arctic Council, an innovative international organization, is going through a period of new growth and challenges. This work identifies the major trends and directions of current Arctic diplomacy and the manner in which national, regional and international leaders and organizations can all make useful contributions in dealing with the complex agenda of environmental, economic and political challenges faced by this increasingly significant area of the globe.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations, international relations and the environment.

1 Creating an Arctic regime

• Initial steps toward building international cooperation in the Arctic

• The “Canadian” initiative

• Establishing the Arctic Council

• Efforts of the Arctic Council, 1996–2015

As mentioned earlier, the Arctic has had a long history of exploration and scientific inquiry. The names of Cabot, Hudson, Bering, Franklin, Amundsen, and Byrd all speak of the centuries of effort made by several nations to chart and understand this polar region. Their various undertakings from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries gave rise to a view of the region that has emphasized the remoteness of its location and the harshness of its climate. However, their perseverance in the face of such conditions, along with the less chronicled history of the several indigenous peoples of the Far North, have generated another vision of the Arctic which has emphasized the ability of humankind to adapt to the challenging conditions of the region and to live in harmony with them. The history of the development of an Arctic governance regime reflects both of these perspectives.

Over the course of the past 100 years, the scientific and exploratory efforts of the international community within the Arctic have remained foremost in the minds of most individuals. At the outset of the twentieth century various expeditions were launched to unlock the mysteries of the region. A fervent competition existed among scientists and adventurers from across the circumpolar world to see who could advance furthest north and claim the elusive North Pole. This was accompanied by the growth of an emerging polar science which sought to better understand the climate and physical contours of the land and waters of the Far North. Additional inquiries were made into the plants and animals of the region, as well as the first focused studies of the various Arctic peoples and their societies.¹ Such undertakings began to give both a face and form to what had been previously an indistinguishable white expanse in the minds of many of those who lived further south.

This outburst of exploration and inquiry was followed up in the 1920s and 1930s with an equally audacious effort to link the Arctic more broadly with the rest of the globe. Utilizing the new transportation and communication technologies of the era, bold undertakings were made to survey possible new sea and air transport routes throughout various parts of the region and to establish telegraph, radio and telephone networks. It was recognized, even then, that the shortest distance between world capitals might lie across the northern pole and the ability to move goods, people and their messages across the Arctic would be an important asset to many businesses and countries.²

It was during this first half of the twentieth century that the vast natural resource reserves of the Arctic region first began to be fully appreciated. Fish from northern waters and timber from boreal forests had long been part of the global economy. However, it was not until the 1920s and 1930s that the extensive mineral and energy resources of the Arctic were first to be exploited in a major way. New coal, iron, nickel and gold mines were established in North America, the Soviet Union and in the Nordic countries. Petroleum and natural gas deposits were discovered in Alaska, northern Canada and in several locations in the Russian Far North. The full extent of this resource bonanza was not completely recognized at the time, however, as much of the landscape and waters of the Far North remained hidden by ice and snow.³

Initial steps toward building international cooperation in the Arctic

It was also during the first decades of the twentieth century that the several circumpolar states began to recognize the need to establish the precise extent of their northern domains and to demonstrate their sovereignty and control over them. While once the northern borders of their countries had not mattered much to most politicians residing in their southern capitals, now the possibility of economic and political advantage spurred them to formalize these. Both Canada and the United States took steps to outline their respective claims to their northernmost territories and to develop programs aimed at incorporating indigenous and settler populations into the nation-state. The Nordic countries did the same. The USSR went further by making its Arctic a primary focus for the economic and political development of the new Soviet state. It initiated major natural resource development projects and moved large numbers of it population to its northern frontiers.⁴

One of the distinctive developments in Arctic diplomacy during the era was the conclusion of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty in 1920. Here the major Arctic states were able to agree upon an amicable settlement of one of the first serious international competitions for natural resources and political status in the region. Under the treaty’s provisions sovereignty over this northern archipelago was given to the newly independent Norway. At the same time, however, all signatory nations were allowed to develop natural resources there and to conduct scientific inquiries and to establish research bases. The area was also declared a demilitarized zone. This early example of international collaboration and the peaceful settlement of Arctic disputes have continued to remain inspiration for subsequent initiatives in the Far North.⁵

Unfortunately, additional progress toward this goal was seriously postponed by two major developments in the global community that were to dominate the nature of international relations for much of the remainder of the twentieth century. The first of these was the coming of the Second World War. During this global conflict, the Arctic became a vital arena for the provisioning and the actual fighting of the war by the Allied forces. Enormous quantities of food, fuel, munitions, and other needed war goods were dispatched from northern ports. The famous North Atlantic convoys and the equally dangerous Murmansk/Archangelsk supply runs delivered troops and vital supplies to battlefield and civilian populations of Britain and the Soviet Union. New military bases were established throughout the circumpolar North to organize and stage these efforts. Similarly, major investments were made in infrastructure and transportation routes in various parts of the Far North during this period. Perhaps the most well known of these undertakings was the construction of the 500-mile Alaska Highway which linked the interior of Alaska to northwest Canada and the rest of North America.⁶

The second of these altering international events was the onset of the Cold War. As tensions increased between the East and the West, it became increasingly evident to both alliance systems that the Arctic would occupy a major focus for their military and strategic planning. By the late 1940s, it was apparent that the region was becoming one of the potential “zones of conflict” between the opposing forces.⁷ From the vantage point of the Western Alliance, the Far North was seen as being critical to their defense efforts. With the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 much of North America and Western Europe were linked together in a tight system of mutual support and assistance that was predicated upon a major investment of defense resources in their respective portions of the Arctic. New and expanded military facilities were established in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway during this period. A significant number of troops, hardware and equipment were stationed in northern Canada and the United States—especially in Alaska—in order to respond to any perceived military threat from across the northern pole or to be quickly deployed to the European theater in event of a crisis there.⁸

As the Cold War progressed, the NATO allies further expanded their military presence in the area by agreeing to the allocation of additional air and naval assets to the Arctic region and to the construction of a series of early radar warning and defense monitoring sites throughout the Far North. The Soviets for their part responded, in kind, by building major new defense facilities through their Arctic zones in Europe and the Far East. The Kola Peninsula and the adjacent areas of northwest Russia became major military bases for the Soviet northern fleet and for bomber and eventually ballistic missile deployments.

Throughout much of the Cold War period, the Arctic continued as a zone of deep concern and potential conflict between East and West. It was a region around which both alliance systems deployed their most prized military forces and in which very little in the way of mutual cooperation could be expected or conceived. This latter point was highlighted by the relative dearth of circumpolar collaboration taking place during this period and the near absence of any significant Arctic-focused international agreements. Even rather innocuous proposals coming from neutral or non-aligned parties of the region aimed at collaboration in areas of weather forecasting and environmental monitoring in the Arctic were rejected by both sides. The two major military groupings stared icily across the northern pole at one another and saw only dangerous adversaries rather than potential partners on the other side.⁹

Very gradually, however, there began a thawing of the Cold War environment during the 1970s. In the spirit of détente, the Western and Eastern alliance members began to initiate a series of scientific and academic exchanges with one another. During some of these face-to-face meetings, preliminary discussions were undertaken by scholars and policymakers from both sides of the pole regarding the desirability of diminishing the level of confrontation in the Far North and replacing it with true Arctic cooperation.¹⁰ These discussions were supplemented by the initiatives of specific northern community groups like the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) that sought to build their own circumpolar association aimed at establishing better lines of communication and coordination among the peoples who resided in the separate sectors of the Arctic. Yet progress in this direction remained painfully slow. It came to a virtual halt in the early 1980s when both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in renewed military build-ups within their respective Arctic regions. It would take the impact of two developments later in that decade for the Cold War framework to be seriously challenged.

The first of these was the Chernobyl Incident of 1986, when a serious leak of radioactive material took place at a Soviet nuclear power station in the Ukraine. The resulting plume of contamination not only affected the immediate region but also stretched northwest, eventually reaching portions of Sweden and Finland. The latter country, which shared a common border with the Soviet Union, had long been concerned with possible air, water, and soil contamination within their own territory that arose from adjacent industrial sites within the USSR. Uncertain as to how to address these concerns with their more powerful neighbor, the Finns saw an opportunity coming from the Chernobyl events to raise a general alarm among all circumpolar states concerning the serious challenges of transboundary pollution and environmental contamination throughout the Arctic. In early 1989, the Finnish government issued a call for interested parties to begin a process of establishing an international pollution and contamination monitoring regime for the region. This became known as the “Finnish Initiative” and was eventually to lead to the establishment in 1991 of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS)—a predecessor to the Arctic Council. The AEPS was to function from 1991 to 1997 as the primary focus for Arctic environmental monitoring and research. Much of its mission and mode of operation were to be later adopted by the Arctic Council when it was established.¹¹

The other major event of the late 1980s that was to initiate a broader effort at Arctic governance was a presentation made by the Soviet Union’s new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, on 1 October 1987 at the northern Russian city of Murmansk. Known subsequently as the “Murmansk Speech,” Gorbachev outlined a series of proposals aimed at countering what he termed the “vast build up of military forces in the Arctic.”¹² Among the remedies he proposed at that time were those of establishing a nuclear-free zone in Europe, restricting naval activity in Northern Europe, expanding cooperative efforts at northern resource development, and opening of the Soviet Northern Sea Route to foreign traffic. He also called for the creation of a comprehensive plan to protect the natural environment of the North and an undertaking to establish an Arctic Research Council that might expand scientific knowledge and communication within the region and respond to the interests and concerns of the indigenous populations of the area. In the conclusion to his remarks, Gorbachev suggested that the Arctic states should set aside their historical differences and join in a “general zone of peace and fruitful cooperation.”¹³

The “Canadian” initiative

The response to the Murmansk Speech was varied among the other Arctic states. The United States suggested that it did not see much of any real substance in it. The Nordics, especially Norway and Finland, saw merit in its call for greater cooperative environmental action. The latter country also saw the speech as a partial endorsement of its developing proposal for an Arctic environmental monitoring scheme. The Canadians, for their part, broke ranks with their North American neighbors, somewhat, and suggested that the Gorbachev proposals were “interesting” and merited additional scrutiny. This Canadian willingness to hear more from the Soviet leader was a reflection of both improving bilateral relations between the two countries and a longstanding domestic campaign on the part of several Canadian academic, scientific, and indigenous leaders to promote a cooperative, circumpolar approach to Arctic issues and concerns.

So it was not entirely unforeseen that when Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney made a formal visit to the Soviet Union in November 1989, he took up the idea of possible Arctic collaboration and suggested an actual framework for it. In a speech he delivered in Leningrad at the USSR’s Arctic and Antarctic Institute, Mulroney told his audience that: “Eventually we would like to see the nascent multilateral environmental and scientific cooperation become more broadly based to cover the full range of economic and social issues, just as Canada and the USSR are doing bilaterally.”¹⁴ He then dramatically added: “Why not a council of Arctic countries eventually coming into existence to co-ordinate and promote cooperation among them?”¹⁵ With these simple words, the cornerstone was laid of what was eventually to become the Arctic Council.

While the idea for such a northern community-building exercise might have seemed revolutionary to some, it should be noted that the concept of a circumpolar organization had been discussed within Canadian foreign policy circles for nearly 20 years—even in the depths of the Cold War period. Professor Maxwell Cohen had suggested as early as 1970 that the time had ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgement
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Creating an Arctic regime
• 2. The structure and operation of the Arctic Council
• 3. Governance challenges faced by the Arctic Council
• 4. Looking to the future
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Routledge Global Institutions Series