Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Insight Turkey > Commentaries |

Hotting Up? Geopolitical Rivalry and Environmental Security in the Arctic

Traditionally the Arctic has been on the margins of international political interest, either geopolitically or environmentally. Climate change, though, has changed this by appearing to open up new economic opportunities in the region. Interest in the High North has subsequently increased, both from the states of the region and beyond. To date, though, there has appeared no likelihood of this escalating into resource wars, despite this prospect being widely heralded a decade and a half ago. Instead, governance in the region, centered on the Arctic Council, has proved an exemplar of intergovernmental cooperation, even in the face of increased tensions between Russia and the West over the past two decades. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, though, has frozen this blossoming co-management of the High North and put its future in doubt. This is likely to have some negative consequences in terms of the environment and maritime safety in the region. However, despite a heightening of tensions, there remains little reason to expect a Russian military initiative in the region since all non-Russian territory will soon be under NATO protection and Moscow would have far more to lose than they could gain from such an act.

Hotting Up Geopolitical Rivalry and Environmental Security in the Arctic
 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Traditionally the Arctic has been on the margins of international political interest. Geopolitically the region has usually been a relatively benign one with seemingly little to fight over. Commercial interest in the High North had largely ended by the early twentieth century, by which time the region’s whale and seal stocks had been exhausted and legendary Norwegian explorer Amundsen had proven that the fabled North West Passage over Canada was frozen. The Arctic played a very limited role in the First and Second World Wars and did not figure greatly in the Cold War, beyond being utilized by the superpowers for the stationing and testing of nuclear weapons. As a remote part of the world largely neither industrialized nor cultivated it also tended not to be a primary concern when environmental politics took off in the 1960s. Pollution or resource depletion were not the major concerns they were becoming in other parts of the world. Until the 1990s geopolitics or environmental security were rarely invoked in Arctic diplomacy. 

Climate change, though, has changed this and brought the Arctic ‘in from the cold’ in both regards. Retreating ice sheets have revealed potential economic opportunities for extracting fuels and minerals, as well as opening up new sea lanes previously abandoned as infeasible. This has awoken the interest of governments and businesses from within and outside of the High North but has also threatened to unleash damaging environmental change in a new scramble for resources. Pollution has already greatly worsened due to climate change and would worsen even more with greater industrial encroachment. To date, the changing Arctic landscape has not prompted significant encroachment or a damaging resource war as the region’s governments have looked more to cooperative solutions than confrontation. However, as with many facets of international relations, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens to undo decades of fruitful co-management of the High North and usher in a new kind of literal Cold War. 

 

 

The Rise of Arctic Geopolitics

 

In 2007 the Arctic was uncharacteristically thrust to the forefront of political scrutiny and the world’s media when a robot from a Russian submarine placed the national flag on the exact location of the North Pole for the first time in history, in a symbolic act of conquest both retro and futurist. The Russo-phobic response of some Western media and politicians to this stunt was also reminiscent of fears from yesteryear provoked by ‘the Bear’ and seemed to many to be a likely precursor for a new geopolitical struggle between East and West. Canadian Foreign Minister, Peter Mackay, epitomized Western irritation at the Russian initiative by stating to television reporters: You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say “we’re claiming this territory.”1 However, the governments of Canada, along with fellow Arctic littoral states, Denmark and Norway, have also been busy in recent years claiming extra (underwater) territory, albeit in a less extravagant fashion. The melting of the Arctic ice sheets has opened up new possibilities for navigation, fishing, and, most particularly, the exploitation of underground resources once thought too costly to extract, awakening the interests of governments and Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) from within the Arctic states (U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland) and beyond. 

At around the same time that the Russian robot was at the North Pole, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was carrying out a ‘Survey of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,’ the results of which further thrust the region into the media spotlight and realms of the realpolitik. This much-quoted survey, carried out in conjunction with fellow geologists from Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Norway, and Russia, estimated that the region contained 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered fossil fuels: 13 percent of oil and 30 percent of gas. These findings were, of course, in addition to proven reserves already being extracted near the Northern coasts of Alaska, Canada, and Russia, amounting to 10 percent of the world’s known remainder. 84 percent of all these undiscovered deposits are offshore and much of it lies under parts of the Arctic Ocean beyond the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the states and is hence, as yet, not under any sovereign control.2


Pollution has already greatly worsened due to climate change and would worsen even more with greater industrial encroachment


The combined effects of the Russian robot and the U.S. geological survey prompted some bellicose reactions in many sections of Western media and academia. A 2008 article in Jane’s Intelligence Review, widely cited in the UK popular press, reasoned that Russia’s war against Georgia and the general high stakes could see them, and possibly other Arctic states, ‘make pre-emptive military strikes’ to secure resources.3 Similarly, another widely cited article, by a former U.S. Coast Guard Officer in the conservative journal Foreign Affairs, warned of ‘armed brinkmanship’ due to the anarchic nature of the emerging Arctic political landscape.4

Seemingly supporting such reactions was a notable reassertion of energy security interests in a series of foreign policy statements by the Arctic powers. The Fundamentals of Russian State Policy in the Arctic up to 2020 and Beyond vowed to establish military and coastguard groups to protect new economic interests in line with their extended Continental Shelf claim (which includes the Lomonosov Ridge to the North Pole) and stated that the Arctic would become “the country’s top strategic resource base by 2020.”5 The U.S. traditionally ambivalent to the Arctic beyond their own Alaskan oil fields was also awoken by the Russian robot and geological surveyors. One of the last acts of the Bush Junior government was to release a Homeland Security Directive on the Arctic, the first official U.S. foreign policy statement since 1994, which announced that Washington would “assert a more active and influential national presence to protect its Arctic interests.”6 The release of the Canadian government’s Comprehensive Northern Strategy in the same year was in the context of their already well-established ‘use it or lose’ strategy which had prompted regular naval maneuvers around the Arctic islands and promised the construction of a major military base at Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island. In 2009, the Norwegian government went beyond words and symbolically moved their national military headquarters from Jalta near Stavanger to Reitan, near Bodo, North of the Arctic Circle.  

Russia’s nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika touted as the strongest of its kind and a symbol of Moscow’s ambition to tap the Arctic’s commercial potential, returned to Saint Petersburg on December 14, 2019, after a two-day test run. OLGA MALTSEVA / AFP via Getty Images

Energy security interests have also come to be asserted from beyond the Arctic Circle. In a hitherto completely unprecedented manner China, the EU, and the UK have produced foreign policy documents on the region over the past decade and asserted themselves as observer members of the Arctic Council, the region’s principal intergovernmental forum. Other states, such as Japan and South Korea, have also become observers at the Arctic Council as business opportunities relating to the High Seas, shipping lanes and on-land MNC ventures have opened up.

Norway, Canada, and Denmark are, like the Russians, making ‘contiguous continental shelf’ claims a further 150 nm from the edge of their EEZs. This has been done by submitting geological evidence to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, established by the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The United States has not been part of this process since they are not a party to UNCLOS. Isolationist opposition in the Congress to the notion of being beholden to an international legal body has hence prevented the Americans from being able to participate in this potential new Arctic ‘carve up.’ The Russian, Norwegian, Danish and Canadian continental shelf claims overlap in several places, including on the Lomonosov Ridge which runs to the North Pole, claimed by Copenhagen, Moscow, and Ottawa. Longer-running territorial and particularly maritime disputes in a number of the shared seas of the Arctic Ocean have also been given prominence in the media.

 

 

The Rise of Arctic Cooperation

 

This geopolitical coming in from the cold of the Arctic encouragingly prompted cooperation rather than conflict amongst the Arctic 8. This is largely because seeds of cooperation had already been sewn prior to this. Cordial co-management of the region with an environmental focus actually began in the dying days of the Cold War. In 1987 Gorbachev’s Murmansk speech declared: “What everybody can be absolutely certain of is the Soviet Union’s profound and certain interest in preventing the North of the planet, its Polar and sub-Polar regions and all Northern countries from ever again becoming an arena of war, and in forming there a genuine zone of peace and fruitful cooperation.”7 As a relatively benign geopolitical region in the context of East-West relations, the Arctic represented a good stage for the presentation of this Soviet olive branch. Gorbachev also made reference to environmental cooperation in the Murmansk speech, an enticing prospect for Western powers horrified by the Chornobyl disaster just a year earlier. 

The Arctic Council was formed in 1996 as a consequence of environmental cooperation prompted by Gorbachev’s Murmansk speech. The organization specifically evolved from the 1991 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), but the idea of a permanent institution for the Arctic was around at the same time that this regime was being developed at the end of the 1980s. Following up on the Murmansk initiative, the Finnish government initiated discussions on an environmental treaty for the Arctic, culminating in this then being signed by the eight Arctic states at a Rovaniemi ministerial conference in 1991. This particular proposal was informal with no commitment to institution-building but, at the same time, with the stated aim to “identify, reduce, and as a final goal, eliminate pollution,”8 was ambitious. The AEPS committed the eight to an Action Plan promoting scientific cooperation and the carrying out of environmental impact assessments for industrial projects in the region. This and further forms of environmental cooperation would be conducted primarily through regular meetings of four working groups: the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP); Protection of Arctic Marine Environment (PAME); Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR); and Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF).


Evaluating energy opportunities is not simply a matter of estimating the likely amounts of oil and gas under the ice and rock of the Arctic and comparing this to estimates of the rest of the world


The Arctic Council crystalized from this AEPS cooperation and absorbed its working groups. The Council was initially established as a loose diplomatic forum (largely due to lukewarm enthusiasm from the U.S.) but would later evolve into a fully-fledged intergovernmental organization (though retaining the descriptor of an ‘intergovernmental forum’) with a permanent secretariat in Tromso, Norway. Important forms of environmental cooperation and shipping safety regulations have emerged from this process of regional governance centered on the eight Arctic states but also including outside powers such as China as observers, alongside representatives of the region’s indigenous peoples, including the Inuit and the Sami. 

This intergovernmental cooperation mitigated against any serious escalation of geopolitical rivalries amongst the Arctic 8. In addition, though, geopolitical, and environmental concerns raised by the Russian robot and U.S. Geological Survey soon appeared overstated. Despite the way it was reported and commented upon the USGS Survey was not anything revelatory. Its findings were not out of step with previous estimates of untapped Arctic energy supplies and broadly similar to its previous 2000 report. It does appear to have been the spectacle of the robotic Russian flagbearer which elevated the significance of the survey. As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was quick to point out at the time, this was a piece of exploratory showmanship comparable to the ‘Stars and Stripes’ being planted on the Moon in 1969. Indeed, it is usually overlooked that some of the money for the expedition came from Western sponsors.9

The corporate takeover of the Arctic also now seems over-stated. As with many heralded oil finds of the past, the Arctic bonanza has yet to materialize. The USGS survey itself warns that; “no economic considerations are included in these initial estimates; results are presented without reference to costs of exploration and development which will be important in many of the assessed areas.”10 Evaluating energy opportunities is not, of course, simply a matter of estimating the likely amounts of oil and gas under the ice and rock of the Arctic and comparing this to estimates of the rest of the world. The costs of exploration, extraction, and transport are much different in the High North. The economic downturn the world experienced in 2008 made such costs all the more apparent and many of the companies that acquired drilling licenses for new Arctic fields have never set to work. For example, the Shtokman Liquefied Natural Gas field project, a much-heralded joint venture between Gazprom, TOTAL, and Statoil launched in 2007 in the Russian Barents Sea, never opened operations due to the increasing doubts of shareholders prompting a series of postponements. Similarly, a much-vaunted oil and gas bonanza in Greenland has yet to yield any hydrocarbons and has seen most MNCs hand back their licenses to the home rule government in Nuuk.


In Canada and Russia, though, there is an expectation at home that the national interest requires posturing and assertion rather than the more prosaic reality of cooperative co-management


The effects of climate change are already dramatic in the High North, but it is important to remember that the Arctic Ocean is never going to transform into the Persian or Mexican Gulf. Even with warming temperatures, the Arctic drilling season could only be three months long in the foreseeable future. Despite its retreat, thick ice cover will still be a reality in most of the Arctic for most of the year and 24-hour darkness will always be a fact of life in the winter months. Offshore prospecting, extraction, and transport are much more expensive than onshore anywhere in the world and the costs are multiplied when in such remote locations. Shipping in the Arctic will gradually become more straightforward with warming but still not easy. Many of the new routes, such as the North West Passage, will still only open for short seasons and an increasing number of icebergs from melting glaciers will present new hazards.

Just as the new Arctic energy scramble has yet to happen neither have the vaunted clashes over these resources. In 2010 the Russians and Norwegians concluded an agreement ending a low-level 40-year diplomatic dispute over how to partition the Barents Sea by amicably splitting it in two. In a joint communiqué that followed the two foreign ministers announced: “We firmly believe that the Arctic can be used to demonstrate just how much peace and collective interests can be served by the implementation of the international rule of law.”11 This initiative took much of the world by surprise but should not have done, given that it was a win-win result. Doggedly sticking to their divergent claims had created a ‘grey zone’ amounting to some 12 percent of the Sea in which neither side could prospect for oil. Such cordiality and restraint were also evident in the resolution of probably the two tensest diplomatic incidents to occur in Arctic international politics in recent years −the Elektron Incident of 2005 and Arctic Sunrise case of 2013. In 2005 the captain of the Russian trawler The Elektron, Yarantov, was arrested by Norwegian coastguards for fishing near Svalbard in an area Oslo claim as their EEZ but one that is disputed by Russia. Yarantov resisted arrest and instead turned the ship back to Murmansk with the two Norwegian coastguards held captive. Despite some outcry amongst nationalists in the Russian media and Duma at the Norwegian arrest and pursuit of the trawler, the incident was resolved in a remarkably low-key manner. Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Northern Fleet did not react in a remotely belligerent manner and, whilst Yarantov was not given up to the Norwegians, he was later fined for illegal fishing by the Russian authorities. Similarly, in 2013 the crew of a Greenpeace ship who had been arrested and detained for attempting to occupy a Russian oil platform in the Arctic were released when the Netherlands government (the flag state) protested via the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Russian overtures to the West on the Arctic have been consistently conciliatory since then, whilst maintaining their claims to the Seas to their north. Gorbachev’s words of 1987 were re-echoed in 2010 by Prime Minister Putin at a meeting of an International Arctic Forum in Moscow when he stated that; “‘We think it is imperative to keep the Arctic as a zone of peace and cooperation,’ since; ‘We all know that it is hard to live alone in the Arctic.’”12 Putin’s subsequent annexation of Crimea and adventurism in Ukraine, in his second stint as President, inevitably re-stoked Western concerns but cooperation centered on the Arctic Council -which does not discuss military matters- was able to persist. The revival of traditional Russo-Western tensions in Europe has been far less evident in the Arctic where three decades of successful cooperation and co-management in the Arctic Council and other forums have produced conditions of complex interdependence between the Arctic state making them resilient to knee-jerk geopolitical reactions.

(R-L) Sweden’s PM Lofven, Iceland’s President Johannesson, Russia’s President Putin, Finland’s President Niinisto, and Norway’s PM Solberg attend a plenary session of the International Arctic Forum in Saint Petersburg, on April 9, 2019. MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV / AFP via Getty Images

Foreign policy statements assert zero-sum characterizations of energy security interests because that is what foreign policy statements traditionally do and the official assertions of national interest in the Arctic are much the same. Formal Realism, though, often masks a truer discourse of cordial cooperative relations and that is the case with the Arctic states. The Russians and the Canadians have, on occasion, ‘talked tough’ in relation to the Arctic but this has been a case of playing to their domestic audience more than an international one. Both Russia and Canada identify as ‘Arctic nations,’ in stronger terms that the other Arctic states. Sweden, Iceland, and Finland are not Arctic Ocean states, which has led to them being sometimes marginalized when the other ‘A5’ have engaged in exclusive maritime diplomacy. Of the A5 the U.S. has never displayed the same level of interest in Arctic affairs as Russia or Canada and Denmark’s role as a player in the region could disappear if Greenland chooses full independence from Copenhagen. The Norwegians certainly identify as an Arctic nation but Oslo has tended to tread more carefully than Ottawa in order not to provoke their Arctic neighbors. In Canada and Russia, though, there is an expectation at home that the national interest requires posturing and assertion rather than the more prosaic reality of cooperative co-management. In 2011 at the same time as Wikileaks exposures were revealing dangerous flashpoints for war in the Middle East and elsewhere quite the reverse was found in examining leaked cables from Arctic intergovernmental diplomacy. Prime Minster Harper, whilst using bellicose anti-Russian rhetoric in public, was revealed to be much more conciliatory about the Kremlin in private and dismissive of the possibility of war in the Arctic.13 The Russians and Canadians have, in fact, been the co-leaders of cooperative politics in the region (partly due to traditional U.S. disinterest) and together played key roles in forging the Arctic Council from the ashes of Cold War rivalry in the 1990s. 


The Arctic region has become particularly prone to several forms of long-range pollution, mainly associated with industrial activities in Europe, North America, and Asia


As well as working constructively in an intergovernmental organization, the Arctic states –including Russia- have shown a great deal of respect for the rule of international law in the region. The continental shelf claims are being pursued in a distinctly legalistic manner with the Russians, Canadians, Danes, and Norwegians patiently presenting claims to UNCLOS and showing every indication that they will abide by their arbitration. This was made public with the ‘Ilullisat Declaration,’ which followed a meeting of the Arctic Ocean states (Russia, U.S., Canada, Norway, and Denmark) in Greenland in 2008, which stated that: “We remain committed to this legal framework [UNCLOS] and to the orderly settlement of any overlapping claims.”14

This Arctic intergovernmental cooperation can most obviously be viewed as vindicating a Liberal model of IR but it is also possible to see this through the lenses of Neo-Realist and English School thinkers. From a more power-politics perspective, the world’s two premier military powers have balanced and consolidated their influence in the region by playing constructive roles in vehicles like the Arctic Council which might limit their maneuver a little but help reinforce the status quo and keep other potentially interested powers -like the EU or China- at a distance. Like the Concert of Europe in the 19th century or the EU or World Trade Organization in the present age, perhaps Arctic institutions and regimes represent mutually convenient vehicles for states rather than evidence of creeping devolved global governance.

 

 

Environmental Security in the Arctic

 

Environmental security has come to be invoked in the Arctic in two key dimensions. On the one hand, this is in the national security terms of heightened energy interests, as previously discussed. However, a second human security form is even more clearly invoked. The increased spotlight that has been cast on the Arctic due to climate change has also served to begin revealing the human security implications of this phenomenon. The world’s most profound form of environmental change is being felt most profoundly of all in the Arctic. Arctic temperatures have increased at twice the global average rate over the past century and sea ice has shrunk to unprecedented levels over the last two decades. In a graphic illustration of the globalization of environmental problems, the Arctic region has become particularly prone to several forms of long-range pollution, mainly associated with industrial activities in Europe, North America, and Asia. Arctic Haze, a smog resulting from the accumulation of sulfur, nitrogen, and carbon emissions in the atmosphere in winter and spring over the High North, is accelerating with the further onset of warming in the Arctic since it is linked to local shipping traffic emissions. Long-range pollution by persistent chemicals, like organochlorine pesticides and mercury, either through the atmosphere or by bioaccumulation through the food chain into fish has already worsened and would worsen still with industrial encroachment into the region.


Globalization has come belatedly but rapidly to the Arctic with profound environmental and social changes transforming the lives of its peoples


Globalization has come belatedly but rapidly to the Arctic with profound environmental and social changes transforming the lives of its peoples. Indigenous Arctic peoples have been particularly affected by the rise of ‘lifestyle illnesses’ such as lung cancers, obesity, and liver disease.15 In a side-effect to the rise of pollution in the region referred to as the ‘Arctic dilemma,’ health problems have arisen as a result of people consuming less of their traditional foodstuffs through fears of poisoning by lead, mercury, or organochlorines. Problems amongst indigenous peoples, such as alcoholism and suicide, have greatly worsened to become amongst the worst in the world with the rise of anxieties and insecurities linked to social change.16 One political consequence of this has been to divide Greenlandic Inuit on the desirability of industrialization. Some see the extraction of minerals and oil as a means of funding full independence whilst others view such development with trepidation given the negative social changes that have already occurred.17

 

 

The Ukraine War and the Big Freeze

 

The ‘Age of the Arctic’18 or the idea of ‘Arctic exceptionalism,’19 which has seen High North diplomacy deepen and be sustained in spite of a deterioration of Russo-Western relations in East Europe and the Middle East, possibly came to a crashing end in 2022. On March 3, 2022 the Arctic Council announced that it would essentially freeze its operations in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia held the chair of the council so there was no prospect of the other seven simply carrying on straight away and excluding them from meetings. In June, though, the remaining ‘Arctic 7’ did indicate that they would: “implement a limited resumption of our work in the Arctic Council on projects that do not involve the participation of the Russian Federation.”20

Geopolitical tensions have heightened but the Arctic is still not a likely arena for war to break out. With Finland and Sweden poised to join NATO all non-Russian territory North of the Arctic Circle will be firmly within the Western alliance and realistically beyond the reach of any northward adventurism from Putin. At the same time, Russia already has a firm foothold in the Arctic and would stand to lose more in terms of disrupting business than it could gain by stoking conflict over Svalbard or the Lomonosov Ridge. The Ukraine War fallout pushing Russia and China closer together is an obvious Western anxiety, but this should not have any great bearing on Arctic diplomacy. Sino-Russian cooperation in the Arctic will likely increase with Western MNCs pulling out of Arctic energy cooperation ventures in Siberia and Beijing keen to reap the rewards of opening up the Northern Sea route above Russia. However, most Chinese interest in the Arctic thus far has been in fostering economic ties with Greenland and Iceland and they have to tread carefully since their role in the region is essentially by invitation. 

The biggest threats from the deterioration of intergovernmental relations in the region are environmental. Disruptions to Russian energy exports caused by Western sanctions could push the Kremlin into exploring environmentally-damaging ventures further into the High North. Canada also may be tempted to make up for energy shortages by returning again to environmentally-contentious drilling projects previously abandoned. The thinly-populated Arctic is not well-equipped for dealing with oil spills and increased encroachment would lead to greater pollution and even more damaging social disruption. 

 

 

Conclusions

 

It seems inevitable that great power competition in the Arctic will heighten in the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian War, but it is still improbable that it will become a flashpoint for a new Cold War. Liberal optimism has taken a hit with the freezing of diplomatic cooperation, but Realist logic persists in the military arena. There is a rough balance of power in the region and no geopolitically ‘grey areas’ akin to Ukraine, Georgia, or Moldova. An Arctic diplomatic freeze need not push us closer to conflict but it does threaten to undo decades of promising work and make pollution and environmental disaster more possible.

Although energy supply disruptions may see some abandoned prospecting ventures being returned to, the notion of a huge bonanza that was around 15 years ago is never likely to materialize. Furthermore, even if some oil platforms are uncapped again it is hard to envisage this coming to be fought over. The apparent coming to an end of the Age of the Arctic is something to lament in environmental and human security terms but it should not take us closer to war. The simple fact, recognized by the Inuit and other indigenous groups across the region for many centuries, is that thriving in remote, difficult conditions necessitates cooperation rather than nationalistic rivalry. The Arctic is most certainly worth protecting but it is not worth fighting over.  

 

Endnotes

 

1. Peter Mackay, “Question Period,” CTV, (August 2, 2007).

2. “Survey of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,” U.S. Geological Society (USGS), (2008).

3. Mark Galeotti, “Cold Calling: Competition Heats Up for Arctic Resources,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, (October 2008), pp. 8-15.

4. Scott Borgerson, “Arctic Meltdown,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2008), pp. 63-77, p. 73.

5. “Fundamentals of Russian State Policy in the Arctic Up to 2020 and Beyond,” Russian Government, (2009). 

6. “Homeland Security Directive on Arctic Regional Policy,” U.S. Government, (2009).

7. Mikhail Gorbachev, “Speech at the Ceremonial Meeting on the Occasion of the Presentation of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star to the City of Murmansk,” Murmansk, (October 1, 1987).

8. “Rovaniemi Declaration,” AEPS First Ministerial Conference on the Protection of the Arctic Environment, (June 14, 1991), p. 2.

9. Pavel Baev, “Russian Policy in the Arctic: A Reality Check,” in Dmitri Trenin and Pavel Baev (eds.), The Arctic: A View from Moscow, (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010). 

10. “Survey of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic.” 

11. Jonas Store and Sergei Lavrov, “Joint Communique,” Globe and Mail, (September 21, 2010).

12. Vladimir Putin, “The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue,” Speech at the International Forum, (September 23, 2010).

13. Campbell Clarke, “Harper’s Tough Talk on the Arctic Less Stern in Private,” Globe and Mail, (May 12, 2011).

14. “The Ilulissat Declaration, Governments of Denmark, Norway, Russia, U.S. and Canada,” (May 28, 2008), retrieved May 12, 2011.

15. Jingxuan Zhang, et al., “Lung Cancer in the Inuit Region of Nunavik, Québec: Descriptive Epidemiology of Patients Diagnosed Between 2005 and 2016,” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, (2018), A7341.

16. Peter Bjerregaard and Christina Viskum Lytken Larsen, “Time Trend by Region of Suicides and Suicidal Thoughts among Greenland Inuit,” International Journal of Circumpolar Health, Vol. 74, No. 10 (2015); Eduardo Chachamovich, et al., “Suicide Among Inuit: Results from a Large, Epidemiologically Representative Follow‐Back Study in Nunavut,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 60, No. 6 (2015), retrieved February 12, 2019, from http://publications.cpaapc.org/media.php?mid=1906, pp. 268‐275. 

17. Peter Hough, “The Inuit,” in Rick Colbourne and Robert Anderson (eds), Indigenous Self-determination and Sustainable Economic Development, (2021), pp. 147-164. 

18. Oran Young, “The Age of the Arctic,” Foreign Policy, Vol. 61, (1985), pp. 160-179.

19. Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv and Kara K. Hodgson, ““Arctic Exceptionalism” or “Comprehensive Security?” Understanding Security in the Arctic,” Arctic Yearbook, (2019).

20. “Joint Statement on Limited Resumption of Arctic Council Cooperation,” U.S. Department
of State
, (June 8, 2022), retrieved June 24, 2022, from https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-limited-resumption-of-arctic-council-cooperation/.


Labels »  

We use cookies in a limited and restricted manner for specific purposes. For more details, you can see "our data policy". More...