Tag Archives: governance

As businesses move north, is the Arctic Council keeping pace with environmental stewardship?

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Minister Leona Aglukkaq spoke at the dinner for delegates held 21 October at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre. © Arctic Council Secretariat

Canadian Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq speaks before Arctic Council delegates, October 21 2013. © Arctic Council Secretariat


Climate change and sea ice receding present new opportunities for mining, oil exploration and transportation in the Arctic. Climate change is affecting the circumpolar Arctic twice as fast as regions located in lower latitudes, bringing Arctic development to the forefront of the agenda as Canada begins its second chairmanship of the Arctic Council.
Arctic states are planning to bolster development and exploitation of the region by embracing an opportunistic development approach. The Arctic Council is transforming from a body concerned with environmental protection and sustainable development to one with a clear mandate to enhance economic cooperation. Last week’s Throne Speech from the Canadian government also emphasized the development of the Canadian North, with hardly a mention of conservation.
WWF supports the well-being of the Arctic’s indigenous communities,and development is necessary to create prosperity for the north. But when global warming is melting sea ice across the region, leading to increased Arctic accessibility, it is important to recall the Council’s original mandate of environmental protection and sustainable development. WWF is concerned by the recent narrowing of the Council’s sustainability remit to just one of its domains, the economy. Chief Gary Harrison from Arctic Athabascan Council said in Whitehorse yesterday that he doesn’t want the Council to evolve “from an environmental body to an extractive body.”
Arctic states are working towards the establishment of a circumpolar business forum and the Council’s new diplomatic mission to support businesses in Arctic development is important. This shift of focus on the Arctic circumpolar cooperative agenda must consider the balance between short-term development and the long-term sustainability of the region. There is a vast difference between the speed of industrial development and the progress on environmental protection. There is a risk that development will outpace conservation.
Positive signals are coming from United States officials that science will be central to the American chairmanship beginning in May 2015. Arctic states cannot afford to neglect protecting the Arctic environment, and they must take responsibility for the long-term functioning of rapidly changing Arctic ecosystems and live up to the original mandate of the Council.

The marine protection gap

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The Canadian icebreaker ship Louis St. Laurent, breaking through the sea ice of the Canada Basin, Beaufort Sea, Alaska, United States. © Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Stock / WWF-Canada

The Canadian icebreaker ship Louis St. Laurent, breaking through the sea ice of the Canada Basin, Beaufort Sea, Alaska, United States. © Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Stock / WWF-Canada


Representatives of Arctic states, Indigenous peoples and observers to the Arctic Council are gathered here in Whitehorse, Yukon to begin the first major meeting under the new Canadian chairmanship.
While Whitehorse is a long way from the Arctic Ocean, the sea will be on people’s minds as they gather here. This will be their first official chance to talk about a major task that the Council has completed, an identification of the most important marine areas in the Arctic.
This identification covers both international sea areas, and also those in national waters. It was driven by a previous Arctic Council report, the Arctic Marine shipping Assessment, that recognized increasing use and development of the Arctic will require some way of protecting the places most important to life there. The Council deserves praise for this achievement – it also requires the ambition to follow it with concrete actions for marine conservation.
So far, the Council has agreed to explore the need for environmental protection for places in international Arctic waters. This is a start, but a much smaller start than is really required to protect Arctic life, and the livelihoods of the peoples who rely on that life. The reality is that only about 15% of what the Council calls Arctic marine areas are “international”, that is, beyond national jurisdiction of any one state.
Now that the Council knows where the important marine areas are, and knows that most of them are in national waters, it needs some way of advancing protection of those nationally-controlled areas. Of course, the protection of those areas is really up to the states concerned, not a job for the Council. What the Council could do is to look at the important areas already identified, and work out which of those areas would, taken together, provide a bottom line of protection for Arctic marine life and ecosystems. This could provide an international plan for prioritizing protection, a plan that could and should then be put into practice by all the Arctic coastal states through appropriate national instruments.
While working at a national level on marine protection, Arctic states and observer states should join their forces to identify international areas where may apply together to the United Nations for special protection status.
 

Are the Faroe Islands Arctic?

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Rainbow over the Faroe Islands. © Marc-Andre Dubois / WWF

Rainbow over the Faroe Islands. © Marc-Andre Dubois / WWF


This week, I’m in the Faroe Islands in order to attend a meeting of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), one of six Working Groups of the Arctic Council.
At 62°00’N, the Faroe Islands lie midway between Norway and Iceland, about 4° south of the official boundary of the Arctic Circle. There’s an ongoing discussion about defining the boundaries of the Arctic — highly relevant for these islands, whose government just released an Arctic policy entitled: The Faroe Islands – a Nation in the Arctic. This self-governing region is part of the Nordic family of nations, but are these remote islands Arctic?
On Sunday, our group was invited to participate to a bus tour leaving from Tórshavn, the capital of the archipelago to the Viðareiði . Viðareiði is the northernmost village in the Faroe Islands. It was cold, rainy, windy and beautiful. The islands are located at the heart of the Gulf Stream delivering a cold oceanic climate, which means that the islands don’t experience a long-lasting accumulation of snow. The bus wandered over bridges and tunnels along steep slopes facing powerful North Atlantic waters.
The average temperature in July is an important environmental and biological indicator of ‘northernness’. An average temperature of 10º C  closely corresponds to the treeline. If we use this indicator, large terrestrial areas of the Faroese archipelago mountains are indeed Arctic.
The harsh climatic conditions and the expected consequences of Arctic industrial development here lead me to conclude that the Faroe Islands will indeed be an important stakeholder in the Arctic’s future.