Arctic Yearbook 2017 - Change & Innovation

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Arctic Yearbook 2017 Heininen, L., H. Exner-Pirot, & J. Plouffe. (eds.). (2017). Arctic Yearbook 2017. Akureyri, Iceland: Northern Research Forum. Available from, http://www.arcticyearbook.com.

ISSN 2298–2418

This is an open access volume distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY NC-4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial.

Cover Image Credit: Myriam Lauzon Editor: Lassi Heininen, University of Lapland|lassi.heininen@ulapland.fi Managing Editors: Heather Exner-Pirot, University of Saskatchewan|heather.exnerpirot@usask.ca Joël Plouffe, École nationale d’Administration publique, ENAP-Montréal|joel.plouffe@enap.ca Editorial Board: Chair Dr. Lawson Brigham|Distinguished Professor of Geography & Arctic Policy, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Senior Fellow, Institute of the North, United States of America Members Dr. Gail Fondahl|Professor of Geography, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada Dr. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson|Former President of the Republic of Iceland Ambassador Hannu Halinen|Former Senior Arctic Official (SAO), Finland; Special Advisor to the Director General and CEO of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Dr. Steven E. Miller|Director of the International Security Program; Editor-in-Chief of International Security, Harvard University, USA) Dr. Alexander Pelyasov|Russian Academy of Sciences; Director of the Center of Northern and Arctic Economics; Ministry of Economic Development & Trade, Russian Federation

About Arctic Yearbook The Arctic Yearbook is the outcome of the Northern Research Forum (NRF) and UArctic joint Thematic Network (TN) on Geopolitics and Security. The TN also organizes the annual Calotte Academy.

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The Arctic Yearbook seeks to be the preeminent repository of critical analysis on the Arctic region, with a mandate to inform observers about the state of Arctic politics, governance and security. It is an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication, published online at www.arcticyearbook.com to ensure wide distribution and accessibility to a variety of stakeholders and observers.

Arctic Yearbook material is obtained through a combination of invited contributions and an open call for papers. For more information on contributing to the Arctic Yearbook, or participating in the TN on Geopolitics and Security, contact the Editor, Lassi Heininen.

Acknowledgments The Arctic Yearbook would like to acknowledge the Arctic Portal [http://arcticportal.org] for their generous technical support, and the scholars who provided peer review of the academic articles. We would also like to thank Myriam Lauzon for her artwork for this year’s cover.

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Arctic Yearbook 2017 Change & Innovation in the Arctic: Policy, Society & Environment Table of Contents Section I: Introduction Preface

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Hannu Halinen

Introduction – Change & Innovation in the Arctic

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Heather Exner-Pirot, Lassi Heininen & Joël Plouffe

This Year in the Arctic: Timeline of 2017 Events

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Joël Plouffe & Heather Exner-Pirot

Section II: Thinking Arctic Innovation

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Scholarly Articles

Towards Innovation (Eco)Systems: Enhancing the Public Value of Scientific Research in the Canadian Arctic 24 Ashlee-Ann Pigford, Gordon Hickey & Laurens Klerkx

Inventing the New North: Patents & Knowledge Economy in Alaska

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Salma O. Zbeed & Andrey N. Petrov

Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights in the Arctic

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Robert P. Wheelersburg & Sean Melvin

Northern Peripheries & Creative Capital: The Nature of Creative Capital & Its Role in Contributing to Regional Development in Nordic Regions

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Aisling Murtagh & Patrick Collins

Narrating Identities through Art-Making on the Margins: The Case of Two Workshops in the Arctic 98 Daria Akimenko, Melanie Sarantou & Satu Miettinen

Developing Metrics to Guide Sustainable Development of Arctic Cities: Progress & Challenges 113 Luis Suter, Carrie Schaffner, Carlson Giddings, Robert Orttung & Dmitry Streletskiy

Urban Planning in the Arctic: Historic Uses & the Potential for a Resilient Urban Future Melissa Jane Kenny

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5 Commentaries

New Publication: N.Y. Zamyatina & A.N. Pelyasov (2017). Regional Consulting: Invitation for Creativity. Saint-Petersburg: Mamatov Publishing House 146 Alexander Pelyasov

Section III: Creative Collaboration

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Scholarly Articles

Collaboration across the Arctic: A Tool of Regionalization or Simple Pragmatism?

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Verena Gisela Huppert & Romain François R. Chuffart

Building Academic Research Capacity among Indigenous Youth: A Participatory Health Research Project with Students at Chief Julius School in Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada 163 Megan J. Highet, Amy Colquhoun, Karen J. Goodman, the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project Planning Committee, & the CANHelp Working Group

Digital Environmental Storytelling Connecting to the Arctic: #60Above60 Pilot

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Laura C. Engel, Mary E. Short, Sarah E. Jennings, Robert W. Orttung & Luis J. Suter

Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) – A Framework Program on the Land–Atmosphere– Ocean–Society Interactions of the Changing Arctic–Boreal Environments 188 Hanna K. Lappalainen, V.M. Kerminen, T. Petäjä, J. Bäck, T. Vesala, T. Vihma, T. Haapala, A. Mahura, A. Baklanov, R. Makkonen, A. Lauri, V-P. Tynkkynen, G. de Leeuw, P. Konstantinov, N. Kasimov, V. Bondur, V. Melnikov, S. Zilitinkevich, & M. Kulmala Briefing Notes

The Arctic Resilience Action Framework: A New Paradigm for Regional Cooperation to Build Resilience 207 Sarah Abdelrahim & Joel Clement

Innovations for the Arctic through Cross-border Cooperation

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Ekaterina Shlapeko Commentaries

Encouraging Arctic Cross-Border Entrepreneurship through Collaborative Creative Steps 2.0 Methodology 217 Anzelika Krastina & Anitra Arkko

The Arctic in the Research of the Luzin Institute for Economic Studies of the Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (KSC RAS) 220 Larissa Riabova

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Section IV: Arctic Change & Innovation in Practice

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Scholarly Articles

Pediatric Health Care Services in the Arctic regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia): Medicodemographic Indicators Particularly in the Delivery of Health Care_____________ 223 Tatiana Burtseva, Vyacheslav G. Chasnyk, Antonina N. Grigoreva & Natalya I. Douglas

The Information Community of the Arctic in Russia: Evaluation of the Expenses for the IT Projects Development, Characteristics of the Labor Costs Calculating 232 Ivan V. Evdokimov, Alexander S. Khaluimov, Nikita V. Sokolov & Sergey E. Golokhvastov

‘Future Games’: Enacting Innovation in Greenland

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Carina Ren & Rasmus Kjærgaard Rasmussen Briefing Notes

Submarine Cables: Bringing Broadband Internet to the Arctic, a Life Changer for Northerners?

259 Michael Delaunay Commentaries

Social Media for Health in Nunavik

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Marie-Claude Lyonnais & Christopher Fletcher

Telemedicine & e-Health in the Russian Arctic

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Yury Sumarokov

Section V: Arctic Resources & Development

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Scholarly Articles

Environmental & Human Impact of the Northern Sea Route & Industrial Development in Russia’s Arctic Zone 275 Diana Dushkova, Tatyana Krasovskaya & Alexander Evseev

Managing the Barents Sea: Comparing Norwegian & Russian Offshore Oil-Spill Prevention Policies 290 Troy J. Bouffard

Part of the Master Plan? Chinese Investment in Rare Earth Mining in Greenland

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Jesper Zeuthen

The Changing Arctic & the Development of Hokkaido

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Juha Saunavaara

The Political Economy of Arctic Reality Television: The Spatial Communication of Ice Road Truckers & Deadliest Catch 339 Derek Moscato

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The Economic Development of Arctic Shipping: A Systematic Literature Review

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Florian Gauthier Briefing Notes

Developing Hydrocarbon Resources in Arctic Russia: The Role of Sino-Russian Collaboration Anastasia Ufimtseva & Tahnee Prior Commentaries

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Missing the Obvious in Arctic Shipping Regulations: A Maritime Lawyer’s Observation from Svalbard 377 Ilker Basaran

Evolutionary Innovation in Arctic Marine Transportation

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Lawson W. Brigham

Section VI: Arctic Governance & Institutions Scholarly Articles

The 2015 Oslo Declaration on Arctic High Seas Fisheries: The Starting Point towards Future Fisheries Management in the Central Arctic Ocean 387 Dan Liu

Legal ‘Arctopia’? How Arctic Governance Expresses a Better World

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Nikolas Sellheim, Leilei Zou & Osamu Inagaki Briefing Notes

Optimizing EU Influence on Arctic Affairs

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Morgane Fert-Malka & Alexandra Kekkonen

The Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation: From Paper to Practice

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Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek

Commentaries

Canada & the Arctic

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Andrea Charron

Finnish Chairmanship of the Arctic Council

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Aleksi Härkönen

The Paris Agreement & the Arctic Region

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Lotta Manninen

Calotte Academy 2017. Perceptions of the Arctic: Rich or Scarce, Mass-scale or Traditional, Conflict or Cooperation?

454 Jussi Huotari & Salla Kalliojärvi

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Section I: Introduction

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Preface Ambassador Hannu Halinen

Policy should always be based on unbiased science. Researchers should prepare policy-relevant studies and politicians should act on this information. In a perfect world, these two parties would work in unison.

Today we seem to be moving away from these lofty goals. There is a “War on Science” (New York Times Editorial, September 8, 2017), specifically related to climate change and Arctic developments.

Policy adopts the predetermined conclusion that climate change is not a problem, seeking evidence to justify that position. This is the opposite of genuine science, which follows the evidence. And governments are supposed to build policy on these outcomes.

Clearly, there is not one truth in science. However, when it comes to climate change, there is an overwhelming consensus in universities, research centers, and also governments, publishing peerreviewed reports, that climate change is caused by human actions. To paraphrase former U.S. VicePresident, Al Gore, does the Inconvenient Truth become the Assault on Reason? Or is there a way to help politicians to heed to the truth and make the right decisions?

This edition of Arctic Yearbook, once again, is an eminent compilation of studies and reports by qualified scholars on developments in the Arctic. Arctic Yearbook 2017 focuses on “Change and Innovation,” particularly addressing differences between the Arctic and developments in other parts of the world, between the North and the South. There is a need for a research strategy to study the ongoing interconnected processes. Globalization influences the Arctic, but the Arctic has also global influence and impact. The Arctic is a regional actor vitally important in the global context. Southern technological solutions and innovations cannot all be converted to benefit the Arctic.

The Arctic, however, is not a vacuum. Indigenous peoples and Arctic inhabitants have been living there for thousands of years, finding a way on how to not only survive but also prosper in cold climate, in ice and snow. Inevitably, the change will come to the Arctic, which today is a stable and peaceful region. The key challenge is to keep the change enforcing, not weakening, Arctic sustainability and resilience.

Hannu Halinen is former Arctic Ambassador of Finland, Special Advisor to the Director General and Chief Executive Officer Officer of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

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The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), on invitation by the Finnish Prime Minister’s Office, has been working for some time on developing a project called “Arctic Futures Initiative.” Behind this project, “A Systems Analysis Perspective on the Plausible Futures of the Arctic,” lies the conviction that policy makers, governments, investors, environmental communities and Indigenous communities need to reconcile the development of economic opportunities and the need to safeguard the environment, diverse cultures, social well-being and livelihoods. Research on the Arctic is increasing in volume, but is often fragmented and overlapping. Politicians generally draw quick solutions and rarely have time to go through the whole spectrum of research. There is a call for a systematic, holistic analysis and possible solutions.

All efforts to find ways and means to assist politicians to convert relevant and reliable scientific findings into strategies and policies are highly appreciated. True, in the real world, the politicians make the final decisions, with or without solid scientific background.

However, this should never discourage science to push politicians towards right and educated solutions.

Preface

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Introduction

Change and Innovation in the Arctic Heather Exner-Pirot, Lassi Heininen and Joël Plouffe

The only constant is change. For the Arctic region, this seems both more and less true than other places. On the one hand, there has been incredible cultural continuity, with many traditions and practices carrying on much as they have for centuries or even millennia. At the same time, the past century has seen incredible change – both socially, with growing connectivity with ‘outside’ economies, cultures, systems and technologies; and environmentally, with global climate changes hitting the polar regions first and hardest.

These many changes both beget and require innovations – the adoption of new ideas, practices, methods or objects. Arctic peoples have shown significant flexibility, resilience and adaptability over the centuries; indeed surviving the region’s extreme conditions has required it (see e.g. Arctic Yearbook 2014). The adoption of gas-powered boats, hard-soled shoes, rifles and snowmobiles/snow machines, are more recent examples of disruptive technologies that have fundamentally altered northern societies.

Yet innovations in the 21st century – especially technological ones – are being developed at ever faster rates, a product of better education, better communications and the resultant rapid diffusion of ideas. There is a sense that the Arctic region is not yet fully enjoying the benefits of many technological innovations that urban, southern dwellers now take for granted: access to affordable high speed internet, links to global distribution systems, cheap air travel, or even roads. Many existing innovations, for example telehealth, food growing systems, and micro-sanitation, have yet to be adopted on a large scale in the North though there utility is obvious.

There is also a history of Arctic communities having had to endure the imposition of southern innovations or technologies that were geographically or culturally inappropriate for the region.

Public housing stock, based on 1950s single family suburban dwellings, is one notable example, Exner-Pirot, Heininen & Plouffe

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with the design, materials, and construction ill-suited for northern living. But there are many, many others. Food and energy systems based on importing goods from distant markets; municipal infrastructure based on solutions to southern metropolises; health systems based on accessibility to tertiary care hospitals and specialists. All of these are clear examples where governments, and society, have simply extended southern solutions to the North with very little consideration for their appropriateness or sustainability.

Intellectually, this has often resulted in the entire North, as a global periphery, being framed in relation to, and as a poorer version of, the South: terrible internet, bad roads, no services. The gap in quality of living between North and South has indeed been growing in many parts of the Arctic region. Practically, it has imposed an unsustainable cost of adopting mainstream technologies and infrastructures in remote, off-grid, and cold locations. If the model is to build hundreds of kilometers of asphalt highways on permafrost, to maintain conventional airports and water treatment plants in communities of a few hundred people, or to ensure the affordability of imported vegetables in northern grocery stores, then we must also accept that many northern communities will be dependent on transfers from southern and central governments, thereby undermining self-determination - even as the gross production of many northern regions outweighs the amounts they are subsidized by southern capitals.

Could we imagine a different scenario, in four or five decades, where the rural North has (re)adopted unique systems and infrastructure that are appropriate and sustainable for northern realities? Or where Arctic communities have become so integrated into global food, transportation and economic systems that their Arcticness is incidental? Both of these seem preferable to the status quo. But which scenario do Northerners want to see realized?

Change across Time The Arctic has been subject to constant change over the centuries. Although we often think of the current, digital, age as a time of unprecedented social changes, the transition from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle that occurred through much of the Arctic in the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily as a result of colonization, arguably had a more significant impact. The introduction of the welfare state, universal primary education, and a wage economy introduced further, disruptive, changes.

Currently the Arctic, a unique and important part of the Earth system, is experiencing rapid environmental, social, economic and geopolitical changes. There are a variety of competing interests, images, visions, and actors at the local, regional, national and global levels, and many of the drivers shaping Arctic realities are exogenous (see e.g. Arctic Yearbook 2013). Despite many narrow, and often politicized, appraisals that climate change, in combination with globalization, will result in an Arctic race for resources and concomitant conflict, the post-Cold war Arctic has been, and is, peaceful. A high level of geopolitical stability has been established based on cooperation across borders by Arctic states and non-states actors, in particular the residents and civil societies of the region. This can provide a fruitful platform for connectivity and further innovations for the ‘global’ Arctic.

Indigenous vs Urban Arctic It is common in the South to think of the Arctic as a homogenous, single region. But Arctic scholars, leaders and inhabitants have frequently articulated the existence of many Arctics – the presence of significant sub-regional variations in geography, culture and economy. In the context Introduction

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of innovation, there are few cleavages as significant as the rural-urban divide on the one hand, and the geopolitical (Nordic-Greenland/Russia/North America) divide on the other.

Cities in the Arctic, even though they may be small by global standards, generally have similar levels of services as their counterparts in the South; sometimes more, as they often serve as regional economic hubs and political centres. Many were developed in concert with the predominant local industry, often in the resource development sector, and have experienced significant immigration over the years. Some are aging, or in decline. But higher levels of education, mobility, and income have made the Arctic’s urban residents much more integrated with global economic and social systems, and with reasonable access to the benefits attached to new, especially digital, technologies.

Rural Arctic residents by contrast, especially those living in remote or off-grid communities, have much more limited access to services and tools that are taken for granted in southern and urban areas. Affordable energy, clean water, internet and cellular coverage, and accessible building materials, are often prohibitively expensive or simply unobtainable based due to a lack of relevant human capital. Anything that requires an economy of scale is a challenge in the rural Arctic. It is also true that the vast majority of Arctic residents living in small, remote communities are Indigenous, and face additional structural barriers to fully enjoying the economic and social rights that are otherwise a hallmark of developed nations. While there is much promise for northern wellbeing attached to the digital age, including unprecedented connectivity to markets, information, entertainment, distance learning, telehealth, and social media, large swathes of the Arctic continue to have difficulty accessing it.

Similarly, it is illogical to lump the Euro-Arctic in with the rest of the region when discussing barriers and needs in technological innovation. Iceland and northern Finland, Norway and Sweden in particular have shown that it is possible to be northern and still succeed in the knowledge economy. The Nordic states enjoy virtually full internet coverage and smartphone saturation.

Almost every community is connected to national road and energy systems. The kinds of innovations needed to improve quality of life are much more in line, and inextricably connected, with those of typical southern and urban communities. Whereas those, primarily Indigenous or ethnic minority, residents living in remote Arctic communities have very unique needs based on culture, geography and history. It is possible that the common denominator in Arctic innovation will not be the Arctic per se, but rather the need for elegant solutions to the challenges posed by (1) being off-grid; or (2) being cold. In this case, there should be, and needs to be, opportunity for collaboration with partners around the globe.

Innovation in the Arctic There is often an implication that the Arctic is lacking or deficient in modern technologies, a close corollary to historical caricatures of the entire North as backwards or peripheral; a primitive space.

It is not our intention to reinforce these stereotypes. Rather, we see opportunity for the Arctic, a region that has made significant progress over the past four decades in building novel and contextually-relevant political systems through devolution and self-determination, as on the cusp of an era in which northern specific and appropriate innovations are developed and adopted.

Much of this is happening already. Many of the articles in this volume detail the innovative use and adoption of ideas, systems and tools, from social media to digital storytelling to cross-border networking. But too many Arctic innovation initiatives are ad hoc, lack coordination and scale, or

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have insufficient human or financial capital. A regional innovation system – whereby the flow of knowledge and best practices happens seamlessly across communities, institutions and entrepreneurs around the Arctic region – could address many otherwise insurmountable barriers: (1) harsh environmental conditions, which make many technologies adopted for mid-temeperate climates, including batteries, mechanical parts, and many construction materials unreliable or inappropriate, and thus require northern-specific solutions; and (2) economies of scale to develop products and processes that address the unique needs of cold, sparse and off-grid communities, but which may need a larger market than the northern regions of individual states can provide to be feasible.

Innovation, Broadly Speaking Although the discourse on innovation often focuses on technology, innovation comes in many forms, and Arctic societies have proven themselves to be innovative in many respects, particularly in the political sphere in the contemporary era. The elaboration of new models of decentralized and self- government beginning in the 1970s transformed northern politics and society, and while frequently emulated have yet to be matched elsewhere on the globe. Regional governance in the Arctic, built around unique institutions such as the Arctic Council (see Arctic Yearbook 2016), has been shown to be adaptable, innovative and most importantly successful over the past quarter century. The Arctic is home to many ‘firsts’ in global governance, and indeed to many ‘onlys’.

These political innovations have provided a platform of regional networks across a variety of spheres, and relevant in the context of this year’s Yearbook theme, among academics and scientists, industry stakeholders, and militaries. This can pave the way for greater and more effective knowledge transfer in the future, with institutions such as the University of the Arctic with its Thematic Networks, the annual Arctic Circle Assembly as a global platform, and the Arctic Economic Council supporting SMEs which are already positioned to be conduits of Arctic innovations.

Over the past decade or so, climate change has accelerated the pace of diplomatic innovations by state and subnational actors to collectively address and coordinate (or anticipate) responses to increased human activity in northern waters. In 2008, the five Arctic coastal states (A5) jointly released the Ilulissat Declaration in which they listed the various areas of policy convergence that would benefit from increased international cooperation in the region, and formally agreed that the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was the legal framework they would abide to in the future to preserve regional stability. In the spirit of that declaration, and under the auspices of the Arctic Council, the eight Arctic states signed three legally binding agreements to increase cooperation on maritime search and rescue in 2011, on marine oil pollution preparedness and response in 2013, and on international Arctic scientific cooperation in May 2017. On fisheries management, the A5 have been leading ongoing negotiations with other Arctic and non-Arctic states and organizations to obtain global political commitments to regulate fishing in the high seas portions of the Arctic Ocean by establishing a new legally binding international agreement to that end. Furthermore, international cooperation was also expanded to the level of maritime operations with the establishment, in 2015, of the Arctic Coast Guard Forum (ACGF), which was created by the Coast Guards of the eight Arctic states to share resources that increase international collaborative efficacy, capacity and capabilities in responding to the rising demands of search and rescue, and enforcing regulations related to environmental protection, fishing and vessel safety Introduction

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(see R. Pincus, Arctic Yearbook 2015). The ACGF held its first multilateral search and rescue exercise in Iceland, in September 2017 (with the participation of all Arctic countries in the actual exercises, and others as observers.) Along those same lines, following the release of the Arctic Maritime Shipping Assessment in 2009, the Arctic Council states actively engaged in multilateral negotiations leading to the adoption, by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), of the International Code of Safety for Ships Operating in Polar Waters – or Polar Code –, which came into force in January 2017 (See L.W. Brigham, Arctic Yearbook 2014). Finally, beyond those innovative tools adopted to enhance maritime safety, additional creative political efforts were made in other areas to: • • •

•

Facilitate Arctic business-to-business activities and economic development with the establishment of the Arctic Economic Council in 2015; Enable Arctic security cooperation through the Northern Chief of Defence Conference (although suspended in 2013 as a result of the Russian-Ukraine crisis); Enhance locally-driven governance in the circumpolar north with the 2017 Arctic Mayors Declaration that lays out goals and priorities shared by Arctic peoples and mayors, and aims to promote and share pan-Arctic local best practices and lessons learned between northern communities, and; Increase Indigenous engagement in the Arctic Council’s work through the Álgu Fund, an endowment that distributes funds provided by the Arctic states to the Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council, and a mechanism that facilities collaborations on specific projects and initiatives (See J. Gamble, Arctic Yearbook 2016).

Building Capacity for Innovation If the Arctic region boasts many examples of working collectively to develop new ideas, foster innovative practices, and address emerging problems and opportunities created by Arctic change, there is similarly a need to address some fundamental barriers.

One element of any strategy to improve the quality and uptake of new technologies in the Arctic region is to improve capacity in scientific and mathematic literacy. This would better position northerners to design new tools and applications as well as adapt southern/urban ones to northern requirements. Yet the historical context of education systems in the Arctic, specifically the imposition of Western standards and curriculum, makes this contentious. Should northern, and especially Indigenous, schools prioritize teaching Indigenous languages and culture, and on-theland experiences; or should it immerse students in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) in preparation for wage employment? Can Western and traditional knowledge paradigms be complementary or are they fundamentally antithetical? Is there, or should there be, a middle ground?

A number of Arctic programs are already working to bridge those gaps, and have enjoyed success.

One particularly good model is the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, a program founded in 1995 with the goal of supporting Alaska Native students on a pathway to science and engineering careers. Despite these bright spots, many Arctic communities still struggle to recruit qualified science and math teachers, and many northern students see Western math and scientific studies as foreign to their ways of living.

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Arctic Yearbook 2017 The field of innovation studies began in earnest in the 1960s, and has seen significant growth in the past decade. However very little work has been done to apply that scholarship to an Arctic context. This year’s Arctic Yearbook is an attempt to address this gap, with the nature of its articles an indication of the early direction of the field. We expect and hope that Arctic innovation studies will continue to develop in the future and are pleased to offer one of the first collections on the subject.

Section II: Thinking Arctic Innovation applies some of the more mainstream innovation concepts to an Arctic context. Pigford, Hickey & Klerkx examine innovation ecosytems as an approach for policy actors to enhance innovation linkages in the Canadian Arctic, and ask how scientific research activity can better contribute. Zbeed & Petrov examine Alaska’s patent data to document the state’s knowledge production geography and dynamics over the past thirty-five years, and to better understand whether and how a transition from a resource-based to a knowledge based economy is possible. Wheelersburg & Melvin summarize the exisiting national global level intellectual property rights that could be applied to, and provide better protection to, Traditional Knowledge.

Murtagh & Collins explore the nature of creative capital among individuals in creative occupations based in two Nordic regions - Lapland in Finland and Västernorrland in Sweden - to assess its contribution to regional development and innovation. And Akimenko, Sarantou & Miettinen analyse the stories and narratives shared by artists in two workshops, held respectively in Rovaniemi and Murmansk, to understand how the qualities of life and work environments impact on art practices and identity construction.

Urbanization is increasingly linked to innovation and knowledge transfer. Suter et al describe the preliminary results of their efforts to produce an Arctic Urban Sustainability Index. Their project aims to help policymakers define and implement sustainability policies by measuring progress towards sustainability, compare across cities, and trace development over time. Kenny undertakes a brief investigation into the history of urban planning within the Arctic and outlines how urban planning in the region can constitute a form of resilience.

In Section III: Creative Collaboration, a number of examples of innovative partnerships, communities of practice, and knowledge networks – all fundamental to the creation and adoption of new ideas and processes – are highlighted. Huppert & Chuffart provide an analysis regional collaborations in the Arctic in the fields of education, health and infrastructure, to assess whether pan-Arctic collaborations in the Arctic are more viable than North-South collaborations. They find no signs of the pan-Arctic paradigm being more viable in the foreseeable future. Highet et al describe their project with the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project Planning Committee aimed at engaging youth and providing opportunities for capacity building. They articulate the need for scientific research in the region to generate meaningful and timely benefits for Indigenous communities in general, and Indigenous youth in particular. Engel et al discuss educator/research experiences in an environmental digital storytelling pilot project, #60above60, which took place within the larger research endeavor Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE): Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic. The exchange sought to develop global competencies, environmental literacy, and promote student voices and agency. Lappalainen et al describe the Pan-Eurasian Experiment Program (PEEX), established in 2012 - a novel conceptual framework of research methods, infrastructures and procedures aiming to be a next-generation natural Introduction

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sciences and socio-economic research initiative with impacts on future environmental, socioeconomic and demographic development of the Arctic and boreal regions and China.

Section IV: Arctic Change & Innovation in Practice examines some real-life examples of attempts at change and innovation. Burtseva et al analyse current pediatric health care in Yakutia and conclude that a change to the current model is needed. These include the wider use of mobile diagnostic medical units, web-based information exchange (tele-consultation and medical reports), and the introduction of automated systems for preventive examination. Evdokimov et al assess the competitveness of the local IT industry in northern Siberia, and suggest that growing competence in the IT field can help change notions that the High North is only a supplier of natural resources, and not a legitmate source of skilled labour. Ren & Rasmussen explore how the 2016 Arctic Winter Games held in Nuuk, Greenland, enacted possible futures through specific policies and practices pertinent to societal innovation in contemporary Greenland.

Section V: Resources and Development; and Section VI: Governance and Development return to the subject matter the Arctic Yearbook, and its host the UArctic Thematic Network on Geopolitics and Security, are best known for.

Dushkova, Krasovskaya & Evseev evaluate the development of the Northern Sea Route from the perspective of the impact further industrialization will have on the adjacent coastal zone ecosystems and northern residents, including economic, environmental and societal. Bouffard explores the differences and influences in Norwegian and Russian offshore oil-spill prevention policy in the Barents Sea, including how each state’s national and economic strategic objectives translate into domestic policy, and how such influences are reflected in operational mandates and behavior. Zeuthen studies how country specific Chinese priorities and a sector specific political economy affect a Chinese enterprise investing in the Kvanefjeld project near Narsaq, Southern Greenland. Saunavaara considers Hokkaido as an example of a region in which development has been linked to new Arctic possibilities by both public and private actor, focusing on the Northern Sea Route and the submarine communications cables that pass through Arctic waters. Moscato examines both History Channel’s reality television program ‘Ice Road Truckers’ and its Discovery Channel counterpart ‘Deadliest Catch’, including the programs’ histories and their implicit or direct roles in influencing discourse about the Arctic and sub-Arctic’s economy and ecology. Gauthier provides a systemic literature review on the economic development of Arctic navigation, focusing on the period between 2007-16. Liu provides an overall examination on the legal aspects of the Oslo Declaration, especially the arguments regarding the future of fisheries management in the High Seas portion of the Central Arctic Ocean, such as a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) or Agreement (RFMA) as the interim measure, and the differences between the Declaration and international fisheries law. Finally, Sellheim, Zou & Inagaki examine some Arctic-specific hard and soft legal instruments and determines the degree to which the Arctic legal space serves as a stage for the construction of a ‘better world’ or ‘Arctopia’.

These scholarly contributions are complemented by commentaries and briefing notes on various Arctic innovations and initiatives, as well as the events and phenomena that captured our attention in 2017. We are grateful to the experts and policy-makers who contributed their expertise and insight in these shorter pieces.

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Conclusions It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention. A collective desire to address the many societal, political, and environmental needs in the Arctic region must now lead to a collective strategy to do so. The Arctic can be a victim of change, or it can be a model - not only of resilience to that which inhabitants of the region cannot control, but for capitalizing on the opportunities that change can bring. The Arctic can be a region characterized by innovation.

We have attempted in this year’s Arctic Yearbook to put a spotlight on innovation as defined in an Arctic context, and to begin a conversation on whether, and how, Arctic communities can be innovative together. A solid foundation for adopting new and innovative processes and institutions in the region has already been established in the political sphere. There is much remaining opportunity to embrace transformative technologies that have an impact on Arctic residents’ daily life and well-being.

Introduction

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year in review Joël Plouffe & Heather Exner-Pirot

2016 October

5-6th – The Arctic Council’s Senior Arctic Officials (SAOs) and Indigenous Permanent Participant organizations (PPs) meet in Portland, Maine to discuss the Council’s ongoing work and future plans to address environmental issues and promote sustainable development in the Arctic. The United States is chairing the Arctic Council until May 2017.

November

28th – The 2016 Arctic Yearbook is launched at the Canadian Department of Global Affairs as part of the celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of the Ottawa Declaration, the founding document of the Arctic Council established in 1996. AY2016 is themed The Arctic Council: 20 Years of Regional Cooperation & Policy Shaping .

2nd – China appoints Mr. Gao Feng as the first Special Representative for Arctic Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Senior Arctic Official to the Arctic Council.

25th – The Arctic Resilience Report is launched.

2nd – Russia releases its new foreign policy strategy with a focus on the Northern Sea Route, the delineation of the continental shelf (OCS) and the role of international law.

December

6th – UArctic’s Northern Nursing Education Network publishes a special collection issue on “Nursing Education in the Circumpolar North.”

20th – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Barack Obama announce the UnitedStates-Canada Joint Arctic Leaders’ Statement. In this declaration, President Obama designates the vast majority of the U.S. federal Arctic waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas as indefinitely off limits to offshore oil and gas leasing. Prime Minister Trudeau also designates a moratorium on oil and gas licensing in the Canadian Arctic waters, however to be reviewed every five years through scientific reassessments.

31st – Kick-off celebrations begin in Helsinki as Finland prepares to mark its 100 years of independence.

January

2017 1st – The International Code of Safety for Ships Operating in Polar Waters (the IMO Polar Code ) enters into force. 9th – 2016 is confirmed as the warmest year on the planet since recordkeeping began, close to a record breaking 1.5oC warming.

16th – Hundreds of United States Marines land in Norway’s Arctic for a six month deployment, irking Russian officals.

Joël Plouffe & Heather Exner-Pirot are the Managing Editors of the Arctic Yearbook.

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February

January

2017 25th – U.S. Special Representative for the Arctic, Admiral Robert Papp, steps down as the State Department’s top Arctic diplomat. Papp joins a Washington-based shipbuilding company as lobbyist.

6th – Celebrations begin in Trondheim, Norway, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Sami People’s first congress of 1917.

23rd – The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (often called the ‘doomsday’ vault) located in Longyearbyen (Norway) receives 50,000 new samples from seed collections around the world. The vault is the world’s largest repository built to safeguard against wars or natural disasters.

March

20th – A Nunavik teacher from the Kativik School Board, Maggie MacDonnel, wins the $1 million Global Teacher Prize for her work to encourage young Inuit to return to school by engaging them in projects that interests them.

23rd – The leaders from the eight coast guards of the Arctic Coast Guard Forum sign a joint statement adopting doctrine, tactics, procedures, and information-sharing protocols for emergency maritime response and Arctic operations. The Chairmanship for the forum is transferred from the U.S. Coast Guard to the Finnish Border Guard.

28-30th – The Circumpolar Inuit Economic Summit is held in Anchorage, Alaska.

28th – The five coastal Arctic states joined by China, the EU, Japan and Republic of Korea meet on Central Arctic Ocean fisheries, but no agreements are reached and negotiations continue.

31st – The Arctic Science Summit Week 2017 begins in Prague.

11th – The Canadian province of Québec includes the Arctic region in its new 10-year International Policy.

April

18th – Russia unveils its Arctic Trefoil base in Franz Josef Land, a Russian archipelago in the Barents Sea. 21st – Norway presents a new Arctic strategy.

27th – U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order aimed at lifting former President Obama’s indefinite ban on Arctic drilling.

May

28th – Canada’s Special Representative for Arctic Leadership, Mary Simon, releases her report for a New Shared Arctic Leadership Model that puts emphasis on establishing Indigenous Protected Areas, funding for renewable energy, and efficiency alternatives to diesel fuels.

8-14th – The Week of the Arctic is held in Fairbanks, Alaska, preceding the Arctic Council ministerial meeting that begins the same week. The events include: Arctic Interchange ; the Arctic Broadband Forum ; and the North by North on Arctic innovation, resilience and sustainability.

Year in Review

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May

2017 11th – The 10th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting is held in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson chairs the meeting, becoming the first Republican holding that position to attend an Arctic Council Ministerial. Key deliverables from the U.S. Chairmanship: the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation is signed, becoming the 3rd legally binding agreement signed under the auspices of the Arctic Council; the release of the Snow, Water, Ice & Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA); the Telecommunications Infrastructure in the Arctic Assessment; the Circumpolar Local Environmental Observer Network (CLEO).

11th – Finland takes over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council until 2019 with an agenda themed Exploring Common Solutions.

12th – Russia announces that it is slashing funding for activities under the new Russian Arctic Programme by 75%.

17th – Eleven circumpolar mayors sign The Declaration of Arctic Mayors .

17th – The Álgu Fund for indigenous peoples is created.

June

1st– President Donald Trump announces that he is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations that are not part of this treaty. Many officials from the circumpolar Arctic states lambast Trump for his decision to pull out.

1st – Calotte Academy 2017 begins in Rovaniemi, Finland. This year’s theme is Perceptions of the Arctic: Rich or Scarce, Mass-scale or Traditional, Conflict or Cooperation.

8-12th – Ninth International Congress of Arctic Social Science (ICASS IX) held in Umeå, Sweden.

August

July

27th – France appoints its new Ambassador for Arctic & Antarctic negotiations , Ségolène Royal, former presidential candidate in the 2007 French election and former Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development, and Energy. The position, created in 2009 by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, was formerly occupied by Michel Rocard, French Prime-Minister from 1988 to 1991.

7th – The UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) announces that it will begin the process of developing rules in mitigating the risk of use of heavy fuel oil (HFO) for ships operating in Arctic waters.

29th – The Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica sets a record for the earliest transit in the Northwest Passage.

1st – Russia’s new Arctic icebreaker-tanker Christophe de Margerie makes first liquefied natural gas voyage from Norway to South Korea.

2nd – 10 years ago today, a Russian titanium flag was planted on the Arctic Ocean seabed at the geographical North Pole.

16th – Norwegian explorer Roald Admundsen’s ship, Maud, begins her returns to Norway where she was built in 1917. Maud sank in Nunavut nearly 90 years ago.

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September

5-6th– The Arctic Coast Guard Forum holds its first operative exercise in Iceland, Arctic Guardian 2017. Maritime and air assets are provided by Denmark, Canada, Norway, Iceland, and the U.S. The three other Arctic Council states, Finland, Sweden and Russia, participate as observers.

6th – China’s Xue Long (Snow Dragon) research vessels completes its two-week transit through the Canadian Northwest Passage from the Bering Strait to Lancaster Sound.

This is China’s first ever voyage through these waters, part of an 83-day research mission circumnavigating the Arctic. This is Xue Long’s eight Arctic expedition, but the first sailing the Arctic rim.

18-20th – The 2017 Arctic Energy Summit is held in Helsinki, Finland.

19th – The Arctic Economic Council welcomes three new members representing different parts of the Arctic business community.

October

20th – The luxury cruise liner Crystal Serenity completes its second Northwest Passage voyage. A smaller vessel, the polar-class Crystal Endeavor, will take over from Serenity at a future date.

13-15th – The 5th Arctic Circle Assembly is held in Reykjavik, Iceland.

14th – The Arctic Yearbook 2017 is launched at the fifth Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland. AY 2017 is themed Innovation & Change in the Arctic: Policy, Society & the Environment.

year in review 2 0 1 7

Year in Review

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Section II: Thinking Arctic Innovation

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Towards Innovation (Eco)Systems: Enhancing the Public Value of Scientific Research in the Canadian Arctic Ashlee-Ann Pigford, Gordon M. Hickey & Laurens Klerkx

Over the past decade, the Canadian Arctic has seen an intensification of scientific research designed to foster innovation (i.e., the process of transforming ideas into new products, services, practices or policies). However, innovation remains generally low. This paper argues that before we can meaningfully promote innovation in the Arctic, there is a need to first identify the complex systems that support or inhibit innovation. Few, if any studies have taken a systems approach to enrich our understanding of how existing networks may or may not support innovation in the Canadian Arctic. A promising, but under-explored approach is to consider innovation ecosystems, defined as the multi-level, multi-modal, multi-nodal and multi-agent system of systems that shape the way that societies generate, exchange, and use knowledge. This paper presents innovation (eco)systems as a potentially valuable systems-based approach for policy actors to enhance innovation linkages in the Arctic. From a policy perspective, there is a need to embrace and promote more networked approaches to co-create public value and to consider the lifespan of any innovation. Potential directions for future research include: mapping the actors involved in Arctic innovation ecosystems (including intermediaries and bridging agents) at multiple scales; the role that formal and informal institutions play in shaping co-innovation; case studies to evaluate innovation processes; and an assessment of the coupled functional-structural aspects that influence innovation outcomes in the Canadian Arctic.

Introduction: Innovation in the Canadian Arctic The Canadian Arctic has been identified as an ‘up-and-coming’ region and has attracted increasing national and international policy interest (Steinberg & Tasch, 2015). It has also been characterized as a region undergoing a series of unprecedented parallel social, political, and environmental transitions (Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, 2006; Wehrmann, 2016). Much attention has been paid to understanding the impacts of climate change, as well as the vulnerability and resilience of Arctic residents who are faced with increasing pressures to adapt to the changing environment (Chapin III et al., 2004; Overpeck et al., 1997; Pelaudeix, 2012; Prowse et al., 2009). Concentrated attempts to better link contributions from scientific research and other public interventions to innovation are key to meeting the complex multi-level challenges (e.g., marginalization, poverty, limited infrastructure, poor housing conditions, food insecurity, and limited access to health and education services) associated with concurrent transitions in the Canadian Arctic (Coates & Poelzer, 2014; Exner-Pirot, 2015).

Ashlee-Ann Pigford and Gordon M. Hickey are with the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, McGill University. Laurens Klerkx is with the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group, Wageningen University.

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Innovation can be conceptualized as a “new or better way of doing valued things” (The Expert Panel on Business Innovation, 2009) or “as a response to, and as a means for change” (UArctic, 2017). More specifically, innovation is both (1) the process whereby ideas are transformed into something new and (2) the novel outcomes of such processes, such as a product, service, policy or practice (Baregheh, Rowley & Sambrook, 2009; Borrás & Edquist, 2013). Innovations are the result of (co-)learning, collaboration and interactions between multiple actors (e.g., firms, universities, research and public organizations, knowledge infrastructures, end-users and local knowledge holders) (Doloreux, 2004; Klerkx, Seuneke, de Wolf & Rossing, 2017), and are often a co-evolutionary process in which technological change is accompanied by social and institutional changes (Geels, 2004; Kilelu, Klerkx & Leeuwis, 2013). Therefore, coordinated approaches that link interested actors can help to support innovation (Lundvall, 2010).

There is a general expectation that governments and other public organizations make use of policy instruments to formally oversee the processes of defining and implementing innovation agendas to guide innovation efforts (Borrás & Edquist, 2013; Braun, 2008; Martin, 2016). Governments are usually tasked with the coordination of resources from various sources (e.g., private sector, the civil society sector, and the state) to find and support common priorities with a view to creating public value (Benington & Moore, 2011; Moore, 1995). The concept of public value simultaneously reflects what the public values and what strengthens (i.e., adds value to) the public sphere (Benington & Moore, 2011; Moore, 1995), extending the conversation of value beyond purely economic considerations (e.g., returns on research investment) to also consider social, political, cultural and environmental aspects of value (Joly et al., 2015). Public value can be enhanced through the development of innovations (Hartley, 2015).

One way that governments seek to foster innovation (and promote public value) is through policies that stimulate the production and diffusion of ‘useful’ scientific knowledge, which has the potential to expand policy alternatives, clarify policy choices, and form the basis of new technologies, services, practices and processes (Martin, 2016; McNie, 2007; Schut, van Paassen, Leeuwis & Klerkx, 2013). Over the past decade, the Canadian government has committed substantial financial resources to Arctic research (Nicol, 2016; Ogden, Schmidt, Van Dijken & Kinnear, 2016). National Arctic research funding has supported programs such as: the International Polar Year, the High Arctic Research Station, the NSERC Northern Chairs program, the Northern Scientific Training Program, ArcticNet, Arctic Research Infrastructure Fund, Churchill Marine Observatory, National Research Council Arctic Program, Sentinel North, the Canadian Polar Commission and Polar Knowledge Canada among other initiatives (Government of Canada, 2016, 2017a; Ogden et al., 2016). In 2017, Canada, along with other member states of the Arctic Council, signed the Fairbanks Declaration, …announc[ing] the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation, the third legally binding agreement negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council, which will help increase effectiveness and efficiency in the development of scientific knowledge about the region as well as strengthen scientific cooperation in the Arctic region (Arctic Council, 2017).

Continued and increasing public investments in the production of Arctic-related scientific knowledge implies that Arctic research has public value (McNie, Parris & Sarewitz, 2016), which may also translate into private value that furthers the public interest (Mazzucato, 2011). However, Arctic residents have repeatedly questioned the public value of Arctic research, arguing that Pigford, Hickey & Klerkx

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outcomes do not often well-reflect the values, interests and needs of Arctic communities (Brunet, Hickey & Humphries, 2016; Coates et al., 2014; Ibarguchi, Murray, Rajdev & ISAC, 2015; ITK, 2016; Ogden et al., 2016; Tesar, Dubois & Shestakov, 2016). Despite investments in northern research there has been a relative dearth of research directed towards informing the development of northern-specific innovations, resulting in Arctic communities adopting innovations that were designed for southern communities with mixed success (Coates & Poelzer, 2014). Consequently, there have been calls to strengthen science-policy and science-practice interfaces in the region (Tesar et al., 2016), including a recommendation by the Arctic Science Planning Committee to develop improved methods to align research and policy agendas (Kofinas et al., 2005).

The process of transforming scientific knowledge into innovation is complex and requires diverse actors (e.g., from government, university, private sector, civil society and northern citizenry) to navigate large and rapidly growing amounts of information embedded within complex ecological, social, economic, cultural, organizational and political landscapes (Hammond, Mumpower, Dennis, Fitch & Crumpacker, 1983; Joly et al., 2015). A key question that emerges for decision makers is: how to better understand and intervene in the complex systems that support or inhibit innovation at different scales in the Canadian Arctic to enhance the public value of scientific research? This paper seeks to explore this question. In what follows, we present a brief background on the current state of governance and innovation in the Canadian Arctic. This is followed by a review of Canada’s efforts to promote scientific research in support of Arctic innovation to identify some of the opportunities for, and challenges to, delivering public value. We then draw on the concept of innovation ecosystems to discuss the potential for an expanded and systems-based model to enhance the public value of northern scientific research investments.

Governance: Policy Coordination Issues Influence Innovation in the Canadian Arctic Like many countries, Canada has placed increasing policy emphasis on the need to promote innovation to be competitive in a rapidly globalizing world. This is evidenced by the 2017 Federal Budget that focused efforts and resources on promoting innovation, emphasizing that Canada has “an opportunity to be one of the most innovative and competitive countries in the world” (Government of Canada, 2017b). However, to date, evaluations suggest that Canada’s innovation performance has been poor (Creutzberg, 2011; Jenkins, 2017; Mitacs, 2016; The Expert Panel on Business Innovation, 2009). Canada has been criticized as having limited innovation from the private sector (Innovation Canada, 2011), poor linkages between high quality university academic research and commercialization (Conference Board of Canada, 2015) and overall poor research and development indicators compared to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) (Science Technology and Innovation Council, 2014).

The most common explanation for Canada’s comparatively low innovation performance is that it lacks coordination and policy alignment across and between multiple levels of government (Hawkins, 2009; Mitacs, 2016; Tamtik, 2016). This is likely due to jurisdictional challenges embedded in Canadian constitutional governance structures1 that divide power between the federal government (power over macro-economic policy, foreign policy, banking, defense) and provincial governments (power over natural resources, property laws, and education) (Halliwell & Smith, 2011). These also include the co-management of shared jurisdictions between provinces and the federal government (social welfare, health care, agriculture and immigration) (Halliwell & Smith,

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2011). To varying degrees, local governments also retain community-specific responsibilities which overlap with federal and provincial jurisdictions (power over local security, transportation, infrastructure, planning, services and recreation). Such jurisdictional overlap can create barriers to coordination, communication and collective action with implications for innovation (Creutzberg, 2011; Hawkins, 2009; Mitacs, 2016; Tamtik, 2016).

Focusing on the Arctic region of Canada, it becomes clear that jurisdictional complications are amplified. Nationally, Canada represents both federal and unitary theories of constitutional design, where the federal government manages both constitutionally recognized provinces and federal protectorates, also referred to as territories.2 In this system, provincial and federal governments cannot unilaterally alter the powers of the others (Hueglin & Fenna, 2015). However, unlike provinces, Canadian territories do not exercise their own constitutional powers; rather they exercise delegated powers under the legislative authority of the federal parliament, which holds supreme legislative power to delegate administrative and regulatory responsibilities and can withdraw these powers from the territories at any time (Government of Canada, 2010; Hueglin & Fenna, 2015). Therefore, although the political, logistical, cultural, environmental and organizational challenges that the territories face can be quite similar to the northern regions of most provinces (Coates et al., 2014), they are nested within very different governance structures.

In practice, this has important implications for policy outcomes and support for research and/or innovation initiatives. For example: The Arctic was better studied than the provincial northern hinterlands for two major reasons.

The first was the continuing lure of the Arctic, as revealed in its climate, remote grandeur, very special biological productivity, and culture. The second was an administrative consideration. The federal government could direct and mobilize scientific activities more easily within its jurisdiction (Yukon and NWT) than in areas where provincial agreement was needed. In general, provinces had fewer scientific resources than the federal government (Science Council of Canada, 1977).

The federal government has devolved a range of powers to the three territories, which each have their own legislative assemblies and executive councils (Government of Canada, 2010). This partial decentralization has resulted in the transformation of territories into ‘quasi-provinces’ with increasing powers and resources (Alcantara, Cameron & Kennedy, 2012; Cameron & Simeon, 2002). However, the extent of devolution differs depending on the territory (Alcantara et al., 2012).

All three Canadian territories are dependent on financial transfers for the majority of their budgets (Rocher & Smith, 2003), such that in 2015-2016 transfers (including grants) from the Canadian government reflected 74% of the Yukon’s budget (Government of Yukon, 2017), 78% of NWT’s budget (Government of Northwest Territories, 2017) and 89% of Nunavut’s budget (Government of Nunavut, 2017). The public sector is the largest employer in the territories, which have become “home to the richest and most entrenched government-centric political environment in the country” (Coates et al., 2014; Government of Canada, 2010). Distinct knowledge economies have also emerged in the three territories, with concentrations of highly qualified personnel in Whitehorse, Yukon and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (Petrov, 2008, 2016). Historically, regional collaboration between the three territories has been high, but collaboration has slowed and territories have become more competitive, instead focusing on their differences and the unique challenges facing each jurisdiction (Coates et al., 2014).

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Indigenous rights movements have also resulted in substantial changes to the governance of the Canadian Arctic, leading to increasing regional capacity and reduced federal administrative presence. Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic include Inuit, First Nations and Métis, most of whom reside in isolated rural and remote settlements. Comprehensive land claims were first recognized by Canada’s federal government in 1973 and are “based on the assessment that there may be continuing Aboriginal rights to lands and natural resources. These kinds of claims come up in those parts of Canada where Aboriginal title has not previously been dealt with by treaty and other legal means” (INAC, 2012). Land claims often involve parallel discussion about selfgovernance agreements, which includes arrangements for Indigenous groups to assume responsibility and govern their own affairs including social and economic well-being (e.g., education, healthcare, social services, housing, property and land rights, economic development) (INAC, 2015). As a result, the Canadian Arctic has regions of Indigenous self-government as well as regions with public government arrangements, whereby Aboriginal self-government arrangements are negotiated within broader public governments (INAC, 2016; Rodon, 2014).

There are also a range of co-management systems in place where authority is shared and integrated across multiple levels of decision-making in the Canadian Arctic (e.g., local, territorial/provincial, federal) (Rusnak, 1997). Additionally, Indigenous groups have established bi-lateral agreements with the federal government, most recently the Inuit Nunangat Declaration on Inuit-Crown Partnership, which applies to the Inuit homeland, spanning areas in the three territories and the northern regions of two provinces (Québec and Labrador) (Government of Canada, 2017c).

At the international level, Canada participates in several circumpolar transboundary governing bodies, including the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that promotes cooperation and interaction between Arctic states, Indigenous peoples and other Arctic inhabitants (Heininen, Exner-Pirot & Plouffe, 2016). Canada is a signatory to the Arctic Council’s Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation, which will shape future regional research and innovation systems. Canada also participates in the Northern Forum and other international civil society organizations/councils that represent the interests of Indigenous people living in Canada, including the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Gwich’in Council International, and the Arctic Athabaskan Council (Dubreuil, 2011). In 2016, Canada announced its full support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), which states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination…[to] freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development” (United Nations, 2008).

Here, self-determination signifies the right and ability of a defined group to have control over their future beyond the influence of other entities (Christie, 2007). The implications of this declaration for Indigenous peoples living in the Canadian Arctic are in the process of being discussed (ITK, 2017; Mitchell & Enns, 2014).

Clearly, the Canadian Arctic is governed by a diversity of structures, stakeholders and rightsholders that come together to access information and make decisions on issues that span jurisdictional boundaries and are embedded within existing national, territorial, indigenous and international frameworks. Decisions are therefore made in the context of multi-stakeholder frameworks (Binder & Hanbidge, 1993; Rusnak, 1997), ongoing land claims agreements (INAC, 2016), calls to respect traditional Indigenous knowledge (ITK, 2007; Tagalik, 2010), evolving jurisdictional and regulatory requirements (ACUNS, 2003; ITK, 2007) and geo-political considerations (Steinberg & Tasch, 2015). Furthermore, past policy and strategic directions have Towards Innovation (Eco)Systems

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used inconsistent and at times conflicting boundaries (e.g., geo-political boundaries, climate boundaries, bio-physical and geographic considerations, and Indigenous homelands) to capture ‘the Northern regions’, ‘Northern Canada’, ‘the North’, and ‘the Arctic’ (Callaghan, Matveyeva, Chernov & Brooker, 2001; Dubreuil, 2011; Steinberg & Tasch, 2015). The fragmented, evolving, nested and transboundary nature of Arctic governance means that the coordination challenges characterizing Canada more broadly (Hawkins, 2009) are likely amplified in the Arctic research and innovation contexts with significant implications for policy design and effectiveness.

Developments in Innovation Policy in the Canadian Arctic: A Focus on the Contribution of Research evolved from more ‘linear’ views that assume that scientific knowledge, once generated, will passively diffuse and produce public value (Braun, 2008). Models of complex systems thinking conceptualize innovation as a self-organizing process, bringing together market and non-market resources at various scales to support innovation beyond the production of scientific knowledge and the co-evolution of the technological and socio-institutional products (Braun, 2008; Jucevičius & Grumadaitė, 2014; Klerkx, Van Mierlo & Leeuwis, 2012). Innovation systems are the dynamic and interactive networks that shape the way that societies generate, exchange, and use knowledge (Hall & Clark, 2010; Lundvall, 2010). However, despite this more integrative understanding of innovation, Canadian research policy has yet to embrace complex innovation systems thinking in the Arctic, instead tending towards more linear and sectoral views of what innovation is and how scientific research might best support innovation outcomes.

Approaches to innovation have

National Canadian innovation policy generally aims to support technological innovation carried out by universities and the private sector to facilitate job creation (Government of Canada, 2017b; Hawkins, 2009). There is, however, a recognized need to reconsider the scope of the innovation concept itself, to more explicitly include cultural and institutional change (Strand, Saltelli, Giampietro, Rommetveit & Funtowicz, 2016; Wallner & Menrad, 2011). For example, recommendations for a new National Advisory Council on Research and Innovation (NACRI) include moving away from the current focus on ‘science and technology’ to be more inclusive of all research disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities (Naylor et al., 2017). There have also been calls to better align innovation incentives with efficacy goals and empower endusers to play a role in stimulating innovative activity (Blomqvist & Busby, 2017). Further, national innovation polices tend to focus on urban areas and it is unclear if innovation patterns are replicated in more sparsely populated rural and remote areas (Kelemen & Teo, 2014). The divergent nature of Canada’s national technology-focused innovation policy and the diverse realities of local Arctic communities suggests the need for a more systematic and integrative examination of the dynamic properties that contribute to systems of innovation in the Arctic.

Regional approaches to innovation in other circumpolar nations have also promoted businesscentered socio-technological approaches to innovation (Andersen et al., 2007; Hintsala, Niemelä & Tervonen, 2015). Researchers in Finland have examined the existence of an “Arctic business ecosystem” assessing organizations based on their economic value (Hintsala et al., 2015; Hintsala, Niemelä & Tervonen, 2016). Another report reflects on Nordic innovation systems as a way to increase national economic competitiveness (Andersen et al., 2007). These approaches tend not to be reflective of the Canadian Arctic context where a social economy dominates3 and the universities and businesses that might participate in Arctic-focused product innovation are located Pigford, Hickey & Klerkx

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in southern Canada (Abele, 2009, 2016; Natcher, 2009; Simon, 2017; Southcott & Walker, 2015).

Canada is also the only Arctic nation that does not have an Arctic university. While each territory has a college (Nunavut Arctic College, Aurora College and Yukon College), existing funding structures and eligibility requirements often direct investment for training, research and innovation towards universities in the south, raising important questions for local capacity development and the treatment of northern interests (Carr, Natcher & Olfert, 2013; ITK, 2016; Simon, 2017).

The Canadian Arctic does not have a regional innovation policy; however, several overlapping research-focused strategies have been employed to promote the production and use of scientific research in support of innovation in the Canadian Arctic (Table 1). Although discussion about developing federal guidelines for Arctic research emerged in the early 1970’s, in 1977 the Science Council of Canada released the first report on Arctic science policy entitled: Northward looking: a strategy and science policy for northern development (Science Council of Canada, 1977). While the report established the foundation for future research policy, it was criticized for failing to recognize the role that political, social and economic factors play in scientific activities (de la Barre, 1979).

Subsequent strategies have yet to fully address these issues (Simon, 2017) and recent national policies continue to echo the directions detailed in the 1977 report. In 2016, the three territories launched a “pan-northern” approach to science policy (Government of Yukon, Government Northwest Territories, & Government of Nunavut, 2016), framing northern research as something that needs to be determined by northerners, with a solution-driven, needs-oriented and partnership-based focus. More specifically, they have identified six roles for themselves in the science system: practitioners, consumers of science information, educators, facilitators of research within their own jurisdictions, regulators of research, and partners in regional, national, and international science initiatives (Government of Yukon et al., 2016).

These roles reflect the increasing importance of collaborative research networks and knowledge exchanges across diverse institutions, sectors and countries (Martin, 2016). They also reflect the emergence of multi-stakeholder frameworks to engage in participatory and community-based, coproduction research models in the Canadian Arctic (Brunet, Hickey & Humphries, 2014; Brunet et al., 2016; Fletcher, 2003; ITK, 2007), with explicit guidelines and requirements for Indigenous engagement and local capacity building in place (see, for example: ACUNS, 2003; Arctic Council, 2013; Government of Canada, 2014; ITK, 2007; Schnarch, 2004; Simon, 2017; Yukon Indian People, 1973).

Importantly, innovation has been, and continues to be, central to life and livelihoods in the Canadian Arctic. Local knowledge systems, “consist of the knowledge, beliefs, traditions, practices, institutions, and worldviews developed and sustained by [I]ndigenous and local communities, and are believed to represent an adaptive strategy to the environment in which these communities live” (Vandebroek, Reyes-García, de Albuquerque, Bussmann & Pieroni, 2011). According to Wallner and Menrad (2011), innovativeness is a characteristic of culture, making culture a critical component to consider when examining innovation. In the Arctic, institutions that support cultural, social and ecological diversity are recognized as important supports to foster innovation (Chapin III et al., 2004). Recognizing that the production (and use) of scientific research is only one of many enabling factors embedded within an innovation system (Wieczorek & Hekkert, 2012), it is important that we adopt a systems approach to garner a complete understanding of the dynamic relationships that promote innovation processes.

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Why an Innovation Ecosystem Approach for the Canadian Arctic?

An innovation ecosystem is defined as “a multi-level, multi-modal, multi-nodal and multi-agent system of systems” (Carayannis & Campbell, 2009) and may offer more nuanced insights for policy actors seeking to design innovation policy for the Canadian Arctic. Innovation ecosystems are generally not considered distinct in many aspects from innovation systems, rather they build on national innovation systems thinking (Lundvall, 2010), placing emphasis on the importance of pluralism with respect to actors, institutions, types of knowledge and paradigms (Adner, 2006; Carayannis & Campbell, 2009). Conceptually, innovation ecosystems seek to explicitly consider the interdependent, nested, transitional and interconnected networks of actors involved in innovation processes, their actions and interactions, and the socio-cultural institutions (e.g., laws, rules, norms) that influence their practices and behaviours (de Vasconcelos Gomes, Facin, Salerno & Ikenami, 2016; Jackson, 2011; Oksanen & Hautamäki, 2015). Differing from business ecosystems, which focus primarily on value capture, innovation ecosystems focus on value creation (de Vasconcelos Gomes et al., 2016).

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Table 1. National Research Policy Directions: Strategies and Reports for the Canadian Arctic Year 1972

Name Science and the North: A Seminar on Guidelines for Scientific Activities in Northern Canada

1977

Northward Looking: A Strategy and Science Policy for Northern Development

Year 1987

Name Canada and Polar Science

Author Sub-Committee on Science and Technology of the Advisory Committee on Northern Development (Federal level)

Science Council of Canada (Federal level)

Author Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Federal level)

Document Purpose This report presents background material, statements and other information from a seminar held to assist the Government of Canada in developing guidelines and priorities for scientific activities in northern Canada.

Innovation Considerations - Various factors shape the adoption of southern innovations in the North.

- Innovation needs to reflect and adapt to concurrent environmental and technological changes.

- Northern development is a dynamic process involving people, resources, the environment and new technological innovations.

- To support innovation, one must support northern Indigenous people.

This is a report on the 3.5 year ‘Study of Northern Development’ and a proposed strategy based on findings.

- Focus on promoting innovation by implementing science policies for northern development.

- Promote technological sovereignty through innovations.

- Industrial innovation can be stimulated by research and development programs.

- A theoretical Arctic university would promote innovation of northern technologies - Administrative and legislative innovation should aim to provide research support to committees and bolster provincial resources to be equivalent to those offered by the Library of Parliament.

Document Purpose This report advises on the feasibility of establishing a national polar institute in Canada.

Innovation Considerations - Innovation is not explicitly identified.

- The document calls for science to be more quantitative, technology-oriented, better

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integrated and more directly involved with or responsive to local concerns.

1991

Northern Science for Northern Society – Building Economic Self-Reliance

Science Council of Canada (Federal level)

This is a report on a study from 1988-1990 on the institutional changes needed to help northerners apply science and technology to support economic development.

- Northern communities partially reject innovation because the conventional structures and methods of science and technology are not evidently useful.

- To build northern capacity leaders must foster innovative approaches to technology.

1997

Chapter 8 – Supporting Scientific, Educational and Cultural Cooperation in the Arctic In: Building the Circumpolar FrameworkExercising Canadian Leadership

Library of Parliament Research Branch; House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Federal & International levels)

This extensive review discusses the domestic and international concerns in the circumpolar region in the context of recent changes in technology, communications and geopolitical factors.

- There is a need to balance national interest and science promotion in innovative national, regional and global frameworks.

- Recent technological innovations open new opportunities for North-South partnerships.

Year 2000

Name Northern Science and Technology in Canada – Federal Framework & Research Plan

Author Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (Federal level)

Document Purpose The Federal Framework and Research Plan presents directions for partnerships with governments, universities and northern peoples to improve the return on federal investment in science and technology.

Innovation Considerations - Encourage the development of innovative partnerships and links to other programs.

- Support for the transfer of scientific knowledge and technology innovation to the private sector to promote economic growth.

- Government departments, agencies, and branches are responsible for innovation through science and technology development, trade and

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market expansion, tourism and youth entrepreneurship, and research and development.

2000

From Crisis to Opportunity: Rebuilding Canada's Role in Northern Research

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Federal level)

2005

From Opportunity to Action: A Progress Report on Canada’s Renewal of Northern Research

Institute on Governance (Federal level)

Year 2008

Name Vision for the Canadian Arctic Research Initiative: Assessing the Opportunities

Author Canadian Council of Academies upon request of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) (Federal level)

This report summarizes the findings from consultations by a multidisciplinary Taskforce (established 1998) that investigated concerns about the decline of research in the North.

This report summarizes the results from the Working Group on Northern Research’s (established 2003) ‘Dialogue on Northern Research Workshop’.

- The North is identified as a leader in satellitebased innovation.

- Northern research institutes are seeking innovative ways of involving local people in the research.

- Recommendation to support multidisciplinary northern research projects.

Document Purpose This commissioned report is an independent external perspective on findings from the Visioning Workshop on a new research station.

Innovation Considerations - Northern citizens have a key role in innovative partnerships to develop community-based environmental monitoring.

- Biomimicry may be a key source of innovation in the North.

- Technology will play an important role through innovation and commercialization.

- Key factors such as the caliber of scientists and infrastructure will likely play a role in the innovation (or lack of innovation) of new technologies.

- The North is identified as a welcoming environment for innovation.

- Participants identified technological innovation in research and training as an area to build on.

- Efforts should be made to modify education in innovative ways (e.g., traditional knowledge).

- Action had not occurred with respect to the placement of ‘innovators’ with field expertise in local schools.

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- A call for innovation to be leveraged in the approach to science and technology as identified in the priorities defined for the station.

2009

Canada’s Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future

Government of Canada; Minister of INAC (Federal level)

2014

The State of Northern Knowledge in Canada

Canadian Polar Commission (Federal level)

Year 2017

Name A New Shared Arctic Leadership Model

Author INAC Minister's Special Representative on Arctic Leadership (Federal level)

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This document provides an overview of the federal government’s Northern Strategy (vision, four pillars, and activities to date).

This report summarizes a study that examined knowledge gains during the seven-year period commencing with International Polar Year in 2007.

- Support for industrial innovation through support to university granting councils.

- Highlight existing innovative consultative process.

Document Purpose This independent report outlines advice toward the development of a new Shared Arctic Leadership Model.

Innovation Considerations - Arctic policy should be based in reciprocal relationships built in trust, inclusiveness and transparency to inform innovative policy.

- Current innovative thinking supports the creation of an Arctic university.

- Innovation and transition will require major investments from public and private sectors.

- Clean and renewable energy innovation will require collaboration with key partners.

- Structural changes to funding and transfer payments are necessary to ensure that resources are optimized.

- A call for research on governance innovation.

- Encourage future collaborative work to identify innovative ways to address socio-economic challenges.

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Therefore, innovation ecosystems emphasize the multiple positions and roles of local or regional actors in innovation processes that focus on value creation (Oksanen & Hautamäki, 2015). In the context of the Canadian Arctic, innovation ecosystem perspectives have the potential to provide additional scope to reveal opportunities to better manage the formal and informal institutional and relational contexts that govern innovation (de Vasconcelos Gomes et al., 2016; Rabelo, Bernus & Romero, 2015).

The ‘Eco’ Analogy & Innovation Ecosystems in the Canadian Arctic Much of the literature on innovation ecosystems takes a somewhat limited view of the relationships between innovation and public value, instead placing emphasis on economic outcomes (similar to innovation systems literature). The conceptualization of innovation ecosystems has been subject to considerable debate (Oh, Phillips, Park & Lee, 2016; Ritala & Almpanopoulou, 2017; Suominen, Seppänen & Dedehayir, 2016) and a range of definitions have subsequently emerged (de Vasconcelos Gomes et al., 2016; Durst & Poutanen, 2013). Nevertheless, “[t]he prefix eco in innovation ecosystems implies a specifically ecological aspect” (Ritala & Almpanopoulou, 2017), with a biological ecosystem defined as “a system that includes all living organisms (biotic factors) in an area as well as its physical environments (abiotic factors) functioning together as a unit” (Jackson, 2011). Building on this thinking, an innovation ecosystem similarly includes all of the elements that come together, to influence innovation dynamics and potential (Jackson, 2011).

Shifting emphasis to the ecosystem analogy may also help policy actors at different levels of already established decision-making hierarchies to better consider their roles and responsibilities as well as the agency of natural ecosystems in innovation processes and outcomes (Pilinkienė & Mačiulis, 2014; Vermunt, Negro, Verweij & Hekkert, 2017).

In the Canadian Arctic, the analogy to a natural ecosystem has the potential to enable diverse actors to better comprehend the complex systems underlying the creation of public value through innovation, and improve understanding of the roles of different actors in this process. Ecological analogies have already been used by Arctic residents to describe the research system, with analogies being drawn between researchers and snow geese, both of which arrive in the summer, make a lot of noise, leave at the end of the summer and return the following year to repeat the process (Lemelin, Wiersma & Stewart, 2010). Similar analogies have been made between researchers and ground squirrels, known as ‘siksiks’ in Inuktitut (Gearhead & Shirley, 2007). Borrowing from ecology, an innovation ecosystem implies a system of systems supporting a range of specialized actors that cooperate, feed-off, adapt to, support, compete and interact with each other (de Vasconcelos Gomes et al., 2016; Shaw & Allen, 2016). Additionally, innovation ecosystems can also be characterized as systems in flux that are emergent, with lifecycles driven by co-evolution processes (de Vasconcelos Gomes et al., 2016). Every part of an ecosystem must be considered in order to comprehend the complex functioning of the whole system (Jackson, 2011).

Arctic Innovation Communities An innovation community is a collection of actors that dynamically evolve as people and organizations come together to produce and/or use a specific innovation (Wang, 2009). They have also been conceptualized as innovation platforms, hubs, clusters, learning alliances, etc. (Kilelu et al., 2013; Schut et al., 2016). Innovation communities also reflect the “protected spaces that allow experimentation with the co-evolution of technology, user practices, and regulatory structures” Towards Innovation (Eco)Systems

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that might promote sustainable development through transitions, as characterized in strategic niche management4 (Schot & Geels, 2008).

The complex governance issues of the Canadian Arctic speak to the diverse actors that come together to cultivate a multi-innovation, multi-community Arctic innovation ecosystem. Figure 1 presents a re-interpretation of Wang’s (2009) theoretical model for innovation ecosystems. As infinite, related innovations co-evolve in the ecosystem, it is important to recognize their relationships to the innovation community. Figure 1 conveys a network of three different innovations, selected to reflect the common Arctic innovations that are briefly discussed later in this paper (technological innovation, administrative innovation and social innovation). The three larger boxes contain an innovation community comprised of diverse actors engaging in the production and use of an innovation, governed by the supply and demand of the innovation.

Community members can engage in both the production and use of the innovation and can also participate in multiple innovation communities. Actors may include organizations and individuals (e.g., governments, universities, industry, supporting institutions, specialised people, entrepreneurs, the financial system, consumers, civil society, cultural groups), as well as the emergent relationships, which play various roles throughout the life of an innovation ecosystem (Rabelo & Bernus, 2015).

Arctic innovation communities are reflective of the features unique to the complex, hybrid institutions and societies that govern the Canadian Arctic (Abele, 2015). In the Canadian Arctic where the traditional actors in an innovation ecosystem (e.g., universities and a large private sector) are underrepresented, many actors likely reorganize to form different innovation communities.

The figure shows the interactive nature of the three innovations, illustrating that as resources move to support one innovation, they “consume attention” requiring additional resources (i.e., time and money), thus influencing the available resources for related innovations. Members of the innovation community can also migrate within and between innovation communities, participating in multiple activities (Wang, 2009). For example, a community member may sit on multiple committees and be both a producer and a user of all three innovations.

To date, innovation communities have not been identified in the literature on the Canadian Arctic.

At first glance, it may appear that the innovation ecosystem is like a barren land in which only a few pioneer species are present. However, it can be argued that diversity characterizes the Canadian Arctic innovation ecosystem, much like that of the physical ecosystem: [a]lthough species diversity is generally lower [in the Arctic] than at more southerly latitudes, the diversity of animals and plants, communities, and landforms are surprisingly rich. Patterns of biodiversity are strongly coupled with the wide variety of Arctic environments…[t]he Arctic is therefore far from uniform (Callaghan et al., 2001).

Diversity of the Arctic innovation ecosystem is reflected by co-occurring knowledge systems, whereby Indigenous local knowledge systems co-exist and interact with formal research and innovation systems in diverse ways (Pierotti, 2010; Scott & Humphries, In Press), as well as the alternative economies that can and do co-exist with larger northern market economies (Abele, 2009; Southcott & Walker, 2015). Since biotic and abiotic actors come together to form innovation communities within the innovation ecosystem, an examination of community dynamics can help to provide insight into interdependencies between people and nature. It has been argued that the Canadian Arctic has the potential for an ‘innovation environment’ with the capacity to support and inspire future innovation based on the ingenuity of Arctic residents, who have persisted in Pigford, Hickey & Klerkx

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extreme environments for centuries (Coates et al., 2014). Support for an ‘innovation environment’ is also coupled with the rapid pace and variety of successful administrative innovations (e.g., selfgovernment, co-management, economic development, modern treaty negotiations) (Coates et al., 2014), as well as social innovations that merge southern-based administration and northern cultural values in response to opportunities and pressures from new technologies (Abele, 2015, 2016; Natcher, 2009).

Implications & Future Directions This review suggests that if governments aim to support the formation of innovation ecosystems in the Canadian Arctic, they likely need to focus their efforts on engaging dynamic innovation communities nested within complex overlaying governance structures and to expand their definition of innovation to better reflect the multiple economies present in the Canadian Arctic.

From a policy perspective, there is a need to embrace and promote more networked approaches to value co-creation, requiring decision-makers to negotiate various boundaries between multiple actors representing diverse interests (i.e., the interests of the state, the private market, civil society and informal community organizations) to co-create public value (Benington & Moore, 2011; Braun, 2008). Aspects such as science-policy linkages, relationships, group dynamics, trust and social capital need to be more carefully considered as they can influence the way that relationships are navigated (McNie, 2007; McNie et al., 2016; Schut et al., 2016). Further research into the actors involved in Arctic innovation ecosystems (Brunet et al., 2016) and the nature and impacts of the knowledge flows between these actors would be helpful. This should include assessment of actors that span boundaries (i.e., intermediaries and bridging agents) and coordinate efforts to support innovation (Howells, 2006). Here, it also becomes important to consider the different institutional dimensions affecting research and innovation organization (Klerkx et al., 2012; Schut et al., 2016), as well as to consider patterns of power relations and knowledge utilization (Steinberg & Tasch, 2015). The mobility of innovation communities is also integral to understanding innovation ecosystems in the Canadian Arctic. For example, people, knowledge and physical supplies are constantly moving between northern and southern Canada for Arctic scientific research and the Arctic Council’s Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation aims to further promote international mobility among the scientific community (Arctic Council, 2017). Relatively little is known about how mobility influences knowledge flows between members of the Arctic innovation ecosystem and this is an area that requires further research and policy attention

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Figure 1: Innovation Communities within Innovation Ecosystems (Based on Wang 2009)

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A key challenge for research and innovation policy is to more meaningfully consider the lifespan of any innovation, including the various co-occurring processes of creation and destruction, something that innovation ecosystems thinking may assist with. For example, the boundary between collaborative research–stakeholder relationships is path-dependent, meaning that their feasibility or credibility is influenced by earlier arrangements (Schut et al., 2013). Here, careful efforts to promote path-breaking by challenging the rules, artifacts and habits of the underlying societal system may be warranted to avoid ‘groupthink’ and path-dependency scenarios (Ölander & Thøgersen, 2014; Walrave, Talmar, Podoynitsyna, Romme & Verbong, 2017). In search of sustainable development, diverse actors will need to develop new modes of production and new institutional arrangements to support these production models (Bouma, van Altvorst, Eweg, Smeets & Latesteijn, 2011). Future research could consider how open innovation systems (Chesbrough, 2006), can be designed to encourage path-breaking. Innovation actors (and communities) that take opportunities to innovate during times of change can also play a unique role in providing bridges to help solve issues and may inadvertently change the system itself (Hartley, 2015).

Future research to better understand the complex dynamics of innovation communities and processes in Canadian Arctic innovation ecosystems is needed. More specifically, there is a need for innovation policy frameworks at different levels to better recognize the coupled functionalstructural aspects that influence innovation outcomes in the Canadian Arctic. This will help to identify key leverage points and ‘bottlenecks’ requiring attention (Meadows, 2008). Here, mapping the various elements of an innovation ecosystem (e.g., actors, capital, infrastructure, regulations, knowledge, ideas, culture, architectural principles, and interface) (Rabelo & Bernus, 2015) would be a useful first step (Wieczorek & Hekkert, 2012). Such an exercise might lead to improved understandings of how institutional dimensions (Schut et al., 2013) and multi-dimensional linkages (i.e., relationships, connections, interactions) (Poteete, 2012) shape innovation outcomes in different Arctic contexts. Further, comprehensive case studies that evaluate innovation successes and failures are needed to examine innovation processes in different contexts. Future research into the current models of co-innovation (Botha, Turner, Fielke & Klerkx, 2017; Klerkx et al., 2017) that exist in the Arctic and the potential for ‘grassroots innovation’ (Hermans, Roep & Klerkx, 2016) and ‘inclusive innovation’ approaches to better engage marginalized groups within the innovation ecosystem (Foster & Heeks, 2013) are also warranted.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to acknowledge funding support from: Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) CREATE-Environmental Innovations, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canadian Graduate Scholarships Doctoral Scholarship, a McGill University Graduate Mobility Award and the McGill University William Dawson Scholar Award.

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Notes 1. Much of the literature on innovation in Canada highlights the federal nature of the country and the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. There has been limited evaluation of innovation in the territories, which are constitutionally distinct from the provinces.

2. The three Canadian territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) account for approximately three percent of the Canadian population and are located primarily north of 60º latitude, spanning northern Canada and covering 40% of Canada’s land mass (Government of Canada, 2010).

3. The extensive northern ‘social economy’ is “the part of the social productive system that lies outside the direct ambit of government programs and large business. It includes small business, not-for-profits, co-operatives, family-based production, traditional or noncommodified production, and volunteer support to others” (Abele, 2009).

4. Similar to ecological niches, which reflect an animal’s place in the biotic environment and its relationship to food sources and other animals, innovation community niches have a finite amount of resources, leading to competition (Wang 2009). According to Wang (2009) “[j]ust like an arctic fox subsisting upon guillemot eggs and the remains of seals killed by polar bears, an innovation concept consumes attention from the member organizations and their people in the community.” Conceptualizing innovation as part of an ecosystem means that different innovations “consume attention” and resources from the same community, thus there can be ‘innovations’ competing for the available resources.

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Inventing the New North: Patents & Knowledge Economy in Alaska Salma O. Zbeed & Andrey N. Petrov

In the last few years, Alaska’s economy suffered as world oil prices plunged to very low levels and production declined.

Modern economic development theories would suggest searching for alternative ways to manage northern regions.

Investment in the knowledge-based economy seems to be one of the possible options. In Alaska, there have been very few studies of its knowledge economy. The key feature of a knowledge economy is a greater reliance on human capital than on natural resources, combined with efforts to integrate innovations in every stage of the production process.

Patents are considered a good representation of innovative activity. We provide evidence drawn from patent data to document geography and dynamics in Alaska’s knowledge production over thirty-five years (1976-2010). The results show that Alaska has considerable patent activity, especially in certain oil-sector-related industries, and strong clustering of innovation in major urban regions (Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Matanuska-Susitna boroughs).

Alaska inventors, however, tend to be independent individuals (“lone eagles”), even though corporate innovation activity has been growing. In addition, small Alaska communities sometime demonstrate high levels of knowledge production in a few niche industries, articulating the importance of individual-driven and niche-based innovation in remote regions. Overall, between 1976 and 2010 Alaska’s regional innovation system evolved from a small isolated system dominated by individual inventors focused on innovation in old, low-technology sectors to a relatively diversified (although still over-reliant on the oil sector) intra- and internationally connected system with a considerable presence of company-driven innovation, but with a strong position of individual inventors, including those from smaller communities.

Introduction Exploring the role of innovation and creative activity in economic development recently became a critical area of inquiry among economists around the world (Feldman, 2000). Over the past few decades, the knowledge economy has risen to occupy a key status in economic development and has played an essential role in advancing the global economy (Bell, 1973; Clark, Feldman, & Gertler, 2000). Many studies demonstrated that regions that experienced economic growth have concentrations of creative activities and patent production (Sonn, 2008; Florida, 2002). They also revealed the importance of using patents as an indicator of innovation and economic development (Breschi 1999; Hall et al., 2001). However, with the advent of the internet, it is possible for Salma O. Zbeed and Andrey N. Petrov are affiliated with the Arctic, Remote and Cold Territories Interdisciplinary Center (ARCTICenter), Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa.

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cooperation to occur between distant places thus creating new economic and intellectual connections between cores and peripheries (Sonn, 2008).

This study examines the role of the knowledge economy in Alaska focusing on local innovation represented by patents. Patents is the main instrument for protecting intellectual property rights for individuals and groups (Merges, 1997). Patents give an inventor an exclusive right to economically exploit the innovation for a certain period. A patent should be a piece of novel work. In addition, a patent must have an invention and should solve a problem in a field and lead to the possibility of a valuable application. An invention within a patent must be explained in enough details to enable others to take advantage from this patent. (Merges, 1997). Patents are usually considered as a good indicator of knowledge production (Feldman, 2000; Jaffe & Trajtenberg, 2002).

Alaska is a part of the national (U.S.) and global periphery. It is an Arctic region and a resourcedependent economy currently suffering from low oil prices and falling production. At the same time, as the Alaskan economy evolves, a variety of economic sectors outside the traditional “pillars� of the Arctic economy (resources, public sector, and subsistence), such as professional and financial services, specialized manufacturing, and information technology, have contributed to the Arctic’s growth (Petrov, 2016). Thus, examining the role of innovative activities in Alaska could help us to better understand the emergence of new economies in peripheral areas as they become affected by globalization, urbanization and knowledge-driven development. The goal of this study is to analyze the geography and dynamics of the patent production in Alaska between 1976 and 2010. This study addresses the following research questions: (1) what are the geographies and typologies of patent production in Alaska? And (2) what are the internal and external components and connectivities within the Alaska Regional Innovation System?

Literature Review: The Knowledge Economy and its Role in Economic Development The knowledge economy is defined as an economy that depends on knowledge and technology as main factors of production and wealth making, since technology and knowledge convert wealthcreation activities from physically-based functions to knowledge-based activities (Lagendijk, & Lorentzen, 2007; Kogler, 2014; Sonn, 2008). Innovation can be defined as the implementation of a new product or development process (Feldman, 2000).

In the literature there is an overall consensus that innovation, knowledge, and education are important for building a strong and healthy economy (Bell, 1973; Clark, Feldman & Gertler, 2000), including the Arctic (Larsen & Fondahl, 2014). Innovation is at the core of economic development connecting previous knowledge and new knowledge. Innovation ensures the continuation of economic progress and affects all components of regional development (Kogler et al, 2011; Feldman, 2000). In addition, a number of previous studies suggest that there is a significant connection between creative and artistic capital and scientific technology production (Florida 2002; Cavin & Petrov, 2012).

Regional Innovation Systems The Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) is a well-accepted approach to understanding the geographic encapsulation of the knowledge economy (Asheim & Isaksen, 2002; Lundvall, 1992).

It recognizes that innovation takes place within a particular regional context. The concept has two main lines of inquiry: the first is innovation process and its characteristics, and the second is Zbeed & Petrov

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regional analysis, since it is interested in explaining the local distribution of regional tech industry and innovation industry networks (Cooke, 1997). The RIS strategy promotes the interactive innovation and systematic learning and focuses on supporting institutions, agencies that feed those regional knowledge exchanges.

In respect to the Arctic and adjacent northern areas, there have been a number of RIS studies in northern Fennoscandia (e.g., Jauhilinen & Suorsa, 2008; Suorsa, 2009). Alaska is one of the regions still in need of exploring the structure of local RIS and the factors that play a role in regional innovation and stimulate vibrant knowledge economy. Alaska RIS (AKRIS) is yet to be described and mapped, a significant gap and potential impediment for economic development efforts in the state.

Geographical Analysis of Patents Simply put, a patent is the award of an intellectual property right for an invention to the inventor.

Patents are an indicator of innovation and R&D process (Jaffe et al., 1993; Jaffe & Trajtenberg, 2002; Khan & Dernis, 2006). In the United States patents must be granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) upon the examination of an invention (Kogler, 2014). USPTO also holds the patents statistics for various locations. However, not all patents are useful and not all of inventions are patented. In addition, the degree of novelty of patents may vary. The importance of a patent depends on its type since technological patents are more directly valuable in a knowledge economy than other types of patents. The number of patents in a certain area reflects the knowledge economy outcomes or, in other words, indicates the output of knowledge production.

The Knowledge Economy in the Arctic The knowledge economy is shaped by the location of the study region. The Arctic is known for its peripheral and dependent status with respect to the southern regions (Agranat, 1992; Bone, 2009; Petrov, 2012). With unstable resource economy, finding new economic opportunities is needed to improve economic development prospects in Arctic (Petrov, 2016). However, these opportunities in the Arctic are not plentiful since there is a shortage human capital among other economic, geographic and political impediments (Huskey, 2006; Larsen & Fondahl, 2014). By analyzing spatial patterns, temporal dynamics and sectoral characteristics of patents production in Alaska, and examining inventor networks this study fills a substantial research gap in respect to evolving Alaska Regional Innovation System. In addition, the results help advance our understanding of the role of knowledge economy in remote regions, including resource peripheries.

Data and Methods The study area for this research is the U.S. State of Alaska and, specifically, its eight boroughs where patents were issued over the 35-year period from 1976 to 2010 (Figure 1). Alaska has the largest area, but is the fourth smallest population among U.S. states with 710,231 residents in 2010 (United States Census, 2010). Anchorage is the largest city in the state. The second largest city is Fairbanks, followed by Juneau, the capital of Alaska.

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Figure 1: Study Area: Alaska (Patents in Alaska Boroughs. Source: USPTO) USPTO Data USPTO data serve as a foundation for this analysis. In the U.S. patents, or awards of an intellectual property right, are allowed for new, beneficial and intelligent inventions for a term of 20 years from the filing date of a patent application, and give the right to prevent others from taking advantage of the invention over that period (Foray, 2002). U.S. patents are published via the USPTO. USPTO provides multiple attributes for granted patents, including names and geographical locations of inventor(s) and applicant(s), industrial/technology category of the invention, any cited or citing patents, description of the innovation and other characteristics. These attributes allow researchers to follow the trends of patent activities in time and space. This study investigates USPTO dataset to determine the spatial and sectoral characteristics of Alaskan patents between 1976 and 2010. Using USPTO patent database ensures strong confidence in the results because the Patent Office itself issues patents and records all related information. Furthermore, this database provides a large dataset of relevant information for U.S. inventors and co-inventors, regardless of their place of residence at the time they worked on a specific invention.

In this study we used USPTO data files that included any patent that had at least one inventor who resided in Alaska listed from 1976 to 2010, for which the data were compiled by Dr. Dieter F. Kogler. The beginning and the ending date of analysis were chosen to alleviate issues caused by a possible delayed publication of the most recent patents (past 2010) and by an incomplete record of patents prior to 1976. The data consist of the patent number and the sequence of inventors with a unique inventor ID for each. Also, there are spatial indicators based on inventor residence, e.g. state, city, and country name. The database contains the organization a patent is invented for (listed as the patent’s ‘applicant’), and if it is blank, the patent is most likely not assigned to a company, but to the inventor directly. Patent technology classification codes are also listed in the

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patent document according to the USPTO classification (USPTO, 2017). This study uses only the first USPTO code which yields good results if one wants to know the ‘spread’ of technology within a state in a certain industry sector.

We grouped USPTO patents awarded between 1976 and 2010 in 5-year periods to eliminate annual fluctuations and make it easier to analyze and compare the results. Analyzing patents data starts with examining the temporal dynamic of patents and identifying the historical trends of patents over the time. Then, the study investigates the spatial distribution of patents in Alaska and the clustering of patents. Industry sectors that have the largest number of patents are also analyzed to have a deeper understanding of the nature and diversity of innovations activities. We also map inventors and co-inventors of these patents to gain a full image of the inventors’ spatial networks to understand the spatial distribution of local and external inventors.

Inventor networks are very important in understanding innovative flows and knowledge spillovers that could be investigated by mapping the networks to show the locations of the inventors and respective knowledge exchanges (Ejermo & Karlsson, 2006). Networks are often considered as a main underlying factor for innovation activities (Borgatti & Cross, 2003; Kogler et al, 2013).

Inventor networks build joint knowledge production and cooperation systems. Through time this synergy enhances knowledge production and establishes strong knowledge circulation. Since the networks develop over time and space, the evolution of networks is closely related to the evolution of the knowledge economy (Boschma & Ter Wal, 2008).

In this research, inventors’ networks analysis relies on the first inventor of the patent since it is usually considered as the main inventor. As mentioned earlier, the analysis covers all patents that have at least one Alaskan inventor (a resident of Alaska when a patent was awarded). Inventors’ network analysis determines the geographical location for each patent according to the first inventor residency, and builds a network between Alaskan inventors and the external co-inventors to elucidate both the clustering and inter- and interregional connections of inventors. We examine both individual inventors and company inventors (working for corporate applicants) to explain the co-authorship between inventors in relation to the patents’ spatial and sectoral characteristics.

Measuring Innovation Activity in Alaska Using Patents Patent-based indicators are frequently used for measuring knowledge production (Pavitt, 1985; Grupp & Schmoch, 1999; Jaffe & Trajtenberg, 2002; Kogler, 2010). This study uses standard measures of innovative activity, such as the number of patents per capita and patent/inventor ratio. Albeit there are various ways to measure the spatial distribution of patents, the Location Quotient (LQ) remains a powerful tool that allows comparing the share of patenting in a particular industry sector at the regional (e.g., borough) vs. the U.S. national levels. LQs are ratios that indicate an area’s relative distribution of patents by industry sector, i.e. reveals the region’s specialization in certain innovative activities (Burt et al., 2009).

Using the equation below, one can calculate the LQ of a specific industry/technology classification group by dividing share of total patent output in the region (j) devoted to the sector (i) on the total national share of the sector (i).

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If LQ>1 reflects the relative concentration of specific activity in the region compared to the nation.

If LQ<1 reflects that the sector is underrepresented of the region of interest compared to national share.

To examine co-inventor collaborative networks we identify multi-authored patents and then determine the spatial locations for the listed inventors by geocoding the places of inventorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residency, and then connecting nodes in the networks between these locations by applying a custom Python script. We analyze team size, internal, out-of-state and international co-authorships and differentiate between individual and corporate inventors.

Results and Discussion Patent Production in Alaska: Historical Trends and Evolution Over the period of 1976-2010 the total number of Alaskan patents was 1,077 created by 1,873 inventors. The number was very low until the early 1990s when it rapidly increased only to decline again in the 2000s (Figure 2). The total count of inventors from Alaska (first inventors and coinventors) was 1,340 (71.5% of all inventors), while the non-Alaskan-inventors count was 532 (28.5%). Alaskans were lead inventors on 86.2% of all recorded patents.

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Figure 2: Patents and Inventors Numbers Trends.

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Figure 3: Annual Number of Patents and Inventors, and Average Team Size per Patent Figure 3 shows the annual dynamics of patents and inventors and respective team size per patent in 1976-2010 in Alaska. Based on the nature of these dynamics, we can identify four periods: before 1985; 1986-1999, 2000-2006 and after 2007. In 1976-1985 the number of patents and inventors were low, with 219 inventors and 154 patents and the team size less than 2 inventors. That means most of the patents were created by individuals. The largest industry sectors were wells, hydraulicearth engineering (both are related to oil extraction) and fishing/trapping/hunting. During the Alaska oil boom in 1986-2000 we notice a significant growth in the numbers of patents and inventors: 940 inventors produced 545 patents, and the team size increased, with many more inventors from other states. The largest industry sectors were wells technology, followed by surgery and hydraulic-earth engineering. In 2000-2005, the numbers of patents and inventors declined, although oil-related sectors still dominated: wells, liquid purification or separation and hydraulic-earth engineering. In the last time period, coinciding with the Great Recession, since 2007 the quantity of patents dropped and then slowly increased while the number of inventors quickly recovered. This means more inventors were involved in producing one patent, building larger, geographically diverse teams. The industrial mix remained similar with some new technology sectors emerging (measuring and testing equipment, etc.) Overall, since 1976 we observe the pattern of increased knowledge production, team size and industrial diversification of the patent activity in Alaska with continuing dominance of innovations associated with the oil sector.

Between 1976 and 2010, most patents in Alaska were granted in wells, hydraulic and earth engineering, surgery, liquid purification and land vehicles sectors. These five industries accounted for about 60 % of all patents granted in this period. Oil dependent sectors produced almost a half of patents from three leading boroughs (Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Matanuska-Susitna). Top patent-producing industries changed over time, but generally remained similar: hydraulic and earth engineering, wells, land-vehicles, and liquid purification (all oil-related). Road structure and fishing Inventing the New North

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and trapping (corresponding to pre-oil specialization and pipeline construction) appeared in the top five in the 1976-1985. Surgery emerged as a key innovation industry since the late 1980s and data processing and measuring in the 2000s, indicating the diversification of innovative activity and a shift to new technologies.

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Figure 4: Oil prices, production and patent activity in Alaska

Figure 4 compares the oil price, oil production and the count of patents in 1976-2010. Although the chart does not show a clear relationship, it appears that the periods of lower oil prices coincided with higher innovation activity in Alaska. For example, from 1986 to 2002 there was a steady growth in patent production, while oil prices remained low. A spike in oil prices in the mid-2000s corresponded with diminishing innovation activity. It is too early to conclude whether these observations reveal a potential pattern. One possible hypothesis to test might be that the oil industry, which dominates Alaska innovation, tends to innovate more under lower profit margins (and in Alaskaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s case, declining production) say, to develop new technologies for cost saving and production increase. Alternatively, a resurgence of individual innovators and a relative decline of corporate, i.e. oil sector, patenting during the crisis of the mid-2000s may point to different resource cycle responses among agents of innovation in the Alaska RIS. These patterns should be tackled by future studies that will incorporate the analysis of companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities, business operations, investment data, etc.

The Geographical Distribution of Patents and Inventors Patents production in Alaska is highly concentrated in space. The majority of them, more than 90% in each of the five yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; periods from 1976- 2010, located in eight boroughs (Figure 4). At the borough level, the Anchorage Municipality has had the highest number of patents, larger than the rest of boroughs combined. Fairbanks North Star Borough and Matanuska-Susitna Borough (suburbs of Anchorage) are distant seconds in terms of the number of patents. This could be Zbeed & Petrov

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explained by the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s size and role in the Alaska economy, since Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska and houses technology, communication and engineering firms. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that many smaller communities had relatively high per capita patent production levels (Figure 5).

In Anchorage, the number of patents was the largest in 1996-2000, when it reached 255 patents and 133 inventors. Fairbanks North Star Borough followed by Matanuska-Susitna Borough demonstrated a considerable gap compared with Anchorage Municipality, although the peak was recorded in the same time period. Juneau City and Borough was a distant fourth. The rest of boroughs, including Kodiak Island Borough, Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Kenai Peninsula and Valdez-Cordova Census Area had a few patents and inventors. Noticeably, the periods of 19911995, 1995-2000, and 2001-2005 showed higher production of patents compared with the periods before and after.

Inventor distribution was similar to the patents distribution with the highest number of inventors living in Anchorage Municipality, Fairbanks North Star Borough, and Matanuska-Susitna Borough. However, when measuring inventors per 1,000 residents we found that some low population density boroughs had a high share of inventors, e.g., Ketchikan Gateway Borough had 3.1 inventors per 1,000, and Valdez-Cordova Census Area had 1.9 inventors per 1,000. These unlikely innovation â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hubsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; deserve further investigation. This is an interesting phenomenon that most likely constitutes a special property of innovation in remote regions embedded in individualdriven and niche-based innovation in these places.

Figure 5: Patents per 1,000 Residents Inventing the New North

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Specialization and Sectoral Concentration of Patents This section aims to describe knowledge formation as specified by the technological specifications of patents. To measure and compare patenting activity in a particular technology sector (or industry, to which it was associated) at different geographic locations we used the Location Quotient (Burt et al., 2009). In this study we focused on 25 industries (based on the USPTO technology classification) with the highest amount of patents awarded to Alaskan inventors. The six boroughs with the largest patent counts between 1976 and 2010 were analyzed and LQs for the top 25 industry sectors were computed for them using USPTO data.

Table 1 represents patent counts in each of the 25 top technology/industry sectors. LQs with a value greater than 2.0 (black), and values below 0.5 (red) are shown to indicate respectively higher or lower relative patent activity compared to the U.S. as a whole. High LQ means specialization of a borough in creating patents in a certain sector. The gray boxes indicate sectors, in which no patents have been recorded to the residents of a particular borough, and the white boxes include the rest of the values, which are LQs with results between the values 0.5 and 2.0 exclusively (i.e., near the U.S. national level). The last column in Table 1 shows the overall count of patents granted in a particular industry over the 35-year time period.

Each of the six boroughs showed specialization in at least three industry sectors. MatanuskaSusitna Borough specialized in developing new technologies in 14 industry sectors (black boxes), Fairbanks North Star Borough in 13 sectors, Anchorage Municipality in 11 and Kodiak Island Borough in 10. Anchorage Municipality was the most productive borough by the total number of patents, and Anchorage-based inventors created new products in each of the 25 industry sectors.

Similarly, Matanuska-Susitna Borough and Fairbanks North Star Borough had high counts of patents in almost all sectors with a few exceptions. However, it is worth mentioning that despite the overwhelming dominance of Anchorage in patent production, it was not the most diversified region in terms of specialization (only in 10 sectors). This most likely reflects the overrepresentation of the oil-sector-related innovation in Anchorage and a resultant “innovation monoculture” entrenched in a few powerful, but undiversified knowledge industries. This observation should be further investigated especially since it could be a technology-sector manifestation of the resource curse.

Boroughs with much smaller patent output, such as Ketchikan Gateway Borough and Juneau City and Borough, have had patents in relatively few industry sectors, i.e. were narrowly specialized occupying a constricted technological niche. On the other hand, some technological sectors were only present in a few boroughs, for example, liquid purification or separation, land vehicles, data processing-measuring-calibrating or testing, multiplex communications, internal- composition engines and fluid handling. These tended to be sectors with a low count of recorded patents (Table 1).

Among the technology/industry sectors, fishing was the most frequently overrepresented technology among Alaska patents in six boroughs, followed by animal husbandry with five cases.

These ‘old’ industries represented the areas of Alaska’s consistent and long-established technology excellence. The most radical specialization, with LQs exceeding 20, was observed in smaller regions (Kodiak, Ketchikan) in some of these niche industries (fishing, marine propulsion) indicating a narrow stream of knowledge production in these remote areas. On the other hand, new

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technologies have also found their spots on the top 25 list (Table 1). They included, among others, amusement devices/games, measurement instruments, surgery and communication technologies.

Table 1: Calculated LQ Values of Recorded Patents from 1976-2010 Anchorage

IndustrySector Municipality Wells 17.9 Hydraulic 12.8 Surgery 3.5 Liquid purification or seperation 1.9 Land Vehicles 1.9 Boring or penetrating the earth 7.4 Fishing 5.1 Data- processing- measuring ,Calibrating or testing 1.2 Drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions Measuring and testing Ships Animal husbandry Supports Static Structure Geometrical Instruments Exercise devices package and article carriers MultiplexCommunications Communications: Electrical Marine Propulsion Internal - composition engines Amusement Devices: games Material or article handling Fluid handling Refrigeration

1.2 0.7 4.4 2.8 1.3 1.0 2.9 2.5 2.9 0.3 0.8 5.2 1.2 1.9 1.7 0.8 0.7

Faribanks North Ketchikan Juneau City Matanuska Kodiak Total# of patents(1976Star Gateway and _Susitna Island Borough Borough Borough Borough Borough 2010 0 0 0 12.1 4.9 117 17.2 0 0 2.2 9.6 43 0 7.2 0 0 0 30 2.6 0 1.4 0.7 0 24 0.8 0 1.7 9.1 0 24 2.4 0 0 2.4 0 21 6.3 34.4 26.1 6.3 56.0 21 1.9 0 0 2.9 0 17 0.4 1.0 0 2.3 2.3 0.8 6.0 0 5.6 0 0.5 12.7 0 3.8 1.2 3.7 2.3

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 69.9 0 0 0 0 0

1.6 1.0 9.8 23.9 0 0 8.3 0 5.9 0 0 0 0 3.9 0 0 0

0.4 0 2.4 2.3 1.5 2.5 2 15.4 8.5 2.3 0.5 0 4.9 1.9 1.2 0 2.4

0 0 10.6 10.3 0 3.7 0 27.4 0 0 0 28.5 0 8.4 0 0 5.3

16 15 14 14 14 13 13 12 11 11 11 10 10 10 9 9 9

The Regional Innovation System in Alaska To apply the RIS concept to the Alaska innovation system (AKRIS), one needs to quantity different sources of patent production (Figure 6). We used information about patent applicants (entities that filed a patent application) to define main RIS structural elements. These elements or â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;agents of knowledge productionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in Alaska were classified as internal (located in Alaska) and external (led by extraterritorial actors with Alaskan co-inventors), and each component was assigned a share in the innovation process based on patents it produced. This share gives an insight into the importance of each element in the overall innovation process. Both levels, internal and external, had different roles in the innovation system. They are also interacted. In Alaska, the major structural elements of RIS (and agents of knowledge production) were individual inventors, government, private or non-government organizations, and universities. Within Alaska individuals had the highest percent of patented innovations (57%), followed by private organizations (9%), universities (1.7%), and, lastly, by the state and local government (0.2%) (Figure 5). External innovation activities in AKRIS exhibited a different pattern. The private organizationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; share of patents was the highest (27%), individuals and government were at par (1.7 % each), and universities had the smallest share of innovations (0.8%). This structure is not accidental, but reflects the key properties of remote RIS: an elevated role of individual inventors locally coupled with the predominance of extraterritorial private companies in the external flows of knowledge and innovation.

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Figure 6: Alaskan Regional Innovation System Components.

Co-Inventor Networks Analysis and Trends This section aims to determine the spatial distribution of co-inventors of Alaska-based patents and identify the external and internal networks within Alaska and between Alaska and other regions.

All co-inventors for each patent were linked and their networks were built and mapped using GIS (geovisualized). We then compared dynamics and various characteristics of inventors 1976 and 2010 dividing it into 5-yar study periods (1976-1980, 1981-1985, 1986-1990, and so forth) to elucidate the progress of inventorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; networks over time and observe the changes of inventorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; clustering.

In order to highlight the spatial evolution of inventor networks, we compared the earliest and the latest five-year periods (1976-1980 and 2006-2010). First, Figure 7 presents the co-inventors network in 1976-1980. The total number of inventors is 120, most (74) of them were individual inventors, i.e. either a single inventor or a group of independent co-inventors with no recorded relationship to any organization or company. On the other hand, there were 46 inventors involved with organizations. All co-inventors were located inside the USA, with most inventors residing in Alaska (Alaska had 95 inventors, about two thirds of them were individuals and one-third belonged to an organization). Most non- Alaskan inventors (60%) were company inventors, while 40 % were individuals. Anchorage Municipality recorded the largest number of inventors (53 inventors).

Among external locations Texas had the largest number of inventors (11 inventors), 64% of them were company-based.

This analysis suggests that the AKRIS in its early days was relatively inward oriented, dominated by individuals and small, localized inventor teams. It had rather limited connectivity within the USA and was isolated from the rest of the world. The time period between 1976 and 1980 reflects Zbeed & Petrov

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the “pre-oil” situation, when the role of large corporations was still modest. It is interesting to point out that the number of patented innovations was small, with a large share fishery, trapping and other “old” sectors. This is the only time when road construction patents made to the top five sectors, a situation reflective of intensive construction phases of oil development.

Figure 7: 1976-1980 Alaskan Inventors Network In the most recent time period, 2006-2010 (Figure 8), there were 330 inventors, slightly fewer than in the previous five-years, but many more than 35 years earlier. Among them, 69% were involved with an organization, while 31% were individual inventors. The share of company inventors became the largest in the early 2000s, and it slowly declined in 2006-2010, perhaps, reflecting the diversifying nature of knowledge production away from oil sector dominance and towards individually produced innovations. Alaskan inventors outnumbered non-Alaskan inventors (188 to 142). The percentage of company-based inventors grew to 52% among Alaskans and 91% among outside collaborators. Anchorage still had the largest number of inventors, 54% whom were company inventors. Among other states Texas again had the largest share of inventors (94% of them were company inventors). On the other hand, Alaska innovators were globally connected having co-inventors in Australia, India, United Kingdom, and South Korea.

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Figure 8: 2006-2010 Alaskan Inventors Network

Conclusions This study explored the dynamics of innovation activity in Alaska expressed through USPTOregistered patents in order to improve the understanding of knowledge creation and other creative activities in remote areas. It constitutes a first look into the Alaska knowledge economy that can potentially play an essential role in diversifying Alaskaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic system. Patents is an important indicator of knowledge economy and their typological, geographical and historical patterns provide a key insight into the Alaskaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s regional innovation system.

Patent development in Alaska grew over time, so did the number of Alaska-based inventors. Since 1976 we observed the pattern of growing knowledge production, team size and industrial diversification of the patent activity with a continuing dominance of innovations associated with the oil sector. Based on the nature of patent dynamics in 1976-2010, we identified four periods: before 1985; 1986-1999, 2000-2006 and after 2007. In 1976-1985 the number of patents and inventors was low, and most of the patents were created and claimed by individuals. The largest industry sectors were wells technology, hydraulic-earth engineering and fishing/trapping/hunting.

During the Alaska oil boom we noticed a significant increase in patents and inventors with the most prolific patenting in wells technology, followed by surgery and hydraulic-earth engineering.

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Since 2007 the quantity of patents dropped and then slowly increased, although co-inventor teams became considerably larger and geographically dispersed reflecting an increasingly globalized nature of Alaska knowledge production.

There has been heavy clustering of patents in some of Alaska’s boroughs, specifically, in Anchorage Municipality, Fairbanks-North Star Borough, and Matanuska Borough. These Alaska regions with intensive patent activity have become highly specialized in multiple industrial technologies related to the oil sector (wells, hydraulic, drilling, etc.), “old” industries (such as fisheries or animal husbandry) and “new” technologies (telecommunications, surgery, etc.). Smaller boroughs tended to occupy narrow knowledge production niches in a few industries, such as fishing and marine propulsion.

In respect to the structure of the Alaska RIS this study mapped its main elements and identified their contribution in knowledge generation within the system. We considered both internal and external elements (knowledge-producing agents), such as individuals, companies/organizations, government and universities. It is important to highlight that independent individuals developed more than one half of all patents over the observed period, and most of them were Alaskan inventors. Private organizations (companies) were the second largest owner of the intellectual property, and non-Alaska biased firms were the dominant external force of innovation. The government and universities played modest roles in the AKRIS. These findings reflect a key property of remote RIS: an elevated role of individual inventors locally alongside with the predominance of non-local private companies that control external flows of knowledge and innovation.

Collaborative networks of Alaskan inventors underwent substantial changes during the 35 years we examined. In the early days a single inventor or a group of independent co-inventors was a leading force of innovation working primarily within Alaska or with a few co-authors from other U.S. states. This constitutes a sharp contrast to the most recent years when patents tended to be created by company-based inventors working with large groups of co-authors scattered around the U.S. and the world.

Overall, between 1976 and 2010 AKRIS evolved from a small isolated system dominated by individual (“lone-eagle”) inventors focused on the innovation in old, low-technology sectors to a relatively diversified (although still over-reliant on the oil sector) intra- and internationally connected system with a considerable presence of company-driven innovation, but a strong position of individual inventors, including those from smaller communities.

This study constitutes a first-cut analysis of patent activity in Alaska and is limited in scope to address only general patterns and trends. Perhaps it raises more questions than provides answers.

More in-depth analysis should focus on patent citation networks, evolution of industrial and technology mix, connections of innovation with economic development, and resource economy in particular, relationships with creative capital, to name a few research directions. One aspect that seems very intriguing is the relationship of innovation activity and the price of oil: it appears that the periods of lower oil prices coincided with higher patent production in Alaska. Further research will find out whether this is a coincidence or a pattern, a potentially impactful finding that may shape our understanding of innovation in the periphery. It is also important to investigate innovation in smaller communities and elucidate their linkages with community capacities and capitals, as well as potential implications of community development paths.

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Acknowledgements This research was partially supported by NSF PLR#1338850 and OISE #1545913.

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Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights in the Arctic Robert P. Wheelersburg & Sean Melvin The Arctic has been a region long characterized by knowledge transfer between northern residents and people from southern states. Over the past few decades, the transfer of Arctic traditional knowledge (â&#x20AC;&#x153;TKâ&#x20AC;? here including Indigenous knowledge) has accelerated at a fast pace due to research, the exploration and exploitation of resources, and movement of peoples in and out of the region. In some cases, TK has been lifted wholesale without consideration in an asymmetrical relationship. Southern residents have their intellectual property rights (IPY) protected by national and global level laws and agreements. Conversely, due to its nature as a communal property held and passed down through the generations at the societal level, TK from Arctic Indigenous peoples is not as well protected. This paper summarizes some national and global level IPY protections such as patents that could be applied to Indigenous TK. In addition, recent efforts by Saami and Inuit at the national and global levels, respectively, are reviewed. The authors recommend that Indigenous groups use their status as permeant participants on the Arctic Council to create and implement TK IPR that is appropriate to the nature of Indigenous societies and yet provides a sufficient level of protection for future generations. Such protection is important as the impacts of the melting ice cap will increase information transfer from the Arctic.

Introduction Much attention today is focused on Traditional Knowledge (TK)1 in the Arctic due to the importance of using local understanding of environmental factors to reduce the negative influence of global climate change on sustainable development. Statements like the following seem commonplace: Arctic biodiversity has been and continues to be managed and sustained by Arctic Indigenous peoples through their traditional knowledge. Traditional knowledge is used to observe, evaluate and form views about a particular situation on the land. This knowledge reflects perceptions and wisdom that has been passed to new generations to the present day. However, steps need to be taken to ensure that traditional knowledge is renewed and passed on to the generations to come (Mustonen & Ford 2015: 1).

We believe that Indigenous TK based on shared cultural traits such as handicrafts, rituals and performance art, as an aspect of intellectual property rights (IPR) is as worthy of protection as ecological knowledge, especially as increased interaction brings more people and commercial enterprises to the Arctic looking to capitalize on (or at least collect) such knowledge. For example, Robert P. Wheelersburg, Ph.D., is Professor of Anthropology, Center for Arctic Policy Studies, University of Iceland. Sean Melvin, J.D., is Associate Professor of Business, Department of Business, Elizabethtown College

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the British design firm Kokon To Zai recently apologized and removed an Inuit sacred parka design it used in a new clothing line that was apparently lifted from the 2006 film Journals of Knud Rasmussen (Off & Douglas 2015). Creating programs and policies to strengthen the protection and sustainability of Arctic Indigenous IPR can have far reaching influence not only on the continued interactions of resident (i.e., local) populations with the land but through cultural aspects that support the functioning of their societies as well. If one accepts that premise, then it is important to maintain cultural as well as biological diversity in the face of globalization spreading mass culture that has been and continues to permeate the northern regions.

Yet, despite the importance of such protection, what are the legal and ethical ramifications of IPR for contemporary Arctic Indigenous peoples, especially given the tremendous changes in the region over the past hundred years or so? Are the Indigenous groups in the region able to define and establish which TK is important enough to use IPR protections and once so protected, determine who owns the rights to it? Are Arctic Indigenous societies capable of receiving and incorporating IPR protective measures similar to those functioning in other parts of the globe?

Perhaps more importantly, are such societies able to create and disseminate their own IPR protection protocols in the face of tremendous changes within those societies? Are there problems with using IPR for TK that is often developed communally and handed down from earlier generations? To further that last point, should contemporary, undocumented Arctic TK changed by modernization and cultural borrowing from outside sources be subjected to IPR protection?

Lastly, what is the appropriate way for Arctic Indigenous groups to manage contemporary TK systems and who determines which are subject to IPR legal protection?

These questions stand in opposition to some previous examinations of Arctic Indigenous IPR protection because it takes as its fundamental assumption that these peoples should be in control over what TK is protected, who receives the protection, and what laws and regulations should be exercised to avoid such protection. In contrast, while much of the literature related to Indigenous intellectual property rights is based on proposals to increase IPR protections for Indigenous peoples, some scholars have argued that the protection of Arctic traditional knowledge-based intellectual property rights is problematic and unlikely to serve the long-term interests of either the Indigenous people or researchers (Wenzell, 1999: 123). Davis and Wagner cautioned that intellectual property protection requires a defining of traditional knowledge through local expertise and that researchers have not established appropriate standards for identification and selection of local experts (2003, 464).

Using this perspective, this paper examines legal aspects of IPR that are mostly created and enforced by government bodies from outside the region. In addition, examples of how Arctic peoples themselves have obtained and/or strengthened IPR protection are described. Although our focus is on the western Nordic region and the North American Arctic, the recommendations contained herein can also be applicable to the Eurasian Arctic should the states located there agree to participate in global IPR efforts.

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Legal Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Figure 1. ILO 169 Definition of Indigenous Peoples

Part IV. Vocational Training, Handicrafts and Rural Industries, Article 23.

1. Handicrafts, rural and community-based industries, and subsistence economy and traditional activities of the peoples concerned, such as hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering, shall be recognised (sic) as important factors in the maintenance of their cultures and in their economic self-reliance and development. Governments shall, with the participation of these people and whenever appropriate, ensure that these activities are strengthened and promoted.

2. Upon the request of the peoples concerned, appropriate technical and financial assistance shall be provided wherever possible, taking into account the traditional technologies and cultural characteristics of these peoples, as well as the importance of sustainable and equitable development.

For many Indigenous groups in the Arctic, their protection begins with the International Labour Organization Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169. While the convention defines who is able to claim the status of an Indigenous people, there are problems when trying to apply that to IPR protection. The convention’s section covering TK presented above is not strongly stated, leaving the protection of peoples’ intellectual property up to the benevolence of individual states’ politicians. In addition, of the Arctic Eight only Denmark and Norway have ratified the convention, requiring Indigenous groups in the remaining countries to seek redress elsewhere.

Thus, while it may seem a simple matter to obtain IPR in the international community, it is in fact a difficult task navigating through a web of incomplete and confusing laws and policies.

As with many aspects of Arctic legal issues, agreeing upon intellectual property rights for northern residents is complex; made all the more so by the hodge-podge of treaties, laws, regulations, political statements, etc. that apply to the issue due to the region’s standing as a geographical territory, not a political one. Populations who live in the Arctic, including those in semiautonomous areas such as Greenland are members of nation-states primarily occupying territory to the south of the region and are therefore subjected to the policies and laws produced by their respective countries. As pointed out by Bankes and Koivurova (2014), jurisprudence in the north is mostly a product of the legal systems of the individual Arctic eight states. Even that figure does not fully define the complexity as in the authors’ words when describing the various polities in the Arctic (2014: 223 – 224, 230, 240) … of which three are federal states (with law-making powers devolved in varying degrees to their northern subunits) and five are unitary states. Greenland has a distinct status, having opted for Self-Rule in 2009. Global and regional norms of international law are also significant, as are the norms of the European Union (EU) that bind Finland and Sweden as member states. In addition, as members of the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement Norway and Iceland apply many EU norms. A more pluralist account of legal systems includes less formal arrangements such as the customary norms of the Indigenous peoples (Watson and Hamilton 2013; Webber 2013 [citation in original]) … To a certain extent, [I]ndigenous customs also apply to many of the behaviors of Arctic residents. … While most of the norms that apply in the Arctic are general … there is a limited amount of law, both domestic and

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international, that is specific to the Arctic. Some of these have relatively long history, but none relate to IPR. … While we can identify a clear trend in the consolidation of [I]ndigenous rights in international law, this trend has only penetrated the domestic legal systems of the Arctic states in a limited fashion, especially the large federal states – the USA, Canada and Russia. The four Nordic states have been more open to influences from international law.

Global non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) also present a myriad of policies and processes involving IPR and none have the legal authority to impose and regulate protective measures. For example, UNESCO policy is that all interactions with Indigenous peoples must go through their member states because Indigenous peoples have no direct communication channel with UNESCO. According to that reasoning, even Arctic Indigenous organizations like the Inuit Circumpolar Conference or the Swedish Sami Parliament should retain no means of influencing member states because they have no shared governance with majority societies at the national level (Shadian, 2010) and their pan-national forms are not recognized as legitimate by their constituent states. What makes the Arctic different from other regions, however, is that there is a clear channel by which Indigenous groups like the ICC and RAIPON may influence the constituent states as permanent participants of the Arctic Council. It is that channel that could provide the unique avenue for these Indigenous groups at the collective level to influence their own IPR protection.

Bankes and Koivurova (2014) describe the role that global norms play in Arctic law, which, in addition to domestic laws and international treaties that apply there, often focus on a single aspect of cooperation such as the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC). Even when there is a general agreement and a resulting document specifying the responsibility each state must make to resolve legal issues, there is no mechanism for forcing states, autonomous regions or even northern residents to comply above national level law enforcement. That situation occurred in 2017 when President Donald Trump refused to comply with the Paris Agreement signed by a previous administration. Global or hemispheric legal norms that apply to Indigenous peoples include the International Labor Organization’s Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (ILO 169), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Organization of American States’ proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples rely on state-level agreement and enforcement to force compliance. To determine how Indigenous groups might take steps to prevent problems regarding IPR, we surveyed appropriate legal entities and policies that currently affect international IPR that may be extended to the Arctic.

International Recognition and Protection of Indigenous IPR Outside of the Arctic there have been examples of a state granting IPR to Indigenous groups.

Perhaps the first example of an Indigenous intellectual property protection in the world was in 2000 when Panama passed a law granting its Indigenous peoples “exclusive, collective, and perpetual rights to their creations, inventions, and traditional expressions” (Obaldia, 2005: 338).

The law was passed in response to protection for a cloth called mola, a garment that contains Indigenous designs related to the Kuna Nation’s cosmology. Importantly, for Arctic Indigenous peoples, the law recognizes IPR over the mola designs despite the influence that modern values/ideas (in this case Christian notions of modesty) have had on TK. Thus, protection was accorded to an important handicraft that combined Indigenous knowledge and modern values related to globalization for which the Kuna will benefit.

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IPR for the traditional cultural expressions, traditional knowledge, genetic resources, and inventions of Indigenous people in the Arctic region have also recently entered the “ambit of intellectual property discussions” (von Lewinski 2004: 3). This recent focus on intellectual property rights has been primarily driven by an awareness of increased industrial exploitation of Indigenous people’s knowledge and resources without their consent. As Tobias-Stoll and von Hahn (2004) point out, the industrial exploitation has largely complied with existing intellectual property laws since most Indigenous knowledge was considered in the public domain as that term has traditionally been defined in international law. The other reason for an increased awareness of Indigenous IPR has been the self-organization of Indigenous people and their representatives, which have pressured international organizations to re-examine intellectual property protections.

Even with this increased awareness by the international legal community, Indigenous peoples face significant obstacles in establishing intellectual property rights. These obstacles include definitional issues for determining who is recognized as Indigenous peoples, clashes in cultural perspectives between so-called Western civilization and Indigenous peoples (Bird, 2002), and aligning relevant human norms in the context of Indigenous knowledge (Davis & Wagner, 2001).

Perhaps the most important advance in establishing traditional knowledge, expression, and resources was the establishment in 2000 of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore (Intergovernmental Committee). WIPO began working in the area of folklore in the late 1970s/early 1980s with the first draft of a model law for protecting expressions of folklore against exploitation adopted in 1982. Since then, through fact finding missions in various parts of the world and an exchange of views on cultural norms, the committee has developed proposed polices intended to raise traditional knowledge and cultural expression to the same level of recognition afforded to other forms of intellectual property. Specifically, the Intergovernmental Committee recently released a proposed preamble recognizing that: the [holistic] [distinctive] nature of traditional knowledge and its [intrinsic] value, including its social, spiritual, [economic], intellectual, scientific, ecological, technological, [commercial], educational and cultural value, and acknowledge that traditional knowledge systems are frameworks of ongoing innovation and distinctive intellectual and creative life that are [fundamentally] intrinsically important for indigenous [peoples] and local communities and have equal scientific value as other knowledge systems (WIPO, 2017).

WIPO is responsible for administering a number of international treaties in the field of intellectual property and disseminates information and advice to organizations with a special interest in protecting intellectual property. WIPO provides technical advice and assistance to developing countries on protecting intellectual property while promoting economic, social and cultural development. WIPO’s Global Intellectual Property Issues Division (the Global Issues Division) is more of an oversight body directly related to Indigenous peoples. It is a research unit that conducts studies and practical activities to better understand the relationships between intellectual property and access to, and benefit-sharing in, genetic resources; the protection of traditional knowledge; and the protection of expressions of folklore. WIPO fields missions to study current approaches and future possibilities for protection of intellectual property rights of those who hold traditional knowledge, including Indigenous peoples.

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Typically, intellectual property rights in the international sphere are based on a general protection of economic, social, and cultural rights by virtue of the United Nations Charter or upon specific statutory protections afforded to citizens of World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries through the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The TRIPS intellectual property rights standards provide a convenient baseline because all WTO member countries are bound to impose certain uniform standards of protection for both domestic and foreign intellectual property holders/applicants (Schaffer, 2014). These rights essentially arise under the U.N. Charter of 1945’s Article 55 (Fundamental Freedoms) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural rights, passed in 1960. Intellectual property rights were strengthened by TRIPS in 2000, which imposes positive obligations on member countries (e.g., standards for copyrights and patent time period minimums for member states). Intellectual property may be protected through provisions on copyrights (i.e., music, paintings, sculpture) or on industrial property (i.e., patent standards and trademark characteristics).

The WTO is primarily a European-based trade organization (although Japan and other Asian and Middle East countries are either members or observers). All members of the Arctic Council are original members of the WTO (Jan, 1995) and therefore the protections (such as TRIPs) would also apply to Indigenous people to the extent the IPR “fit” the mold established in TRIPs (which is part of the problem—the Indigenous culture doesn’t always align with legal norms established by the WTO or TRIPs). TRIPs is the primary international treaty for intellectual property protection. It is binding on all WTO members—including all Arctic states. Copyright is controversial because folklore doesn’t fit the copyright standards of fixation, originality, authorship, and term. However, Lucas-Schloetter argues that there is an indirect protection of “collections, anthologies, and compilations” that are arranged, adapted (transformed), or derived from sources which are not, in and of themselves, protectable (Lucas-Schloetter, 2004: 300).

Patents Leistner concluded that “virtually all” forms of intellectual property can play a part in the protection of traditional knowledge (2004: 64). Since patent law is the most important source of economic protection for traditional knowledge, much of the existing literature focuses on its applicability to traditional knowledge. For example, much of the traditional knowledge used to invent devices related to hunting, fishing, and farming meet the requirements for protectable subject matter under the WTO’s TRIPSs standards. Patents are an appropriate protective tool for Indigenous IPY since Art 27 of TRIPs protecting patents “leaves practically no possibility” of excluding traditional knowledge-based inventions from patent protection in general (Leistner, 2004: 68). The primary questions are how to meet the origin and novelty requirement. However, scholars argue that the TRIPs Agreement implicitly answers these requirements by requiring an applicant to “only disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for an invention to be carried out by a person skilled in the art…” (TRIPs Art. 29(1)). However, the next hurdle, novelty, is more difficult to satisfy. According to Article 27 of TRIPS, patents may only be granted if invention are “new, involve an inventive step, and are capable of industrial application”.

Therefore, traditional knowledge that is protectable subject matter may still fail to gain patent protection if the invention is derived from the “public domain knowledge stock” (Leistner, 2004: 65).

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Copyrights According to Cornish, traditional knowledge “in the wider sense will, in most cases, be covered by the scope” of the Berne Convention’s copyright protections (2013: 22). Apart from the Berne Convention, the other basic source of international copyright law is found in TRIPS Articles 9-14 that gives protection to expressions, but not to ideas, procedures, or operation of mathematical concepts. This limitation narrows the use of copyright law to “folklore” protection.

Photograph 1. Kiiñåuq – Inuit Anaktuvuk Pass Caribou Skin Mask, Justice Mekiana, artist. Collected by Wheelersburg in Fairbanks, Alaska, 1990.

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Photograph 2. Čážehat – reindeer skin baby shoes, unknown Saami artist. Collected by Wheelersburg in Jokkmokk, Sweden, 1986.

Trademarks One scholar argues that one of the easiest and “most adequate” protections of the intellectual property of Indigenous peoples is through registration of traditional, Indigenous, or tribal names as a trademark (Kerr, 2004: 86-87). Trademarks protection is primarily rooted in identity and genuineness and not on protection of an achievement (e.g., patents). This eliminates the traditional barriers to protection of intellectual property that has existed in the public domain, which is so problematic in obtaining patents and copyright protection.

Indigenous IPR and TRIPS International legal scholars have argued that the TRIPS agreement is inadequate to protect Indigenous IPR for two reasons. First, the TRIPS escape clause allows individual nations to deny patents based on the nation’s public order/morality; protection of human, animal or plant life or health; or to avoid environmental harm, provided that the exclusion is not made merely because the exploitation is permitted by law (Patel, 1996). Second, as Weeraworawit points out, TRIPS standards and practices are geared towards privately owned intellectual property and is virtually “non-responsive to protection of innovation and creativity (in the form of traditional knowledge and folklore) as intellectual property” (2003: 771). Moreover, as Bird argues, the mixed economy that resulted when modern-era wage labor and market economy concepts were mixed with traditionally communally-owned property, further complicates protection because the TRIPS regime does not “readily apply to collectively owned traditional knowledge of [I]ndigenous people” (2002: 3). Still, even under the current intellectual property law, some have argued that Indigenous people may already collectively own certain intellectual property rights. For example, Stevenson advances a collective intellectual property theory regarding Inuit ecological knowledge, even if much of it has yet to be written down (1996: 4). Lesitner (2004) maintains that traditional Wheelersburg & Melvin

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knowledge may overcome concerns of patentability by adding value to an existing invention or process in the public domain.

Solutions While providing final solutions to the obstacles in obtaining IPR for Indigenous people is well outside the scope of this paper, one example, the Pauktuutit Inuit Women’s Association project, offers valuable insights in traversing the complex international legal standards (Bird, 2002: 1). The project set out to develop a Canadian national inventory of seamstresses and designers that documented regional variations in the design of Inuit women’s parkas called amautis. The project then sought to create an association of manufacturers who would share trademark rights and provide a seal of guarantee that consumers were buying a truly handcrafted product from an Inuit seamstress. Since the project was developed to provide employment in rural and remote Arctic communities by creating products for lower latitude markets, Bird argued that such a collective may be protected by existing IPR laws under the “appellation of origin” provisions of trademark law since the amautis are tied specifically to a geographic region thus meeting a primary goal of trademark protection – consumer confidence. Although trademarks are typically not recognized as collective right, a collective group may maintain a single right that any member may use without obtaining permission. One of the important aspects of the project is that the Canadian government is also encouraging amauti production as it supports Inuit women’s participation in a mixed economy combining wage employment with traditional handicraft protection. Although in a different part of the north, a study of work patterns by men and women in the Nordic region compared part-time and full-time employment for those aged 25 to 64. There was a definite difference between the amount of part-time work based upon gender, with females participating more in part-time work than their male counterparts (Lanninger & Sundström, 2014). Thus, providing Indigenous Arctic women with increased labor options through IPR protection provided by trademark law benefitted their communities two-fold - flexible work schedules combining wage and traditional work and the impetus to produce and disseminate TK in the form of handicrafts.

A second possibility has already occurred with Alaskan Inuit through their use of the “Silver Hand” trademark since 1972. As part of the protections provided by the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the Act allows only Alaskan natives to use ivory to produce handicrafts for sale within the U.S. Importantly, the MMPA allows only individuals to use the Silver Hand to produce and market authentic handicrafts, removing the ability of the entire Indigenous community to regulate the use of the trademark by its individual members. The trademark is important to Alaska as a state due to its reliance on tourism to generate income, of which the purchase of native arts and crafts is a critical part. Unfortunately for Alaskan Indigenous peoples, the Silver Hand is a mark given on the basis of “blood quantum” and any Alaskan native with ¼ native blood is eligible to use the trademark. Instead of protecting native industries, however, the ability of anybody who possesses the right to use the Silver Hand regardless of artistic talent (i.e. knowledge and skills) dilutes the quality of native arts and crafts as the trademark only guarantees authenticity, not quality. Unscrupulous companies may employ such people without appropriate talent and training to produce cheap trinkets that are purchased by tourists based only upon their authenticity.

Ultimately, the Silver Hand hurts Alaskan native artists for two reasons: their products are too expensive for the tourist trade compared to the lesser quality handicrafts and some feel that putting

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a collective trademark on the work of individual artists diminishes their work within the global fine arts community (Hollowell-Zimmer 2000). A possible solution for the Alaskan Inuit may be within reach as recently the Canadian Government transferred the rights of its Inuit trademark, the “Igloo Tag” to the Inuit Art Foundation so that they can control its use (Frizzell, 2017).

Figure 2. Indigenous Peoples Protection of Their Own IPR Inuit Circumpolar Conference Statements on Intellectual Property Rights [Paragraph] 14. PROMOTE the removal of international and national trade barriers that affect all forms of Inuit livelihood, in consultation with affected Inuit, at the same time ensuring that the rights of Inuit to their intellectual and cultural property, traditional [i.e. indigenous] knowledge, and access to capital, employment, contracts, financing, royalties, local revenue, and other financial benefits of development are enhanced in the process; [Paragraph] 18. DIRECT ICC to represent Inuit by promoting their rights and protecting their interests in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), European Union (EU), Organization of American States (OAS), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the World Conversation Union (IUCN), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and other relevant organizations.

The Kuujjuaq Declaration declared by Inuit of Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Russia On the occasion of the 9th General Assembly of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. August 11 - 16, 2002.

WHEREAS the article 27 of the Universal Declaration Human Rights and article 15 of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have recognized the right of Indigenous Peoples to protect their intellectual/cultural property. WHEREAS the Inuit of the circumpolar regions have developed intellectual/cultural property that is integral to Inuit culture. […] WHEREAS ICC re-affirmed its commitment to protect the intellectual cultural/property of Inuit in paragraphs 14 and 18 of the Kuujjuaq Declaration. […]

WHEREAS some Inuit businesses may be selling the products of this exploitation, for example by selling mass-produced replicas of Inuit designs and artwork and use other Inuit intellectual products. WHEREAS enterprises continue to misappropriate Inuit traditional dances, songs and folklore; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that ICC will step up its efforts to ensure that Inuit intellectual/cultural property rights are adequately protected. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that ICC will, through its respective national organizations where appropriate, encourage Inuit-owned businesses and other companies to stop selling products that are unduly exploiting Inuit intellectual/cultural property.

Protection of Inuit Intellectual Property Rights, ICC Executive Council Resolution 2003 – 03. Inuit Circumpolar Conference Meeting of the Executive Council, Nome, Alaska, U.S.A., June 26 – 27, 2003.

The Swedish Saami Parliament’s Policy Document on Traditional Knowledge Our Vision: A Sápmi where traditional knowledge [árbediehtu] has a living and strong position in the society. We Saami want to live in a Sápmi, where transference, care of, documentation and conservation of traditional knowledge is based upon the Saami value system. We strive to have control and influence over our Saami traditional knowledge, which is clearly based on international law and its regulations on self-determination. We want to live in a society where we can achieve solutions, models and experiences from our traditional knowledge, which is enriching as much for us Sami as it is for society as a whole. …

Possession of Knowledge Traditional knowledge is a non-material property, which belongs to us Saami, since no other folk group possesses the specific knowledge as it is seen with the concept árbediehtu [Saami traditional knowledge]. … Saami traditional knowledge is both collectively and individually Wheelersburg & Melvin

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Arctic Yearbook 2017 owned, which facilitates that we Saami can both use it and forward it to future generations. … It also means that common symbols will continue to be collective and that no one, regardless of ethnicity, will claim individual ownership of them. The Patent Office should therefore not give patent rights to individuals on what can be considered collective symbols, árbediehtu and so on, which are found in the Sami culture. Árbediehtu has as a character that it has never been actually owned by individuals, since it was the direct prerequisite for being able to make a living in Sápmi. Other societies’ methods for protecting knowledge, for example by patents and copyrights, do not work as well for indigenous peoples, because large parts of the traditional knowledge are collectively owned and have been created through multi-generational use of the environment in specific areas. Patent collection of collective property can create problems in the local community, for who has more right to the collective knowledge than anyone else[?]. To protect ownership of the árbediehtu through national and international legislation is also associated with difficulties, because these legislative measures are adapted to other cultures. Therefore, it is important that ownership of árbediehtu, is granted to the Sami so that it can be respected as both a collective and individual knowledge as it actually is and as it has been. Árbediehtu. Árbbediehto/Aerpimaahtoe. Sametingets Policydokument för Traditional Knowledge, pp. 4, 13 - 15, 17 – 18. 2010. The [Swedish] Saami Parliament’s Policy Document for Traditional Knowledge.

Kiruna: Saami Parliament. [In Swedish, translated by Wheelersburg].

As indicated in Figure 2, Arctic Indigenous organizations are sophisticated in their understanding and use of IPR international laws and policies. Both Sami and Inuit organizations have created policies and procedures for using and protecting traditional knowledge, including who is authorized to produce and document it. Examples include the Swedish Sami Parliament’s Policy Document on Traditional Knowledge (Jonsson, 2010; Utsi, 2007) and the Wildlife Management Advisory Council North Slope’s reference guide for the conduct of indigenous knowledge research (Armitage & Kilburn, 2015). While these publications are not legally binding, they represent important steps taken by Arctic Indigenous groups to protect the cultural values and behaviors necessary to retain their identities and their societies as viable entities in an increasingly crowded and multi-ethnic Arctic region.

Yet, these important steps also reveal problems associated with attempting to protect Indigenous knowledge from the perspective of the peoples who possess it. The ICC’s document calls for the elimination of all trade barriers that prevent Inuit communities regardless of their location from having free access to markets. For example, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) forbids exporting Greenlandic tupilaks made with ivory – an Indigenous raw material used in their making, which ultimately limits the ability of the Pan-Inuit to sell traditional goods. Further, in addition to the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, recent bans by various American states, along with an eventual international ban on ivory could prevent Inuit society from selling ivory handicrafts. The ICC resolution above also addresses misappropriation of Indigenous knowledge by businesses and other entities for exploitative purposes. Not restricted to material objects, the document includes in its concern for exploitation “dances, songs and folklore” by even Inuit-owned businesses. Perhaps more importantly, the Sami policy document states emphatically that Indigenous knowledge is owned by the entire society, not the property of individuals. As such, it cannot be capitalized on by anyone below the level of the society as a whole. Significantly, the Swedish Sami Parliament’s policy rejects the use of non-Sami protective measures like patents and copyrights since that would give advantage to others within the society. Thus, a complicated issue of Arctic IPR becomes even more complex due to both external and internal dynamics of the Indigenous groups themselves.

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Conclusion Since explorers like Peary and Nanson began traveling to the Arctic, Westerners have collected traditional knowledge and transmitted it to the world freely without considering its ownership.

That information transfer increased recently with the emphasis on TK as a primary topic for Arctic social science research and its funding. For example, during the International Polar Year (sic) beginning on March 1, 2007 and continuing until its conclusion on March 1, 2009, IPY’s 228 projects spanning the range of academic disciplines brought more than 50,000 researchers from 60 different countries to the Arctic to be engaged in a globally launched, but community-based effort to engage local residents in their own research. Along the way those projects and researchers produced a massive database of Arctic TK (National Academy of Sciences, 2012). That database may contain information that can solve a myriad of problems from curing diseases to harvesting enough food to feed the planet to providing a world view that explains our place in the universe better than existing models. Such Indigenous TK could have obvious commercial importance, not to mention tremendous value for humans generally, and is deserving of IPR protection.

To help Indigenous peoples meet that goal, this paper examined examples of IPR protection within various Arctic groups and reviewed how they are and could be affected by current IPR regulations.

In addition, global-level laws and regulations were summarized and applied to IPR protection for Indigenous peoples. Regardless of the current state of Arctic TK management, the authors recommend that Arctic Indigenous peoples be actively involved in shaping future IPR agreements and practices to safeguard their own cultural property at both the national and international levels.

As permanent participants to the Arctic Council, Indigenous organizations should encourage the formation of a working group to review the appropriateness of using existing IPR protections and to draft new ones that are perhaps more culturally appropriate. Northern residents who also possess TK but are not Indigenous (e.g., Icelanders) should also mobilize in a cooperative manner with local Indigenous groups to ensure appropriate IPR protection is a priority to preserve and sustain their own long-standing traditions.

Although known to each other for decades, the authors of this piece have not interacted previously on a scholarly level. The combination of a nearly four-decade Arctic anthropologist and a lawyer with one of the most widely used textbooks on IPR created a unique team to address the issue of TK protection for northern Indigenous people. At the same time, our difficulty with initial communication and understanding of each other’s expertise revealed obstacles that Indigenous groups may have using global, national and even their own IPR protections. On one hand, the desire for Indigenous groups to retain and protect essentially communal property often clashes with their belief that no individuals own their culture’s knowledge – a factor in using established IPR protection. On the other hand, with few exceptions, courts are run and staffed by lawyers who sometimes do not have experience with Indigenous beliefs and therefore cannot understand the reluctance of Arctic peoples to use existing laws and regulations for their own protection. With the long-term goal of retaining sufficient cultural integrity to survive in a rapidly changing region, Arctic Indigenous peoples must continue to develop culturally-appropriate mechanisms to retain the integrity of their TK. They also should ensure that some of their members have sufficient legal expertise to modify existing means, if necessary, and then use them to protect their IPR. It is our hope that by surveying existing IPR protections, peoples and groups who have yet to develop that legal expertise have a road map for determining which measures might work in their societies. In

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that way, Arctic Indigenous peoples may help the emerging global society to place the same emphasis on maintaining cultural variability in the north that has already been emphasized for biological diversity.

Notes 1. TK is used herein as an all-encompassing term to include both Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Knowledge. In addition, for this paper the definition of IPR (intellectual property rights) for the most part refers to indigenous TK except in cases where policies and laws are described as global phenomena and therefore apply to non-Indigenous IPR.

Acknowledgments

Robert Wheelersburg was supported on this research project while at the University of Iceland by a U.S. National Science Foundation – Fulbright Commission Scholarship in Arctic Studies. The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers who helped tremendously with guiding our work to complete this article.

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United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. 2017. Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Voices Factsheet – Who are indigenous peoples? www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf, retrieved May 20, 2017.

Utsi, Per Mikael. 2007. Traditionell kunskap och sedvänjor inom den Saamiska kulturen – relaterat till bevarande och hållbart nyttjande av biologisk. [Traditional Knowledge and Customs Within the Saami Culture – Related to Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity]. Saamitinget: Uppsala. von Lewinski, Silke. 2004. Introduction. Indigenous Heritage and Intellectual Property, Silke von Lewinski, editor, pp. 1-4. Kluwer Law International: London.

Weeraworawit, Weeruwit. 2003. Formulating an International Legal Protection for Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore: Challenges for the Intellectual Property System. Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law, (11): 769-777; 2003-2004.

Wenzel, George W. 1999. Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Inuit: Reflections on TEK Research and Ethics. Artic, 52(2): 113–124.

World Intellectual Property Organization. 2017. The Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Draft Articles. Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. WIPO Document GRTKF/IC/34/5.

June, 2017.

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Northern Peripheries & Creative Capital: The Nature of Creative Capital & Its Role in Contributing to Regional Development in Nordic Regions Aisling Murtagh & Patrick Collins

Debates exist around the role of a specific type of human capital â&#x20AC;&#x201C; creative capital â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in regional economic development.

Creative capital dynamics are most often analysed using statistics on workers in creative occupations, but beyond this creative capital is poorly understood, particularly in the peripheral context. In this article we explore the nature of creative capital among individuals in creative occupations based in two Nordic regions. In doing this we also aim to assess the contribution of creative capital and creative industries to regional development and innovation. Our aims also require a different methodological approach. Others that have analysed creative capital have used a series of statistical indicators as their primary metrics. Here we take a predominantly qualitative approach, assessing the experience of creative professionals across two Nordic regions. The primary research is based on semi-structured, qualitative research interviews in two regions -Lapland in Finland and Västernorrland in Sweden. For the purposes of understanding broader trends in the study regions, this data is also combined with statistics on creative occupations.

We find that social capital is also vital in the generation of creative capital. Based on the nature of creative capital emerging here, it appears an important ingredient supporting regional development in Nordic regions. We also conclude by questioning if higher levels of creative capital can also contribute to the increased well-being of northern societies.

Introduction Developing human capital is well recognised as an important part of regional economic development strategies (Mathur, 1999; Hoyman & Faricy, 2008). In the Arctic context, focusing on human capacities such as creative capital, as opposed to resource-based development, has been identified as important in revitalising and reinventing these regions for their positive future economic and social development (Bontje & Musterd, 2009; Petrov, 2013; Larsen & Fondahl, 2014; Hirshberg & Petrov, 2014; Mikkola, 2016). Petrov (2013; 2014) identifies a need for the development of new forms of economic competitiveness and diversification of peripheral economies. This should encompass a move away from old, narrow path dependencies reliant on external agents, such as large corporations or the state, and towards regional economies where there are broader flows of knowledge through a wider range of actors.

Daria Akimenko is a Ph.D. Candidate, Melanie Sarantou is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Satu Miettinen is a Professor at the University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland.

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Our aim here is to develop understanding of the role of creative capital in peripheral regional development. Limited understanding of the characteristics of creative capital, particularly in the Nordic Arctic context, has been identified (Petrov, 2013; Mikkola, 2016). To do this we explore the nature of this capital among creative professionals based in two Nordic regions. In this context we find that social capital is also important in the generation and utilisation of creative capital.

Defining Creative Capital We can explain creative capital simply as a particular kind of human capital, which encompasses workers in creative occupations or the creative class (Florida, 2002). Human capital is generally understood to encompass the skills and knowledge of a labour force or similarly the “imbedding of resources in people” (Becker, 1962: 9). Particular ways to invest in human capital identified by Becker (1962) include formal education through institutions, on the job training or more broadly increasing the amount of information available to people, thus informing better decision making.

The effect of individuals gaining human capital is described by Coleman (1988: 100) as bringing about “skills and capabilities that make them able to act in new ways”. We can also think of creative capital in terms of different sub-types. For example Petrov (2014) mentions cultural and entrepreneurial forms and finds that individuals possess these in different concentrations.

The creative capital embodied in the creative class is however more than the skills of these individuals gained through education and training. It is a multi-dimensional concept. Human creativity is also a key part of creative capital (Florida, 2002; 2003; Petrov, 2008). Creativity is central to the functions of work carried out by the creative class. This can be to: “combine standard approaches in unique ways to fit the situation…independently try new ideas and innovations” but also at times to: “produce new forms or designs that are readily transferable and broadly useful, such as designing a product that can be widely made, sold and used…composing music that can be performed again and again” (Florida, 2003: 8).

Beyond the fundamental role of human creativity in creative capital, it can also be understood more specifically as encompassing informal knowledge and skills, for example that might be passed through generations and between creative people (Petrov, 2014; Petrov & Cavin, 2013). This could be an artisan technique that is learned by contemporary craft professionals or a more experienced creative passing knowledge on to emerging talent. Informal knowledge cannot be captured by measures of creative capital using metrics such as levels of formal education (Petrov, 2014).

Knowledge exchange between people is also important in building wider human capital (Storper & Scott, 2009). This also brings us to a link made between different types of capital – social and human.

Social capital is fundamentally based on social exchanges and results in resources being produced from social connections. Bourdieu (1986: 51) defines social capital as: “the aggregate of actual or potential resources, which are linked to possession of a durable network…or…to membership in a group”. The volume of social capital an agent can mobilise depends on the size of the network the agent is connected with, and also the volume of other types of capital possessed by agents in this network. Generating social capital must continuously be re-affirmed so that trust is built.

Bourdieu (1986: 52) notes the importance of “durable obligations subjectively felt (feelings of gratitude, respect, friendship, etc.)” to building social capital. Coleman (1988) argues that social capital is important in the creation of human capital. In the context of creative capital, both positive

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and negative linkages have been suggested. Petrov (2014) identifies a likely synergy between creative and social capital. Krätke (2011) argues the creative capital generated by knowledge networks is important to facilitate and increase the capacity for innovation. This leaves creative capital delinked from the idea that creativity is an attribute held by the individual, but rather is socially produced and embedded in the social and economic context from which it emerges. On the other side of the debate, Florida (2002) argues that regions with strong social capital tend to be less innovative, while those with lower social capital are more open and likely to attract creative people that contribute to innovation.

Here we define creative capital as a multidimensional concept which has human creativity at its core, driving human skills and capabilities. It can be transferred between individuals, also enabling creative capital capacity to increase. It is impacted by other capital forms, such as social capital. It can be harnessed towards divergent end goals, from pure artistic creation at one end to commercial content creation at the other.

Creative Capital Versus Human Capital Moving beyond conceptualisation, debate also exists around which type of human capital is most beneficial to regional economic growth. Florida (2002) argues creative capital is the most valuable form of human capital to help drive growth. This argument is also linked to place attributes (culturally diverse, tolerant and open to new ideas) attracting creative people to locate in certain regions. However there is much debate on this issue and research exists both supporting and refuting these claims. For example, Hoyman and Faricy (2008) find that creative capital is not linked to regional growth, but the broader human capital capacity supports economic development. Conversely, McGranahan and Wojan’s (2007) analysis of rural and urban US counties finds evidence in support of the creative class thesis. Some remain cautious about Florida’s conclusions but argue they still merit further contemplation (Bontje & Musterd, 2009).

In the peripheral, regional development context, Petrov (2008) argues that while needing further research, creative capital does appear to improve the economic transformation and development prospects of these types of regions. Some evidence suggests that the existence of creative talents in a place can stimulate further creativity, hinting that creative capital has a potentially mutually reinforcing impact. For example, Cerisola (2017) finds that the presence of creative industries and interactions between different types of creative practitioners in an area is important to increasing local creativity. Symbiotic linkages between the core creative arts and the wider creative sector have been identified (Volkerling, 2001). For example, the arts can have a significant role in supporting the wider creative industries through incubating creative talent and encouraging creative innovation (Centre for Economics and Business Research, 2013).

One area of debate with clear lessons for policy are warnings against the ‘one size fits all’ approach to developing creative capital as part of regional innovation policy (Tödtling & Trippl, 2005; Storper & Scott, 2009; Andersen et al., 2010). In this article we also briefly explore the role of creative capital in regional economic development. This can help contribute to the tailored knowledge needed to more effectively evaluate its place.

Methodology Better understanding the nature of creative capital is important because it is under-researched in peripheral contexts. While there are some exceptions (e.g. Petrov 2008; Bell & Jayne 2010; Gibson, Akimenko, Sarantou & Miettinen

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Brennan-Horley & Walmsley 2010) the role of creativity and creative capital as a driver of development has most often been explored in the urban development context (e.g. Krätke 2011; Florida 2003). Analysis of creative capital and the creative class has focused on the use of a series of statistical indicators as key metrics. Here we take a predominantly qualitative approach, assessing the experience of creative professionals in two Nordic regions. We aim to look beyond statistics and at the nature of creative human capital itself.

The primary data informing this research is semi-structured, qualitative research interviews in two regions - Lapland in Finland and Västernorrland in Sweden. The research was carried out as part of a creative momentum project1 that aims to support the development of creative industries in five regions across Europe’s northern edge. This three-year, transnational project is co-funded by the EU Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) Programme. For this article we draw on interviews carried out with 13 creative professionals from September 2016 to June 2017. Some interviews were face to face (7) but others were carried out by telephone (6). Most were creative entrepreneurs (11) who had started their own micro businesses in the creative industries, while one ran a local performing arts organisation and one was an employee in a creative business. A range of creative economy sub-sectors were covered, from core creative to the broader creative industries (see Table 1).

Table 1: Breakdown of interviews Regions

Number of Creative industry interviews

Core Creative/

Lapland

7

4

3

Västernorrland

6

3

3

Total

13

7

6

Cultural industry

We do not focus on the creative class as defined by Florida (2002; 2003) which covers a range of creative professions, but also science, academia, engineering, business and healthcare. We focus solely on creative professions that are part of the creative industries. This is because we are interested in examining the role of creative industries in peripheral regional development through exploration of creative capital. We focus on the creative class in the context of creative industries, as defined by The Work Foundation (2007). Core creative fields focus on generation of pure creative content which can invoke copyright, such as painters, film-makers, dancers or composers.

Cultural industries are closely linked to core creative fields and focus on commercialisation of creative content. This includes for example music, television, publishing and film. The wider creative industries deliver expressive and functional value and include sectors such as architecture, design, fashion and advertising. This classification was used to categorise interviews to ensure coverage of the creative and cultural core, as well as broader creative industries.

For the purposes of understanding broader patterns in the study regions, we also combine this qualitative data with statistical data showing trends in creative occupations in the two regions.

Understanding the role of creative capital in regional development benefits from a mixed methods approach. Developing knowledge on the nature and role of creative capital must go further than describing patterns using narrow statistical indicators, such as percentage of population with a

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university degree or in creative occupations. A qualitative approach seeks to examine subjective experiences to seek new insights (Robson, 2011). This is lacking in current research.

Creative Capital in Västernorrland & Lapland Västernorrland and Lapland are regions in northern Europe with low population densities where natural resources provide an important source of economic activity. Lapland’s economy is specialised in the areas of mining and quarrying, with tourism another important sector of note.

Employment is most concentrated in the public sector, followed by wholesale, retail and manufacturing. Forestry is also important but technological advances mean that labour demand is reducing. Low levels of innovation and enterprise creation are observed as well as the need for development of business linkages outside the region to promote future economic development (OECD, 2017a). Västernorrland’s economy is traditionally based around, and specialised in, forestry and processing. As with Lapland, the public sector, followed by wholesale, retail and manufacturing are where employment is most concentrated. Business services and IT have experienced recent growth. While innovation is higher here than other northern regions, nevertheless greater levels are identified as important for future growth (OECD, 2017b). The broad nature of the regional economies described here shows their reliance on traditional sectors and primary production. This points to the need for economic diversification and creative human capital could be greater harnessed as part of this.

Creative capital can be measured in terms of the number of people in creative occupations. Tables 2 and 3 provide an overview of changes in creative occupations in Västernorrland and Lapland in recent years. This occupation data is based on classification codes used by Statistics Sweden and Statistics Finland. These correspond with the definition of creative occupations used by the UK Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) in its Creative Industries Economic Estimates (DCMS, 2016a).2 Codes were grouped into the categories outlined in the tables below to help overcome issues of confidentiality due to small population sizes. Assessing patterns of change across the occupation categories, creative capital has overall decreased in these regions in recent years. From 2012 to 2014 in Västernorrland it decreased by 9% and in Lapland from 2012 to 2013 by 5%. However not all creative occupation types experienced a decrease. In Västernorrland, media and craft occupations had the largest increases and in Lapland art and recreation occupations had the greatest rise. Relative to total employment in the region, creative occupations make up 3.6% of employment in Västernorrland and 2.58% in Lapland. By comparison, in the UK creative industries accounted for 5.8% of all jobs in 2016 and in this economy creative industries are considered a culturally and economically important sector (DCMS, 2016b).

Table 2: Number employed in creative occupations in Västernorrland 2012 Media (PR, advertising and marketing) 205

923

% Change % of total employment in the region (2014) +350% 0.9%

Software and IT Architecture, design, photography Publishing Film, TV, Music, Radio

1,778 397 199 128

-18% -51% -57% +4%

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2,173 816 466 123

2014

1.74% 0.39% 0.19% 0.13%

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Arts and Recreation Craft Trades

228 33

Total

4,044 3,681 -9%

188 68

-18% +106%

0.18% 0.7% 3.6%

Data source: Statistics Sweden

Table 3: Number employed in creative occupations in Lapland 2012

2013

% Change % of total employed in the region (2013) Media (PR, advertising and marketing) 256 269 +5% 0.39% Software and IT 348 292 -16% 0.42% Architecture, design, photography 711 640 -10% 0.92% Publishing 167 163 -2% 0.24% Film, TV, Music, Radio 155 167 +8% 0.24% Arts and Recreation 110 123 +12% 0.18% Craft Trades 145 135 -7% 0.19% Total 1,892 1,789 -5% 2.58% Data source: Statistics Finland.

These regions also have a small share of total employment in creative occupations. Västernorrland accounts for 1.62% of Sweden’s total employment nationally in creative occupations. Lapland is similar with 1.57% (see Tables 4 and 5). Peripheral regions tend to have a lower share of creative employment compared to cities and more densely populated areas. For example, UK figures show that in 2016 creative industries in North East England accounted for 3.2% of employment, while in London this was 11.5% (DCMS, 2016b).

Table 4: Number employed in creative occupations in Västernorrland relative to national level

Media (PR, advertising and marketing) Software and IT Architecture, design, photography Publishing Film, TV, Music, Radio Arts and Recreation Craft Trades Total

Sweden 2014

Västernorrland 2014

Västernorrland as % of national total

65,801 90,076 32,991 13,590 8,220 9,551 7,607 227,836

923 1,778 397 199 128 188 68 3,681

1.40% 1.97% 1.20% 1.46% 1.56% 1.97% 0.89% 1.62%

Data source: Statistics Sweden

Table 5: Number employed in creative occupations in Lapland relative to national level Finland 2013 Lapland 2013 Lapland as national total Media (PR, advertising and marketing) Software and IT Architecture, design, photography Publishing

27,122 34,013 27,525 9,187

269 292 640 163

%

of

0.99% 0.86% 2.33% 1.77%

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Film, TV, Music, Radio Arts and Recreation Craft Trades Total

6,959 4,776 4,485 114,067

167 123 135 1789

2.40% 2.58% 3.01% 1.57%

Data source: Statistics Finland

Overall the figures tell us that in these Nordic regions macro trends display a decrease in creative capital stock. It would broadly suggest that the role of creative capital in the development of Nordic regions is reducing. The figures do show a clear presence of creative capital in these regions.

However, the figures do not tell us about the nature of existing creative capital and the role regional creative professionals play in their areas’ development. We next move to assess the micro perspective to gain insights on these issues.

Nature of Creative Capital In this section we identify patterns displayed around the nature of creative capital in Västernorrland and Lapland from our semi-structured interview data. Our sample is too small for meaningful comparative analysis. It is however a starting point and future research could look at differences across regions in the nature of creative capital and its impact on regional development.

Building creative capital is a continuous process When thinking of creative capital in the broadest sense of creative skills, it emerged that skills are continuously built by creative professionals. As we discussed above, a number of key elements are central to creative human capital or skills development. In summary these are: education and training; learning by doing, workplace training; and knowledge exchange. Workplace training did not appear here as important in building creative capital. However this observation is most likely impacted by the fact that many of the creative professionals interviewed were entrepreneurs with their own micro-businesses, often with just one or two people working in the business on a fulltime basis. While all of the creatives interviewed had formal education in one or more creative profession, skills development did not end after leaving education. Education appears the basis upon which skills are firstly developed, which are then continually built through knowledge exchange and learning by doing. Knowledge exchange can occur through accessing information from organisations and institutions, such as local groups, business incubation centres and financiers. Knowledge exchange also happens between other creative and non-creative professionals. These patterns are similar to how human capital is generally built.

In the context of building creative capital through learning by doing, being part of a wider community of creative professionals appears central to this process. For example: “Right after graduation I moved to Stockholm. That was good because I could train every day to keep up and also to build on my education…I had the most inspiration to create my own stuff. I started with that in Stockholm also, creating and collaborating with musicians that I met” (Interview 3, Västernorrland). This community may be based locally, but depending on the creative sub-sector, it can also be on the national and international scale. Also linked to learning by doing, building knowledge through trial and error emerged strongly. A curious and experimental nature appears an important trait supporting the continual development of creative capital. In addition, these creative professionals held a willingness to take risks and explore new opportunities. Our data shows that creative professionals don’t feel they need to have all the knowledge and skills required to get involved in new projects,

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or in the case of entrepreneurs to start and run a business. Learning by doing appears central to creative capital. The following comments help to illustrate: “In my earlier job…I learned from that…I've done my own research…I mainly have collected these skills by myself” (Interview 13, Lapland). This attitude also widens the type of projects creative businesses get involved in as creative professionals don’t feel limited by their current skillset. The comments of one creative professional in digital media help to illustrate: “That is a project that is very typical to us, before we did it we didn't know exactly how to do it but we knew that there was equipment available…we went forward” (Interview 10, Lapland).

Complementarity of creative capital types The creative industries are understood as being composed of a range of diverse sub-sectors from architecture to arts and photography to publishing. Sub-sectors are built on different skills or different kinds of creative capital. The complementary nature of different creative capital types emerged strongly in this research. Short-term cooperation with other creative professionals is common to produce projects jointly (e.g. theatre and dance; visual art and festivals; digital media and design) or sub-contracting of work that other creative professionals are more skilled in (e.g. web development and photography; industrial design and carpentry; industrial design and graphic design; marketing and web development). This can sometimes be a longer term cooperation and the basis of a business where two creative professionals come together to establish a company that hinges around their complementary skill-sets. One business interviewed at its core combined the skills of two creative professionals – a carpenter and a designer. Their complementarity is clear: “I am really hands-on. I need to start doing straight away. I can do a quick sketch or an initial design but then I need to do it quickly….[my business partner] probably goes a bit more in depth into design and aesthetics and the functionality, then we just do it together until we get everything working” (Interview 7, Lapland). This also points to the catalytic nature of creative capital. The presence of a variety of types of creative capital within a creative’s network appears to facilitate greater utilisation of it to generate innovative new products or services. For example one creative discusses how they were matched with another similar creative on a business development programme: “We were too similar actually and that’s why we weren’t able to make something new…I am looking further outside the box” (Interview 8, Lapland).

Collaboration between creative professionals with different creative capital types appears to produce more innovative creative content.

Simultaneous harnessing and building of creative capital These creative professionals displayed a simultaneous harnessing and generation of creative capital.

A number of interviewees not only focus on the core creative products or services their business generates but are also involved in teaching. This can be to others seeking professional training but also to different lay groups (e.g., tourists, children, crafters). A desire to share knowledge exists, but not simply as another revenue stream for their business. It can be with a desire to influence how emerging creative professionals are trained. One interviewee identified a lack of focus in their own training on entrepreneurship. They continued to be connected to the institution they were trained in and continued to highlight this. Now entrepreneurship is covered on the course programme they originally trained on. A desire to share knowledge to give back to the creative community also emerged. For example: “I would love to have an apprentice at some point. I feel like I need to give back because I was taught that way” (Interview 8, Lapland). Through their professions creative capital is harnessed as a resource by these individuals, but this evidence shows how creative professionals also play a role in creative capital generation.

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Social capital’s role in building creative capital Education does not only generate creative human capital but also social capital is built through networks made during education. These networks can be taken forward and drawn upon in a creative professional’s future career. A range of human capital types can be needed in creative businesses and social capital is important to gain access to this. Complementary creative skillsets are an important part of a business network and can be drawn upon to support the needs of a specific project. For example, the following comments illustrate this well: “The same people that I studied with were also part of my first feature film. The Director of Photography and Sound Designer were my old school-mates…I’m also making commercials with them from time to time” (Interview 12, Lapland).

Social capital is also central in simulating the human creativity aspect of creative capital. It links people with complimentary creative skillsets to generate for example new content or problem solving ideas. The production of new forms such as content or designs often involves the development of ideas with people that are part of a business network. For example one creative talks about how their services to clients are developed as a collaborative creative process between a variety of individuals: “We join in right through from concept development right through to realising…We help them come up with content and then produce it for them. Then we'll draw on our partner network to back us up in terms of production…it’s much more productive when you have other people to feed off” (Interview 7, Lapland).

While social capital appears important to gain access to creative capital, other factors are also important in generating social capital, particularly the presence of trust. The need for personal connections and formation of trust can limit the social capital (and creative capital) built in the peripheral context. Creative professionals note the importance of direct contact with new members of their business network until this trust is established. While technology can connect people virtually it does not replace the need for face to face contact. This then also limits the geographic reach of businesses located in peripheral Nordic regions, as this interviewee illustrates: “We can work international. I can work all over Sweden and abroad it doesn’t matter for me because I can work with the computer and Skype…but people want to meet. So often you don’t get a job that is less than two hours radius from you because people want to meet, even if we don’t have to…you need first to make them trust you…it doesn’t work unless you have met once so you can get the connection first. Then it is no problem” (Interview 1, Västernorrland).

Creative Capital’s Role in Peripheral Regional Development Up to now we have explored the characteristics of creative capital, how it is generated, accessed and used in peripheral Nordic regions. Next we assess what role it plays in peripheral regional development. Peripheral economies have been described as less innovative than those located in core regions because economic activities tend to concentrate on local service development and primary production (Anderson, 2000; Copus et al., 2008). The nature of creative capital identified here shows that creative industries are a source of innovation in Nordic regions. Creative capital is a resource supporting regional development in peripheral Nordic regions that leads to job creation and re-imagining of the periphery, while also contributing to more balanced development.

Entrepreneurs can play a strong role in supporting and stimulating regional economic development. While the data presented in Table 2 and 3 show an overall decline in numbers employed in creative occupations, these figures hide the dynamics occurring within this, such as

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what type of employment (employees, self-employed) is declining and how many new jobs overall have been created. Our data suggests creative entrepreneurs play an important role in harnessing creative capital to create job opportunities for themselves, and sometimes also others, in Nordic regions. Creative capital is a resource that people who want to live and work in these regions can capitalise on to build a business. The issue of precarious labour and job insecurity is present in creative industries (Dissart, 2003; Luckman, 2013). This issue is also present in these regions, but those with creative capital and an interest in entrepreneurship can take more control over how it impacts them, for example: “I realised that my kind of expertise is wanted and needed but companies can’t hire someone for a longer period because they are working on something that is for a fixed term so then they don’t need me anymore…it was kind of natural to start my own company because of that” (Interview 4, Västernorrland).

The creative capital these professionals possess also plays a role in re-imagining places. The characteristics of the region itself can become a creative resource. Local landscape, built environment, nature, heritage and tradition are harnessed in a variety of ways. While combined with other sources, these place-based attributes are also a source of inspiration. For example: “[The city]…it was too crowded for me. I think it maybe held me back a bit…so many creative people…there is no need for more creation, but here there is…space. It is not crowded…with people…or too many creative ideas” (Interview 3, Västernorrland). Place attributes can also more specifically inspire new products and creative content, for example in Lapland snow has a strong influence. The following comments help to illustrate: “most important are the surroundings here in Lapland and all the hobbies you can do here, skiing, snowboarding” (Interview 10, Lapland). Place attributes can become embedded within creative products. For example, one interviewee describes how local heritage and the built environment influences new products: “We have a few products that are linked to the old city…these cups are also designed based on the interiors of the buildings” (Interview 2, Västernorrland).

Creative capital can support more balanced development and have wider positive socio-economic impacts in Nordic regions. Research has identified that some creative sectors are highly socially embedded, such as crafts and arts (Bertacchini & Borione, 2013; Bennett et al., 2015). Evidence also exists here of socio-economic development impacts through collaboration with non-profit organisations, social development projects, educational institutions and the cultural sector, such as museums and galleries. For example, one interviewee described their work with different disadvantaged groups. They comment on one project involving refugees: “I had five or six participants for several months, it resulted in an exhibition and we had some media attention, the local television were here too” (Interview 6, Västernorrland). Creative entrepreneurs also spend time working to improve the wider entrepreneurial environment in the region, such as being part of local interest groups and staying connected to influencers such as local authorities. Creatives producing physical products also displayed a strong emphasis towards sustainability working to use ecological and natural materials.

In an earlier section we discussed how different types of creative capital complement each other.

The interactions of creative professionals with different creative capital types can result in catalysing ideas that contribute to the development of new creative content, products and services.

Our evidence would suggest that for creative industry development in peripheral regions, access to a diverse network of other creative professionals is important. More broadly in the context of strengthening creative industries, the importance of exploring interdependencies and relationships

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between sectors has been highlighted. For example, in the rural context Bell and Jayne (2010) argue future research should look at the interdependencies and relations between creative industry subsectors. The development of cross sector linkages between creative sub-sectors and other business sectors has been identified as a key action area for future European policy (European Commission, 2012).

While our evidence suggests creative capital plays an important role in peripheral Nordic regional development it should be seen in context and as one part of a broader regional development strategy. Creative entrepreneurs operate in a competitive, globalised market. It has also been noted that these entrepreneurs are not growth oriented and may not create many new jobs other than their own (Herslund, 2012). This dynamic is also observed to some extent in our data. For example: “I don’t know if every company is driven…to be bigger and employ a lot of people. That has never been a dream of mine…now we have control and we don’t have to take care of any employees. If we need help, we hire help for that time” (Interview 1, Västernorrland). That said, it only takes one success story to have a major economic impact on an area. For example, Power (2002) takes the case of IKEA and notes how it continues to positively impact the rural area of Sweden where it was founded. However, such internationally successful examples are not common. Nevertheless, the presence of creative capital in Nordic regions does increase the chances of replicating similar successes.

Conclusion The evidence presented here shows how higher levels of creative capital contributes to the increased well-being of northern societies. Our qualitative data shows it is a resource creative entrepreneurs use to create job opportunities retaining people in peripheral Nordic regions.

However broader statistics suggest an overall pattern of decline in creative capital in these regions.

Entrepreneurship emerges as an important factor in retaining more creative capital in peripheral regions. The nature of creative capital also revealed the complementary nature of creative capital sub-types and the catalytic effects when creatives with different forms of creative capital engage and cooperate. Also for creative professionals, accumulation of creative capital extends well beyond formal education. Learning by doing, as well as learning from others, appears central to creative capital generation. Social capital cannot be overlooked if attempting to facilitate the growth of creative capital in the context of supporting creative entrepreneurship.

This research has helped to highlight the nature of creative capital and role it plays in economic development of Nordic peripheral regions. But the wider debate still exists on the specific role of creative capital, as opposed to a broader strategy of developing human capital capacity, in regional development (Hoyman & Faricy, 2008; Petrov 2008). Even when focused on developing creative industries, this is important to explore because creative capital is not the only form of human capital that supports these industries. For example, Freeman’s (2004) ‘creative intensity’ approach to measuring the economic value of creative industries is based on the idea that not all employment classified under creative industry classification codes is necessarily 100% creative and that creative workers also work outside the creative sector. Future work in the creative industries context could compare human capital, with its narrower form creative capital, examining their value and synergies in peripheral regional development.

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Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the creative professionals who gave their time generously to be interviewed as part of this research, as well as the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme for its funding in support of a creative momentum project.

Notes 1. More information on a creative momentum project is available at: https://mycreativeedge.eu/ 2. For the Västernorrland data codes used were SSYK 96 for 2012 data and SSYK 2012 codes for 2014 data. The Lapland occupation data was classified using ISCO-08. The DCMS system uses SOC 2010 codes. A list with corresponding codes was drawn up to facilitate data comparison across regions. For a list of the specific occupations covered see Annex A in DCMS (2016).

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Narrating Identities Through Art-making on the Margins: The Case of Two Workshops in the Arctic Daria Akimenko, Melanie Sarantou & Satu Miettinen

Artists and makers who live and conduct their creative practices in the geographical margins tend to face social, economic, environmental and historical challenges conditioned by the location of such regions. The condition of relative isolation may impact on the quality of artistic processes and such subjective criteria as motivation, inspiration and self-reflection of the maker.

When artist communities and individuals come together in collective making processes and share knowledge through narrative practices, it may enable connectivity that spreads beyond geographical limitations and contributes to knowledge transfer and dissemination. In this case study, artistic practices such as collaborative textile art and individual making processes are used to discuss life histories and personal positions towards living and working in the Arctic. Artistic practices serve as a means to discuss and share this positioning in narrative and visual formats.

This paper considers the processes and outcomes of two workshops that took place in the cities of Rovaniemi, Finland, and Murmansk, Russia, in December 2016 with local and international artists. The paper analyses the stories and narratives shared by the artists in relation to their making processes and respective contexts. These narratives reveal how the qualities of life and work environments impact on art practices and identity construction and how creating temporal contexts for collective making and sharing may contribute to knowledge dissemination and transfer from one remote community to another. Even though the margins may be objectively defined through quantifiable means, there are also subjective, personal ways of viewing margins or the absence thereof. The research discusses and provides examples of how the creation of collaborative and individual art pieces in the localities in question communicates personal reflections on the margin as a concept, and how the capturing of personal narratives promotes a better understanding of and between different contexts.

Introduction How strange to feel the line that is spun from us lengthening its fine filament across the misty spaces of the intervening world. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1978

The paper discusses relative remoteness, proximity and exchange between artist communities in the Arctic exemplified through two case studies: workshops with artist groups (mainly represented by women) in Rovaniemi, Finland, and Murmansk, Russia. The workshops took place in December 2016 and concluded the first year of fieldwork and data collection for the international art and research project Margin to Margin: Women Living on the Edges of the World (MarginToMargin, Daria Akimenko is a Ph.D. Candidate, Melanie Sarantou is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Satu Miettinen is a Professor at the University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland.

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2016). The project involved artists and communities in outback South Australia, Finnish Lapland and the Russian Kola Peninsula, with the objective to explore the relationship between art- and craft-making practices, identity processes and empowerment of female makers living and working “on the edges”. The project was carried out through the methods of practice-led artistic research by two Finnish, one Russian, one Namibian-Australian and one Portuguese artists and researchers (further, the researchers). Although the research team carried out several other workshops and activities globally, this paper focuses on the two Arctic contexts.

Both workshops were based on a framework where the artists developed their individual art pieces freely interpreting the theme “the margin” and other associated themes, while also participating in collective processes, thereby contributing material, visual and narrative data for the research. The unifying narrative processes in both locations were constituted by group discussions and individual interviews. In both locations the artists were invited to participate in collaborative art-making processes: in Rovaniemi it encompassed making a collective felt, while in Murmansk a life story mandala process was facilitated through acrylic painting on textiles (Miettinen, Sarantou & Akimenko 2016: 75).

The exploration of the project themes through art and research opened up complexities and sensitivities. Marginality is, perhaps, the most challenging theme to discuss. While a body of research on the topic exists in feminist and postcolonial studies, healthcare, pedagogy and other disciplines (e.g., hooks, 2000; Ferguson et al., 1992; Hall, Stevens & Meleis, 1994; Mücke, 1992), when put in concrete interpersonal or community contexts, it becomes an increasingly complicated matter. The word margin is commonly used in the meaning of a space “outside the main body” of something (margin, 2017). When translated into Russian, предел, this term acquires the meaning of an unsurpassable limit or point. The established semantic contraposition between the edge and the center (e.g., Jacobs, 1996; Gibson, 2015) places strain on those on the edge, rendering them the vulnerable party. This complex relationship has been problematized throughout the research, raising critical discussions in the two different contexts, while some participants acknowledged the lack of understanding of another Arctic edge: I am originally from the South of Finland, but I have lived in Rovaniemi now for four years. What I like about Finland is working together and creating great things together. That is what I want to take to Murmansk, but it is a hard question, because I know nothing about Murmansk (Participant, Rovaniemi, 2016).

In quantifiable terms, scholars have cited certain constraints on different aspects of life in the peripheral Arctic. Petrov (2014: 152) referred to “limited evidence of the creative class’s transformative role in the periphery”. This may be a result of limitations in resources and opportunities on the one hand, but also a lack of research and documentation that occurs in the peripheries. These limitations, fueled by environmental limits, contribute to Hardt’s notion that Arctic art and design are not favored with “total artistic freedom” (2012: 57). Coutts advises that a focus on the social and cultural will widen perspectives of the obvious climatic and geographic aspects of the Arctic (2012: 49). Both authors refer to the complex socio-cultural landscapes reinforced by identity formations and mobilities of people in the region.

Through a discussion of the case of two workshops, this paper addresses the social and cultural aspects of the two Arctic locations, alongside environmental factors. Art, craft and design practices discussed in this paper, despite being underpinned by challenging circumstances in the Arctic,

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contribute to the body of practice-led artistic knowledge supported by narrative functions and identity work. The research paper analyses concrete artefacts, narratives and identity processes that came about in the two workshops. The discussion on how knowledge is generated through artistic and narrative practices is followed by comparisons of the two contexts and related identity formations. The paper concludes by discussion of the findings and analysis of how the social and cultural aspects of the case study contribute to the understanding of Arctic identities.

Generating Knowledge through Artistic and Narrative Practices As noted by Exner-Pirot, there is a regional component to the issues of knowledge transfer: “the biggest challenge to Arctic innovation is that the accumulated knowledge often remains tacit knowledge, not explicit knowledge” (2015: 4). The processes outlined below allow for a more efficient transition between these two forms of knowledge.

Nimkulrat et al. note how professional design practitioners tend to depart from “their experiences and ‘specialist tacit knowing’ during design processes” (Nimkulrat, Niedderer & Evans 2015: 5).

Art-making processes also bear strong potential for generating knowledge that may be used and applied by the makers and researchers of artistic practice, thus, transitioning from tacit to explicit.

This premise is the basis of practice-based (or practice-led) and artistic research (e.g., Mäkelä & Routarinne, 2006; Koskinen, 2009). Practice serves as knowledge generating in all its stages – from ideation, through prototyping and making, to the final artefact, leaving the artist-researcher not only in the position to create artefacts, “but also [to] document, contextualize and interpret the artefacts, as well as the process of making” (Mäkelä & Nimkulrat, 2011: 1). Thus, skill itself can be regarded as a method, as noted by Mäkelä and Latva-Somppi in relation to craft-making where “craft skill is used to narrate” as the “application of traditional techniques and materials places the work in a historical context” (2011: 57).

Personal stories lie in the core of this study’s data and knowledge generation. While they start off as elements of tacit and subjective knowledge, stories further become explicit knowledge when put into words and artefacts, documented, critically and empathetically reflected upon and disseminated. Personal experiences, especially those that are narrated and documented, may contribute, much like traditional making, to the understanding of historical and geopolitical contexts, mapping socio-geographic formations and the realities communities face. Derived from the discussion raised by Mills about understanding of the larger context in terms of its meaning for the inner and external lives of a variety of individuals (1959), this idea further developed into a political argument referring to the connection between personal experience and larger social and political structures: “the personal is political” (e.g., Crenshaw, 1991). An alternative approach to modernist objectivity is viewing the knowing individual “as a subject who is conscious of her situatedness, history and discursive nature”, as opposed to being an external observer (Haraway, 1991, as cited in Mäkelä & Latva-Somppi, 2011: 38).

The narrative function, when attributed a space and time for sharing, empowers art- and craftmaking. Narratives allow for knowledge transfer that enables the understanding of multiple contexts and backgrounds of art and craft makers and their communities. This function is aptly referred to by Somers: “it is through narrativity that we come to know, understand, and make sense of the social world, and it is through narratives and narrativity that we constitute our social identities” (1994: 606). Somers (1994) refers to the notion of narrative identities, a concept also

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addressed by Paul Ricoeur (1992: 114-116), that come about when individuals negotiate their stable and changing identities through narratives which are internalized or expressed by using personal stories and communication. Narrative identities are intrinsically connected to temporality, as “narratives are constellations of relationships embedded in time and space,” – Somers explains, which means that identities are shaped during connecting events within a “social network of relationships” (1994: 616). Taking note of these gives focus and depth to narrative-based research, as it may not be taken for granted “that people with similar attributes will share common experiences of social life, let alone be moved to common forms and meanings of social action” (Somers, 1994: 635).

It is often emphasized how building of a discursive space enables narrative and sharing processes, such as “interaction, polyphony, letting-go and the progressive unfolding of thoughts are supported, benefiting ways of knowing, narrative (re)construction, sensory perception and capacities to act” (Eaves, 2014: 147). The project described in the paper created a variety of discursive spaces for artists to share identity and art-making processes, including face-to-face processes, web-based platforms, seminars and exhibitions. The use of video recordings was another platform for realizing performativity and narrativity, as well as data collection. Creation of digital spaces increased the transition between tacit and explicit knowledge. Additionally, digitalization facilitated connections between the communities through web-based sharing platforms, such as video channels, social media, blogs and publications. Connections were also established in physical spaces through exhibitions. These methods encouraged cycles of knowledge transfer, creating spaces for making and sharing, documentation, enabling conversation and collating feedback. Face-to-face meetings and direct knowledge and practice exchange often depends on the availability of resources, but virtual exchange offers ways to overcome these challenges.

Case Murmansk One must not focus only on the margins. The center and the edge are inseparable from one another. Their connection is very strong and noticeable, but it is complex and not always obvious… [In our work] the edge is treated not as something negative, but as something welcome and celebrated, as a determinant of quality. In my opinion, the limit is always where it is. One cannot move it, only cross it.

– Participant, Murmansk, 2016

The four-day workshop Повести о Пределах (a Russian analogy to the title Narrating the Marginal), was hosted by the Art and Service Department of Murmansk Arctic State University (MASU) with a group of students and graduates of the department, two young men and fourteen women.

The participants explored personal interpretations of the concept of margin. During the first day of the workshop the participants and some researchers painted life story mandalas as an introductory activity to the workshop (see Figure 1). This process provided space for the participants to share personal life stories. The narrative ability of making processes and the painted mandalas themselves created new connections and empathy for the research process. The Murmansk students then presented their ideas for the personal projects they planned to complete during that week.

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Figure 1. Visualising personal life histories through life story mandala artistic tool, Murmansk, December 2016.

Credit: Daria Akimenko

In terms of narrative sharing, the workshop process presented some limitations to the researchers themselves, who had to rely on their Russian-born colleague for translation and facilitation during the activities. Three MASU students communicated in English, although most students had a fair to good understanding of the language.

The artists’ interpretations of the themes were often subjectively approached with a focus on personal limits, while exemplary objective limits were linked to their frustrations with obtaining visas for travelling internationally as well as climatic and environmental challenges. One participant noted, for example: “In my art piece I would like to reflect on inner limits, on how they influence one’s perception of the world around,” while another added: “I wouldn’t want to sound banal, but it is obvious that living in Murmansk, one is faced with climatic and geographic limitations, such as cold temperatures and darkness… Through my abstract painting I would like to express the feelings of a person living in such conditions and still thriving to find inspiration, despite everything” (Participants, Murmansk, 2016).

Narratives’ rationality is about explaining, expressing, understanding and constituting human life as a whole, and this is the value and role of story in human life (Ricoeur, 2004: 243). The value of storytelling towards building social connections is widely appreciated as it brings different people and their values together. Narrative allows people to cross cultural boundaries, because stories emerge from and journey through all cultures, encouraging encounter and mutual understanding among different people, hospitality, sharing, as well as the interest we share in each other (Petrilli & Ponzio, 2000: 47).

The artist Oxana Loginova commented on the importance of the narrative ability of artefacts that continues, acceding to different journeys, once the artefacts are removed from their makers (Sarantou, 2014): [The bookmark I made] is not just something written, like “Hello” and “How are you”, because you can do that on Facebook. If people receive something material that you made with your hands it is different, because you send your warmth to another person, and maybe your love or the mood you were in while you made it.

From this bookmark I made, the person who receives it will remember me while reading (Loginova, interview, December 13, 2016).

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The approach to narrative in this project was followed with the purpose to discover the value of stories in identity creating contexts and as means of speaking of the lives they are interwoven with.

Judith Butler (1990) contributed significantly to an understanding of the performative aspects of identities. Narratives, as identity performances (Butler, 1990), have a significant role in this project as they are able to communicate ontological aspects associated with identity formation, including the tensions that are associated with notions of “self” and “other”. Identity performances, some bearing strong relations to the Arctic environments, were also concretized in this project through artistic outcomes and artefacts. In the narration above the participant explains how her personal stories are woven into and embedded in her artefact. However, her artefact making is a performative expression of identities and the concretization of the process is the making, turning materiality into an artefact that “speaks”.

The artist Antonina Gorbacheva adopted a social approach by creating a video that discusses the role of a woman in facing limits and overcoming daily obstacles. She says: Women [in the North] often face obstacles. For example, they may not get a job where “male force” is more valued. There is an obvious discrimination. At the same time we know that our women have been to space, can educate six children as a single parent and so on… I want to show the limits they face and the way they break through those limits due to their inner strength (Gorbacheva, interview, December 13, 2016).

Antonina proposed her video to be a part of an installation, alongside posters and a textile t-shirt citing “I’m Strong”, the title of the work (see Figure 2). This piece became more than an artwork, a political action of rendering audible gender issues in her region. In the reality where feminist actions are often frowned upon and gender roles are still very strictly defined, Antonina’s work is an artistic step towards “recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual” (Crenshaw, 1991: 1241). In the film she visualizes the real stories of her female friends and placed herself as a collective character symbolically “breaking through,” reaching the top of a snow-covered fell in the end of the video.

Figure 2. Making process and the installation “I’m Strong”, Murmansk/Rovaniemi, December 2016. Credit: Daria Akimenko; a still frame from the video “I’m Strong” by Antonina Gorbacheva.

Participants in Murmansk employed narrative to express their emotions, experiences, hopes and frustrations with their circumstances on the one hand, while making sense of their situations on the other. One stated: “[I experience] never-ending fluctuation from the negative to the expressive, from the empty to the replete”, while another mentioned: “I view my life as a map with checkpoints I grew through. And there are points and bonuses I gained by helping people. And there are paths of other ‘heroes’, people” (Participants, Murmansk, 2016).

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I wanted to study in a completely different place. But as I finished high school quite early, and places like St. Petersburg and Kazan are very far from here, I was not ready psychologically. That’s why I entered here, in Murmansk, started studying and have no regrets. I think that if you want to study, you will always achieve it regardless of the conditions. As for the teachers, you can always find a person who would lead and support you. We find opportunities for self-realisation, also thanks to collaboration with other Universities (Participant, Murmansk, 2016).

This reference bears in itself indirect insights into the reality of life and education in this place, for instance, young people’s mobility away from Murmansk, social pressure for starting university immediately after high school (common throughout Russia), struggle to find your artistic self and a suitable studying/working context “regardless of the conditions.” A variety of reflections and personal relationships with margins were documented during the study. Artists’ stories present a wider, complex and informal understanding of living in the margins, revealing the tensions presented by their life circumstances. This narration illustrates that some are even drawn to and find inspiration in the tensions presented by margins: When we first started working on this project, I thought that probably I have no margins or limits and that the whole thing is not about me, but I tried to find a topic about the others. But it is hard to make art when it is not about you. Everything we do is about ourselves. By the third day of the workshop I realised fully that everything I work on is a stimulus to my creativity and movement ahead. That all the time I come across obstacles, margins and limits that I have to overcome. And when I don’t feel those margins and the need to struggle, I get too relaxed. Therefore, any discomfort, all the minuses and pluses of studying here, of living, working and creating in this city formed me the way I am. My whole creativity is based on overcoming (Participant, Murmansk, 2016).

The artists’ stories deliver evidence that the term margin is too wide to define, as it is often disconnected from the determinism of only geographical, climatic or economic factors due to margins also being shaped by cultural, social and political variables. The tensions that margins present not only shape identities, but also the underpinning narratives of lives reflected in artistic practices and outcomes.

Case Rovaniemi I don’t believe that the world has edges. There is no center either, namely.

– Participant, Rovaniemi, 2016

Narrating the Marginal was the title of the other Arctic workshop that was hosted by the Faculty of Art and Design of the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. The group of fourteen participants, three men and eleven women, included local artists and international students of the University as well as practitioners from Moldova, Estonia, Turkey, Australia, Namibia and the UK. The themes connecting the artists on professional and personal levels included migration, belonging and exploration of marginality in various contexts.

The objectives and questions the artists chose to explore varied in scale, direction and focus. Some would inquire and aim to stimulate a discussion about global topics, such as “stereotyping, uninformed value judgments and the role of ego” (Participant from Namibia, 2016), while others asked questions that participants could relate to on a personal level. A Finnish participant, for example, sought to understand and cope with the transformation between different roles that have

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challenged her perception of self by asking “who or what exists in between these roles”. Some artists had more introverted, practice- and material-oriented objectives that contributed unique data through “creating a series of forms that present the characteristics of the material such as rawness, and characteristics of myself, such as being woman and designer, while showing different levels of simplicity and complexity” (Participant from Turkey, 2016).

The artists reflected upon the discussed themes from very different viewpoints: referring to cityscapes, daily practices, inner processes and tangible textures. The produced artworks included two performances, a group game, two video art pieces, two textile works (felt and weaving) and two mix-media artefacts.

In collective sharing the narratives varied from general inquiries to reflections on personal position within identity systems. One way or another identities remained an important theme that was widely explored by several participants in Rovaniemi. The understanding of how people combine multiple identities as they remain relatively transcendent, fluid, overlapping and context sensitive (Appiah, 2007: 100), was central to many discussions. One of the participants noted that “identity is how other people see you”, while another added: “we talk so much about identity, as if there is one and it relates to the other one, but I think it’s so much more fluid and so much more noisy and chaotic” (Participants, Rovaniemi, 2016). Another artist mentioned: I just don’t think that I have one [identity]. I definitely have characteristics and things that I like and so on, but I never feel that any of them is essential… In what concerns “identity markers”, I am always on the easy side. So maybe I am just oblivious to the problems that other people are facing (Participant, Rovaniemi, 2016).

These expressions illustrate that individuals have to negotiate and perform their plural identities often trying to make sense of them through identity processing, such as combining identities (Lawler, 2008: 3-5). Another participant shared an insight into her own identity work: “I have a process now where I am trying to accept myself as I am, because I noticed that I look at myself through the eyes of the others” (Participant, Rovaniemi, 2016).

Identities are formed between, rather than within, persons due to individuals being immersed in environments and societies, living their lives as they unfold into the myriad pathways of their textured worlds (Lawler, 2008: 3). Identity processes are not necessarily clear-cut and smooth, thus individuals have to manage their contradicting identities that are often driven by affect, such as feelings of belonging and unbelonging, to be different from or the same as the “other” or by being part of a selected group that is “different” or the “same” (ibid). One of the participants shared a fitting personal observation that supports this point: “I am two different people – when I talk Estonian I am one person, when I speak English I am somebody else. And I can choose which one to be depending on a situation” (Participant, Rovaniemi, 2016).

A Finnish artist Priska Falin chose to reflect upon identity formation and its margins from a spatial point of view through the means of video: Sometimes the perception of identity is built on clearly definable roles. Can identities be defined by the hidden, unnoticed or unrecognisable? Eight different localities in the city of Rovaniemi are presented in the video In Between. These localities are in between the central, familiar or promoted locations that tourists or local people of Rovaniemi visit. These localities are the unnoticed in between spaces that people may pass through regularly as they seem mundane. This artistic Narrating Identities through Art-making on the Margins

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representation explores the relationships between identities and roles through these marginal locations (Falin, interview, December 5, 2016).

Artists also reflected on how they relate to identities that come about through materialities and artmaking processes and how these shape notions of belonging and unbelonging. The artistresearcher Bilge Aktas conducts a study of felting as a craftform in rural Turkey and Finland.

Through her felted installation (see Figure 3) she reflected on materiality: I chose working with felt since it is a significantly vibrant material. I perceive the practice of felting more as manipulating the material rather than making an artefact.

Due to the strong characteristics of the material, each piece becomes unique within a shared sameness… These pieces can stand on their own individually, but they can make a statement when they create a community, too (Aktas, interview, December 5, 2016).

Figure 3. Making process and the artwork by Bilge Merve Aktas, Rovaniemi, December 2016. Credit: Daria Akimenko.

The same material evoked polar associations and reflections in different makers giving an insight into their artistic practices, personalities and identities. The Estonian-Australian artist shared in a group discussion referring to working with wool while making a collective felt: “As I was making this thing, I realised that I really hate fibre… it’s so unpleasant… there’s something so vague about it. I work a lot with metal and wood and I much prefer it, it’s so concrete”.

A Finnish artist Mirjam Yeboah brought to the workshop her project of vulva-shaped jewelry, each piece unique in shape and color, both a work of craft and a political statement (see Figure 4).

The series was created before, outside of the workshop context, as an artistic exploration of the subject. But as the artist went on showing her work, she found the subject increasingly sensitive and difficult to talk about. Mirjam shared: “I don’t think we talk enough about vaginas and gender and different kinds of intersecting personalities and identities. [We don’t] show it in the way that is true, maybe shocking for some, but also beautiful” (Yeboah, interview, December 6, 2016). In the workshop she wanted to collect reflections and stories, anonymous or open, regarding the subject and see if her work could gain weight and value through the discussion of gender issues and both social and personal boundaries. The artist wondered: “…what kind of people can talk Akimenko, Sarantou & Miettinen

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freely about this topic and what reactions it causes in others. It’s very interesting to see and use it in some way” (Yeboah, interview, December 6, 2016).

Discussions on the politics of the margins and on how marginalities are produced were enabled in the group context and provided additional research data. In the Rovaniemi case, more than in Murmansk, the notion of margin was extrapolated and used in its multiple meanings, including such specific ones, as a margin of a book or textile. One of the big questions raised during the workshop was about how margins, or states of marginality, are defined and by whom.

Figure 4. Group discussion and “GENI”, vulva-shaped jewellery by Mirjam Yeboah, Rovaniemi, December 2016. Credit: Mirjam Yeboah; still frame from the footage of a group discussion.

Plural Arctic Identities Through physical artefacts, recordings and the exhibition (see Figure 5), the stories of the Arctic participants became powerful as they were concrete representations of their individual and collective identities. Although the meanings surrounding the artefacts transformed, as the works from two Arctic locations entered a conversation with one another in the exhibition space of Arktikum, Rovaniemi, the pieces retained their unique identities and site-specificities.

The interaction between the two Arctic edges discussed here has obviously not been the first of its kind. Rovaniemi often initiates, receives and hosts international art and research forums and students from Murmansk and the rest of the world. Murmansk gave the researchers a feeling of a “cosmopolitan” city, rather well-connected to Central Russia and the rest of the Arctic (through a major seaport). Nonetheless, at least in the field of artistic and educational collaborations, there is a tendency of Murmansk community looking up to Rovaniemi as “the center” that is hard to reach due to limited transport infrastructure, scarce funding opportunities and strict immigration policies. This implies that the “center-margin” equation exists even within geographical margins themselves, which fuels further questions, for example, whether the notion of an “iron curtain” continues to place strain on mobility and transfer between these two Arctic locations that are, in fact, not so geographically distant.

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Figure 5. Exhibition “Every Margin Tells a Story”, Rovaniemi, December 2016. Artistic outcomes of the Rovaniemi and Murmansk workshops formed the exhibition that was hosted at Arktikum in Rovaniemi from December 2016 to February 2017. Credit: Daria Akimenko; Satu Miettinen.

The comparison between the two presented contexts can be problematized: the Rovaniemi group was diversified, with participants not necessarily representing Arctic locations, while the group in Murmansk was more homogenous in terms of their places of birth and residence. In this respect, a clarification of the Russian context is required. While most of the Murmansk participants were “ethnically” Russian, at least five of them cited being born and having spent their childhood elsewhere. They referred to themselves as being “from the South”. The southern regions of Russia can be as far as 3000 km away from Murmansk, which is as far as South European countries are from Rovaniemi. This supports the idea that migration and mobility remain, as they did historically, narratives of the Arctic, enriching in various ways socio-cultural landscapes of its many locations.

The relativity of the notions of center and margin comes into the picture: Rovaniemi may be perceived as an artistic, educational, touristic center to the people of the Kola Peninsula, while Murmansk is central to many economic and trade processes in the Russian Arctic. Center and margin remain in continuous interplay and are contextual depending on many socio-cultural variables.

Several of the participants in Rovaniemi were doctoral candidates (between the ages of 25 and 50) who were able to process themes related to marginality on epistemological levels, thus discussing the themes in depth. This group represented random identities with limited relation to the Arctic region. The participants from MASU were undergraduate students and graduates between the ages of 20 and 28 and therefore they approached the topics of marginality and identity in more personal and direct ways. However, one of the authors of this paper, who has lived and worked in Finnish Lapland, but was born and raised in a peripheral Russian region, notes that a rather insightful image of the two groups from the different locations can be grasped.

Some Arctic communities with very versatile demographics focus on overcoming at least some aspects of marginality, like the University of Lapland community that stands strong against being externally marginalized. Other communities, like the Murmansk group that is composed of different people sharing histories, strong and unifying pasts, educational approaches and other factors such as the divide between the West and the East, have different obstacles in overcoming marginalization. The researchers experienced very physical and tangible peripheries while traveling Akimenko, Sarantou & Miettinen

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between Rovaniemi and Murmansk on dilapidated roads and crossing stringent visa check points.

Arctic realities are not homogenous. The striking differences between the two communities reinforced the importance of sharing and exchange between Arctic artists and other global communities.

While the two Arctic groups differed from one another in terms of skillsets and backgrounds, the researchers noted strong contrasts in their approaches to theory and practice. The artists in Rovaniemi initiated an informed and inquisitive discussion challenging some of the key themes and concepts of the project, such as empowerment, identity construction and marginality. The group of Murmansk artists and designers, in contrast, focused on personal narratives and delivered modest and intuitive sharing processes.

During both the workshops artists’ narratives illustrated the importance of location, place and space in their identity processes. One participant commented: “I am from Istanbul, currently I am living in Helsinki. I like how Istanbul has lots of stories and Helsinki allows me to focus on my personal story.” Another said: “If we talk about Russia, I like straightforwardness and the tragedy here most of all. Especially, I appreciate those in the creative fields” (Participants, Rovaniemi and Murmansk, 2016).

Stronger divisions in gender roles were noted amongst the Murmansk group although participants from both locations commented that they do not perceive any differences in their approach to artmaking and artistic practices due to their gender. Two Murmansk artists noted: “Chasing after equality with men many women burn out, lose their inner fire. When trying to cope with heavy tasks she is not meant to cope with, a woman, the keeper of the family hearth, loses her special qualities,” and “I pictured myself in pink, because I’m a girl” (Participants, Murmansk, 2016).

The differences in the two groups’ artistic and academic approaches shaped the workshop experiences of the researchers. The Rovaniemi group proved to have a more conceptual and explorative approach to making and understanding art and craft. The Murmansk group demonstrated thorough and advanced technique as well as a more “classical” academic approach despite working with contemporary artistic means. The identities expressed through art-making were diverse, illustrating the complexities of Arctic identity processes.

Conclusion The assumption that similarities between the two Arctic contexts exist may prove to be incorrect.

Despite superficial similarities, the participants’ individual and collective identities (based on geography, personal backgrounds, working methods, education) vary greatly, thus revealing context-specific realities, strengths and vulnerabilities. Not only the narrative identities of individuals, but also collective Arctic identities should be considered and approached minding preconceptions and generalizations.

The careful documentation of the activities through film, photo and sound was not only a successful method for the representation of the research, but also became a powerful tool for all the researchers to process and disseminate data after fieldwork. The use of video documentation offered a platform for expressing implicit knowledge, thus rendering it explicit through narratives and identity performances. Working with people and their communities, transferring knowledge through art-making and narrative processes, stimulates an appreciation for the role of both mind and heart in fieldwork. While tangible and quantifiable data are conclusive and comprehensive, it Narrating Identities through Art-making on the Margins

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is the intangible data deriving from the intersection of the individual and collective, concurrent and conflicting, intuitive and rational that challenges and fuels research in meaningful ways.

The project achieved the intended documentation of artefact creation underpinned by marginal circumstances. The two artist communities discussed in this paper meet the definition of marginality – the condition of being peripheralized, mainly due to the geographical component (Hall, Stevens & Meleis, 1994: 25). It becomes apparent, however, that even though the margin may be often objectively defined through quantifiable means, there are also subjective, very personal ways of viewing margins or the absence thereof. The research discusses and provides concrete examples of how the creation of different collaborative and individual art pieces in the localities in question sums up personal reflections on the margin as a concept, and how the capturing of personal narratives promotes a better understanding of and between the different contexts.

The documented narratives were related to living, shifting roles and identities related to “making it as an artist” in remote areas. The narratives revealed that artists and makers who live and conduct their creative practices in the geographical margins, specifically in the Far North, face socioeconomic, climatic, historical and other challenges conditioned by the remoteness of these regions.

The condition of relative isolation may impact, both positively and negatively, on the quality and productivity of artistic processes, but it may also impact on subjective realities of art-makers. The use of multimedia narrative offers ways to work through and cope with the identity tensions related to displacement, marginality and isolation allowing to put forward, as poetically noted by bell hooks, “a message from that space in the margin that is a site of creativity and power, that inclusive space where we recover ourselves, where we move in solidarity” (hooks, 1990: 209).

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Gibson, D. W. (2015). The edge becomes the center: An oral history of gentrification in the 21st century. New York: The Overlook Press.

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Developing Metrics to Guide Sustainable Development of Arctic Cities: Progress & Challenges Luis Suter, Carrie Schaffner, Carlson Giddings, Robert Orttung & Dmitry Streletskiy

This article describes the preliminary results of an effort to produce an Arctic Urban Sustainability Index that will have applications for researchers and policymakers. The project aims to help policymakers define and implement sustainability policies by measuring progress towards sustainability, compare across cities, and trace development over time. Existing studies within the region provide little analysis specifically addressing urban development. This study, under the auspices of the National Science Foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) project, aims to fill this gap in Arctic research by promoting urban sustainability, with a focus on optimal city planning and management to ensure the interests of future generations. Collecting the data to prepare the Index has proven challenging across a number of dimensions and efforts to address those challenges are discussed. While the Index described here remains a work in progress, we believe the process of thinking through issues related to measuring sustainability systematically will ultimately deliver useful results for researchers and policymakers.

The Arctic region has seen urban growth in resource-rich areas even as the populations in other parts of the region shrink (Howe, 2009; Dybbroe et al., 2010; Heleniak, 2010; Heleniak, 2013). A majority of the Arctic population resides in urban environments. Expanding cities provide housing, jobs, and education for human populations (Wu et al., 2011; Day & Ellis, 2013), but also impart negative effects such as pollution, encroachment on open land, and contributions to impacts on the surrounding natural environment far beyond the settlement limits (McKinney, 2008). Typically, research in the Arctic has focused on a range of specific and discrete issues, including modeling Arctic climate and weather conditions (Johannessen et al, 2004); permafrost (Shiklomanov et al, 2010); marine and shipping issues (Arctic Council, 2009); oil and gas development (Gautier et al, 2009); foreign policy and geopolitical concerns (Heininen & Nicol, 2007; Exner-Pirot, 2013); and â&#x20AC;&#x153;decolonizedâ&#x20AC;? research with Indigenous peoples (Smith, 2013).

Focusing on cities is crucial because they represent a space where these issues intersect.

Cities, including those in the Arctic, act as a focus where intense human-environment interactions take place (Dybbroe, 2008; Rasmussen, 2011; Streletskiy & Shiklomanov, 2016). The continual growth of the global urban population has invigorated efforts to define and measure urban sustainability (Science for Environment Policy, 2015). On the global scale, there have been several Luis Suter and Dmitry Streletskiy are in the Department of Geography, Carrie Schaffner and Carlson Giddings are at the Elliott School of International Affairs, and Robert Orttung is at the GW Sustainability Collaborative, at The George Washington University, USA.

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important projects undertaken to quantify and track levels of sustainability in urban areas, including most recently the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN CSD, 2007; Todorov & Marinova, 2009; Li et al., 2014; WCCD, 2017; UN, 2015). Unfortunately, Arctic cities have been vastly underrepresented in these broader research efforts. Meanwhile, the Arctic region has been undergoing accelerated and significant changes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; climatically, socially, economically, and politically (Anisimov et al., 2010; Heleniak, 2013; Jakobsson et al., 2014; Underdal, 2013; Young, 2009).

Observed changes have spurred interest in research tracking the evolution of Arctic cities within these individual thematic components (AMAP 2017; Larsen et al., 2015; Longergan et al., 1993; Shiklomanov et al., 2017). The Arctic Urban Sustainability Index seeks to contribute to building the knowledge base on these issues by improving our understanding of the complex linkages among them.

This article lays out a research framework for measuring urban sustainability in the Arctic region, addresses the challenges in quantifying sustainability within an easy-to-use index, and shows best practices for making this data and analysis accessible to policymakers and the public. The goal is to create a synergetic tool measuring Arctic urban sustainability across economic, social, environmental, governance, and planning dimensions. The central research question for the project is: How can Arctic urban sustainability be measured and how can the likelihood of progress on sustainability challenges be assessed? Our central hypothesis posits that a comprehensive tool for measuring sustainability efforts across the full range of scales and mechanisms, as well as the research process of creating such a tool, will trigger efforts to improve urban sustainability planning.

In order to start the conversation around measuring Arctic urban sustainability, researchers created a preliminary Index using a small set of indicators, which were most universally accessible for a limited sample of Arctic cities. The selection of indicators was informed through a series of consultations, meetings and workshops with researchers, local politicians, and other Arctic urban community members. The preliminary dataset was used to synthesize data visualization samples and was presented at several conferences and workshops to generate feedback and interaction from the wider Arctic research community. Challenges related to data quality and accessibility, combined with the limited scope of this preliminary analysis in terms of indicators and cities, suggest that the preliminary results are far from being an accurate measure of urban sustainability in the Arctic. However, by undertaking this initial phase, researchers identified several priorities and best practices for improving the project. The presentations and discussions of the research have initiated valuable exchanges within the broader scientific and policy community, generating feedback and engagement with the research team which will help drive forward the project (Arctic PIRE Workshop, 2017; Streletskiy, 2017; Schaffner et al., 2017; Suter, 2017). The reactions and support this preliminary Index has garnered indicate that the continued improvement of metrics to track sustainability will likely encourage improved urban planning models and benefit Arctic cities.

Defining Sustainability

As with intangible concepts like democracy, justice, and innovation, the substance of sustainability can be hard to define and measure. We start from the assumption that there is a concrete core to sustainability and work to quantify its key components. The conceptual roots of sustainability date back to the late seventeenth century and have evolved over time (Caradonna, 2014: 6).

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Contemporary definitions for sustainable cities focus on using resources in a way that does not impinge on future generations (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). In looking specifically at Arctic urban sustainability, we apply the U.S. National Academies of Sciences three pillars of sustainability: economy, environment, and society (Schaffer & Vollmer, 2010) in an effort to fill existing knowledge gaps (Petrov et al., 2017: 64). Sustainability science seeks to view the world in big picture terms and understand how the various components “depend on one another, interact, and co-evolve” (Matson, Clark & Andersson, 2016). We implement these ideas by seeking to integrate concern for the environment with a broader understanding that communities need a thriving economy and jobs, as well as measures of social justice, in order to thrive.

In a review of the literature, Portney argues that the existing indices tend to mix policy measures with outcome measures (Portney, 2013: 41). He calls for creating an Index of Taking Sustainability Seriously, with the caveat that there still is not enough empirical data to state with confidence how much specific actions, policies or programs influence objective measures of sustainability.

Nevertheless, cities that “take sustainability seriously” are presumably making progress toward greater sustainability. In order to avoid mixing outcome and policy measures, we define sustainability along five dimensions: the first three measure sustainability outcomes – economic, social, and environmental – while the last two focus on efforts by cities to achieve these outcomes – governance and planning.

Defining an Arctic City The idea of a city being defined by something other than population and economics is hardly new.

In 1937, urban historian Lewis Mumford wrote a philosophical piece called “What is a city?” in which he argues that “the city, in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity” (Mumford, 1937: 8). In a 1947 Science article, J. Q. Stewart introduced social physics and used allometric parameters to define physical urban forms as a result of a long series of events, technological developments, and social preferences (Stewart, 1947). More contemporary theorists agree that cities are not merely defined as a dense agglomeration of people, but a place that serves a specific social function. This approach defined the city as a space containing a “contact system, [where] a set of interactions and flows define the kinds of the network that enable creativity and innovation to thrive and grow” (Batty & Ferguson, 2011: 755). Likewise, William Frey and Zachary Zimmer were not satisfied with the limitations of the definition of a city as merely an agglomeration of people, proposing instead that we view cities as ‘Functional Community Areas’” (Frey & Zimmer, 2011). These theories informed our decisions in refining our research scope to communities that met a given population threshold, but also were significant in serving a defined set of regional functions.

In considering urban settlements in the Arctic, it quickly becomes apparent that they do not closely resemble cities elsewhere in the world, and cannot be defined by conventional parameters. The U.S. Census Bureau defines an urban area as any agglomeration of more than 50,000 people and classifies areas between 2,500 and 50,000 as urban clusters (Bureau of the Census, 2010). A common definition for Arctic urban areas during the Soviet era was a settlement of over 12,000 residents, where 85% of the population was engaged in the non-agricultural sectors (Heleniak, 2013: 3), but this definition has also evolved over time. In Iceland, localities of 200 or more

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population are classified as urban (UN Demographic Yearbook, 2015). In the Arctic we often find small urban communities filling the same functional niches as bigger “urban areas” at lower latitudes. Cities of smaller population and low population density can still serve vital administrative functions for government, sites for manufacturing and industry, and centers for social institutions.

Other agglomeration services are also in play within these cities: opportunities for learning, information spillover (the rapid transition of ideas), persistent lower costs of moving people and goods, and the allure of higher wages for employees and higher productivity levels for employers (Brunn, 2016).

The Arctic is not a strictly defined region, with circumpolar countries and international organizations delineating this border varyingly. While the Arctic Circle defines the physical area approximately above 66°30’ N, the region is generally considered more broadly. In Sweden, the county of Västerbotten is classified as Arctic, though a majority of the territory lies below the Arctic Circle (Husebekk et al., 2015). The US Arctic Research and Policy Act uses a strict definition of the Arctic Circle, except in Alaska where significantly more territory is added (US Arctic Research Commission, 2009). Previous research, such as the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), considers these variations and generally accepts a wider region to be Arctic. However other prominent organizations including the Arctic Council Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (EPPR) working group, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), and the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) draw the border differently as well. This project defines the Arctic region as the largest possible area encompassed by this agglomeration of Arctic research organization borders (Figure 1).

These varying demographic, geographical, and functional classifications of Arctic urban areas forced the team to create a circumpolar definition of Arctic cities, rooted in the practicality of undertaking the research project. These considerations informed our decision-making process in classifying an Arctic city as settlement of over 12,000 population located within the Arctic region as defined in defined above. However, cities outside this region have been added based on expert opinion. For example, Yakutsk, which is outside the Arctic borders is underlined by permafrost and widely considered as a major Arctic city. The demographic and geographical definition resulted in an initial list of 50 cities (Appendix A). This list is not definitive, as more cities could be added during the project, based on advice from experts and community feedback. Because of practical considerations, the preliminary index focused on cities where the research team had experience and contacts with local stakeholders. This process identified a list of 12 cities, which are featured in analysis below. Table 1 features these cities and their most recently available (2016/2017) population statistics, sourced from countries’ national statistical databases.

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Figure 1. A map of the cities being featured in the pilot Arctic Urban Sustainability Index, and all Arctic cities that meet the spatial and demographic criteria of this research project Map Author: Luis Suter

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Global Challenges in Quantifying Urban Sustainability Designing a set of measures to assess urban sustainability across these areas remains a challenge; even among the 12 cities selected for the pilot index there is diversity in their microenvironments, politics, and socioeconomic organization. Attempts to quantify complex subjects such as sustainability into indexes and ranking systems have sometimes been criticized as being “incoherently defined, anchored in confused and untested theories, measured idiosyncratically, and subject to manipulation by both the raters and the rated, leading to unintended, unwanted consequences” (Snyder & Cooley, 2015: 79). These concerns reflect the challenge of measuring and communicating the complexity of sustainability and the interactions between sustainability categories such as economics, society, politics, and environment. This criticism has stimulated universities and funding organizations to support increased multidisciplinary analysis, and encouraged the National Academy of Sciences to study ways to promote interdisciplinary team science (Cooke & Hilton, 2015).

In 2009, a group of researchers at the University of Quebec analyzed the use of sustainable development indicators in seventeen urban settings, finding 118 different indicators being tracked across these cities (Tanguay et al., 2009: 24). This diversity was attributed to the broad definitions of sustainability (and equally broad interpretations) being used within the different communities.

The research showed that there was a strong correlation between the number of indicators in an index and the type of actors driving the creation of the index, where studies endorsed by municipal leaders tended to favor a “structure comprising fewer indicators, intended to achieve simple and quantifiable objectives, [while] scientists prefer[red] a minimum of aggregation and, if possible, simplification, in order to be faithful to the concepts” (Tanguay et al., 2009: 14).

The complexity and variety of sustainability definitions and sustainability metrics increase the difficulty of translating science into effective policy. The difficulties in building this particular bridge between science and policy are well documented (McCool & Stankey, 2004; Weigold, 2001), and highlight the need for more bilateral understanding between scientists and policymakers.

Preparing indicators that are scientifically sound and policy relevant demonstrates the importance of knowledge production among researchers, political leadership, and other local stakeholders.

Dutch researchers Niemeijer and De Groot found that the best way to find a compromise between a desire to standardize for comparative purposes and retain local relevance is the inclusion of “consensus” indicators which are universally collectible, complemented by locally specific indicators to address the unique concerns of individual communities (Niemeijer & De Groot, 2008). The fine balance between scientific robustness and political accessibility is a special consideration in constructing such metrics.

Quantifying Urban Sustainability in the Arctic Context The Arctic PIRE project has developed a structural framework where sustainability advances are seen in the social, economic, and environmental sphere and where the main drivers are seen in the policymaking and planning spheres. The quantification of the complex interactions between the five pillars of sustainability is further complicated in the Arctic region by the breadth of microenvironments, and diversity of political and socioeconomic systems in the region. The environmental impacts to physical systems, such as effects of climate change and permafrost have been shown to be comparable across the Arctic (AMAP, 2017; Grebenets et al., 2012; Streletskiy

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et al., 2012; Shiklomanov et al., 2017), but the social and political systems controlling the cities vary starkly (Laruelle, 2014; Huskey & Howe, 2010). Countries have different definitions of what constitutes an urban area (Rasmussen, 2011), contributing to challenges of assessing these communities at a constant geographic scale. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be choosing a standard set of â&#x20AC;&#x153;consensusâ&#x20AC;? indicators to universally assess all these unique cities (DeGroot, 2008).

Cooperation with local stakeholders to assist in data collection and discussion of appropriate indicators will be vital to ensure the metrics remain accessible and useful to local actors.

Table 2. Arctic Urban Sustainability Index Framework with five sustainability categories, related components, and related indicators to measure them

The major focus of the Arctic PIRE project going forward is the identification or creation of metrics to quantify these indicators. Having such measurements is necessary to pinpoint areas for improvement, track changes, demonstrate advances, and examine opportunity costs of devoting resources to one area at the expense of another. In the Arctic and other places, the Index will provide a framework (Table 2) for measuring the contributions of the different actors â&#x20AC;&#x201C; various levels of government, corporations, and civil society groups. These measures will work at various scales, from individual households to federal governments, and across mechanisms, from urban design to personnel decisions by private industry. Having such diverse measures will make it

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possible to identify best practices and transfer them to other cities. Preparing the Arctic Urban Sustainability Index will require more intensive research focused on three main tasks: 1.

2.

3.

Defining metrics of sustainability in the Arctic; Collecting data that are comparable across cities to measure progress along the indicators; and Balancing the complexity of the index to provide accurate measurements with the need to present findings in a clear and concise manner so that policymakers can implement recommendations informed by the research.

The Index must communicate information effectively to policymakers. In recent years, there has been explosive growth in the number of indicators created within tools aimed at altering or supporting “the forms, the exercise, and perhaps even the distributions of power in certain spheres of global governance” (Davis et al., 2012: 4). When translating science to policy, researchers have found that “indicators of sustainability will only be effective if they support social learning by providing users with the information they need in a form they can understand and relate to” (Shields et al., 2002: 1). It has been found that indicator sets with broad political support, which actively involve those who will create policies and those who will be affected, improve the success of an index (Steward & Kuska, 2011). One scholar working on the development of indicators in the developing world argues for designing them “from the bottom up” since they will have greater legitimacy (Stone, 2012: 283). The integration of feedback and input on the design of the index and the validation would be a useful method in educating policymakers on the data and science, while ensuring that scientists are including factors relevant to policymakers and their constituents.

Preliminary Data Collection and Analysis The index framework identifies 80 indicators that can be used to measure urban sustainability in the Arctic. These potential indicators were identified at the first meeting of the PIRE team in October 2016. As of June 2017, about 200 data points have been collected throughout the index; however, the diversity in sources and measurement standards means that these data are not easily comparable. The experience among Arctic researchers has shown that collating and collecting data regarding the region can be difficult (Forbes, 2011; Paul & Andreassen, 2009; Larsen et al., 2015), especially at the urban scale. Therefore, the identification of gaps within the easily accessible metrics alone would be a beneficial addition to the knowledge base of sustainability in Arctic urban centers. Our continued work to create a central repository of data on Arctic cities will benefit the public and cities themselves by increasing the visibility and accessibility of Arctic science. Analysis of these data could be used to identify best practice policies among localities within the circumpolar community. As a proof-of-concept, the research team identified 10 indicators that were measurable across 12 cities in the Arctic (Appendix B). Data were collected from the countries’ national statistical databases and reports from NGOs, universities, and other research groups.

The 12 initial cities were selected based on their geographic distribution and the relatively “universal” availability of data within these cities and indicators. The indicators were selected from the social and economic categories because these measures were the most easily measurable, and were common in more established urban sustainability indexes (Tanguay et al 2009). The environmental, governance, and planning categories require further data collection and indicator Developing Metrics to Guide Sustainable Development of Arctic Cities

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development before they can be included. These 10 indicators within the economic and social spheres do not represent the most effective sustainability-specific indicators within the index framework, however the more complex indicators require more data collection, and potentially the production and administration of survey instruments and field-based data collection (Arctic PIRE Workshop 2017).

Table 3. A sample of Arctic Urban Sustainability Index including some identified data gaps ECONOMIC

City Name

Yellowknife Whitehorse Nuuk Tromsø Salekhard Norilsk Arkhangelsk Kiruna Boden Luleå Fairbanks Anchorage Mean

SOCIAL

Well Being

Remoteness/ Transportation

Energy

Demographics and Migration

Education

Leisure

Per Capita Income

Cost of roundtrip air travel to major urban center

Greenhouse gas emissions (tons per capita)

Median Age

Graduation rates

Access to internet

$57,765.04 $42,510.57 $39,568.97 $35,850.03 $41,541.71 $36,459.09 $20,174.46 $37,533.63 $37,802.69 $37,264.57 $33,553.00 $36,733.00 $38,063.06

1.0387% 1.6466% 2.5272% 0.4184% 0.9629% 1.3714% 0.4957% 0.6661% 0.2645% 0.2684% 0.8941% 0.5445% 0.9249%

10.32 16.10 11.15 4.66 0.05 18.23

0.08 1.20 1.20 50.70 38.60 28.91 15.10

32.6 38.1 33.8 38.7 N/A N/A N/A 42.2 43.9 41.8 27.2 32.2 36.72

81% 69% 48.30% 82% N/A N/A N/A 82% 82% 82% 93.10% 92.50% 79.10%

90.90% 78.00% 64.90% 77.50% 70.00% 67.30% 65.90% 93% 93% 93% 93.80% 94.70% 81.83%

Even with this limited set of indicators, the research team faced significant challenges finding data, Monetary Values in US Dollars, based on PPP adjusted Conversion Rates from OECD; Cost of Air Travel Calculated as % of per capita income.

Data Sources: Northwest Territory Bureau of Statistics, Yukon Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Canada, Statistics Greenland, StatBank Norway, Federal State Statistics Service Municipale Data Passport (Russia), Statistics Sweden, US Census Bureau, City of Fairbanks, University of Alaska, OECD, Knoema.

especially at the resolution adequate for urban scale analysis (Figure 3). Moreover, the normalization of data between countries proved to be difficult, with the indicators being measured differently among them. For example, in Russia, the greenhouse gas emissions report only listed pollution from stationary sources (Rosstat Municipal Data Passport, 2015), whereas in Fairbanks the University of Alaska had recently undertaken an extensive audit of all GHG emissions for the borough (Holdmann & Murphy, 2008). While some researchers have been able to quantify stationary versus non-stationary emission sources in Russian cities (Bityukova & Kasimov, 2012), these data were not easily accessible and indicate the need to engage more regional and topical experts in developing the database. These sorts of data issues resulted in the need to utilize data from the regional (or closest available) scale or to insert “Not Available” fillers where applicable (Figure 3).

Monetary values were normalized using year-appropriate OECD Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) conversion rates (OECD, 2017). Other values were normalized to a per-capita or percent measure wherever possible. Some indicators also required creative normalization techniques in order to account for differences between the research areas. The cost of air travel, for example, was Suter, Schaffner, Giddings, Orttung & Streletskiy

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calculated to the nearest major non-Arctic airport (usually national capitals), but then required normalization to account for the purchasing power of local residents. A measurement of the cost relative to the PPP normalized per-capita income was generated, which demonstrates the complexity and amount of consideration that is needed for creating every single metric.

Results and Challenges The analysis ranked the 12 cities within each indicator and generated a ranking of performance across all 10 indicators (Figure 2). There are some general trends apparent, such as the strong performance of Swedish cities in these metrics. Another interesting finding is the vast difference between Salekhard and the other two Russian cities. The rankings are an example highlighting the tradeoffs of accessibility and accuracy (Tanguay et al., 2009), since they provide a broad overview and the trends are easily understandable. However, they do not show nuances in the data such as the distribution of scores, or city performance relative to peers and the circumpolar average.

Figure 2: Relative Ranking of 12 cities across 10 indicators in preliminary analysis The analysis also calculated the circumpolar mean within each indicator and calculated each cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s distance from that mean in standard deviations. The visualization of these standard-deviation scores facilitates comparison among cities, while also allowing individual cities to assess how they are performing compared to the circumpolar average (Figure 3). This analysis is preliminary and inherits underlying issues in data quality and normalization; these issues will be addressed by the project in the years going forward.

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Figure 3. Spider diagrams for the selected Arctic cities showing relative performance of cities across several sustainability indicators. Each indicator is estimated in standard deviations relative to the circumpolar average. The below average values are outlined in the light-red circle and the above average values are located within the green circle.

The analysis of the standard scores of cities in Figure 3 displays their performance within each of the indicator categories, relative to the circumpolar mean. These diagrams make it easy to see how cities are performing compared to the circumpolar average and to each other. It is easy to see Yellowknife has very high per-capita income than compared to the circumpolar average, but has below average local budget expenditure. In Russia, it is easy to see that Arkhangelsk is underperforming the other cities in terms of their unemployment rate. Over time, as cities implement policies to improve their performance within indicators, their ‘score-lines’ would move towards the outer edge of the spider-plots, representing improved performance. Moreover, if cities improve performance within one indicator at the expense of another – for example, lower unemployment at the expense of increased greenhouse gas emissions – their ‘score-lines’ would shift. This visualization aims to clearly show the complex interactions between different components of sustainability and how sustainability policies can have varying effects on these components.

The preliminary results were based off data from a limited selection of 12 cities, and are not informed by an analysis of all the Arctic cities which will be included within the full scope of this project (Appendix A). Thus, these rankings and patterns must be interpreted as truly preliminary, and not yet significant or appropriate for policy direction. Instead, these results grant an opportunity to present the ongoing work of this project and familiarize a broader community with the end goals and framework of the Arctic PIRE project. The results provided an opportunity to validate framework design and data presentation concepts, while a discussion of the research process encouraged engagement with the wider Arctic science and policy community. These opportunities to incorporate feedback from regional and topical experts are vital to improving the research and success of such a trans-disciplinary project.

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Moving Forward During the first Arctic PIRE conference held in October 2016, the team identified 80 indicators to be measured across the 50 cities identified. These 4,000 data points represent a massive research undertaking because of the variability in data accessibility and availability at the adequate geographical and temporal scale. Leading up to the annual Arctic PIRE conference in November 2017, the teams will be identifying one or two “core indicators” within each component of sustainability. While selecting these indicators, the Arctic PIRE teams will be working in consultation with topical and regional experts, as well as encouraging feedback from international research organizations, regional and national governments, and the Arctic communities. These interactions are vital for creating a product that is transformable and could be used to inform actionable policy (Rowe, 2013; Shields et al., 2008; Tanguay et al., 2009). By including more relevant local actors in the research process, through cooperative data collection efforts, the organization of workshops, and the promotion of science-policy interactions, all involved parties will be better informed on how and why these indicators were selected, and how they were measured.

Some data, especially those of a more qualitative nature, are simply not available on the city-scale within the circumpolar region. For the purpose of quantifying this data, the Arctic PIRE team is planning to construct a survey that can be administered across the circumpolar region. For such a survey to be successful and economical, it is critically important to establish strong relationships with city officials across the region of study to ensure proper access to subjects and to ensure the work is undertaken with the correct permissions and authorizations. Research on Arctic urban sustainability can be coordinated with other efforts on sustainability issues at different levels of government in the Arctic.

The presentation of these initial results has already generated significant interest and interaction with the project, supporting the initial hypothesis that the research process, not only the final product, will generate significant progress in promoting urban sustainability in the Arctic. The ongoing incorporation of feedback from academic peers and policymakers is important for developing a “living framework,” which remains open to change and adaptation as new insights and data become available. The various side-projects the Arctic PIRE team is undertaking are aimed at further encouraging greater collaboration among all Arctic urban stakeholders, and engaging them in advancing the research. These affiliated projects include data collection initiatives in cooperation with local Arctic universities, geographic information system (GIS) models to analyze the dynamics between climate change and urban infrastructure, and remote-sensing projects to track urban growth patterns.

Just as important are efforts to engage a new generation of Arctic researchers through an exciting educational outreach project entitled #60Above60, and through yearly university level field courses which will bring together students from across the Arctic countries to experience and learn about the issues and challenges facing Arctic urban centers first-hand (Figure 4). While much work remains on improving the Arctic Urban Sustainability Index and the database that supports it, the enthusiastic engagement generated so far is indicative of great possibilities.

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Figure 4. American, Russian, German, Swiss, Dutch, and Spanish university students pose during an annual Arctic field-course on permafrost and sustainability in northern regions, led by The George Washington University in partnership with Moscow State University.

Photo Credit: Anna Summi

Acknowledgments Funding for this project came from the National Science Foundation’s Arctic PIRE (Award # 1545913).

We would like to acknowledge all of the Arctic PIRE research institutions and team members, as well as our local community partners, who have been invaluable in continuously strengthening and driving this project forward.

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130Appendix NAME Akureyri Ålesund Alta Anadyr* Anchorage Apatity Archangelsk Boden Bodø Dudinka Fairbanks Fort St. John Harstad Juneau Kandalaksha Kirovsk Kiruna Labytnangi Luleå Magadan* Mo i Rana Molde Monchegorsk Murmansk Nadym Nakhodka Narvik Naryan Mar Nikel Norilsk Novy Urengoy Noyabrsk Nuuk Onega Oulu* Polyarny Reykjavík Rovaniemi Salekhard Severodvinsk Severomorsk Skellefteå Tórshavn Tromsø Umeå Vorkuta Whitehorse Yakutsk* Yamburg

A

COUNTRY Iceland Norway Norway Russia United States Russia Russia Sweden Norway Russia United States Canada Norway United States Russia Russia Sweden Russia Sweden Russia Norway Norway Russia Russia Russia Russia Norway Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Greenland Russia Finland Russia Iceland Finland Russia Russia Russia Sweden Faroe Islands Norway Sweden Russia Canada Russia Russia

Population 18,342 47,336 20,521 8,288 298,192 56,732 351,488 28,024 51,110 21,513 32,751 20,155 24,853 32,468 32,034 28,863 23,167 26,500 76,770 98,930 26,186 20,892 46,205 298,096 44,660 152,294 18,721 24,654 12,055 178,654 113,254 106,879 17,036 26,070 200,637 16,956 212,385 62,234 48,794 185,042 50,905 72,266 12,713 34,283 122,892 80,061 28,225 307,911 47,711

COMMENT

Deemed Significant by Expert Opinion (Low Population)

Deemed Significant by Expert Opinion (Outside Regional Border)

Deemed Significant by Expert Opinion (Outside Regional Border)

Deemed Significant by Expert Opinion (Outside Regional Border)

Yellowknife

Canada

19,569

ECONOMIC

City Name

Remoteness/ Transportation

Well Being

Unemployment Rate

Yellowknife Whitehorse Nuuk Tromsø Salekhard Norilsk Arkhangelsk Kiruna Boden Luleü Fairbanks Anchorage Mean

4.00% 6.20% 6.09% 2.10% 3.60% 5.00% 7.20% 7.00% 7.00% 4.70% 5.40% 5.60% 5.32%

Per Capita Income

$57,765.04 $42,510.57 $39,568.97 $35,850.03 $41,541.71 $36,459.09 $20,174.46 $37,533.63 $37,802.69 $37,264.57 $33,553.00 $36,733.00 $38,063.06

Cost of roundtrip air travel to major urban center

1.0387% 1.6466% 2.5272% 0.4184% 0.9629% 1.3714% 0.4957% 0.6661% 0.2645% 0.2684% 0.8941% 0.5445% 0.9249%

Public Finance

SOCIAL Energy

Total Local Greenhouse Budget gas emissions Expenditure (tons per Per Capita capita)

$3,925.76 $2,447.71 N/A $5,144.82 $5,223.71 $3,953.66 $945.59 $9,411.79 $11,535.46 $11,548.68 $1,067.60 $1,574.75 $5,162

10.32 16.10 11.15 4.66 0.05 18.23

0.08 1.20 1.20 50.70 38.60 28.91 15.10

Housing

Demographics and Migration

Education

Health

Leisure

Habitable Dwellings per Capita

Median Age

Graduation rates

Life expectancy

Access to internet

81% 69% 48.30% 82% N/A N/A N/A 82% 82% 82% 93.10% 92.50% 79.10%

77.9 77.4 72.4 79.8 75.9 74.8 76.3 83.92 83.92 81.56 79.4 78.64 78.50

0.365 0.456956522 0.392305822 0.739959549 N/A N/A N/A 0.629668393 0.767558887 0.828205072 0.410501978 0.374751669 0.552

32.6 38.1 33.8 38.7 N/A N/A N/A 42.2 43.9 41.8 27.2 32.2 36.72

Data Sources: Northwest Territory Bureau of Statistics, Yukon Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Canada, Census Canada, Statistics Greenland, StatBank Norway, Federal State Statistics Service Municipal Data Passport (Russia), Statistics Sweden, US Census Bureau, City of Fairbanks, University of Alaska, OECD, Knoema

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90.90% 78.00% 64.90% 77.50% 70.00% 67.30% 65.90% 93% 93% 93% 93.80% 94.70% 81.83%

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Urban Planning in the Arctic: Historic Uses & the Potential for a Resilient Urban Future Melissa Jane Kenny Urbanization is not the most common concept associated with the Arctic. Nonetheless, climate change, growing industrial activity, and increased levels of accessibility all suggest that the region is likely to become more urbanized.

As these significant changes, environmentally, socially and economically provide both opportunities and threats to the Arctic, there is a critical need to plan for and anticipate these changes to ensure that existing and developing Arctic cities are resilient to the future, both physically and as a social structure. Although Arctic cities exist as hubs of activity within the region, often acting as economic, governance and social centers, urban planners have yet to focus comprehensively on the region. Furthermore, the use of urban planning as a facilitator of urban resilience is a growing concept that is relatively new to the Arctic. Planning can be used to respond to and manage changes to the built environment, increasing the capacity of cities to absorb shocks and changes to the urban fabric. Urban planning as a form of resilience could become a key concept within the urbanization of the Arctic. This paper will take an analytical approach, firstly undertaking a brief investigation into the history of urban planning within the Arctic.

In addition, case studies where urban planning has attempted to provide resilience will be discussed and finally the potential for urban planning to contribute to a resilient future in the Arctic in the future will be highlighted.

Introduction

Norilsk, an industrial city in northern Siberia, is very slowly collapsing; buildings are cracking and disintegrating, creating a city trying to survive in a harsh climate while lacking basic foundational integrity. Thawing permafrost under Arctic towns and cities is a growing issue amongst a variety of concerns regarding the effects of climate change. Urban areas across the eight Arctic countries have long had to deal with unique challenges, most of which are now being exacerbated by climate change. As temperatures in the Arctic rise faster than in any other part of the world, the potential effects become complex and difficult to predict and may have negative impacts on human activities and development (Shur & Goening, 2009; Streletskiy et al., 2012). For the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;urban Arcticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; such as the city of Norilsk, where industry and populations are centered, there is a strong need to develop a resilience towards the effects of climate change to ensure a sustainable future. For the purpose of this article, resilience in the urban sense can be understood as the capacity to plan for, anticipate Melissa Jane Kenny is a PhD Researcher in Urban Science at the Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities, University of Warwick, UK.

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and manage risk and change, while also taking advantage of new opportunities in a sustainable manner. The practice of urban planning is a key and currently underutilized device within the Arctic that has the potential to enhance resilience in the region.

Although urban planning is not a concept that one would immediately associate with the Arctic in general, and its relating issues, planning is becoming a more prevalent and increasingly important tool in securing a sustainable Arctic future. Increased levels of accessibility due to climate change, as well as new opportunities for resource extraction, trade routes and rural-urban migration mean that urban development in the Arctic is becoming increasingly significant, economically, politically and socially. These opportunities also come with threats and consequences; remote regions are particularly environmentally vulnerable to human influence. These complex challenges need to be anticipated and consequently well planned for and managed to ensure that the almost inevitable urbanization of the Arctic is sustainable, resilient and inclusive at all scales. Urban planning is closely linked to urban design, architecture and engineering. Combined, these practices can be utilized to ensure that future economic development and human settlements in the Arctic can coexist and become resilient towards the variety of challenges that the region faces. A comprehensive, forward-looking framework which integrates considerations of planning, development and climate change to create a resilient Arctic future could ultimately be the outcome to help urban Arctic societies develop the capacity to thrive in a changing climate (Linkov et al., 2014).

This article examines the progression of urban planning in the Arctic; firstly, a brief history of urban planning in the Arctic will be described, analyzing historic approaches and solutions to the challenges of development in the region. The study will then discuss the range of experimental and creative approaches to urban planning in the Arctic that have been attempted, before evaluating current planning practices in the region. Finally, the potential for a resilient urban Arctic future will be discussed followed by a discussion of future approaches to planning that seek to ensure a more resilient and sustainable future for all.

A Brief History of Urban Development and Planning in the Arctic The Arctic is a vast region occupying the most northern part of the Earth; settlements within this region have developed and grown to have region and area specific identities. It is also widely accepted that there is a broader Arctic identity that encompasses the entire region, acknowledging shared challenges, threats and common interests, regardless of national borders (Schweitzer et al., 2015). Indigenous inhabitants across the Arctic have a long-standing history of coping with challenges unique to their own part of the region; changing their lifestyle, hunting practices and nomadic ways of life to adapt to the changing climate and environment. By developing a lifestyle which is flexible, with a deep understanding of the nature in which they live, and the diversity of food sources available, Inuit for example have lived a generally subsistent life, adjusting their lifestyles based on continual assessments of climatic conditions (Pearce et al., 2012). Nonetheless, modern development has greatly impacted these lifestyles. In Canada for example, particularly the Northwestern Territories, practices introduced to the region such as land management strategies and forced settlement have begun to erode this flexible and diverse way of life. More settlements began to appear in the Canadian Arctic in the late 19th century, mainly in coastal areas allowing for easy access for trading vessels, trading posts, religious missions and fishing villages, followed by larger settlements developing (Zrudlo, 2001). In the 1950â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, government built housing for Inuit populations became more commonplace, again, particularly in Canada. Climate has impacted development in other Arctic nations; in Greenland, sea temperature fluctuations have impacted Urban Planning in the Arctic

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fish stocks which in turn affect development, prompting offshore fisheries and a less nomadic way of life (Rasmussen, 2009). As settlements and industrial practices continued to grow, it could perhaps be suggested that the inherently adaptive nature of those who inhabit the Arctic began to erode, highlighting a need for resilience and sustainability (Arctic Council, 2013).

The planning and development of settlements in the Arctic has also relied and been heavily influenced by both the climate and the physical landscape, such as mountains and the coastline.

This has shaped the growth of settlements but also restricted expansion, which has led to an often very adaptive and reactive approach to planning in the Arctic (Steinecke, 1999). A limited number of resources, such as building materials and a lack of large labour force, as well as a variety of traditions and social norms depending on location have also influenced and determined the form of the region’s towns and cities (Bannova, 2014). Forms of planning have long been present in the Arctic, although not necessarily always in a formalized or strategic manner. It is suggested by Duhaime that “most Arctic settlements did not appear randomly, but have evolved as part of development that requires conscious planning and management processes; in some cases, involving the inhabitants of the settlements and in other situations based on top-down processes” (Duhaime, 1991: 45).

Planning for development in many northern countries was historically a very centralized, top-down practice, with plans and policies often being developed in far removed, more southern cities within the country. This disconnect between policy and practice has in some ways continued to exist in Arctic urban planning today and in (Farish & Lackenbauer, 2009). In addition, Arctic settlements have developed differently in different areas of the region, ranging from smaller, isolated settlements to much larger, heterogeneous urban cores. Arctic urban typology differs depending on the region or country. There has however been a recent and general trend in the Arctic towards people living in large settlements, particularly in Russia, where industrial cities can be found the Arctic region. Populations in national and regional capitals across the Arctic, such as Nuuk in Greenland and Whitehorse in Yukon, Canada are also steadily rising. It is likely that larger urban centers will become the dominant form of settlement structure across the Arctic as society transforms to have predominantly urban characteristics (Heleniak & Bogoyavlenksy, 2015; Hansen & Rasmussen, 2013).

Early Approaches to Urban Planning in the Arctic: Experimental and Industrial Urban planning can be broadly defined as the organization of spatial structures to improve upon current or existing ones for the benefit of society and more recently, the environment. The practice of urban planning and its related professions is becoming increasingly prevalent in current climate change discourse; the relationship between the physical nature of climate change and the social and economic impacts it has are becoming increasingly interlinked (Davoudi, 2014). It is suggested

by Alcoforado & Matzarakis that “urban planning’s role is of paramount importance to inform, coordinate and implement measures to ameliorate climate quality…in the face of urban and global climate issues” (2010: 23). The Arctic is no exception to the importance of urban planning; in fact, its extreme nature and the challenges it faces with regards to climate change mean that urban and climate issues in the region are magnified. The remoteness of many Arctic settlements, along with the varying and challenging climate, provides a set of tough conditions in which to inhabit; therefore, planning has been, and can continue to be a useful tool to create and develop Kenny

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settlements, providing resilient towns and cities which can serve as a base from which to thrive in Arctic.

Planning practice in the Arctic is beginning to incorporate more strategic impact assessments of both social and environmental issues. It is recommended by Pressman that “one must learn from nature how to design climate-responsive urban space which has a powerful imprint on people’s aesthetic sensibilities” and search for “naturally derived solutions” (Pressman, 1996: 527). In 1996, Pressman also argued that the profession of planning must focus on finding a balance between the exploitation and conservation of resources. Despite this being true across the world, it is perhaps particularly relevant to the Arctic, and its relevancy will continue to increase in the future as climate change effects more severe impacts on the region (Pressman, 1996).

Experimental Approaches to Urban Planning in the Arctic Urban planners, designers and architects have often used the Arctic as an opportunity to develop unique, experimental and ‘cutting-edge’ solutions for Arctic development, developing ideas such as climate responsive buildings, utopian style winter cities and eco towns (Jull & Cho, 2013). Over the years, many ideas, designs and plans have been presented however few have come to fruition.

Canadian ‘Nordicicst’ Louis-Edmond Hamelin commented on “the problem of the relationship between geographic realities and the world of the imagination” (Wynn, 2009: 19). The Arctic is a region of extremes and it presents a unique set of challenges to those who inhabit it. This also presents opportunities for planners, architects and urban designers to develop creative solutions and concepts such as below-ground protection, multi-use buildings, retractable roofs, winter tourism, indoor gardens, transport hubs and public art.

One of the most famous examples of the pursuit of a ‘modern utopia’ in the Arctic is British architect Ralph Erskine, known for socially inclusive and climate responsive architecture, and now often referred to as the ‘Arctic Architect’. Erskine argued that both people and climate must be equally considered in Arctic, or northern, architecture. He first went to Scandinavia in the late 1930’s, noting the lack of inventive architecture that provides pleasure and comfort as well as protection. Instead Erskine suggested that symbolic architecture was more prominent, despite the fact that this does not represent the idea of ‘home’ for most people. Overall, the architect believed that at the time, the towns, cities and built environment of the Arctic were failing to serve the needs of the residents. Erskine developed the ‘ideal Arctic town’ of Svappavaara in Sweden. The town is characterized by continuous runs of buildings connected by walkways. This urban form allows for a convenient and economically viable Arctic town layout, with a multitude of uses clustered for both practical and social benefits, in terms of protection against the harsh climate.

Erskine argued that more highly concentrated northern towns were important as a more dispersed form would create inconvenience in terms of infrastructure and connectivity (Erskine, 1968; McGowan, 2008).

In addition to Erskine’s work in Svappavaara, one of his more famous and potentially controversial designs was located in the small coastal town of Resolute Bay, Canada, as a response to oil revenue increases in the 1970s. His design, commissioned to help integrate Inuit communities and resolve social issues, resembled a fortified town, surrounded by a circular wall structure to protect from the elements and create a microclimate. The horseshoe shape of the planned town can be seen in Figure 1 below. The interior of the town would include apartments, shops and restaurants as well

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as a swimming pool and indoor garden. Despite the inventiveness and optimistic approach of the project, it was abandoned in the late 1970s, mainly due to the lack of proximity to the coast, which was essential for the livelihoods of the Inuit residents (Jull & Cho, 2013). Although Erskine attempted to create ideal Arctic towns, his designs were never undertaken in the mainstream; never fully coming to fruition. He has been criticized for his designs being too ‘placeless’ and ‘colonial’ (Hemmersam, 2016).

Figure 1. Plan for Resolute Bay (Erskine, c 1973) Experimental approaches to urban design, architecture and planning in the Arctic have a tendency to lean heavily towards idealisation rather than practicality and therefore can often be a conflict between a romanticised idea of Arctic living and the realities (Løkken & Haggärde, 2016). The nomenclature of certain phrases or phenomena can have a negative, although somewhat inadvertent effect on development and the Arctic is oftentimes referred to as the ‘final frontier’.

This serves to romanticise the concept of Arctic settlements, deeming them a ‘conquest’, rather than a long-term, sustainable goal. Practical approaches to planning and design are paramount in these challenging and varying conditions, with local vernacular and traditions being equally important.

Industrial Development and Planning in the Arctic Humans have been exploiting Arctic resources for hundreds of years, there are rich deposits of resources such as minerals, oil, natural gas and fish, with the potential, and perhaps the threat of being exploited at large scales. In the past, exploitation of resources in the Arctic occurred with little thought to sustainability (Keskitalo et al., 2011). One of the first industries to be established in the Arctic was whaling and walrus hunting. As far back as the 1500s whales and walruses were slaughtered by early explorers and settlers in the region. Despite whale and walrus hunting no longer existing as an industry in the Arctic, other industries have endured, shaping the industrial landscape of the region (Avango et al., 2014). Settlements emerged around industrial activity, following different trajectories based upon location and type of industry, from temporary barrackstyle accommodation to house workers, to more permanent, imposing, industrial cities. Demand Kenny

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for energy and minerals has meant the global search for resources has expanded its reach to the northernmost part of the world, and while large scale development projects in the Arctic have been few in numbers, they are likely to increase (Klein, 2000).

Mining in the Arctic began to take force more comprehensively in the 1950s, for example the Rankin Inlet Nickel Mine established in Canada, dubbed a ‘grand experiment’ in modernism in the Arctic (Keeling & Sandlos, 2015). Mining operations grew across the region, which holds a variety of deposits such as gold, nickel, lead and zinc. Resources in the Arctic also offer strategic opportunities; with resources comes economic growth and power and thus Arctic geopolitics began to intensify alongside industrial growth (Avango et al., 2014). In terms of resource extraction and power, Russia has emerged as the main player in the industrialization of the Arctic. At present the Russian Arctic accounts for over 60% of the region’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and approximately two thirds of industrial activity in the entire circumpolar Arctic region.

Furthermore, the GDP per capita of the Russian Arctic is almost double the size of the entire country’s GDP per capita as a whole (Duhaime & Caron, 2008). The industrialization of the Russian Arctic was forceful and aggressive, occurring under the Soviet development policy and producing large-scale industrial cities. Russian Arctic cities are unlike any of their urban counterparts in the region. The industrial Siberian cities of Murmansk, Yakutsk and Norilsk, for example, are some of the largest cities in the Arctic. The city of Norilsk, in northern Siberia, developed around the nickel mining industry. Growing under Stalin’s forced labor, Norilsk was initially set up in the 1930s as a Gulag camp. Despite a general plan for the city being developed in 1939, few considerations other than urban growth/industrial growth were taken into account.

Norilsk’s master plan can be seen in Figure 2 below; the repetitive, unsympathetic, nature of the urban form still defines the city today and the harsh character of the built environment continues to mirror the climatic conditions. The city has developed to become a heavily polluted urban landscape marked by high-rise, monolithic apartment blocks arranged in a uniform urban form, to protect against extreme weather conditions. Norilsk is built on permafrost; like many similar Russian Arctic cities, this is becoming an increasingly worrying issue as the permafrost begins to thaw and infrastructure becomes unstable and hazardous (Nelson et al., 2002).

Furthermore, social and economic issues, such as a lack of job opportunities for younger residents, mean that Norilsk, and similar northern Siberian cities, are in decline, with shrinking or plateauing populations. Many residents of cities in the Russian Arctic are leaving the region, if they have the means to do so, as industries have shut down, an issue caused mostly by these cities being based on a single industry (Parente et al., 2012; Heleniak, 2013). Initial waves of industrial activity in the Russian Arctic, particularly resource extraction, were not undertaken in a sustainable manner. As a result, although some industrial infrastructure has endured beyond the end of industrial operations, for example in the form of sites for scientific research, many sites and the surrounding built environment lie abandoned and depopulated or in physical, social and economic decline (Keeling & Sandlos, 2015; Milojevic, 2008; Heleniak, 2001).

Current Approaches to Urban Planning in the Arctic There have been relatively few studies into the history, or current state of urban planning in the Arctic, and the concept does not exist at any comprehensive scale across the region, particularly in relation to the threat of climate change (Ghoneem, 2016).

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Figure 2. Master plan for the city of Norilsk (c.1939) For example, both the 2013 Arctic Resilience Interim Report and the following 2016 Arctic Resilience Report, make very little reference to urban areas. The reports, produced by the Arctic Council, despite focussing on resilience in the Arctic do not discuss in any depth the potential for urban growth and associated challenges in relation to climate change (Arctic Council, 2013; Arctic Council, 2016). Nonetheless, even today, planning and climate are not always inherently linked in the Arctic. In a key 2000 study entitled ‘The Use of Climate in the Urban Planning Process’, Eliasson commented that climate has a limited impact on the urban planning process. It is commented that urban planners currently lack climate knowledge due to a number of factors such as unclear policies, and a lack of time, money and resources (Eliasson, 2000). There is however a natural link between the climate and the built environment in the Arctic for example, decreasing permafrost temperatures are a key threat to human infrastructure, particularly in settlements in Russia and Alaska, where buildings and transport networks are all built on permafrost. There will be a need for increased mitigation and planning measures to address the potentially severe socioeconomic consequences (Streletskiy et al., 2012). Furthermore, concerns are emerging regarding issues such as energy use and renewable energy, quality of public places, and indoor and outdoor comfort, all of which require a combined knowledge of planning and climate (Ebrahimabadi, 2015).

There are a variety of planning, design, engineering, architectural and technological concepts and solutions to provide resilience and to help Arctic settlements adapt to changes in climate and also support social and economic development. The concept of ‘adaptation planning’ has been borne out of the increasing levels of research on how humans can adapt to climate change, focussing especially on vulnerability and resilience. Whilst adaptation planning as a practical concept remains in its early stages, key ideas and concepts have been determined. Adaptation planning relates to acting in the face of uncertainty, and requires ongoing communication and public outreach (Ford & Pearce, 2012). Factors include committing resources, understanding vulnerabilities and determining options and stakeholders. Canada in particular has undertaken a number of these types of planning projects and Canadian Arctic planning has been, and is, arguably the most Kenny

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advanced in the region and Canadian planners are also undertaking the idea of anticipatory planning. Anticipatory planning firstly assesses current strategies to planning, while simultaneously investigating the capacities for adaptation and change among stakeholders and communities (Hirvonen-Kantola, 2015). It is suggested that adaptation initiatives focussed on industry and town planning are underrepresented (Ford et al., 2014). It is common that long-term, strategic plans are not always present in these initiatives, despite cities and urban areas being home to the majority of Arctic inhabitants. Research and results relating to adaptation efforts are very poorly reported in these locations; instead there is a focus on remote and isolated settlements. Long-term strategic planning is vital to ensure that there is a solid framework from which anticipatory and adaptive practices can be implemented. Nonetheless, for many Inuit inhabitants of the Arctic, their flexible and reactive approach to dealing with climatic challenges conflicts long-term planning. Therefore, an amount of flexibility, perhaps even a somewhat ‘ad hoc’ approach to long-term planning will allow for dynamic plans to be made (Pearce et al., 2012). The concepts of adaptation and anticipatory planning focus heavily on producing resilient urban areas; though not yet widespread across the Arctic, there is a shift towards prioritising resilience in the region. Furthermore, with the increasing range of complexities faced by Arctic communities, it is crucial that resilience is integrated early on in the planning process, to allow for planning and adaptation in the short, medium and long-term (Linkov et al., 2014).

In terms of urban design and architecture in the Arctic, resilience towards the challenging climate is a priority. Utilizing technology and climate knowledge is imperative to developing practical and efficient approaches to maintain resilient and sustainable communities. First, creating, retaining and exploiting heat are important; for example, creating ‘urban heat islands’ can create warmer conditions in settlements. Furthermore, lowering the albedo effect assists with heat retention by using darker colors to maximize solar gain and minimize reflection. Additionally, developing dense urban fabrics will both minimize short-wave radiation and protect against strong winds, which can make the temperature feel even lower than it already is in the Arctic. Low-rise, compact and centrally arranged structures will also help protect against wind, and storms, also creating a sense of community. Wind however can also help to keep air quality high. The ultimate goal therefore, when using urban design, architectural and engineering techniques to protect against the climate, is not to completely eradicate it, but to exist, embrace, adapt and where possible, benefit from it (Alcoforado & Matzarakis, 2010). Furthermore, in the Arctic, some communities have begun to deploy adaptive co-management strategies and communications infrastructure, combining traditional and scientific knowledge. This is an emerging concept that presents a comprehensive approach to the planning and management of human activities (Berkes, 2007).

Towards a Resilient Urban Future in the Arctic As the world is already caught up in the wave of urbanization and globalization, the need to develop a resilience towards the multiplicity of issues relating to these phenomena is paramount.

A number of major international agreement have focused on urban issues. The United National Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, devotes Goal 11 to urban areas, prioritizing resilience, sustainability, inclusivity and safety. While not specifically alluding to Arctic development, this goal fits well with the needs of the region in the future, and promotes the importance of urban areas on a global scale (Biermann et al., 2017). In addition, the Paris Agreement, known as COP21 attempts to provide a universal agreement to address climate

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change. As we enter an age of ‘mega-urbanization’, even more remote, extreme and inhospitable regions of the earth will face development and growth. Climate change plays a central role, both positively and negatively in the urban future of these extreme regions. Therefore, planning for resilience and sustainability is an increasingly important task that planners, designers, architects, engineers, policy makers, governments and communities face (Bulkeley et al., 2009). In 1986, Pressman and Zepic argued that functions and activities located in more severe and extreme environments and climates require much higher levels of organization. They suggest that it is key to prioritize both planning policies and principals that moderate and manage the severity of, in this case, the Arctic climate, to create safe, protected spaces for human activity (Pressman & Zepic, 1986).

Urban planning must integrate climate change more thoroughly to achieve successful resilience.

Climatic factors should be approached in an organized way, with engagement and not just awareness of the issues. It should be integrated into plans, and approached proactively; it could also be used as an opportunity, as well as a problem to be dealt with. Understanding the combined effects and consequences of climate change and urban growth, at varying spatial and temporal scales, is key to comprehensively identifying and planning for a resilient future (Ebrahimabadi, 2015; Arctic Council, 2013). Sharing knowledge between planners and climate scientists is crucial, although a great challenge, with both professions being required to understand the needs and capabilities of the other (Eliasson, 2000). It is however important to remember that it is impossible to completely accurately predict all changes to climate; this can be mitigated by incorporating and prioritizing resilience in the planning process. Urban resilience deals with uncertainty; planning for resilience therefore must avoid attempting to predict and regulate the future, instead remaining adjustable (Coaffee & Lee, 2016).

In the future, along with the need to plan for climate change and the subsequent physical and societal impacts, there is likely to be a need to incorporate larger scale political and economic issues. As the Arctic ‘industrial revolution’ evolves, it is important to ensure that proximity to natural resources is not the only planning consideration as urban settlements develop; social, economic, environmental and political aspects must all be considered. Furthermore, an avoidance of single-industry developments should be avoided (Heleniak, 2013). Political tensions may mount as climate change leads to better access to resources in the Arctic, and as the Northwest Passage begins to open, marine territory disputes may rise (Jull & Cho, 2013). Therefore, as well as physical planning, local, regional and even national governments may require reconfiguration in terms of systems of Arctic governance to ensure they are flexible and adaptable to future uncertainties.

Furthermore, a key aspect of Goal 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals relates to global sustainability governance initiatives; it is suggested that the ‘quest’ for resilient and sustainable cities should begin with national policies and regional development plans (Biermann et al., 2017).

Additionally, it is important to build the capacity of communities and regional governments in particular; progress could still be made in terms of prioritizing these sensitive regions. In Russia for example, there are challenges regarding achieving an equal standard of living across the country, with the lack of a comprehensive national regional policy in the Arctic creating challenges (Ghoneem, 2016; Hemmersam, 2016; Kinossian, 2013).

Though many aspects and impacts of climate change in the Arctic can be analysed and quantified, for example, sea ice extent or glacial melt, the impacts of climate change on the human, and in

Kenny

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particular, social structure of the Arctic are much harder to measure; happiness and comfort, for example, are subjective and cannot necessarily be easily monitored or quantified. Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happiness, comfort, and to a wider extent, their livelihoods, rely heavily on the surroundings in which they live. This means that not only ensuring resilient and sustainable urban development is important, but also that it positively impacts the people who reside in the settlements. Future Arctic development and planning must engage and co-exist with the outdoor environment, integrating the climate into daily life. Furthermore, the ideas of comfort and happiness must begin to be understood in greater depth to ensure they can be provided along with the more practical aspects of planning for resilience. Physical and social wellbeing should be prioritized and urban design, planning and architecture should be utilized to ameliorate rather than banish the climate.

It is argued that in developing Arctic settlements, integration rather than isolation must be pursued.

Arctic inhabitants must embrace living alongside the winter climate instead of living in spite of it.

To pursue resilience and sustainability in the future, the relative disconnect between physical and social research regarding the impacts of climate change must be bridged. Research into urban development and the built environment in the Arctic is at present a relatively new field. Therefore, whilst a glaciologist, for example, could be researching the rate at which a glacier will melt over time, the outcome of that research does not help to understand the effects it may have on the lives of those who live near the glacier. It is of course crucial to understand how climate change effects the physical and biological systems, but without an equal and combined understanding of the social impacts, substantial efforts to mediate and adapt to develop resilient urban settlements cannot be made.

The recent rapid increase in levels of globalization, and subsequently urbanization, has meant that some isolated Arctic communities are now facing a more globally influenced spectrum of issues.

Where once a settlement has relied mainly on a lifestyle of subsistence and reactionary planning, a heavier focus on minerals and energy resources in the region has led to larger scale commercial operations continuing to be established and grow, such as mining, fisheries and drilling. Along with these changes must come a modernization of planning and public administration; restructuring to allow for adaptation and resilience (Larsen & Fondahl, 2015). Furthermore, knowledge gaps must be filled and transferable skills, for both experts and local communities, must be developed so that there is a greater potential for adaptation and subsequently, resilience.

Increased development and industrial activity, along with climate change, will bring new challenges and changes. It will be important to look towards local tradition and knowledge specific to the different communities across the Arctic to understand how they have historically coped with climatic issues. Combining these with modern and technological approaches may help to create sustainable, well-informed, context-specific, solutions that are appropriate to local communities and the environment. In a World Bank report entitled, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Eurasian Cities: New Realities Along the Silk Roadâ&#x20AC;?, improved planning and connectivity, as well as sustainability and increased funding are listed amongst key catalysts for sustainable urban growth. As suggested by Heleniak, these lessons could be applied to development in Arctic cities (Heleniak, 2013).

Conclusion The cryosphere is changing and the challenges this presents to cities and communities are manifold. Although there are still a number of varying trajectories that the urban future of the Arctic can take, it is wise to assume that climate change will shape and influence development. The

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impacts of climate change are as important and significant as the economic opportunities they may bring and planning for a resilient and sustainable urban future in the Arctic will require attention and cooperation at all scales (Ford et al., 2014). There is a need to develop a stronger Arctic identity and foster a sense of community and belonging; timescales must also be taken into account, as well as whether new strategies and ideas can be worked into existing planning practices. There is a need for comprehensive planning agendas for the Arctic that balance resilient and sustainable development with the challenges presented by climate change. Questions arise regarding how these agendas will take shape in differing parts of the Arctic, and how they will be implemented, as well as what we can learn from historic approaches to planning and development across the Arctic and what the future holds for Arctic development.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges funding by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant no. EP/L016400/1), the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Urban Science.

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Commentary

New Publication

Regional Consulting: Invitation for Creativity N.Y. Zamyatina & A.N. Pelyasov (2017) Saint-Petersburg: Mamatov Publishing House In this compact book, N.Y. Zamyatina and A.N. Pelyasov share their more than 15 years of experience in preparing strategies and programs for social and economic development of cities and regions of the Russian Arctic and the North. From the very first pages, they formulate the main principles of their work on the preparation of strategic planning documents for cities, districts and regions of the Russian Arctic and North: • Absolute uniqueness and unity of each created scientific product (regional strategy, city program, integrated investment plan) – standard fordist-like technologies are totally inappropriate here; • Necessity to work at the microlevel of modern spatial development, using for this purpose the tools of municipal statistics, sociological surveys and interviews, necessity to see the role of local factors of entrepreneurial energy and the creativity of the local community, network structures and projects in regional development; • Great attention to the rhythm and characteristics of the Arctic space, which should materialize in the techniques and technologies of zoning of the Arctic regions and the preparation of maps as a tool for prompt and effective decision-making in the field of strategic planning;

Alexander Pelyasov is Director of the Centre of Northern and Arctic Economics, Moscow, Russia.

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•

•

•

An interdisciplinary approach to the development of strategic planning documents as a result of inclusion in the development team of economists, sociologists, cartographers, demographers and anthropologists; Knowledge of advanced foreign experience and practices in the field of strategic planning, including the mechanisms for the formation of local innovation systems, local clusters and industrial areas, the activation of knowledge flows - and the ability to creatively apply it in specific spaces of the Russian North and Arctic and work in a new ideology of endogenous economic growth, new economic geography and new industrial policy; A combination of knowledge of federal norms and rules and live expeditionary knowledge of the problems of Russian cities and regions in the North and Arctic as the result of active communication in expert communities at the federal, regional and local levels.

The main idea of the book is that a “one size fits all” approach does not work in these extreme territories, that each case is absolutely unique and it is necessary to select recipes for treatment and development for each city, district and region of the North and the Arctic.

The question arises: how can this be done? In preparing recommendations on the prospects for the development of cities and regions in the Russian Arctic and North, attention should be paid to the details of the local community, the local business class, the peculiarities of local government policy and corporate structures. After all, innovation is not only about “iron,” it’s also about a creative search for residents of the Arctic and North, who create their regional and local development on a daily basis, at their own peril and risk, and the task of experts is to help them in this process.

The book is formed as a collection of case studies. For the task of “loading” the reader into the practical kitchen of strategic planning in the Arctic and in the North, the research methodology of case studies fits better than others. The most interesting excerpts from the strategies are designed to show that the establishment of a creative search for new development paths can work equally effectively at the level of cities, districts and regions. But at the same time for each level it is necessary to select its unique “palette of colors” – a concrete toolbox of research methods – that allows to solve the problems of designing the future image of a given place most effectively.

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Fig. _____. Macrogeographical location of Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous okrug (Yugra): between zone of major settlement and Arctic zone of Russia. Cartographer – R. Goncharov As a rule, the preparation of a document for the long-term planning of a city, district or region of the Arctic is almost always accompanied by a change in views (overcome of myths and locks) of local development – and innovative search for new paradigms. And – in an unexpected way – the most important achievement of regional consulting is not even the preparation of a strategic planning document but the correction of highly distorted representations of development by local authorities, business, and the expert community. It is very difficult, in the collective efforts to fend off the numerous blockages (myths and distorted representations) of development that really hamper the free creative search for new opportunities and new trajectories. The authors everywhere saw the main result of their work in promoting such innovative search.

The book shows that most unique outputs in the field of regional consulting have been borne as a result of an extremely attentive attitude to the spatial characteristics of the object of strategic planning – the region, district or city. It was the attention to the map, the economic-geographic position (location), the territorial structure, the space-time cycle that led the authors away from the pattern of the unified approach to the unique view of the concrete object of forecasting – to become later a platform of intellectual concentration for the subsequent creative search for new development opportunities.

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Figure 1 Depleted and young deposits of Hlanty-Mansiisk Okrug-Yugra (under the data on dynamics of oil extraction, 2007-2010. Cartographer R.Goncharov An important conclusion of the book is that enormous contrasts in the degree of development and location of productive forces in the spaces of the Russian North and the Arctic make general market prescriptions for unified arrangement of the entire territory of Russia absolutely unsuitable.

And if in the European North and the Arctic market models and approaches are still partially working, then in the unpopulated and poorly infrastructure-equipped and developed spaces of the Arctic and North in Siberia and Far Eastern Asia, these approaches of the world economic mainstream do not work totally. Here absolutely new ideas about drivers of spatial development are necessary. The power of competition and competitive markets has never been there and in the foreseeable future they are unlikely to arise. Instead, cooperativeness and mutual assistance in the economic form of cross-subsidization, corporate social responsibility of monopoly structures, state-supported volunteerism and non-profit initiatives are working here.

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Collaboration across the Arctic: A Tool of Regionalization or Simple Pragmatism?

Verena Gisela Huppert & Romain François R. Chuffart

The Arctic is witnessing the rise of a new paradigm caused by an increase in pan-Arctic collaborations which coexist with the region’s traditional linkages with the South. Using an analysis of concrete examples of regional collaborations in the Arctic today in the fields of education, health and infrastructure, this paper questions whether pan-Arctic collaborations in the Arctic are more viable than North-South collaborations, and explores the reasons behind and the foreseeable consequences of such collaborations. It shows that the newly emerging East-West paradigm operates at the same time as the traditional North-South paradigm, with no signs of the East-West paradigm being more viable in the foreseeable future. However, pan-Arctic collaboration, both due to pragmatic reasons and an increased awareness of similarities, is likely to increase in the future. The increased regionalization process in the Arctic is both a tool and a consequence of the increasing pan-Arctic collaboration.

Introduction Collaborations within the region above 66° north have gained in frequency and significance over the last decades. The rate and speed at which the Arctic transformed itself from a regional complex with a low level of regionness to a region with a high level of interdependencies and societal contacts means that the Arctic region is now at the forefront of international affairs. (See Hettne & Söderbaum, 2000; see also Knecht, 2013: 167-168). Prior to the Cold War, this present situation might have come as a surprise. Young suggests that “[a]nyone who had the audacity to forecast in 1986 the emergence of this agenda of international cooperation in the Arctic within ten years would surely have been dismissed as a starry-eyed visionary” (Young, 1996: 49). Traditionally, collaboration in the Arctic has been based on the North-South paradigm, where governments in the South would work with the Arctic part of their country in the North. Nowadays, based on a rising awareness of similar pre-conditions across the Arctic and an emerging regionalization, panArctic collaborations in the Arctic can be regarded as being more viable than the more traditional North-South collaborations.

In this work, the main objective is to investigate whether the increase of pan-Arctic collaborations is based on similar pre-conditions and a sense of regionalization or whether this shift could be due to other reasons, and whether these collaborations support increasing Arctic regionalization.

Through an analysis of concrete examples of regional collaborations in the Arctic today from the sectors of health, infrastructure and education, this chapter questions whether pan-Arctic Verena Gisela Huppert is a PhD Fellow at CIRCLA (Centre for Innovation and Research in Culture and Learning in the Arctic), University of Aalborg, Denmark. Romain François R. Chuffart is a LL.D. candidate at the University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland.

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collaborations in the Arctic are more viable than North-South collaborations, and explores the reasons behind and the foreseeable consequences of such collaborations.

Although the 21st-century Arctic can be characterized as a zone free of tension, there remains some disagreements concerning the future of the region between “those who favor a state-centric view of the Arctic and those who contend that the region represents a new opportunity for subnational and non-state actors to play significant roles in fashioning [the Arctic’s] future.” (Nord, 2015: 304-5; see also Holm Olsen & Shadian, 2016). Moreover, globalization trends and a peaceful and stable situation in the region have fostered a climate in which international and pan-Arctic collaboration could significantly increase (Heininen, 2010b: 265; see also Heininen, 2010a). In this chapter, the term “pan-Arctic collaboration” is thus to be understood as transnational collaboration between Arctic stakeholders, from the East to the West. This work regards panArctic as being opposite to the traditional North-South collaborations characterized as domestic collaborations between southern capitals and their Arctic regions. The first section of this chapter serves as a methodological and theoretical starting point in which the different region-building processes in the Arctic are outlined, and concepts of regionalization and regionalism are compared and contrasted. The second section analyses the similar pre-conditions that provide an incentive for local actors to collaborate. In light of the previous sections, the third section investigates concrete examples of pan-Arctic collaboration to assess whether pan-Arctic collaborations could be more viable than the traditional North-South collaborations.

Regionalization Since the end of the Cold War, the Arctic has witnessed a surge in region-building processes through different actors (i.e., non-state actors and states) shaping the discourse in delineating the Arctic as a region for common policy purposes. Although there is no commonly accepted conceptualization of what is or makes a political region, the main criteria are increasing transnational interdependencies between states in relative geographical proximity (Knecht, 2013: 166). Theoretically, regional developments and region-building processes can be divided into “regionalism” which is construed as a “top-down” process mainly driven by national governments, and “regionalization”, a process based on grass-root involvement of local actors with similar preconditions (Keskitalo, 2004). Regionalization is also “a process whereby a geographical area is transformed from a passive object to an active subject capable of articulating the transnational interests of the emerging region” (Hettne & Soderbaum, 2000). Methodologically, regionalism and regionalization should be construed as two sides of the same coin (Knecht, 2013: 167).

Regionalization in the Arctic is a relatively new phenomenon, and historically, the Arctic has been rather passive. Arctic relations have mainly been defined as following a North-South axiom, which can be explained by the different colonial contexts in which most of the Arctic still finds itself at present (Keil & Knecht, 2016: 8). The southern capitals used to frame Arctic relations through the lens of a geopolitical paradigm whose discourse shaped and reinforced the Arctic as the “Last Frontier” (Knecht, 2013: 173). Regionalization can also be a tool of political change as local actors often challenge and rethink the region through the lens of decolonization (Rasmussen, 2011: 198; see also Markussen, 2017: 308). In changing the relation between former colonizers and colonized lands and peoples, local collaborations can challenge concepts of state sovereignty and of national boundaries.

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At the end of the Cold War, an era corresponding with the onset of globalization, relations among Arctic territories were characterized by national collaborations. As Knecht observes, the concept of ‘last frontier’ was “marked by competition and contested stability” (Knecht, 2013: 173). This meant that the Arctic was never an attractive ground for collaboration especially when the territories belonged to other countries. Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1987 Murmansk speech is often pinpointed as the point at which the Arctic became an active subject with increased regionalization (See Åtland, 2008). In his speech, “Gorbachev suggested that the Arctic states should set aside their historical differences and join in a ‘general zone of peace and fruitful cooperation’” (Nord, 2016: 14; Gorbachev, 1987: 31). Whereas the Cold War was defined by a state-centric and protectionist approach to IR (Jegorova, 2013: 128) and by a rapid expansion of military facilities in the Arctic, the “contemporary situation represents a clear de-escalation,” (Laruelle, 2014: 113; Young, 2004: 3) even suggests that the end of the Cold War provided “the burst of energy in support of initiatives designed to replace old antagonisms with cooperative ventures cutting across the boundaries of national jurisdictions in the Arctic.” The collapse of the Cold War bipolar world system, as Jegorova (2013) describes it, has brought a multipolar global system in which international relations are viewed through multidimensional cooperation. The Arctic region is no different. Internationalization has played a role in constructing a cohesive Arctic region, that relies on both internal and external factors to advance its region-building process. Having gained global awareness over the years, the Arctic is now regarded as an international region with non-Arctic states becoming more influential and making their presence felt. Exner-Pirot (2013) suggests that as an international region, the Arctic is unique in how quickly it transformed from a passive [geopolitical] object to an active subject (121). Globalization has had a strong influence on regionalization in the Arctic, as “transnational linkages were facilitated by technological advances” (Ibid.). This made grass-rooted regionalization processes possible and allowed the Arctic to develop as a more cohesive unit (Ibid: 126). However, Arctic development also comes at a cost for individual national governments that are unlikely to have the financial resources to meet the high costs of such developments (Rasmussen, 2011: 73). Regionalization thus provides an incentive for more fruitful transnational cooperation where local actors can pool their resources to achieve a common goal (see Markussen, 2017: 308). However, the fluctuant economic context of the Arctic may make local development difficult to sustain for local and regional stakeholders.

In the Arctic, transnational interdependencies depend less on geographical closeness – the Arctic is one and half times bigger than Europe – and more on various stakeholders’ similar preconditions and on a transnational willingness to shape the region as a fertile ground for international cooperation. Regionalization or shaping the region-building discourse might not be the purpose of various local stakeholders collaborating with one another, but, unwillingly or not, local collaborations are both a tool and a consequence of regionalization.

Similar Pre-Conditions and Shared Values A rising awareness of similarities among Arctic actors has gone hand in hand with increasing regionalization. Arctic collaboration and cooperation have both been encouraged and made possible through the development of international bodies such as the Arctic Council. When the Arctic Council was created in 1996, it was argued that “[t]he Council will provide a mechanism for addressing the common concerns and challenges faced by their governments and the people of the Arctic” (Arctic Council, 1996). The Arctic as a globalized region faces the common challenges

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of dealing with the effects of climate change while developing a stable economic system. The establishment of the Arctic Council brought the eight Arctic countries closer together by creating a framework that strengthened transnational relations across the Arctic. (See Koivurova, 2010).

The work of the Arctic Council contributed to both increased regionalization as well as a better understanding of similarities in the Arctic. The regionalization of the Arctic provides a platform for developing new initiatives and finding solutions to common challenges. This similar set of preconditions and challenges is seen as a valuable asset for local stakeholders, as local collaborations are likely to increase cultural revitalization and raise global awareness of the Arctic (Larsen & Schweitzer, 2010; Poppel, 2015).

From an International Relations (IR) point of view, there are evident benefits in collaborations based on shared interests. Jackson and Sørensen (2012) argue that the liberalist approach regards humans as rational beings, who engage with each other because of shared interests. In international affairs, this rationality can result in greater cooperation (Jackson & Sørensen, 2012: 96-98).

Historically, interactions due to shared interests in the Arctic were limited, and they were often enabled by national governments and southern stakeholders. Presently, similar preconditions in the Arctic regions are often underestimated and current regional cooperation is relatively low.

Nevertheless, increased collaborations based on similarities would be beneficial (Lyck, 2015).

Furthermore, Sejersen (2015) suggests that “[t]he contemporary regional understanding [in the Arctic] has something to offer in cultural, social and economic terms and the area has increasingly been able to emerge as a distinct region in policy discussions” (Sejersen, 2015: 9). This argument highlights the extent to which these similarities help the Arctic stand out as an integrated region.

As Keskitalo (2007) argues, “[w]hile globalization does create the need for interaction on a larger scale, it may be more viable politically to construct institutions for cooperation at the regional level instead, where there is some commonality of culture, history, social systems and values, and political and security interests” (Keskitalo, 2007: 187). There is a continuous need for North-South collaborations, especially high-level transnational collaborations and increasing the number of collaborations at the regional level. To achieve the goal of a more stable Arctic region, local stakeholders must be involved in matters related to security and politics. Arctic regions should be involved when working with security and politics, however it is questionable if these should be discussed on a regional level only.

Examples of Collaborations Across the Arctic Education Education in the Arctic is a widely-discussed topic, as many Arctic regions struggle with providing local education. Challenges include a lack of tradition for formal education, and a small population size that makes it difficult to provide education locally. This has led to migration with consequences for the individual and the local society (see Larsen & Fondahl, 2014; Larsen & Schweitzer, 2010; Rasmussen, 2011). Traditionally, youth in the Arctic would be sent southwards for further education when it was not available locally.

A collaboration between schools in Iqaluit, Canada, and Sisimiut, Greenland is a concrete example based on the challenges and similarities the two Arctic towns experience in regard to education.

Established in Spring 2017, the collaboration enables college students to take classes in the respective school in Nunavut/Sisimiut, enabling the students to take classes which are not currently available locally (Zeheri, 2016). The president of the Nunavut Arctic College, Joe Adla Collaboration Across the Arctic

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Kunuk, claims this pan-Arctic collaboration is of significant importance because “[t]he similarities between our land here and their land, and our spoken language in Inuktitut and Greenlandic means it will be an easier transition for students, not like going to Vancouver or Toronto” (Zeheri, 2016), referring to cultural and environmental similarities between Nunavut and Greenland.

Raising awareness for the similarities between the Arctic regions, as well as the aspiration for a better education for their youth is the driving force behind this cooperation. Traditionally, young people would go South to urban areas if classes were not locally offered. By sending them across the Arctic instead, the actors hope for an easier transition, as today many Arctic residents that are, for example, sent to Vancouver, Toronto or Copenhagen, struggle with the adaption to the new environment, which is so foreign from the North.

The above outlined case is an example of how local stakeholders take fate into their own hands and rely less on state actors. Education is crucial for the continued development of the Arctic region. The effects of greater collaboration between regional education institutions could lead to better education in the Arctic regions. It could decrease the North’s dependency on the South if regional actors in the Arctic would supply each other with education opportunities, and contribute to overcome the traditional relations between former colonizer and colonized. However, due to the small population size of the Arctic regions, it will not replace the traditional education exchange with the South in the foreseeable future.

From a pragmatic perspective, it is not easier or cheaper to travel across the Arctic, as infrastructure often mainly connects to the South. It would not make education cheaper for the residents. In addition, the different school systems across the Arctic could make collaboration difficult. On an individual level, pan-Arctic collaborations in the field of education can be more viable than the traditional North-South collaborations, due to the cultural, environmental and social similarities, it can be easier for the individual person to adjust to the region. In the foreseeable future, the traditional collaborations will not be replaced by these pan-Arctic collaborations in regard to education, as the educational opportunities in the Arctic are very few compared to the South. Local collaborations like the example above will, however, contribute to an increasing awareness of similarities between locals, and also increase local fate control and capacity, as actors take initiative themselves. These initiatives will come to exist side by side with the traditional North-South collaborations, and likely increase at the same time as regionalization in the Arctic increases.

The above example can be linked to other similar kinds of collaboration in the field of higher education in the Arctic, such as collaboration between universities.

In 2015, Fróðskaparsetur Føroya (Faroe Islands), Ilisimatusarfik (Greenland), Háskólinn á Akureyri (Iceland), Háskóli Íslands, and Nord University (coastal Norway) launched a new international and interdisciplinary collaborative master’s program that allows students to spend one or two semesters studying at one of the partner universities. The program, ‘West Nordic Studies,’ aims to increase the knowledge of common issues in the area, as well as to enhance mobility and strengthen the network, in order for the students to ‘take part in shaping the WestNordic region’ (UArctic, 2017; WNS, 2017).

In Russia, UArctic’s North2North program has also allowed several universities to be involved in student exchanges across the region. This program “gives students in Arctic countries access to different cultural conditions and the possibility to study in other countries in the region” (Ivanov,

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2015: 38). However, exchanges are not the only tool in the toolbox for furthering academic collaboration (see Korteniemi, 2011). For a little over 25 years, education has also been a tool for Russia and Norway to develop cross-border collaboration. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Nord University (Nordland, Bodø) in Norway has developed a collaborative network of undergraduate and graduate programs with key Russian universities. The collaboration network started as a bilateral agreement between the Baltic State Technical University in Saint-Petersburg, but successfully grew to include other Russian universities such as MGIMO University (Moscow), Murmansk State Technical University, Northern Arctic Federal University (Arkhangelsk), Tyumen State University and Ukhta State Technical University. Funded by federal governments and local governments and spearheaded by several businesses and research councils, these different programs mainly focus on business administration, engineering, energy management and sustainable management in the High North as they bring together professors and specialists from outside academia (Nord University, 2016).

The above outlined examples of university collaboration were mainly established in order to share and create knowledge about the region, as well as scientific cross-border collaborations on current challenges in the Arctic region. Cross-border university collaborations are not only in the interest of the regional actors, but also the states. Through university collaboration states can show their willingness to cooperate across borders, which can be a state tool for a higher agenda than education, including security issues, peace and stability in the region.

Both the Arctic youth as well as local and regional actors benefit from the knowledge sharing by increasing university collaborations in the Arctic. The collaborations have an effect as more knowledge and research will be produced, and the regional population benefits from research. By working together, the actors highlight their commonalities which reinforces the feeling of belonging to a common Arctic region.

University collaboration across the Arctic adds to the existing collaborations with the South. It helps to collect local knowledge, and these Arctic competencies can contribute to the development in the Arctic as they are based on similarities and common challenges. On the other hand, for now there are still too many disciplines that do not exist in the Arctic, which keeps Arctic actors in a dependent relationship with the South in regard to education and research. This is not likely to change in the foreseeable future.

Infrastructure The wide distances in the Arctic have traditionally been a barrier to regional collaboration. The development of regional transportation could, however, enhance business opportunities between regional actors. It does not come as a surprise that the number of pan-Arctic transportation collaboration has been increasing over the years.

The local government initiative, Arctic Airlink, has established regular air traffic in the European Arctic, serving airports in northern Finland, Norway and Sweden via direct flights since January 2015 (Arctic Airlink, 2017). The initiative is based on a common understanding of the region’s potential, but a lack of direct pan-Arctic transportation in order to make use of the potential: “Better infrastructure and accessibility is a prerequisite for more and better business, greater labor market, increased tourism, attractiveness and openness between good neighbors” (Ibid.). Through better infrastructure, the actors wish to bring development to the entire region (Idem.).

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Shared interests from local actors built the basis for the initiative. By creating better connectivity across the Arctic, the actors aim for the creation of a regional market. The initiative is anchored in the field of transportation but potentially has influence for development for all kinds of stakeholders, as it ties the region closer together and opens up for further cooperation throughout other sectors. The involved regions with their small airports and small or medium-size cities also show similarities in their geographical delineation. Scholars suggest an increasing urbanization in the Arctic in the future, and the above initiative contributes to tying the region closer together (Nord, 2015: 304-5).

By creating local infrastructure collaboration, the region will rely less on “southern” airlines for travels within the European Arctic, as well as save time when travelling. In the long term, it might have an effect on the traditional airlines which might experience fewer passengers, which might influence prices. On the other hand, there are no indications that Arctic air traffic will become less expensive in the future (Rasmussen, 2011: 170). Pan-Arctic collaboration in the field of transportation, such as the above, can serve as a stepping stone for region-building in the Arctic as it potentially could show an effect in all kinds of sectors. The collaboration could be more viable than the traditional connection with the South as it connects the region faster at the same price level.

Another example from the transportation sector is the newly established agreement between the Icelandic shipping company Eimskip and the Port of Portland, Maine, and especially further cooperation that has followed from the agreement. In 2013, Eimskip announced Portland, Maine on the east coast of the United States as their new port in the North-Atlantic (Eimskipafélag Íslands, 2013). The managing director for Eimskip in the US, Larus Isfeld, claims that the choice of Portland was not only because of logistical reasons, but also due to similarities in culture and values with the Arctic home market, which can enhance cooperation for Eimskip: The reason we came to Maine to start with is we thought the community is like our culture in our other North Atlantic offices, especially in Scandinavia. [...] I think we’re very compatible with the people of Maine. We all come from harsh winters with long dark periods and we’ve always had to fight for our existence. [...] so we understand each other better. A lot of the values Mainers have, you find the same values in Scandinavia. (Mainebiz, 2014).

It is these similarities that make pan-Arctic cooperation easy and beneficial for local actors. Since the arrival of Eimskip in Maine, the potential of further future cooperation between Maine and the Arctic has been investigated by the actors from both sides of the Atlantic. Delegations from Maine visited Iceland and Northern Norway in order to look for future business opportunities (USM, 2017; Arctic Frontiers, 2017), the Arctic Council’s Senior Arctic Officials and Permanent Participant organizations met in Portland in 2016 (Arctic Council, 2016) and Rambøll organised an Arctic Round Table in Portland (Ramboll Group, 2017).

Portland reached out for the collaboration with Iceland mainly for pragmatic reasons, such as logistics, the prospective of a northern shipping route and attractive business opportunities. In addition, the collaboration is enhanced by shared values and conditions in the respective region as well as good timing for establishing the collaboration. Portland also reached out to Iceland at the same time as Icelandic politicians were keen on developing Iceland’s position during their postcrash recovery.

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The collaboration will contribute to better connectivity between Iceland/the European North and North America, and offer new business opportunities for local actors. Increasing regional infrastructure collaborations also shows the trend of an urbanizing Arctic, and a general movement to rethink traditional connections. The increasing urbanization of the Arctic will have an effect on the traditional, non-Arctic actors, as these could lose some of their businesses. Pan-Arctic collaboration on infrastructure could be more viable than relying on external (outside the Arctic) ports in the long run, and thus serve as a major contribution to the continued regionalization of the Arctic, especially depending on the melting of the sea ice.

Health Health care is another sector that provides examples of pan-Arctic cooperation. The North of Norway and its neighboring Russian region have engaged in a region building process during the last 90 years. Amongst others, the region established a visa-free zone in order to enhance the opportunities to travel within the region (Barents Observer, 2017). The towns of Tromsø, Norway and Murmansk, Russia have had a cooperation agreement for more than 90 years. Today, this agreement focuses especially on common interests in public health, health services and infrastructure. One of the aims of the agreement is “[i]mproving competence related to environmental and ‘Arctic’ medicine [...]. There should also be emphasis on strengthening emergency medicine capacity and disaster and emergency preparedness.” (Helse Nord, 2010: 18).

The cooperation is thus focused on better health services for local communities across the borders.

A similar example can be given from Greenland, where the health care system has had an agreement with Iceland and Denmark since 2009, in order to provide the best service to patients.

A concrete outcome of this agreement is the recent decision to send patients from the settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit in East Greenland to Iceland or Denmark instead of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. In doing so, patients are guaranteed more efficient services (Peqqik, 2017).

The health of their population and provision of ‘the best service’ is a common interest of both regional and state actors, and the Arctic regions “have a long history of international collaboration and cooperation when dealing with issues that affect their communities including human health” (Parkinson et al., 2015: 249). This can also be connected to competency and capacity building as an effect of collaboration in the field of health. Mainly, health collaboration is established due to pragmatic reasons, such as logistics and the lack of local specialists, and shorter distances to specialists across the Arctic than to the South.

Regional health collaboration can result in faster health services and has an effect for the local population, although it also could result in various costs for the local population, such as higher transportation costs and language challenges. Collaboration in the health sector also influences local competency development, as it helps to build competencies in Arctic medicine. In the foreseeable future, collaborations in the health sector might increase the development of local and regional competences, which in the long term can have a positive effect on the whole region. PanArctic collaboration in the health sector has been going on for a long time, and with the right infrastructure (transportation and interpreters) it could become more viable than the North-South collaboration.

Conclusion With an increase in pan-Arctic collaborations, the Arctic as a globalized region witnesses the rise of a new paradigm, which operates simultaneously with the traditional linkages with the South.

Traditionally, the Arctic has been a rather passive object. However, this has changed, and the Arctic is now construed as an active subject in international relations. Through different region-

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building processes, such as regionalization, these newly established pan-Arctic collaborations between local Arctic stakeholders help accelerate the region-building process, which eventually leads to a better integrated region with a high level of regionness.

In general, pan-Arctic collaborations add to the development of local expertise and competencies, and to more fate control on the part of local stakeholders, as they use their respective local expertise in expanding their collaborations. Although collaborations often start because of pragmatic reasons, in the long term they have an effect on regionalization and the region-building process, as they turn local stakeholders into active actors. Regionalization is a tool of political change as local actors often construe, challenge and rethink the region through the lens of decolonization. In changing the relation between former colonizers and colonized lands and peoples, local collaborations can challenge concepts of state sovereignty and of national boundaries.

Collaborations are both a tool and a consequence of increasing regionalization in the Arctic. PanArctic collaborations often start because of pragmatic reasons, but the similar pre-conditions shared by the local actors also play a role in their developments. The examples outlined in this chapter show that in the field of education, similarities and increased regionalization were the determining factors for collaboration. Collaborations in health service and infrastructure are much more based on pragmatic reasons. The similar pre-conditions are not the root of collaboration in these two areas, but they only help to streamline collaborations between local stakeholders. The pragmatic background may make them more viable than the traditional North-South paradigm in the long term. Collaborations based on similar preconditions add to existing linkages as well as the regionalization process.

In the foreseeable future, collaborations in the Arctic will become more local as the detachment from traditional linkages proceeds. At the same time, the future role of non-Arctic actors, which have evolved outside of the traditional North-South relation, is not to be underestimated, as global interest in the Arctic is booming. In addition, the links between the Arctic and the globalized South are becoming stronger on several levels (e.g., economic level with commercial shipping or even socio-cultural developments). The Arctic as a region evolves at the center of a complex web of relations as it becomes a more integrated region in a globalized world. The new emerging EastWest paradigm cannot yet be described as being more viable than traditional North-South collaborations. Instead, the two paradigms operate simultaneously with complex outcomes.

However, it is possible to foresee that East-West initiatives are likely to increase in the future.

Instead of polarizing the Arctic, the evolution of pan-Arctic collaborations following these two paradigms transforms the Arctic into a more complex region with new opportunities that help the Arctic build itself into a more integrated region.

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Building Academic Research Capacity among Indigenous Youth:

A Participatory Health Research Project with Students at Chief Julius School in Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada Megan J. Highet, Amy Colquhoun, Karen J. Goodman, the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project Planning Committee, and the CANHelp Working Group

The CANHelp Working Group has conducted community-driven research in Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada since 2012. In 2015, the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project Planning Committee requested new research aimed at engaging youth and providing opportunities for capacity building. In response, members of the academic research team proposed a photovoice project aimed at documenting the social impact of H. pylori infection in Fort McPherson that would be carried out with youth in the community. In the spring of 2016, we commenced this project and delivered a series of in-community workshops aimed at building academic research capacity among the youth. We then organized a weeklong trip for three Fort McPherson youth to visit our project offices at the University of Alberta in the fall of 2016. In addition to other goals, this visit allowed us to teach these youth about how the CANHelp Working Group research proceeds once the academic researchers have left Fort McPherson.

Here, we outline the program of academic research capacity building that we developed and carried out through the Fort McPherson H. pylori Photovoice Project. We then describe the benefits that we noted to have resulted through our approach of integrating capacity building opportunities throughout the research process. We conclude with a discussion that supports the call for new and innovative approaches to integrating opportunities for capacity building into academic research as a means for ensuring that projects generate meaningful and timely benefits for Indigenous communities in general, and Indigenous youth in particular.

The Institute of Aboriginal Peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Health (IAPH) provides funding for scientists leading research in the broad area of Indigenous health and wellness in Canada. In addition to their role in funding research, the IAPH also recently called upon researchers to challenge historic models Megan J. Highet, Department of Medicine, University of Alberta; Amy Colquhoun, School of Public Health, University of Alberta; Karen J. Goodman, Department of Medicine and School of Public Health, University of Alberta; the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project Planning Committee, and the CANHelp Working Group.

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of research. One way that the IAPH has done this, is by encouraging scholars to develop new approaches for addressing health disparities in partnership with Indigenous communities (Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health, 2011). This goal has been echoed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (of which the IAPH is a part), when they recently issued a revised policy statement that included a chapter dedicated to outlining guidelines intended to support the ethical and meaningful involvement of Indigenous peoples in research that impacts them (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2013). Indigenous scholars have also challenged the wider academic research community to consider whose interests research serves, who benefits from research, and what, if anything, research actually achieves (Smith, 1999). Ensuring that academic studies benefit Indigenous communities in practical ways constitutes an important step away from historic instances wherein research agendas were often steeped in colonialist ideologies and Eurocentric values (Castleden et al., 2012, Genuis et al., 2015a, Jardine & Furgal 2010, Smith, 1999). In response to these expectations for guiding contemporary research, academics are increasingly called upon to consider innovative ways of incorporating opportunities for capacity building into research situated within Indigenous communities (Genuis et al., 2015a).

While discourse along these lines has served as a catalyst for significant strides being made in community-based participatory research, community-driven research, and partnered approaches to research carried out with Indigenous peoples (see: Allen et al., 2012; Castleden, 2008; Cheung et al., 2014; Colquhoun et al., 2013a, 2013b; Genuis et al., 2015; Goodman et al., 2008; Jardine & Furgal, 2010; Hastings et al., 2014; Ninomiya & Pollock, 2017), much work remains to be done. It has been nearly a decade since the United Nations (UN) recognized the rights of children to have a voice, to contribute to, and to benefit from research in their communities (Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009). Yet, the engagement of Indigenous youth in research that affects them remains an underdeveloped area of scholarship (Jacquez et al., 2012). This is striking given that Indigenous youth living in northern Canada are known to experience higher rates of both physical and mental health concerns relative to urban and non-Indigenous youth residing elsewhere in Canada (Ford et al., 2012). At the same time, northern Indigenous youth also find themselves to be on the “forefront” of systemic social, political, economic, and environmental change (Ford et al., 2012: 1). Youth may therefore be recognized as a demographic subgroup that has traditionally had limited opportunities for contributing in meaningful ways to research that impacts them (Ford et al., 2012). It follows then, that the benefits of research that we are increasingly witnessing in the context of Indigenous health have not yet reached northern youth (Castleden et al., 2012). These youth should therefore be targeted, as a group, for engagement in impactful research. Clearly, youth would stand to benefit from opportunities to engage in scientific research capacity building workshops and activities that accompany academic research carried out in their communities. A handful of recent studies have engaged Indigenous youth in Alberta (Genuis et al., 2015a, b, Pigford et al., 2012), Alaska (Allen et al., 2012, Ford et al., 2014), and the Northwest Territories (Jardine and James, 2012). These studies incorporated opportunities for building scientific and academic research capacity among youth; however, there remains a paucity of these kinds of research approaches in the literature and, to our knowledge, none have focused on research with a biomedical component.

Many definitions for ‘capacity building’ have been offered as the term has evolved since it emerged in academic vernacular over three decades ago (Craig, 2007). Here, we use ‘capacity building’ in the context of community-based research to describe the provision of activities, “resources and Building Academic Research Capacity among Indigenous Youth

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support that strengthen the skills and abilities of people and community groups to take effective action and leading roles in the development of [research within] their communities” (Adams & Owens, 2015: 131). In the same way that participatory research is not a method per se, but rather “[a] process by which decision-making power and ownership is shared between the researcher and the community involved” (Castleden et al., 2012: 162), activities aimed at building academic research capacity among research participants can be framed as an approach to research that prioritizes ensuring both immediate and long-term benefits to community members. Capacity building also serves as an effective means for integrating community engagement throughout the research process, which is also an underlying principle for conducting ethical research with Indigenous communities (Allen et al., 2012). Thus, rather than being an ‘add-on’ to research, we view capacity building as a pillar of the process of research with Indigenous communities and especially so in the case of research that aims to engage youth. Here, we provide an overview of our approach to implementing academic research capacity building opportunities into a photovoice project that engaged Indigenous youth in research to document their perceptions of the impact of Helicobacter pylori infection in Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada.

Project Background and History H. pylori is a bacterium that infects the stomach lining where it causes inflammation. The onset of the infection may be accompanied by common symptoms of digestive upset; there are no specific signs and symptoms that identify the infection, so the onset typically goes unnoticed. H. pylori infection can persist, and when chronic, is usually asymptomatic. Thus, H. pylori infection may go undetected and, therefore, untreated for years, or even decades. Chronic H. pylori infection may cause serious diseases including peptic ulcers and, more rarely, stomach cancer (Goodman et al., 2008). The infection is probably spread most frequently by contact with digestive fluids from an infected person, and is typically acquired during childhood, although initial infection and reinfection may occur throughout the life course (Goodman, Jacobson, & van Zanten, 2008).

Populations with a higher prevalence of H. pylori infection generally have higher treatment failure and re-infection rates (Goodman, Jacobson, & van Zanten, 2008). H. pylori infection therefore constitutes an important public health concern. Youth, in particular, may benefit from gaining knowledge about this health concern. Such knowledge may, for example, help youth to make informed decisions about their own health as they become adults who may also eventually assume the responsibility for making decisions that impact the health and wellbeing of the wider community.

The Canadian North Helicobacter pylori (CANHelp) Working Group is a multidisciplinary team that formed between 2006-2008 to conduct community-driven research in response to concerns about H. pylori infection that were articulated by Indigenous community leaders in northern Canada. The CANHelp Working Group links northern communities, health care practitioners, government officials, and academic researchers (including epidemiologists, pathologists, microbiologists, health economists, gastroenterologists, biostatisticians, researchers from the school of public health, and anthropologists), for the purpose of investigating H. pylori infection in northern Canada. In each community, a planning committee comprised of local residents guides the research to ensure that it remains centered on locally identified priorities. Based on knowledge of the research that the CANHelp Working Group had been conducting in Aklavik, Northwest Territories since 2007, Fort

Highet, Colquhoun & Goodman

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McPherson community leaders invited the CANHelp Working Group to launch the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project.

Fort McPherson is a small Artic hamlet located on the Peel River approximately 98 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, Canada. In the 2015 census, the community had a population of 775, the majority of whom self-identified as Gwich’in Dene (Athabaskan) First Nations (NWT Bureau of Statistics, n.d.). Although Fort McPherson is situated on the Dempster Highway and remains accessible for most of the year by road, the community is considered ‘remote’ given its relative geographic isolation. In 2012, 59% of participants screened through the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project tested positive for H. pylori infection (Goodman et al., 2008), a prevalence similar to that reported for other Arctic communities and substantially higher than the prevalence observed in communities located in southern Canada (Goodman et al., 2008).

Overview of In-Community Activities In 2015, the Fort McPherson H. pylori Project Planning Committee expressed a preference for new research that would engage youth and provide opportunities for capacity building within the community. In response, members of the academic research team proposed the Fort McPherson H. pylori Photovoice Project, which would engage youth attending Chief Julius School in a research project aimed at documenting youth’s knowledge, views, and perspectives regarding the impact of H. pylori infection within their community. Working closely with members of the planning committee and school staff, we developed a program that would offer opportunities for building academic research capacity among project participants. The most significant aspect of this program is that it was specifically intended to extend throughout all stages of the research project including data collection, analysis, and dissemination activities. Capacity building activities took place incommunity and also included a weeklong visit to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Participation in the photovoice project was open to students in grades seven through twelve at Chief Julius School, which is the only school in the community. Participation in the photovoice project was encouraged by offering participants the opportunity to be selected for a trip to the University of Alberta. The three youth ultimately chosen for this trip were the only ones who completed all in-community research activities and capacity building workshops and also returned completed parental/guardian consent forms, which were criteria for eligibility.

In June 2016, during a week-long period of in-community research activities, the lead author and a research assistant held an information session about H. pylori infection and the photovoice project for all students at Chief Julius School who had indicated an interest in participating in the photovoice project. This was followed by a series of 1.5- to 3-hour workshops each day that were aimed at building academic research capacity on topics including: developing basic digital photography skills to facilitate image-based research, photo literacy; qualitative photo analysis; principles of ethnographic research; and an introduction to basic tenants of qualitative research including mixed-methods approaches drawn from visual anthropology and ethnography. These workshops took place alongside data collection activities for the photovoice project. The school principal provided the project leaders with classroom space and time to engage youth in these activities during and after regular class time. While the methods and outcomes of data collected for this project are beyond the scope of this paper, results have been presented elsewhere and are accessible on the CANHelp Working Group’s website (www.canhelpworkinggroup.ca.)

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Academic Research Capacity Building Carried Out with Youth Who Visited the University of Alberta In November 2016, three youth, along with an adult chaperone, traveled more than 1900 km from Fort McPherson to Edmonton to visit the project offices of the CANHelp Working Group located at the University of Alberta (see Figure 1). A primary goal of this trip was to elucidate the processes of academic research for these youth through opportunities to learn about how academic research proceeds once researchers leave the research participants’ community. The academic research team arranged several educational experiences during this trip to provide insight into the broad range of expertise of the multidisciplinary academic members of the CANHelp Working Group. The intent of this excursion was echoed by the adult chaperone who said that she hoped that through this experience, the youth would “be able to understand H. pylori and answer questions for people in the community.” She went on to comment: “I’m so excited for them because this is going to help them in so many ways.”

Figure 1. Youth from the Fort McPherson H. pylori Photovoice Project visit the CANHelp Working Group’s Microbiology Laboratory at the University of Alberta.

Photo Credit: Megan Highet

The timing of this academic research capacity building trip was planned to coincide with two research symposia being held at the University of Alberta that same week. In anticipation of the

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youth’s presence on campus at the time of these events, members of the academic research team prepared abstract proposals for two separate poster presentations that described aspects of the research and capacity building opportunities that they participated in throughout the photovoice project. On the first day of their visit to Edmonton, the youth learned about how researchers disseminate results at academic conferences through conversations with members of the academic research team. They then contributed some of their own perspectives to the posters prepared for presentation. The symposia focused upon two different aspects of the subject area expertise of researchers engaged in the photovoice project. These include the School of Public Health’s ‘International Forum on Public Health Education’, and the Faculty of Extension’s ‘Engagement for Transformational Change: Research Showcase’. The youth and their chaperone attended the latter, which allowed them to contribute to presenting the poster that they helped to prepare. This was the first academic conference that any of the youth had attended, and so they were also interested to view the posters of other researchers from academic institutions throughout Alberta.

This showed them how the research that they had been participating in was situated in relation to other active research projects being conducted by members of the broader academic community.

Other educational activities organized for the youth during this trip included learning about how scientists in the CANHelp Working Group conduct microbiological research at the University of Alberta. Before a visit to our microbiology laboratory, a graduate student in our group provided an educational overview of DNA analysis and various techniques used for our microbiological research. Another graduate student provided a tour of our microbiology laboratory and helped the youth to visualize H. pylori bacteria with the aid of a microscope. This experience afforded them a visual perspective on the laboratory component of the H. pylori research being carried out in Fort McPherson that few other community members have had. Following this, the CANHelp Working Group Laboratory Sciences Lead instructed the youth through a series of hands-on experiments as they learned to extract DNA from a wheat germ sample and then subjected their samples to gel electrophoresis. These exercises were intended to simulate how researchers carry out genotyping of H. pylori strains cultured from biopsies of stomach tissue collected during incommunity endoscopy clinics in our partner communities. In doing so, the youth learned that this technique enables CANHelp Working Group researchers to characterize the antibiotic susceptibility of various strains of H. pylori that infect people; information needed to make recommendations for improving treatment protocols for better managing H. pylori infection.

In addition to learning about the process of research dissemination and developing an understanding of knowledge translations goals (by learning about how laboratory science can inform health care protocols), the youth also observed how physician members of the CANHelp Working Group apply knowledge of H. pylori infection and associated digestive diseases to diagnose and treat patients. For this capacity building opportunity, we visited a teaching laboratory at the University of Alberta Hospital that contains an endoscopy simulator normally used by medical residents to hone their skills in performing the procedure upon simulated, robotic patients.

After having the equipment and the procedure explained to them, the physician who facilitated this activity explained some of the pathophysiological changes that might be detected during such a procedure. The youth then each had the opportunity to conduct mock endoscopies using the simulator. The simulation involved reviewing mock patients’ histories and guiding the scope using video simulation. The youth proved skillful at navigating the anatomy of the robotic patient and

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adept learners as they requested increasingly challenging simulations and intently questioned the physician on the implications of their findings.

In discussions following this activity, the youth reported that the experience helped them to better understand why the CANHelp Working Group had previously offered a remote endoscopy clinic in Fort McPherson. They also agreed that they were surprised to see how pathological changes to the digestive track actually looked, admitting they had expected signs of stomach cancer to appear as black splotches eating away at the simulated patient’s body, rather than the areas of reddened inflammation that they observed in one of the mock patients. Following further discussion, the youth also agreed that their understanding of how their own bodies must look inside and how disease impacts the human body in general, had changed as a result of this activity. Furthermore, they stated that the experience had helped them better understand the disease process associated with H. pylori infection. This sentiment is revealed in the reflections of one of the youth who commented: “[the] reason I went on this trip is because I wanted to know what H. pylori is…lots of people said that my Auntie had it once, which I didn’t know about. I never had a chance to ask her, so I wanted to know and get together and learn about it.”

Following this, the youth shadowed a gastroenterologist as he met with patients during his clinic duties and they also had the chance to observe a diagnostic endoscopy being performed on a patient at the University of Alberta Hospital (with the prior consent of the patients). While the University of Alberta Hospital is a teaching hospital and opportunities for trainees to observe medical procedures are not infrequent, they are normally reserved for advanced medical students.

It was therefore a rare opportunity for these youth to observe the practice of a gastroenterologist whose expertise in diagnosing and treating H. pylori infection comprises an important component of the community-based research activities of the CANHelp Working Group. This experience allowed the youth to better understand how stomach tissue samples for microbiological analysis are collected during endoscopy procedures and how physicians arrive at diagnoses for their patients. This experience was reported as being particularly enlightening for one of the youth, who is interested in pursuing a career in the healthcare field.

A final series of activities the youth engaged in during their visit to Edmonton included tours of the local postsecondary campuses and their respective Aboriginal Student Centers. Together, we toured the University of Alberta, MacEwan University, and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (N.A.I.T) campuses to learn about programs and services offered by each institution.

The motive for offering this opportunity was to build capacity with regard to awareness of educational opportunities and dedicated support available to Indigenous students for achieving their own goals after high school. Upon completing the campus tours, one student remarked: “[w]ithout coming here, I don’t think I would have had the opportunity to tour [these places] and [to] see the programs they have.” This was echoed by another youth who said: “[i]f not for this [trip] I would have never thought of going to school after high school.” In light of these comments, we consider these aspects of the trip to have been especially worthwhile.

While the academic research capacity building activities that took place at the University of Alberta have concluded, rather than wrapping up, we anticipate continuing to develop our program of capacity building opportunities. Not only have the students carried the new knowledge and experiences gained in Edmonton back with them to Fort McPherson, but they will also have the opportunity to formally share these experiences with their peers at school and with members of

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the wider community at a knowledge exchange event that will be held at Chief Julius School. At that time, a permanent installation of the photovoice images and the posters that the students helped to prepare for the research symposia will be installed in the school and the students will assist in presenting information about H. pylori infection, the photovoice project, and all capacity building activities carried out up until that time for the benefit of fellow students, members of the planning committee, and other community residents who will be invited to attend the presentation.

Discussion of Multilateral Benefits of Engaging Youth in Academic Research Capacity Building Integrating opportunities for building academic research capacity throughout the process of research with Indigenous youth provides an array of benefits that extend to groups and individuals beyond those directly engaged in the project. When reflecting on the benefits that our approach has yielded, we recognize three areas in which youth have benefited: supporting factual learning; increasing scientific processual capacity; and building networks.

Factual Learning There were many occasions wherein youth involved in this project benefited from factual learning opportunities. In Fort McPherson, these included the workshops attended prior to and during the photovoice project that aimed to enhance basic digital photographs skills and to introduce youth to research and analysis concepts including photo literacy, photo analysis, visually based research, and ethnography. While visiting the University of Alberta, there were many more opportunities for students to learn from our interdisciplinary research team, as they had the opportunity to learn about DNA extraction and analysis techniques, to learn more about H. pylori infection, to view bacterium through a microscope, to learn about endoscopy procedures, and to observe the clinical practice of a gastroenterologist. They also learned about a wide range of research projects being carried out at postsecondary institutions in Alberta as a result of their participation in the Faculty of Extension’s Research Showcase. Finally, the youth who visited Edmonton also learned about postsecondary education in Alberta by touring local campuses, wherein they had opportunities to ask questions about admission criteria, scholarships, academic programs, support for Indigenous students, and student life. These broad educational experiences may benefit these youth as they complete secondary school, in their personal lives throughout adulthood, and particularly, if they decide to pursue an undergraduate degree or career training in the future.

Increasing Scientific Processual Capacity In addition to contributing to the research through their engagement in the photovoice project, the youth also participated in analysis of the data that they helped to collect, which provided the opportunity to learn about how academics conduct research from the planning stage through analysis and dissemination. In doing so, they developed their own critical thinking abilities and communication skills. Because these are typically ‘behind the scenes’ aspects of academic research that take place outside of community locations where data collection occurs, academic research may be considered, to varying degrees, ‘mysterious’, since those who contribute to research (as informants, subjects, and participants) in ‘the field’ rarely have access to the actions of researchers once they have returned to their laboratories and offices on university campuses located many hundreds of kilometers away. The insight that the youth who participated in this project have gained by working closely with the researchers leading this project and contributing to data

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dissemination activities constitutes an important step towards elucidating the processes of academic research. Gaining first-hand experience in academic research carried out in university laboratories and offices is also valuable considering how often researchers from diverse backgrounds approach Indigenous communities in northern Canada with requests to conduct a wide range of studies (Carraher, 2013). This experience will help the youth (who will inherit the community and may eventually be in the position to evaluate proposals from researchers wishing to conduct projects within their community) to understand and evaluate academic research, plans, and timelines. Further, the opportunity these youth have had to observe academic research processes ‘from the other side’ will enhance understanding between community members and academic researchers. This sentiment is echoed in the comment of one of the youths who visited Edmonton and reflected: “[b]ringing us people together is important. You guys are here and we are there. [Here we are a]ll learning together and getting closer to each other. Learning about something in a group.”

Building Networks In 2005, Bowen and Martens suggested that despite best intentions, it is often the case that capacity building efforts result in limited impact or direct benefit, which they suggest may be largely due to the quality and duration of the interactions between academic researchers and members of the community in which research is situated.

Thus, while building capacity through factual and processual learning were important components of the youths’ visit to the University of Alberta, we also prioritized the opportunity that it presented to strengthen relationships and to expand upon existing networks. Examples of these interactions included reinforcing the rapport established with researchers during project activities carried out in Fort McPherson, as well as establishing new networks as youth were able to meet many more of the researchers and staff affiliated with our research group. While the most salient values of these ties will be revealed over time given that it often takes years for the benefits of applied health research to produce measurable benefits within a community (Paradis et al., 2005), the establishment of relationships external to their community may serve as one meaningful way in which the research can prove personally relevant and immediately beneficial to community members (Fletcher et al., 2008).

Bowen and Martens (2005) have further argued that one of the most important outcomes from capacity building activities is the “[d]evelopment of relationships and the building of networks” (207). In addition to this, we also recognize that building academic research capacity may also result in expanding youth’s networks within their community. This might occur, for example, if the experience contributes to enhancing their sense of “self-esteem, empathy and responsibility” (Genuis et al., 2015a: 2), or if it stimulates interest and provides them with the tools needed to become more active and engaged in addressing community concerns. We saw evidence of this on many occasions throughout the capacity building activities when youth were initially hesitant to contribute to discussions or activities, citing a lack of confidence in their ability to generate meaningful contributions as the reason for their lack of engagement. Yet with encouragement, they soon developed confidence in themselves, in their observations, and in their quality of analytical thinking, which had the effect of demonstrating to them that they did indeed have important contributes to offer. We hold that at least in part, this newfound confidence was achieved through the investment of the researchers in supporting and establishing rapport with

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these youth. This does, of course, require genuine interest on the part of the academic researchers towards ensuring that benefits from research are multilateral in nature and that they extend to project participants as well as positively impacting the wider community. This sentiment is echoed in a comment made by the principal of Chief Julius School, who noted that: “[h]aving [the] opportunity to be at a university and understand the programs presented and the wealth of knowledge shared through research…[a]lso, just meeting those who have much to share” was a significant benefit for these youth that she associated with the trip.

Conclusions With the objective of adhering to and furthering the goals of ethical research conducted with youth in northern Indigenous communities, we developed this academic research capacity building program to take place alongside the photovoice project. This approach is also intended to contribute to furthering the aims espoused by the Tri-Council Agencies and its Institutes, to develop research that is transparent (by elucidating the research processes that occur once the researcher leaves the community) and to ensure that projects contribute to reducing the “structural inequalities that are manifest in the structures of power that exist between researchers and communities” by providing opportunities for community members to develop skills and expertise “that the community [itself] views as tangible and beneficial” (Castleden et al., 2012: 162).

Academic research capacity building may therefore be framed as an opportunity for research to “occupy a space that satisfies both academic and community priorities” (Ninomiya & Pollock, 2017: 35).

Through their participation in associated in-community and Edmonton-based capacity building opportunities, youth enhanced their knowledge of H. pylori infection, developed new skills and competencies in the areas of academic research, analysis, and results dissemination, strengthened existing relationships, and expanded upon their network of connections. By gaining insight into the process of academic research through all stages, beginning with helping to shape the direction of the research and culminating in dissemination, these youth gained valuable knowledge pertaining to how academic research proceeds behind office and laboratory doors that are not ‘closed’ per se, but are nevertheless usually inaccessible given the distance that separates University of Alberta research spaces from the community of Fort McPherson. While beyond the scope and purpose of this paper, the outcomes, results, and our own reflections on what we have learned from the youth who participated in the research component of this photovoice project have been presented at several international conferences (copies of these presentations are accessible on the CANHelp Working Group website) and will be published separately.

We expect that this experience will benefit the youth who were able to take part in these capacity building opportunities as well as members of their wider community. Not only have the knowledge and skills gained through these activities been internalized by these youth, but in doing so, they also add to the broad expertise of the community to which all residents contribute. In this way, these youth may now also be considered as “embody[ing] the goals of community partnership” (Genius et al., 2015a: 7). This is because, as Genius and colleagues have observed, youth who participate in (academic research) capacity building opportunities, are ultimately better equipped to “contribute to health and cultural advocacy” in the future, as a result of skills gained through training and by being informed by the outcomes of associated research activities (2015: 7).

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We agree with the afore-referenced guidelines that call for innovation in the ways in which academics conduct research with Indigenous peoples and engage youth in projects. We also agree that the onus is upon academic researchers to address the challenge of ensuring that research provides timely and meaningful benefits within communities in which research is carried out. In response, we encourage others to consider repositioning research priorities with the aim of identifying and emphasizing opportunities for (academic research) capacity building within their projects. When ensuring that benefits to community members is the first priority of the research, we take a significant step towards addressing calls for change in the ways in which academic researchers relate to the communities with whom they work.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the staff of Chief Julius School for their support of this research as well the chaperone who volunteered her time to accompany the youth from Fort McPherson during their trip to Edmonton. Thanks also to all those members of the CANHelp Working Group who contributed their expertise to the activities organized for the youth during their visit to the University of Alberta.

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Carraher, S. (2013). “Never Say DIE!”: An Ethnographic Epidemiology of Helicobacter Pylori Infection and Risk Perceptions in Aklavik, NWT (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). McMaster University, Hamilton.

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Digital Environmental Storytelling Connecting to the Arctic: #60Above60 Pilot Laura C. Engel, Mary E. Short, Sarah E. Jennings, Robert W. Orttung & Luis J. Suter This paper discusses educator/research experiences as participants in a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project taking place within the larger research endeavor Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE): Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic. Arctic PIRE is based in Washington, DC and operates in collaboration with 13 universities from around the world. As central to the educational outreach strategy of the project, this chapter focuses on the design of an environmental digital storytelling pilot project, called #60above60.

The major component of #60above60 involves the digital exchanges of teacher and student-led 60-second videos between classrooms in the DC metropolitan area and Arctic urban communities. Through these exchanges, the aim is for students to share urban life perspectives across the 60-degree parallel, which is how this project defines “Arctic”.

This interdisciplinary project’s goal is to connect students from Arctic and non-Arctic communities to examine both local and global environmental challenges, as well as potential solutions. In this chapter, utilizing perspectives in the literature focused on developing global competencies, environmental literacies, and student voices and agencies, we provide a reflection on the design of the #60above60 project.

Introduction How do we address the considerable disconnect between scientific research and public knowledge?

How, through our various positionalities, is science shared with the public? Who can be an expert in creating and sharing knowledge about environmental-based problems and solutions? How do we engage the next generations in explorations of sustainability both at home in a local context and places far removed? These questions speak to the core challenges facing research, teaching, and learning about the Arctic. Well-noted in debates about scientific communication, it is increasingly difficult to communicate and disseminate dynamic and complex scientific knowledge with an increasingly skeptical public (Bubela et al., 2009). Of equal importance, particularly as it relates to the Arctic, is the need to engage practitioners and students in scientific inquiry and to involve the youngest generations in understanding and addressing ecological challenges facing their local, national, global, and planetary communities (Gold et al., 2015; Misiaszek, 2015, 2016).

This chapter offers a reflection on the educational research and outreach components of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Arctic Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE), Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic. We focus specifically on the recently Laura C. Engel & Sarah E. Jennings are from the International Education Program, Mary E. Short is from Curriculum and Instruction, Robert W. Orttung is from the Sustainability Collaborative, and Luis J. Suter is from the Department of Geography, at The George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA.

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launched #60above60 pilot project, which aims to connect students and classrooms in Arctic and non-Arctic urban contexts. This paper features program design, rather than program outcomes, in order to reflect on the initial pilot design of #60above60 utilizing perspectives from the literature on global competencies, environmental pedagogies, and the advancement of student agencies.

Teaching & Learning about the Arctic There are many examples of educational outreach programs and organizations aimed at enhancing teaching and learning about the Arctic, frequently positioned as a vital locale for advancing future generations’ understandings of the effects of climate change. Often Arctic-based educational outreach efforts focus on building knowledge and understanding about the Arctic through teacher professional development, the production and dissemination of curriculum and related materials, and the provision of opportunities for teacher study abroad. Although significant contributions have been made, many of these efforts have reached only limited populations of students and teachers.

The often-limited outreach of Arctic-based teaching and learning programs speaks to a broader challenge facing ecological educators, namely how to make explicit the connections between local communities and global environmental systems (Connell, Fien, Lee, Sykes & Yencken, 1999; Gold et al., 2014). This challenge is also well-recognized in global education, where scholars have argued against the tendency to advance “the global” as an abstract, bound object or place separated from a local community. Rather, global learning must seek ways to build knowledge, attitudes, and skills to help “students examine the ways in which global processes are creating conditions of economic and cultural exchange that are transforming our identities and communities” (Rizvi, 2009: 265266).

Applying these ideas to Arctic-based teaching and learning in non-Arctic spaces, it is no longer adequate to study the Arctic as a geographical, cultural, or environmental space far away. It is instead important to advance the ways in which human beings, albeit with distinct positionalities, are inherently linked in global and planetary social and environmental configurations. As such, one way to teach and learn about the Arctic is to begin much closer to home through investigating students’ own local contexts in connection with Arctic contexts. This idea lies at the heart of the literature in education aimed at advancing global competencies, environmental literacies, and student agencies, out of which the #60above60 project has emerged.

Advancing Global Competencies Boix Mansilla and Jackson (2011) defined global competency as “the capacity and disposition to understand and act upon issues of global significance” (xiii). Some of the key dimensions include developing students’ critical thinking and analytic skills about global problems and issues; attitudes of empathy, solidarity, and respect for difference and diversity; and the willingness to take action on global problems. Advancing global competencies in education seeks to develop student’s capacity to (1) investigate the world (students investigate the world beyond their immediate environment), (2) recognize perspectives (students recognize their own and others’ perspectives), (3) communicate ideas (students communicate their ideas effectively with diverse audiences), and (4) take action (students translate their ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve conditions). Emphasis is placed on action and solving problems of global significance, as well as

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building more a comprehensive understanding of multiple perspectives and worldviews, including their own as well as others, while taking action (Boix Mansilla & Jackson, 2011).

Yet, creating a program focused on developing global competencies through environmental pedagogies comes with some notable cautions. According to Misiaszek (2016), for example, wellmeaning environmental educators have historically ignored socio-environmental connections to impose western developmental value systems on their international students in the name of sustainable development. Far too often, students participating in environmental education programs are taught that sustainability in the Arctic means treating it as a static object, somewhat of a museum. These messages often ignore Indigenous traditional practices, such as, for instance, hunting, and vilify practices and ways of knowing that have been passed on through generations.

Many marginalized Arctic Indigenous communities are already struggling to hold on to their rights to these practices. Such an approach to environmental education is in its own right oppressive as it results in the further loss of traditional and cultural knowledges. Therefore, as Misiaszek (2016) argued, educational approaches aimed at building global competencies must be teamed with ecopedagogy, as both are necessary in order to remain conscious of socio-environmental ramifications inherent in environmental education.

Furthermore, global competency approaches, such as Boix Mansilla’s (2016) global thinking routines, build global awareness through a reflective set of activities. In environmental education, these reflective practices can help learners consider multiple perspectives on issues from a range of cultural stances, and provide with students opportunities for learning about environmental issues through appropriate instructional practices (Scott, 2002). In doing so, learners come to understand the significance of their learning while continuing to think individually, as well as socially, about their actions (Qablan, Al-Ruz, Khasawneh & Al-Omari, 2009; Scott, 2002).

Environmental Literacies Developing students’ capacities for critically evaluating complex problems is essential if students are to be prepared to address global ecological problems such as climate change, renewable energy development, and resource management. Environmental pedagogies, such as education for sustainability, education for sustainable development, environmental education, and ecopedagogy all have common threads in defining the skills, knowledge and dispositions needed for developing literacies as focused on “increasing environmental wellbeing” (Misiaszek, 2016: 587). Researchers define environmentally literate populations as those whose members understand the guiding principles sustaining ecosystems and hold basic ecological knowledge (Orr, 1992; Sobel, 2008; Stone & Barlow, 2005). Environmental pedagogies encourage the development of environmental literacies when they become embedded into education and equip students to create more sustainable communities (Orr, 1992; Stone & Barlow, 2005). When students see their communities as one aspect of human-made systems within our natural systems, they develop a wider foundation for environmental literacies (Gruenewald, 2003b). According to the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE): An environmentally literate person, both individually and together with others, makes informed decisions concerning the environment; is willing to act on these decisions to improve the wellbeing of other individuals, societies, and the global environment; and participates in civic life (Hollweg et al., 2011: 2-3).

And the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education (maeoe.org, n.d.) states: Digital Environmental Storytelling Connecting to the Arctic

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It is critical that today’s students understand the ecological, economic, and cultural connections between humans and the environment and realize how decisions made by individuals (including themselves) and governments influence these areas and the connections among them. Environmental literacy is integral to fostering this understanding, emphasizing that humans are part of a global community and that actions and decisions made locally by individuals or communities have effects that go well beyond local environments (“Defining Environmental Literacy”, n.d.: para 3).

By beginning close to students’ daily life experiences and home community, and expanding outward, learning becomes conceptually achievable as lessons are scaffolded with the intention of making it possible for students to develop the skills necessary for asking and discussing critical questions about both local and global environmental human impacts. Central to global competency education, as well as environmental pedagogies, is the guiding principle that a leading purpose of education is to instill in students the capacity and motivation to act on their learning, rather than to remain passive recipients. This philosophy holds the belief that students and children are fully entitled to participate in discussions of global proportions and should be encouraged to advocate for changes which make their own lives, and the lives of those around them, more just.

Developing Student Agencies To incorporate action into our framework, the project is informed by critical science education scholars. Evidenced in the literature, researchers have argued that students who are academically competent in the school subject matter view their experiences in science classrooms as irrelevant for their future careers and disconnected to their everyday lives (Carlone, Haun-Frank & Webb, 2011; Eisenhart, Finkel & Marion, 1996; Windschitl & Calabrese Barton, 2016). Scholars offer several reasons for this disconnect. For instance, scientific disciplines, as taught in many schools, reinforce ways of thinking, acting, and being that are reflective of masculinity, and western European cultural ideals (Brickhouse, Lowery & Schultz, 1999). Or, students find their situated discourses to be contradictory to those of academic scientific discourses and as a result learn through classroom talk that their science educational experiences are not personally relevant (Carlone et. al, 2011; Eisenhart, et. al, 1996; Windschitl & Calabrese Barton, 2016). This systematic messaging regarding scientific normative practices and identities creates a disconnect for the many students who fall beyond those narrow categories. Collectively, the central thrust of these studies is making science education meaningful to students’ lives through connecting the objective of study in science with student’s communities, whereby through learning about problems directly impacting those communities, students will be more likely to engage in civically minded scientific actions.

Ideas of the active learner are, of course, not new. These ideas, for example, are related to Dewey’s (1916) notions of the active learner engaged in a process of creating knowledge (e.g., “doing”) and later reflecting on that generated knowledge to build engagement in the learning process. Taking a cultural studies approach to science education, Basu et. al (2009) developed a framework of socioculturally situated science education with a focus on civic action. Termed “critical science agency,” Basu et. al build upon the works of Freire (1970) in that it maintains that learning is agency. Through the act of learning, an individual may begin to break down power structures and create a more just world.

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Focusing on enhancing agencies of learners means taking a deep look at the ways that students learn, and the systemic structures within which students are taught, so that we may address materials and practices reinforcing the perception that nondominant student populations are missing or invisible in science (Barton & Tan, 2010; Basu et. al, 2009; Basu & Calabrese Barton, 2010). In doing so, Basu and Calabrese Barton (2009, 2010) acknowledged power structures existing within science education and, thus, their research demonstrates the benefits of instructional designs that address and mitigate power structures. As students learn through instructional practices that encourage a sense of academic agency, the process focuses attention on the powerful and subjective role of subject matter knowledge. Therefore, students are empowered to see themselves as capable of academic futures and extracurricular endeavors pursuant to creating a more just and equitable world (Arnold & Clarke, 2014; Barton & Tan, 2010; Basu et. al, 2009; Basu & Calabrese Barton, 2009; Basu & Calabrese Barton, 2010). As a result, students begin to use science as a context for change while developing a scientific identity (Basu & Calabrese Barton, 2009).

Weaving together these three sets of perspectives in fostering global competencies, environmental literacies, and student agencies, it is essential for Arctic-based teaching and learning to foster opportunities whereby students can investigate urban sustainability and environmental changes in their own local contexts, exchanging these ideas with students in Arctic contexts perhaps otherwise distant. Derived from these three sets of perspectives, such an exchange should be designed to provide students with experiences that broaden their conversations from the local to the planetary, a leap of paramount importance if students are to be prepared to address global concerns in their lifetimes.

#60above60: Making Space for Writing and Exchanging Environmental Stories Inspired by advancing both global learning opportunities in local schools and place-based environmental pedagogies targeting local ecological environments of students (Gruenewald, 2003a), as well the notable gap in existing approaches to Arctic teaching and learning, the Arctic PIRE launched the #60above60 pilot program in 2016. #60above60 emerges out of the NSF Arctic PIRE, a cross-disciplinary and international collaboration among 13 universities around the world. The five year project (2016-2021) is aimed at developing metrics for Arctic urban sustainability, as well as advancing innovative ways to communicate this science with different stakeholders. These aims therefore include building connections between students in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and communities in the Arctic. #60above60 refers to 60-second videos produced by primary and secondary age classrooms in non-Arctic (e.g., the DC metropolitan area) and Arctic urban communities in order to share perspectives on urban life from above and below the 60-degree parallel. The idea is based off of GW Planet Forward’s “60-Second Selfie Challenge” that encourages college students to use readily available mobile technology (e.g., their cell phones) to make 60-second videos of themselves exploring sustainable innovations related to food, water, energy, and climate on their campuses or in their communities (Planet Forward, 2014). The Planet Forward model is to “engage young people and innovators in search of solutions to the biggest challenges facing our planet” (Planet Forward, n.d.).

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#60above60 adapted these ideas of digital environmental storytelling through investigating a student’s own community as a central means to advancing experiential, problem-based global learning. The focus on the “selfie” (i.e., the self as the center of the story) was broadened to “video,” in order to allow students to step behind the camera in the production of digital stories.

For the youngest learners, classroom videos and photos were also encouraged. Additionally, one of #60above60’s central components is not only the production of 60-second digital stories of environmental problems and solutions in urban contexts, but also the exchange of these videos with youth in other contexts, providing new opportunities to scaffold learning about communities and cities where students may have little or no previous knowledge. By prioritizing digital and environmental storytelling as a primary avenue, the aim of #60above60 is to engage students in cross-site and cross-national reflections on the social, historical, political, cultural, and environmental factors that shape urban sustainability in cities around the world.

In its initial launch, #60above60 did not have specific criteria on subject matter or grade level, operating with intent to encourage diversity of perspectives among teachers and learners.

Consequently, participating classroom teachers taught a range of subjects and content including: media and technology, reading, general science, advanced placement (AP) environmental science, social studies, and general education (all subjects). Moreover, in the initial pilot phase, a range of elementary, middle and secondary classrooms participated, including five primary schools (age 812), three middle schools (age 13-16) and ten secondary level classrooms in total (age 16-19): (6) Washington, DC, United States, (4) Alaska, United States, (4) Norway, and (4) Finland who indicated an interest in participating in #60above60 in their respective classrooms (see Figure 1).

To initially connect with these schools and invite participation, we used a snowballing method, beginning with members of the Arctic PIRE research team to get in contact with school leaders or teachers. Considerations included access to technology and the production of videos in English.

As such, it is important to consider that schools interested in the initial pilot phase of #60above60 were already connected with researchers in universities and often in environments with ready access to technology. Also notable are exclusions of schools both in Canada and Russia. In future iterations of #60above60, we plan to incorporate Russian and Canadian schools, as well as aim to include schools serving disadvantaged and/or more remote student populations. When teachers indicated an interest, a package of materials was disseminated to them, including an educational outreach infographic on the Arctic, sample videos, “how to” video production toolkits, and a #60above60 curricular framework, discussed further below. In addition, educators were connected with the project and one another via a password protected Wikispace where teachers could post and share their process of creating videos and photos, either individually or through classroom collaboration. Classrooms collaborated among age groups and across regions. In the discussion that follows, we detail the design of the three central lines of inquiry within the #60above60 project. In doing so, our aim is to be reflective of how and in what ways the program speaks to the guiding perspectives from literature in global competencies, environmental pedagogies, and advancement of student agencies.

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182 Figure 1. School Locations for #60above60

Project Design: Three Lines of Inquiry The framework of #60above60 includes three lines of inquiry that require increasingly complex thinking and investigation on the part of the student. Each line of inquiry is framed by a single place-based investigative question used as the basis for the digital story: (1) What is special about your city? (2) What is an environmental challenge? (3) What is a solution to that challenge? Each of the three questions acts as an individual stage. Whereas the videos are guided and students are prompted, the intent is that they will be driven by student interests in asking and answering questions about their local environments, leaving subject matter decisions up to them. Teachers support students in choosing topics for discussion, as well as in constructing their discussions around video subjects. The bulk of video content, however, is chosen, filmed, and discussed by students. Along with these three prompts, we provided examples of how to build global competency using this framework with visible global thinking routines (Boix Mansilla, 2016; Ritchhart, Church & Morrison, 2011). For example, they could be used for student evaluation, writing prompts, or to build research skills. The three prompts are discussed below.

What is special about your city?

The objective of this first line of inquiry is to introduce students to the process of investigating their cities independently and to become more comfortable as investigators. It is intended to help Digital Environmental Storytelling Connecting to the Arctic

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students see themselves as members of their local communities, and take ownership of their local environments. It situates studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; educational investigations within a larger, nested cultural and social system (Lemke, 2001). While we are not implying that this line of inquiry is capable of spanning the full range of studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sociocultural networks, it does encourage students and teachers to move investigations beyond school walls and into larger community contexts. For instance, in the design of this stage, this process offers students the opportunity to step into local spaces of the surrounding communities and begin to generate questions about what the special attributes might be and what makes them special. For non-Arctic students, this first line of inquiry provides new insights into urban Arctic life: What does an Arctic city look like? How might this exercise challenge assumptions about Arctic cities? Before reviewing videos from abroad, classrooms are asked to reflect on what they already believe about the other featured contexts, as well as what they do not know, and are curious to learn. They are asked to consider assumptions implicit in their notions, questions, and beliefs about their exchange city and then to conduct independent research about what life is like there. Overall, the first line of questioning is aimed at structuring studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; investigations about home and abroad.

What is an environmental challenge?

During the second line of questioning, students identify environmental challenges facing their local communities to facilitate the examination and questioning of urban sustainability issues within their local environments. Students are asked to consider what caused the problem, and what difference it makes in the lives of people who live there. Students are also encouraged to consider: Who is affected? Why does the environmental challenge matter to their communities? They are then asked to consider: What environmental challenges might be taking place in the city with which they exchange videos? The intention is then for students to compare and/or contrast those challenges to environmental challenges depicted in the student videos from other cities. By discussing what they learned about environmental challenges in different parts of the world, the program design offers students an avenue to better conceptualize the ways in which people, regardless of distance, are connected as members of a greater global community.

What is a solution to that challenge?

The third stage of #60above60 encourages students to critique and support ways in which their local communities and peer cities are addressing environmental challenges. By taking a critical approach to local and global environmental challenges, students are encouraged to take action both locally and globally. During this phase of the project, students are asked to consider (among other questions): How would you address this environmental challenge? What difference does it make in the lives of people who live there? As students share their videos, they are able to consider the deeper socio-environmental factors embedded in the problems identified by their international peers. The lines of inquiry listed above are carefully worded to encourage students to not only think about human-nature interconnections and interactions, but to deepen those considerations to include multiple perspectives. Teachers are provided reflective prompts that may foster discussion around solutions from across the 60 degree parallel and how they may or may not be possible at home.

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Discussion In an effort to build additional platforms to advance meaningful global and environmental learning, the design of #60above60 is aimed at creating a virtual space whereby young people can pose critical questions about urban sustainability issues in their local communities and investigate potential solutions to environmental problems. Layered onto this place-based pedagogical approach are opportunities for non-Arctic students to engage in essential global dialogues with peers living in Arctic communities by exchanging their investigations of those local environmental problems and innovations. In working through the three lines of inquiry, students are potentially able to compare and contrast across diverse Arctic and non-Arctic settings, making relevant what may have previously seemed irrelevant to students, as well as challenging preconceived notions about urban life across nation-state boundaries.

In its design of three cycles, each potentially involving an exchange of videos, this model aims to push students to develop essential skills in communication with diverse audiences, primarily through an investigation of their own and otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspectives. Moreover, the storytelling components provide opportunities for students to exercise voice and enhance their digital literacy skills using technology that is often readily available. As such, #60above60 is designed to be an inherently socio-environmental project that brings groups of students together across vast distances to learn about environmental sustainability in multiple contexts. As such, the #60above60 model aims to add potential value for other Arctic efforts, as well as new research avenues in global and environmental education.

In reflecting in this chapter on the core design elements of #60above60 against the literature on global competences, environmental literacies, and student agencies, we note particular limitations.

For example, our initial outreach to schools connected with members of the Arctic PIRE research community did not provide a wide enough outreach to ensure that we were incorporating a diverse range of schools, including those that serve traditionally marginalized students. Second, the basis of the program design is readily accessible technology to produce videos, and access to internet connectivity to send and receive videos, excluding schools without readily accessible Internet connectivity. Lastly, as we reflect on our aims and objectives underlying #60above60 against perspectives emerging from literature, of particular importance is the insufficiency of a single platform or single program. Specifically, we are critically reflective of the fact that the direct exchange of student produced videos is not sufficient for students to become aware of their ecological, economic, and cultural connections to international peers. And in fact, they could in some circumstances re-inforce stereotypes about urban contexts in Arctic and non-Arctic contexts.

Much depends on the training and perspectives of teachers, how teachers utilize the #60above60 platform in their classroom practices, and the level of reflective questioning taking place.

Therefore, in future iterations communication between schools will be much more in depth than the mere exchange of videos, to include opportunities for follow-up questions.

Despite these limitations, we remain hopeful about the #60above60 program. It is vital to develop programs that encourage ecological awareness and global collaboration through civic action by teaching students about climate change in the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet (National Geographic, 2017). Moreover, in creating opportunities for students to produce digital stories, we prioritize the youngest generations to be the lens through which stories of climate change and human impacts on the environment can be noted. Why not? The future of

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the planet is in fact theirs. Providing students opportunities to exercise their voice is arguably the first step in positioning the youngest generation so that they develop the skills and the dispositions to take action on truly planetary issues.

Of course, sustainability challenges like resilience and adaption to climate change are not simply limited to contexts above the 60-degree parallel, mandating place-based, problem-centered, global learning initiatives. Therefore, the #60above model may potentially be adaptable to other latitudes (#60below40; #60atzero). Designing programs of study that encourage students to think, speak, and act in ways that address existing ecological challenges, introduces students to experiences, mental processes, and develops critical capacities necessary to avoid planetary ecological collapse beyond those already underway.

Acknowledgments Funding for this project came from the National Science Foundation’s Arctic PIRE (Award # 1545913).

We would like to acknowledge all of those who have supported the development of the #60above60 project, especially Planet Forward with specific thanks to Frank Sesno and Dan Reed; the Arctic PIRE team, especially Dmitry Streletskiy, Carrie Schaffner, Carlson Giddings; and all of the teachers participating in this pilot study.

References Arnold, J., & Clarke, D. J. (2014). What is “Agency”? Perspectives in Science Education Research. International Journal of Science Education, 36 (January 2015), 735–754. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2013.825066 Barton, A. C., & Tan, E. (2010). We Be Burnin’! Agency, Identity, and Science Learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 19(2), 187–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508400903530044 Basu, S. J., & Calabrese Barton, A. (2009). Critical physics agency: Further unraveling the intersections of subject matter knowledge, learning, and taking action. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 4(2), 387–392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-008-9155-4 Basu, S. J., Calabrese Barton, A., Clairmont, N., & Locke, D. (2009). Developing a framework for critical science agency through case study in a conceptual physics context. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 4(2), 345–371. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-008-9135-8 Berland, L. K., Schwarz, C. V., Krist, C., Kenyon, L., Lo, A. S., & Reiser, B. J. (2016).

Epistemologies in practice: Making scientific practices meaningful for students. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(7), 1082–1112. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21257 Boix Mansilla, V. & Jackson, A. (2011). Educating for global competence: Preparing our youth to engage the world. Educating for Global Competence, 1–136. Retrieved from http://asiasociety.org/files/book-globalcompetence.pdf Boix Mansilla, V. (2016). How to be a global thinker. Educational Leadership, 74(4), 10–16.

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Brickhouse, N. W., Lowery, P., & Schultz, K. (2000). What Kind of Girl Does Science? The Construction of School Science Identities. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(5), 441– 458. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-2736(200005)37:5<441::AID-TEA4>3.0.CO;2-3 Bubela, T., Nisbet, M. C., Borchelt, R., Brunger, F., Critchley, C., Einsiedel, E., … Caulfield, T. (2009). Science communication reconsidered. Nature Biotechnology, 27(6), 514–518. https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0609-514 Carlone, H. B., Haun-Frank, J., & Webb, A. (2011). Assessing equity beyond knowledge- and skills-based outcomes: A comparative ethnography of two fourth-grade reform-based science classrooms. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(5), 459–485. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20413 Connell, S., Fien, J., Lee, J., Sykes, H., & Yencken, D. (1999). If it doesn't directly affect you, you don't think about it’: A qualitative study of young people's environmental attitudes in two Australian cities. Environmental Education Research, 5(1), 95-113.

Defining Environmental Literacy (n.d.). http://maeoe.org/definition-of-environmental-literacy/ Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Macmillan Publishing.

Eisenhart, M., Finkel, E., & Marion, S. F. (1996). Creating the Conditions for Scientific Literacy: A Re-Examination. American Educational Research Journal, 33(2), 261–295. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312033002261 Engel, L. C. (2014). Citizenship education and national (re)formations: Reflections from Spain.

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Gold, A. U., Kirk, K., Morrison, D., Lynds, S., Sullivan, S. B., Grachev, A., & Persson, O. (2015).

Arctic climate connections curriculum: A model for bringing authentic data into the classroom. Journal of Geoscience Education, 63(3), 185-197.

Gruenewald, D. (2003a). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3-12. doi:10.1080/13504620802193572.

Gruenewald, D. (2003b). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for placeconscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3) 619-654. doi:10.3102/0028312040003619.

Hollweg, K. S., Taylor, J. R., Bybee, R. W., Marcinkowski, T. J., McBeth, W. C., & Zoido, P. (2011). Developing a framework for assessing environmental literacy. Washington, DC: North American Association for Environmental Education. Retrieved from https://naaee.org/sites/default/files/envliteracyexesummary.pdf Lemke, J. L. (2001). Articulating communities: Sociocultural perspectives on science education.

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Our Children’s Trust. (n.d.) https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/ Planet Forward. (n.d.). About us. http://www.planetforward.org/content/about-us Planet Forward. (2014). 60 second selfie challenge. http://www.planetforward.org/2014/08/25/60-second-selfie-challenge-how-to Qablan, A. M., Al-Ruz, J. A., Khasawneh, S., & Al-Omari, A. (2009). Education for sustainable development: Liberation or indoctrination? An assessment of faculty members’ attitudes and classroom practices. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 4(4), 401– 417.

Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making thinking visible: How to promote engagement, understanding, and independence for all learners. John Wiley & Sons.

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Sobel, D. (2008). Childhood and nature: Design principals for educators. Portland, ME. Stenhouse Publishers Stone, M. K., & Barlow, Z. (Eds.). (2005). Ecological literacy: Educating our children for a sustainable world. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books.

The Polar Hub (June, 2017) The Climate Change Board Game. https://thepolarhub.org/resource/climate-change-board-game Windschitl, M., & Calabrese Barton, A. (2016). Rigor and equity by design: locating a set of core teaching practices for the science education community. In D. H. Gotimer, & C. A. Bell Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching, (1099-1159). Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association.

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Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX): A Framework Program on the Land - Atmosphere - Ocean - Society Interactions of the Changing Arctic – Boreal Environments Hanna K. Lappalainen,1,2,8 V.M. Kerminen,1 T. Petäjä,1,8 J. Bäck,3 T. Vesala,1 T. Vihma,2 T. Haapala,2 A. Mahura,1 A. Baklanov,4 R. Makkonen,1 A. Lauri,1 V-P. Tynkkynen,5 H. Junninen,1 G. de Leeuw,2 P. Konstantinov,6 N. Kasimov,6 V. Bondur,7 V. Melnikov,8 S. Zilitinkevich,2,8 & M. Kulmala1,8 The Arctic is warming two times faster than the other regions of the Earth system. Spatially, the processes called “Arctic greening” and the Arctic tundra “browning” are bringing the Arctic change closer to the dynamics taking place in the boreal regions. To be able to understand the changing Arctic environments and societies as well as feedbacks between the Arctic and boreal regions and, on a larger scale, between the Arctic and the Earth system, we need a novel conceptual framework of research methods, infrastructures and procedures. The Pan-Eurasian Experiment Program (PEEX), established in 2012, is aiming to be a next-generation natural sciences and socio-economic research initiative using excellent multi-disciplinary science with clear impacts on future environmental, socio-economic and demographic development of the Arctic and boreal regions and China. PEEX is also a science community facilitating novel research infrastructures (in situ observation networks) in the Northern Pan-Eurasian region and China. PEEX delivers conceptual plans of coherent, coordinated, comprehensive in situ measurement and data systems of the Earth surface-atmosphere interactions. PEEX is making an assessment of the existing observation capacities including satellites, versus the future PEEX in situ observation network, which would cover the Northern Eurasian region from Scandinavia to East Asia. The principles of the PEEX in situ observation network is based on the SMEAR (Stations Measuring the Earth Surface – Atmosphere Relations) concept. PEEX is interested in expanding the land-based observation network to cover also the most relevant processes related to the Arctic Ocean and to make a conceptual design of the marine in situ component. In addition, PEEX is taking the first steps for implementing the seamless all-scalesmodelling platform and continues to develop the PEEX View Modelling Tool.

Introduction The Pan-Eurasian Experiment Program (PEEX) (https://www.atm.helsinki.fi/peex/) is a multiscale and multi-disciplinary program aimed at finding science based solutions for the global environmental challenges, such as climate change, at the Northern high latitudes and in China. The PEEX kick-off meeting was held in October 2012. The cornerstones of the program are (i) 1) Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; 2) Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; 3) Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; 4) GAW program, World Meteorological Organization, Geneve, Switzerland; 5) Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; 6) Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia; 7) Aerocosmos, Moscow, Russia; 8) Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia.

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carrying out a science based approach from deep understanding to practical solutions, (ii) using methods based on multidisciplinary, multiscale tools, (iii) coordinating fragmented observation sites towards coherent, coordinated research infrastructures, (iv) delivering scientific information and services receiving the greatest possible impact and (v) facilitating knowledge transfer and multidisciplinary education. The promoter institutes of PEEX have been the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Finland; the Institute of Geography of Moscow State University, AEROCOSMOS, and the Institute of Atmospheric Optics (Siberian branch) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in Russia; the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Institute for climate and global change research of Nanjing University in China. The program governance and the communications is coordinated by the PEEX Offices in Helsinki (PEEX Headquarters), Moscow, Nanjing and Beijing under the guidance of the Program Steering Committee.

The program is aimed to be a long-term continuous activity carrying out coordinated research and the development of in situ observation networks and education of the next generation of experts having multidisciplinary skills and background. Starting from 2013, PEEX has defined its scientific scope and the thematic research areas of interest. The main interest is in the understanding of large-scale feedbacks and interactions between the land-atmosphere-ocean continuum in the changing climate of the Northern high latitudes. The PEEX research community or network is currently covering ca. 4,000 researchers representing mainly the natural sciences. The backbone of the research approach is the currently ongoing Finnish Center of Excellence in Atmospheric Science - From Molecular and Biological processes to The Global Climate, with the annual volume of published peer reviewed papers of about 150. PEEX is also gathering research results on the Arctic-boreal environments via the PEEX Special Issue in the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/special_issue395.html).

In addition to carrying out and making an integrative synthesis out of Arctic-boreal research, PEEX is also interested in coordinating the in situ network on Earth surface−atmosphere observations across the Northern Eurasian region and marine based observations over the Arctic Ocean (Figure 1). The principles of the PEEX in situ observation network is built on the SMEAR (Stations Measuring the Earth Surface – Atmosphere Relations) concept (Hari et al., 2016; Kulmala et al., 2016; Alekseychik et al., 2016). SMEAR concept is based on simultaneous observations on atmospheric composition, meteorology and ecosystem biological activity (photosynthesis, respiration). The flagship station introducing the SMEAR concept in operation is the SMEAR-II station situated in Hyytiälä, Finland. The SMEAR-II station is contributing to several European and global level monitoring and observation systems (www.atm.helsinki.fi/SMEAR/index.php/smear-ii) (Figure 1).

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Figure 1. One of the main aims of PEEX is to improve the current in situ observation network and observation concept across the Northern Eurasian region. The PEEX geographical area of interest (left) and the schematics of the SMEAR-II station observations (right).

PEEX is interested in expanding the land-based observation network to cover also the most relevant processes related to the Arctic Ocean and make a conceptual design of the marine in situ component (Vihma et al. manuscript in preparation). New data are needed for comprehensive data analysis and modelling frameworks. PEEX will establish a seamless modelling framework from nano-scale modelling to Earth system models and introduce community-based services for data mining and for demonstrating air pollution events at regional scales (Baklanov et al., manuscript under preparation). Satellite observations provide daily observations of atmospheric composition and surface properties, complementary to in situ and modeling information. As a part of this approach, PEEX is delivering conceptual plans of the coherent, coordinated and comprehensive measurement and data systems of the land-atmosphere interactions.

The PEEX education is a cross-sectional activity, which covers young scientists training, including specific winter and summer schools, and the expert training targeted to more technical aspects of measurement techniques and running operations including data management aspects of field stations.

The PEEX Science Plan was delivered in 2015 (Lappalainen et al., 2015, http://www.atm.helsinki.fi/peex/images/PEEX_Science_Plan.pdf) and after that, the main focus has been on the conceptual design of PEEX tools. In this paper, we will introduce the latest progress made in different PEEX tools (observation network, marine observation concept, modelling platform, socio-economic data pools, education) during the last two years and give an overview of the next steps implementing the PEEX Science Plan.

Scientific Background The Arctic is warming two times faster than the other regions of the Earth. Spatially, the processes called “Arctic greening” and the Arctic tundra “browning” are bringing the Arctic change closer

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to the dynamics taking place in the boreal regions (IPCC, 2013; Anderson et al. 2013; Myneni et al., 1997; Xu et al., 2013; Phoenix & Bjerke, 2016).

Research collaboration is required to solve those yet open scientific questions that are specifically important to Arctic-boreal land ecosystems in the coming years (Table 1). In particular, the scientific questions in the context of global climate change and its consequences for nature and northern societies are related to the net effects of various feedback mechanisms connecting the biosphere, atmosphere and human activities (e.g., Elmendorf et al., 2012; Macias-Fauria et al., 2012; Larsen & Fondahl, 2014; Callaghan et al., 2011; Schuur et al., 2015). Such feedbacks are triggered by increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG), leading to higher temperatures and consequently to further permafrost thawing, land cover change, increased dissolved organic carbon content in freshwaters, acidification of the Arctic Ocean, sea ice decline, increased photosynthetic activity, changes in the carbon balance and energy budgets as well as greenhouse gas exchange between the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems, shrub encroachment, treeline advance, and increased biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions into the atmosphere which leads to increased aerosol and cloud droplet number concentrations thereby affecting the Earth’s radiation budget (Arneth et al., 2010, 2014; Ballantyne et al., 2012; Carslaw et al., 2010; Kulmala et al., 2014). These feedbacks may be expected to accelerate or decelerate the rate of climate change. The primary scientific focus of the PEEX is on the physical, chemical and biological processes affecting climate change. In addition to climate change and global warming, the PEEX community investigates biogeochemical cycles in different ecosystems, sustainable use and acclimation of forests to the changing climate, air quality, feedbacks between air pollution and changing climate, and related socio-economic aspects.

The Arctic Ocean plays an important role in the climate system. The essential processes related to the interaction between the ocean and other components of the Earth system include the air-sea exchange of momentum, heat and matter (e.g., moisture, CO2, and CH4, sea spray aerosol), as well as the dynamics and thermodynamics of sea ice. The remaining open scientific questions are related to the role of the ocean in the Arctic amplification of climate change, to the reasons for the Arctic sea ice decline, to the GHG exchange between the ocean and atmosphere, and to the various effects that the sea ice decline has on the ocean, surrounding continents and aerosol budgets (Lappalainen et al., 2015). Furthermore, the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean is undergoing fast changes, including a decline of summer ice extent and ice thickness, and is affecting the dynamics of the ocean biology. Sea ice changes will result in a significant increase in the ice-free sea surface during the vegetation season, and an increased duration of this season. This will initiate a pronounced growth of the annual gross primary production (GPP) and phytoplankton biomass.

Higher GPP may in turn cause an increase in CO2 fluxes from the atmosphere to the ocean and an increase in the overall biological production, including the production of higher trophic level organisms and fish populations. An increase in surface water temperature might “open the Arctic doors” for new species and change the Arctic pelagic food webs, energy flows and biodiversity.

Climatic and anthropogenic forces at the drainage areas of Arctic rivers may lead to changes in flood timing and increase in the amount of fresh water and allochthonous materials annually delivered to the Arctic shelves, and further to the Arctic Basin. All these processes could impact the Arctic marine ecosystems and their productivity, as well as the key biogeochemical cycles in the region. One of the most important potential changes in the marine Arctic ecosystems is related

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to the progressive increase in the anthropogenic impacts of oil and natural gas drilling and transportation over the shelf areas, via the long-term backwash effect (Lappalainen et al., 2015).

Introduction to PEEX Tools In order to understand the changing Arctic environments and societies and the feedbacks between the Arctic and boreal regions and, at a larger scale, between the Arctic and the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s system, we need a novel conceptual framework of research methods, infrastructures and procedures. The socalled PEEX tools, Earth surface-atmosphere and marine observation networks, satellite observations, modelling platforms, socio-economic data pool, and educational tools serve this need.

Table 1. The main large scale research questions are introduced in the PEEX Science Plan; see also Kulmala et al., 2015.

LARGE-SCALE RESEARCH QUESTIONS LAND SYSTEM Q-1 How could the land regions and processes that are especially sensitive to climate change be identified, and what are the best methods to analyze their responses?

Key topic: shifting of vegetation zones, Arctic greening Q-2 How fast will permafrost thaw proceed, and how will it affect ecosystem processes and ecosystem-atmosphere feedbacks, including hydrology and greenhouse gas fluxes?

Key topic: risk areas of permafrost thawing Q-3 What are the structural ecosystem changes and tipping points in the future evolution of the Pan-Eurasian ecosystem?

Key topic: Ecosystem structural changes ATMOSPHERIC SYSTEM Q-4 What are the critical atmospheric physical and chemical processes with large-scale climate implications in a northern context?

Key topic: atmospheric composition and chemistry Q-5 What are the key feedbacks between air quality and climate at northern high latitudes and in China?

Key topic: urban air quality, megacities and changing PBL Q-6 How will atmospheric dynamics (synoptic scale weather, boundary layer) change in the Arcticboreal regions?

Key topic: weather and atmospheric circulation AQUATIC SYSTEMS â&#x20AC;&#x201C; THE ARCTIC OCEAN Q-7 How will the extent and thickness of the Arctic sea ice and terrestrial snow cover change?

Key topic: The Arctic Ocean in the climate system Q-8 What is the joint effect of Arctic warming, ocean freshening, pollution load and acidification on the Arctic marine ecosystem, primary production and carbon cycle?

Key topic: The Arctic maritime environment Q-9 What is the future role of Arctic-boreal lakes, wetlands and large river systems, including thermokarst lakes and running waters of all size, in biogeochemical cycles, and how will these changes affect societies (livelihoods, agriculture, forestry, industry)?

Key topic: lakes, wetlands and large river systems in the Siberian region ANTHROPOGENIC ACTIVITIES Q-10 How will human actions such as land-use changes, energy production, the use of natural resources, changes in energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources influence further environmental changes in the region?

Key topic: Anthropogenic impact

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Q-11 How do the changes in the physical, chemical and biological state of the different ecosystems, and the inland, water and coastal areas affect the economies and societies in the region, and vice versa?

Key topic: Environmental impact Q-12 In which ways are populated areas vulnerable to climate change? How can their vulnerability be reduced and their adaptive capacities improved? What responses can be identified to mitigate and adapt to climate change?

Key topic: Natural hazards FEEDBACKS â&#x20AC;&#x201C; INTERACTIONS Q-13 How will the changing cryospheric conditions and the consequent changes in ecosystems feed back to the Arctic climate system and weather, including the risk of natural hazards?

Q-14 What are the net effects of various feedback mechanisms on (i) land cover changes, (ii) photosynthetic activity, (iii) GHG exchange and BVOC emissions (iv) aerosol and cloud formation and radiative forcing ? How do these vary with climate change on regional and global scales?

Q-15 How are intensive urbanization processes changing the local and regional climate and environment?

Key topics: Atmospheric composition, biogeochemical cycles: water, C, N, P, S

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Earth surface-atmosphere observation network Continental observations To ensure a successful research approach, PEEX will establish its own long-term, coherent and coordinated research infrastructure activities, such as an in situ observation network of ecosystem– atmosphere interactions (Lappalainen et al., 2014; Alekseychik et al., 2016; Kulmala et al., 2016).

The concept of the hierarchical PEEX in situ station network is based on the know-how of the 20year development of the SMEAR-II flagship station measurement theory and techniques (Hari et al., 2016). The backbone of the station network is built on the existing land surface (biosphere/ecological or urban) and atmospheric observation networks in collaboration with European, Russian, Chinese and global partners (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Starting from 2016, the PEEX program has gathered metadata information from the Russian stations conducting ecosystem, atmospheric composition and/or meteorological measurements. The metadata poll is based on the SMEAR concept. By June 2017, we have metadata information (information on the measured variables, descriptions of the field station and the measurement site) from 54 stations (figure by Nuria Altimir and Alla Borisova, University of Helsinki 2017). We plan to release a station metadata e-catalogue in 2018.

Establishment of new SMEAR stations are envisioned. The first ideas of the Global SMEAR network were introduced in the Paris COP side-meeting. PEEX will also contribute to the WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) observation program and the Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS). WMO GAW provides the standards for atmospheric measurements, while IG3IS will establish, propagate and, over time, improve the methodological standards for how the atmospheric transport inverse model analyses of atmospheric GHG concentration measurements (“top-down”) can be combined with spatially and temporally explicit socioeconomic emission inventory data (“bottom-up”) to better inform and manage emission reduction policies and measures.

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Marine observations The marine component of PEEX will address the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas. Its basis will be a hierarchical concept of an in situ station network analogous to that in the Eurasian continent, but affected by the practical challenges in making long-term observations in and over the sea (Hari et al., 2016). Observations from the ocean, sea ice and atmosphere are needed to obtain a better understanding on the state and change of the marine Arctic climate system (Dรถscher et al., 2014).

The processes to be studied include the sea ice thermodynamics and dynamics, ocean heat and freshwater budgets, ocean circulation, waves and tides, ocean chemistry and ecosystems, atmospheric heat and moisture budgets, synoptic-scale cyclones and polar lows, tropospherestratosphere coupling, atmospheric boundary-layer processes, as well as aerosols and clouds (Vihma et al., 2014). Some of the in situ observations will be made during research cruises, manned ice stations and research aircraft campaigns, while the majority of the data will be collected by applying long-lasting installations. These include drifting buoys on sea ice and ocean surface, gliders in the ocean, moored thermistor chains and current meters, ice-tethered platforms and coastal stations. The in situ observations will be supported by satellite and ship/ice-based remote sensing observations.

A particularly interesting aspect is the interaction of the marine, atmospheric and terrestrial components of PEEX. Among the major interactive processes are the effects of river discharge on the ocean and sea ice, coastal erosion, subsea permafrost in the Siberian continental shelf, transports of heat, freshwater, aerosols and air pollutants from lower latitudes to the central Arctic, as well as the effects of Arctic amplification of climate warming on Eurasian weather and climate.

The concept of the SMEAR stations, i.e., integrated measurements at a fixed position, can be established in the coastal island of the Arctic Ocean, whereas a central Arctic observatory could only be based on a ship or other floating platform anchored and drifting within the pack ice. In addition to the legendary Russian ice stations (Romanov et al, 1997), only three ship based campaigns, SHEBA (Perovich et al., 1999), Tara (Gascard et al., 2008) and N-ICE2015 (Granskog et al., 2016), have been successfully completed during the last 20 years.

The next major international Arctic Ocean research effort will be the MOSAiC study (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate experiment, http://www.mosaicobservatory.org/), where the R/V Polarstern will be anchored on pack ice for one year beginning in Autumn of 2019. The expected drifting route follows the Transpolar Drift which will carry the ship from the Laptev Sea to Fram Strait via the North Pole region. The MOSAiC observatory will include ship-based measurement of the atmosphere, ice and ocean physical-chemical and biological properties as completely as possible in terms of absolute values of different variables and their vertical distribution. The ship-based observatory will be complemented with a network of automatic ice-tethered buoys and profilers, underwater drifters, unmanned aerial systems, aircrafts, additional ships and satellites.

Satellite observations The PEEX Program research infrastructure pillar underlines that the satellite observations need to be connected with the ground-based observations of the PEEX network. Satellite observations (European Space Agency, NASA) provide daily observations over the whole Northern Eurasian region, complementary to ground-based observations and thus filling the gaps between in situ Lappalainen et al.

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stations. At the northern high latitudes, polar orbiting satellites provide a good coverage with several overpasses over the same area each day, depending on the sensorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; swath width, and a spatial resolution of typically 1-10 km. However, serious disadvantages are the long polar night and presence of clouds, which hamper observations at the wavelengths of the solar spectrum often used for measuring the atmospheric composition, land surface reflectance and temperature, and vegetation. Another problem may be the high reflectance of surfaces covered with snow and ice, which makes it difficult to separate the surface reflectance from that of the atmospheric components, including clouds (Kokhanovsky & de Leeuw, 2009; Istomina et al., 2010; Sogacheva et al., 2017). Yet, successful approaches to retrieving aerosols and clouds over snow and ice have been published. As an alternative, one can use instruments having wavelengths in the thermal infrared (TIR) like the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) that provides important information on trace gases and GHG, active instruments (lidars) like the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization CALIOP that provides information on the vertical distribution of aerosols and clouds, or radars (Hilton et al., 2012; Winker et al., 2009).

The UV/VIS (Visible and Ultraviolet Spectroscopy) instruments are most useful at high latitudes over darker surfaces between early Spring and late Autumn when sufficient light is available. In these conditions, satellite information is available on aerosol properties, GHGs and trace gases such as O3, NO2, SO2 and VOCs, as well as on cloud properties, surface reflectance, surface temperature and vegetation. Taken together, these measurements provide important information on Earth surface-atmosphere interactions, such as how aerosols and their precursor concentrations contribute to various feedbacks in a changing climate. Forest fires occur frequently during the Summer. Satellites can be used to investigate influences of forest fires on the biosphere, atmosphere and climate, as satellite observations provide information on aerosol and trace gas emissions, dark burnt area after a fire and subsequent recovery of vegetation. Furthermore, effects of megacities on surface reflectance, atmospheric composition and spatial extent of the pollutants emitted by large cities or even power plants can be detected, and the emissions strengths can be evaluated by combining satellite data with inverse modeling (e.g., van der A et al., 2017).

Satellites are frequently used to provide information on land-water boundaries and water surface properties, such as the water temperature, wave properties, surface reflectance, effects of whitecaps, ocean colour, presence of algae, presence of sea ice and snow melt. This is particularly important considering the logistical problems associated with ground-based observations at high latitudes and in the harsh Arctic climate as described in the section on marine observations.

In general, different aerosol parameters are the key parameters relevant to global climate by effecting the radiation balance and cloud formation processes (Kulmala et al., 2014, Paasonen et al., 2013). To illustrate the use of satellite observations over the PEEX area, the full mission ATSRretrieved seasonal aerosol optical depth (AOD) time series (17 years, 1995-2012) is shown in Figure 3 â&#x20AC;&#x153;AODâ&#x20AC;? for Eastern China, with high AOD increasing over the years, and for western Russia, with much lower AOD, close to or lower than the global average AOD over land which is shown as a reference. Each of these time series shows the common Summer maxima and Winter minima, further modified by year-to-year changes in meteorological conditions and emissions like the occurrence of forest fires in Russia in 2010.

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Figure 3. Aerosol optical depth (AOD) seasonal variation of the AOD over land for the years 1995-2012 over eastern China (red line), western Russia (blue line), and global (black line). Seasons are indicated with different colors in the legend (Figure by Larisa Sogacheva, Finnish Meteorological Institute 2017).

Modelling Platform Different aspects of integrated model development, evaluation and understanding will be considered within the PEEX Modelling Platform (PEEX-MP). Several new integrated modelling developments are expected: i) improved numerical weather prediction (NWP) and chemical weather forecasting (CWF) with short-term feedbacks of aerosols and chemistry on meteorological variables, two-way interactions between atmospheric pollution or composition and climate variability or change, ii) better prediction of atmosphere and/or ocean state through a closer coupling between the component models to represent the two-way feedbacks and exchange of the atmospheric and ocean boundary layer properties, and iii) more complete, or detailed, simulation of the hydrological cycle through linking atmospheric, land surface, ecosystems, hydrological and ocean circulation models (Baklanov et al., 2017; Baklanov et al., manuscript under preparation).

The PEEX-MP focuses on a new generation of multi-scale integrated models and is based on the seamless Earth System Modelling (ESM) approach (WWRP, 2015) to evolve from individual to seamless meteorology-composition-environment models to address limitations in weather, climate and atmospheric composition fields whose interests, applications and challenges are now overlapping.

In a general sense, the seamless approach considers several dimensions of the online coupling, including: i) time scales (from real-time and short-term till decades and climate time-scale), ii) spatial scales (from street level to global scale with downscaling and upscaling methods), iii) processes: physical, chemical, biological, and social; iv) Earth system elements, environments or components: atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere or pedosphere, ecosystems or biosphere; v) different types of observations and modelling as research tools: data processing and data assimilation, validation and verification of modelling results; and vi) linking with studies on health and social consequences, impact, assessment, as well as services and end-users. In addition, the methodology and research needs for realization of the Seamless Prediction Systems are presented

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and discussed in “Seamless Prediction of the Earth System: From Minutes to Months” (WWRP, 2015).

At the current phase of the PEEX Science Plan implementation, the seamless modelling approach is considered in relation to, at least, two aspects (Baklanov et al., manuscript under preparation).

Firstly, at the process-scale where it refers to the coupling within a model of meteorology and composition processes in order to represent, for example, the two-way interactions between composition and radiative processes or microphysics, or the consistent treatment of water vapor.

Secondly, in terms of temporal-spatial scales, it refers to the absence of discontinuities in model behavior when used at multiple temporal or spatial resolutions to have, for example, a consistent treatment of black carbon for air quality and climate applications or consistent coupling interval between land, ocean and atmosphere.

The PEEX-MP is characterized by a complex integrated Earth System Model (ESM) approach, in combination with specific models of different processes and elements of the system, acting on different temporal and spatial scales. The ensemble approach is the best when integrating modeling results from different models, participants and countries. PEEX will utilize the full potential of a hierarchy of available models: scenario analysis, inverse modeling and modeling based on measurement needs and processes. The models will be constantly validated and constrained by available in situ ground-based and remote sensing data of various spatial and temporal scales by using data assimilation and top-down modeling. The analyses of the anticipated large volumes of observational data and modelling results will be supported by a dedicated Virtual Research Platforms (VRP) with environments developed for these purposes (Baklanov et al., manuscript under preparation).

PEEX dataflow from observational and modelling platforms will be made easily accessible through Virtual Research Platforms (VRP) which allows for the visualization and first-hand analysis of various PEEX data and time series. Such VRP platform is specifically designed for holistic multidisciplinary understanding of large volume interconnected datasets. The first version of PEEX VRP, PEEXView, should be able to combine multidisciplinary datasets of varying temporal and spatial scales (Hari et al., 2009; Hari & Kulmala, 2005). This tool should not be limited only to natural science data, so even socio-economic indicators, such as industrial production index (IPI), can be used in analyzing changes in e.g. atmospheric properties. Currently, PEEXView holds 2D datasets (satellite products, regional and global simulations), time series (e.g. stations’ observations), point-data (e.g., wildfire occurrence) and air mass trajectories. All datasets will be complemented with relevant metadata. The PEEXView has been designed to establish fluent comparison and evaluation of simulation and observational data.

Socio-economic data pools and socio-economic modeling It is important to explore interactions between environmental change and societal transformations of natural resource utilization in northern Eurasia in order to assess the complexity of their socioecological consequences at global, regional and local levels (Figure 4). Socio-economic data needed for serving the research aims of the PEEX land – atmosphere – ocean – society nexus are related primarily to the following social sectors or realms: natural resources, industrial complexes, social security, public health and the political system, especially natural resource and environmental governance. The challenge in deriving relevant, reliable and valid data from these sectors in northern and eastern Eurasia, in Russia and China, is as acute as in any authoritarian political Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX)

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context. There are a lot of primary data on the two first mentioned realms of society in the form of official statistics that depict nation-wide phenomena (e.g., overall GHG emissions) and demographic indicators (e.g., morbidity). However, concerning, for example, emission volumes from extractive industries or epidemiological information on environment-related health issues, the relevance and reliability of such data are unfortunately low. For example, the state that runs the major energy companies in Russia has not been able to provide comprehensive and reliable data on specific emissions, such as oil spills or flaring of associated petroleum gas (e.g., Shvarts et al., 2016; Vasileva et al., 2015), which are both key indicators affecting northern ecosystems and public health.

There are, however, solutions to overcome the observational data and modelling challenges posed by individual countries’ and governments’ restrictions and regulations, especially in the authoritarian contexts of Russia and China. In Russia, the economy and thus the whole political system has grown dependent on fossil fuels, and environmental governance restricting the (short term) economic possibilities of the natural resource sector are not easy to promote. In China, the environmental externalities of rapid economic growth and increased industrial production are visible signs of a system level failure to address these problems. Thus, the other side of the coin, the environmental consequences of core economic activities of Russia and China are easily ‘green washed’ and kept secret by the regimes in power in order to tampen popular moods critical of this environmental change (e.g., Tynkkynen & Tynkkynen, forthcoming 2018). However environmental studies, combining the latest knowledge on natural and social sciences, can provide solutions also for authoritarian governments on how to increase resilience in these societies on a longer perspective by addressing the socio-ecological problems, and not to hide them. This is the goal of the PEEX initiative, as well.

On the level of methods (and methodologies) there are wide possibilities to provide the information needed for sound socio-ecological policies and governance. In the era of the Internet, and the possibility to utilize spatial (geographical) information accessible via a large spectrum of satellite-derived data, the success of trying to hide the environmental consequences of economic activities is doomed to failure. Therefore, what the PEEX aims at is to explore the possibilities of above mentioned data sets, and concerning air emissions and human health data, for example, the possibilities offered by so-called ‘big data’ should be explored thoroughly. Information can be extracted e.g. via meta-analyses on available satellite data aiming at triangulating reliable levels of industrial and other emissions, or via web-based data that can tell more about environmental health issues on the regional and local levels than traditional statistics provided by the states and regional governments. Finally, the research available on political systems and different regimes in the Eurasian domain can already provide reliable background knowledge on possible pathways, stemming from regimes’ previous reactions to global political, social and environmental issues, against which different environmental, emissions and population data can be compared to.

Education of the next generation of experts

The PEEX educational program is based on life-long learning at multiple levels. There are two key objectives for researcher training and research career promotion within PEEX.

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Figure 4. Krasnojarsk hydroelectric power plant (55°56’05”N 92°17’37”E) affects the local climate and the river never freezes for 200-300 kilometers downstream of the dam, see also https://web.archive.org/web/20110723191324/, http://www.ilec.or.jp/database/asi/asi-56.html (Photo

by Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, 2000).

First, PEEX educates the next generation of scientists by providing training in technical skills and scientific issues together with an understanding of societal dimensions related to the ‘Grand Challenges’ such as climate change, air pollution, deforestation, and ocean acidification. Second, PEEX contributes to the needs of society by educating scientists at masters and doctoral levels with a deep core understanding and multidisciplinary orientation, having also transferable skills to be readily applicable to the working environments outside of academia. Furthermore, PEEX is interested in establishing relationships with key European players in the fields of research, research infrastructures, service providers and research policy, and to provide transversal training addressing all aspects of environmental observations. This training ranges from data provision to data application in numerical models. For example, training related to measurements will range from instrument development to observation network building. Similarly, training related to modeling will cover everything from the application of simple one-dimensional numerical models to the development of holistic ESM (Earth System Models). Furthermore, training in social sciences will range from understanding modeling based approaches to decision-making to policy analysis. PEEX training will also apply the idea of horizontal learning (Lauri et al., 2016). In such a learning approach, teachers take the role of facilitators rather than lecturers. This strategy is carried out throughout the courses, and it is based on twenty years of international collaboration and analysis of learning outcomes. This allows for the social construction, sharing of information and cognition, and finally improves the metacognitive skills of the students which, in turn, enhance self-directed learning skills (PEEX Science Plan).

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Discussion and Summary Since 2012, the PEEX science community has delivered a comprehensive science plan, determined the program’s science questions and made a conceptual design of the tools needed for implementing the research agenda. During the upcoming years, the mission focus will be on setting up the observational system together with the seamless modelling platform. The implementation of the research agenda will take place by separately funded projects. The core projects here are the Finnish Center of Excellence in Atmospheric Science – From Molecular and Biological processes to The Global Climate (FCoE-ATM) (ongoing); the European Research Council’s Advanced Grant project on “Atmospheric Gas-to-Particle Conversion” (2017-2021); and the M. Kulmala’s Academy professorship project “Air quality – climate interactions and feedbacks” (2017-2021).

The main interest is on understanding the land – atmosphere feedback loops, but also on a deeper understanding of the role of the Arctic Ocean in this context. The PEEX research community consists currently of several disciplines of natural sciences. However, the PEEX mission is to be the next-generation program built on both natural sciences and socio-economics having a strong cross-disciplinary dimension. PEEX continues deepening the collaboration with the European, Russian, Chinese and global partners to maximize the impact of the PEEX research highlights, scientific assessment and research infrastructure development relevant to the climate policy processes. The key stakeholders in this are the Future Earth, Arctic Council (SAON); World Meteorological Organization (WMO); the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations – Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEO-GEOSS); Digital Belt and Road Initiative (DBAR); and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis – The Arctic Futures Initiative (IIASA AFI).

Acknowledgments We would like to acknowledge the support and funding from the following bodies: Academy of Finland Finnish Centre of Excellence grant no. 272041; CRAICC Nordic Venter of Excellence contracts no. 26060; CRAICC-PEEX (amendment to contact 26060); CRAICC-CRUCIAL (amendment to contact 26060) funded by Nordforsk and EU-Horizon2020 INTAROS-project Grant Agreement No 727890.

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Lappalainen, H.K., Petäjä, T., Kujansuu, J., Kerminen,V., Shvidenko, A., Bäck, J., Vesala, T., Vihma, T., De Leeuw, G., Lauri, A., Ruuskanen, T., Lapshin, V.B., Zaitseva, N., Glezer, O., Arshinov, M., Spracklen, D.V., Arnold, S.R., Juhola, S., Lihavainen, H., Viisanen, Y., Chubarova, N.,

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Briefing Note

The Arctic Resilience Action Framework: A New Paradigm for Regional Cooperation to Build Resilience Sarah Abdelrahim & Joel Clement

As the Arctic experiences increasingly rapid change, it is more important than ever to promote and support actions that enhance the resilience of the region. In May 2017, resilience was reaffirmed as a priority of the Arctic Council, and the Arctic Resilience Action Framework (ARAF) was adopted in the 2017 Fairbanks Ministerial Declaration by the eight Arctic Council States and six Permanent Participants.

The ARAF defines resilience as the ability of a system to bounce back and thrive during and after disturbances and shocks. It emphasizes the importance of considering linked social-ecological systems when developing strategies for resilience in the Arctic, where social and ecological systems are tightly linked. In addition to presenting a set of priorities for building resilience in the Arctic, the ARAF initiates a set of actions to enhance regional coordination and improve shared learning and the exchange of best practices (Arctic Resilience Action Framework, 2017).

A Brief History of Resilience in the Arctic Council The Arctic Council has cooperated on a number of environmental and social issues throughout its 20-year history. In 2004, the release of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) increased our understanding of the rapid changes that were occurring in the Arctic (ACIA, 2005). Since then, the Arctic Council has continued to study the physical, ecological, and social changes that are impacting the Arctic.

During the Swedish Chairmanship of the Arctic Council (2011-2013), the concept of resilience became more prominent within the Arctic Council, primarily through the Arctic Resilience Report (ARR) project. The ARR, co-chaired by the United States and Sweden, and released in November 2016, presented a comprehensive, scientific assessment of resilience in the Arctic. It examined a

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number of â&#x20AC;&#x153;regime shiftsâ&#x20AC;?, or large, abrupt changes in social-ecological systems, and evaluated characteristics of resilient Arctic communities (Arctic Resilience Report, 2017).

Supporting Arctic resilience and adaptation was a priority of the U.S. Chairmanship (2015-2017).

The Arctic Council led a number of initiatives to advance this priority, including the development of a strategy to prevent the introduction of invasive species in the Arctic, the promotion and expansion of the One Health approach, and the expansion of the Arctic Adaptation Exchange Portal, which was initiated during the Canadian Chairmanship (2013-2015) (U.S. Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, 2015).

As the Arctic Council continued to examine Arctic change, resilience, and climate change adaptation, it became evident that an organizing framework to improve coordination and enhance shared learning could benefit not just the Arctic Council, but a range of experts, stakeholders, and practitioners at multiple scales.

Development of the ARAF With the goal of exploring the way forward for resilience coordination in the Arctic, the Arctic Council Resilience Workshop was held in March, 2016 in Fairbanks, Alaska. More than 50 people participated, including representatives from six Member States, several Permanent Participant groups, and all six Arctic Council Working Groups. It was agreed that a framework to identify common priorities and encourage further action within the Arctic Council would be beneficial (Arctic Council Resilience Workshop Steering Committee, 2016). Following the Arctic Council Resilience Workshop, the Arctic Council Senior Arctic Officials (SAOs) requested that a team of experts develop and propose a regional resilience framework (Summary report. (SAO plenary meeting. Fairbanks, Alaska. 16-17 March 2016, 2016).

Resilience experts representing Arctic Council States, Permanent Participants, Working Groups and Observers subsequently came together to lead the development of the Arctic Resilience Action Framework (ARAF). To identify the ARAF priorities, Arctic States, Permanent Participants, and several Observers provided input on their own resilience priorities and capabilities. Input from the six Permanent Participants was particularly crucial to ensure that the ARAF would be relevant to Indigenous communities on the ground. Ongoing Working Group initiatives that contribute to resilience-building were compiled to further inform priorities for the Arctic Council. The team of experts reviewed several recent Arctic assessments, such as the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment and the Arctic Human Development Report II. The ARAF was also developed with an eye towards global resilience initiatives, to ensure coherence and compatibility.

A draft of the ARAF was presented to the SAOs at their October, 2016 meeting in Portland, Maine (Summary report. SAO plenary meeting. Portland, Maine. October 2016). Additional feedback was subsequently incorporated, and a near-final draft was presented to the SAOs at their March 2017 meeting in Juneau, Alaska (Summary report. SAO plenary meeting. Juneau, Alaska. March 2017).

A final draft was forwarded to the Arctic Council Ministers for their review and endorsement at the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial meeting on May 11, 2017 in Fairbanks, Alaska (Arctic Resilience Action Framework, 2017).

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Arctic Resilience in the Global Context Increasing international cooperation on climate change and sustainable development challenges has provided a backdrop for the development of the ARAF. Global momentum for addressing climate change and other changes has increased over the past few years, as evidenced in part by the adoption, in 2015, of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the Paris Climate Agreement. International and regional multilateral bodies around the world are developing adaptation and resilience strategies that complement these global agreements (Kofinas et al., 2016: 200-201).

A coordinated resilience framework for the Arctic, one of the most rapidly changing regions in the world, is an important and timely addition to the growing collection of existing regional strategies.

With a successful history of regional collaboration on environmental, scientific, and social issues, the Arctic Council is well-positioned to lead thi collaborative framework.

A Snapshot of the ARAF The ARAF is organized around four overarching priorities. They include the following: 1. Analyzing and Understanding Risk and Resilience in the Arctic 2. Building Resilience and Adaptation Capacity 3. Implementing Resilience with Policy, Planning and Cooperation 4. Encouraging Investment to Reduce Risk and Build Resilience Each of the four priorities includes four to six “Action Areas”; or more specific areas of action where emphasis is needed. Arctic States, Permanent Participants, Observers, and others are addressing many of these Action Areas already. However, each of the Action Areas could benefit from additional work or investment.

By way of example, the ARAF suggests an “Implementing Action” for each Action Area in the document. An Implementing Action would consist of a specific program, project, or initiative that an Arctic Council State, Permanent Participant, Observer, Working Group, or other stakeholder would take that addresses the corresponding Action Area.

Taken together, the four priorities, the Action Areas, and the example Implementing Actions are intended to provide guidance for the Arctic Council and other Arctic Council stakeholders when considering resilient practices and investments. This framework, and the shared learning it represents, can guide Arctic communities allocating scarce resources, investors seeking to prioritize investments in Arctic resilience, and resilience experts seeking to leverage or replicate success.

Specific actions to address the four priorities and their Action Areas should be guided by the nine guiding principles outlined in the ARAF. These include, for example, valuing and drawing on Indigenous/Traditional Knowledge and local knowledge, empowering local communities, addressing multiple risks together and looking for co-benefits, and building upon existing global, regional and national strategies for sustainable development, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and disaster risk reduction (Arctic Resilience Action Framework, 2017).

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Implementation The ARAF lays out several priorities for building resilience, but it also suggests additional followup actions to advance coordination and overall understanding of best practices. In particular, it proposes three implementation areas.

First, the ARAF suggests the collection and tracking of “Implementing Actions.” Each Arctic Council State, Permanent Participant, Observer, and Working Group will be invited to submit a set of current Implementing Actions which address the four priorities and their Action Areas. To avoid duplication of effort, many Implementing Actions are expected to reflect existing commitments that have been made through national-level strategies, Working Group work plans, or commitments to through international agreements (e.g., the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). Communities, academics, the private sector, and international organizations, among many other stakeholder groups, could also make very valuable contributions through the submission of Implementing Actions. Collecting Implementing Actions and making them publicly available will improve awareness of ongoing activities, encourage additional circumpolar collaboration and partnerships, and stimulate new, innovative ways of thinking.

The second area of implementation is an inventory of existing and emerging measurement protocols and indicators to help measure progress towards building resilience. Developing this inventory is a first step to informing ways to measure progress towards building resilience at a circumpolar level. However, such an inventory could also be useful at the national, subnational, or community level.

Finally, an important goal of the ARAF is the promotion of shared learning and exchange of best practices. To facilitate this exchange, the ARAF proposes the establishment of a biennial resilience forum, which will convene local, sub-regional, and regional resilience experts and practitioners.

The forum will be an opportunity to assess collective progress towards the ARAF priorities, identify emerging priorities, exchange information, and showcase best practices. Finland will host the first Arctic Resilience Forum in 2018 (Arctic Resilience Action Framework, 2017).

ARAF Adoption by the Arctic Council The 10th Arctic Council Ministerial meeting was held on May 11, 2017 in Fairbanks, Alaska. As part of the 2017 Fairbanks Declaration, the eight Arctic Council Ministers and representatives of the six Permanent Participants agreed to “adopt the Arctic Resilience Action Framework to track suggested circumpolar resilience priorities and to coordinate such efforts, and welcome actions as appropriate to address those priorities” (Fairbanks Declaration, 2017).

The SAO Report to Ministers provides further guidance for implementing the ARAF. It states that the ARAF implementation will occur under the leadership of the Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG), with input from the five other Arctic Council Working Groups. It also directs the Arctic Council Secretariat to provide support for the implementation activities of the ARAF (Senior Arctic Officials’ Report to Ministers, 2017).

Building on the three implementation areas proposed by the ARAF, the SAO Report to Ministers directs the Arctic States, PPs, and Working Groups to share actions that they are taking to build resilience. It also states that a team of experts will identify opportunities to measure and evaluate progress, and it states that Finland will host the first biennial Arctic Resilience forum in 2018.

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Finally, it states that efforts to implement the ARAF will be reviewed by SAOs after two years (SAO Report to Ministers, 2017).

Next Steps The first phase of ARAF implementation will be led by the United States, Sweden, and Finland.

By Fall 2017, it is expected that a project team, consisting of representatives from other Arctic States, Permanent Participants and Observers, will be formed under the SDWG. The project team will lead a process, with support from the Arctic Council Secretariat, to collect Implementing Actions from Arctic Council States, Permanent Participants, Working Groups, and Observers.

The project team will also consider ways to engage other non-Arctic Council stakeholders that are undertaking important initiatives that address the ARAF priorities.

In addition, the project team will begin the inventory of monitoring protocols and indicators. It will also provide guidance for organizing the September 2018 forum.

Conclusion The ARAF provides an important opportunity to enhance cooperation and learning and to systematically and strategically build Arctic resilience. In a region that is changing more rapidly than almost anywhere else on the planet, the ARAF also provides an important opportunity for the Arctic Council to demonstrate regional and global leadership. Remarkably, the ARAF has already brought together all Arctic Council States, Permanent Participants, and Working Groups to discuss this high-priority and cross-cutting issue. The first two years of ARAF implementation will provide abundant lessons and insights for how the Arctic Council can more effectively collaborate to address resilience, and similar urgent and cross-cutting issues.

References ACIA. (2005). Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from, https://www.amap.no/documents/doc/arctic-arctic-climate-impact-assessment/796.

Arctic Council. (2017). Arctic Resilience Action Framework. Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arcticcouncil.org/handle/11374/2019.

Arctic Council. (2017). Fairbanks Declaration. Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arcticcouncil.org/handle/11374/1910.

Arctic Council. (2017). Senior Arctic Officialsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Report to Ministers. Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org/handle/11374/1909.

Arctic Council. (2017). Summary report. SAO plenary meeting. Juneau, Alaska. March 2017. Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org/handle/11374/2044.

Arctic Council. (2016). Arctic Resilience Report. M. Carson and G. Peterson (Eds). Stockholm Environment Institute and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm. Retrieved from, http://www.arctic-council.org/.

Abdelrahim & Clement

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Arctic Council. (2016). Summary report. SAO plenary meeting. Fairbanks, Alaska. 16-17 March 2016.

Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org/handle/11374/1762.

Arctic Council. (2016). Summary report. SAO plenary meeting. Portland, Maine. October 2016. Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arctic-council.org/handle/11374/1834.

Arctic Council Resilience Workshop Steering Committee. (2016). Arctic Council Resilience Workshop: Summary Report. Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arcticcouncil.org/handle/11374/1760.

Kofinas, G., Abdelrahim, S., Carson, M., Chapin, F.S., Clement, J., Fresco, N., Gunn, A., Peterson, G., Petrov, A.N., Quinlan, A., Sommerkorn, M. & Veazey, A. (2016). Building resilience in the Arctic: From theory to practice. M. Carson and G. Peterson (Eds.), Arctic Resilience Report. Stockholm Environment Institute and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm. Retrieved from, http://www.arctic-council.org.

U.S. Chairmanship of the Arctic Council. (2015). Enhancing Arctic Resilience in the Arctic Council: A Strategy for 2015-2017. Retrieved from, https://oaarchive.arcticcouncil.org/handle/11374/1496.

The Arctic Resilience Action Framework

Briefing Note

Innovations for the Arctic through Cross-border Cooperation Ekaterina Shlapeko

The Arctic region is an area of growing strategic importance, especially in terms of increasing access to natural resources and new transport routes. Nevertheless, the extreme Arctic climate makes the region a challenging place to live and sets lots of tasks in creating an attractive and comfortable environment for the people. There are supporters and opponents of Arctic exploration, thus the Arctic has become a space of collision and intersection of interests for a number of global actors (states, TNCs, NGOs). Many Arctic people are concentrated in the border areas with large disparities, considered as peripheral and lagging behind others. However, the European experience of cross border cooperation (CBC) has proven itself as an effective tool for supporting stability and prosperity of border territories. It is believed that CBC has the potential to transform a border into a possibility for development. Since the 1980s, the EU has been providing border regions with the financial means (INTERREG) to boost co-work in finding solutions to common challenges and to achieve a more balanced and harmonious EU territory.

Most of the Arctic zone of the USSR was closed to foreigners and it was the central authorities who took care of the Northern territoriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; development and supply. The situation changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the establishment of the Arctic Council and introduction of Technical Assistance for the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The North-West Russian regions also got access to cross-border funding after Finland and Sweden joined the EU. Large-scale CBC projects were aimed at improving border infrastructure (communications, roads, etc), while small projects fostered people-to-people contacts as well as networks between local communities. In the late 1990s, many activities promoted by the Nordic partners were new, even innovative for Russians. Internet expansion, health care legislation Ekaterina Shlapeko is a Researcher at the Regional Economic Policy Department, Institute of Economics, Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Petrozavodsk, Russian Federation.

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reform, and construction of pollution control facilities would have been impossible without foreign investment and expertise. When the European neighborhood and partnership instrument were launched in 2007, the Russian Federation began to co-finance CBC programs, declaring equality of partners from both sides of the border. The structure of the Russian economy is still characterized by the dominance of large companies and a small number of high-tech industries.

However, the state strategy for the development of the Arctic zone relies on an innovative and restorative approach with the aim of forming a new technological basis.

Nowadays smart specialization of regions is one of the key European directions to gain sustainable and inclusive growth. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are the top performers according to the European Commission’s Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015. In order to find out how to strengthen the innovation capacity of regions, in 2013 the OECD conducted case studies of six cross-border areas, including four Nordic examples: the Bothnian Arc (Sweden-Finland), Hedmark-Dalarna (Norway-Sweden), Helsinki-Tallinn (Finland-Estonia), and the Oresund Region (Denmark-Sweden). The studies confirmed that growth opportunities can come from working effectively with a neighbor. Geographic proximity remains important for the innovation process.

Some major benefits for the regions from CBC in innovation are wider business and knowledge networks, higher quality products and services, diversity of assets, greater visibility with national policymakers, and internal and external recognition. For instance, the Bothnian Arc collaboration was initiated by the mayors of Oulu and Luleå (300 kilometers apart) seeking to diversify from the traditional mining, forestry and metal sectors. Due to the Nordic tradition of cooperation and common areas of specialization as well as complementary expertise (ICT cluster, innovation ecosystem) both areas are developing an internationally recognized brand as the technology hub of the north.

The interrelation of CBC and innovations led to the formation of a new concept, cross-border regional innovation system. The researchers from the University of Surrey define dimensions and measurable indicators of CBC in a regional innovation system: economic structure and specialization (statistics), science base (publications), nature of linkages (patents), institutional setup (common institutions), and accessibility (cross-border traffic). The authors stress that due to availability issues, the suggested indicators depict innovation in a rather narrow ‘science, technology and innovation’ mode (Makkonen et al., 2016). We suggest using cross-border projects for a broader view, including also the ‘doing, using and interacting’ mode of innovation.

The implemented projects under the Kolarctic ENPI CBC make it possible to assess the intensity of cross-border contacts and define functional area for cross-border innovations. The contiguous regions of the relevant programme are: Lapland in Finland, Norrbotten in Sweden, Finnmark, Troms and Nordland in Norway and Murmansk Oblast, Archangelsk Oblast and Nenets Autonomous District in Russia. The population of the program area is about 2.87 million people, and almost 70% of them live in the Russian part. The total budget allocated for 51 projects was 70.48 million Euros. The projects were implemented under three priorities: economic and social development, people-to-people cooperation and identity building, and common challenges.

The project profiles (https://www.keep.eu/) provide the information about the leading organization, partners, main goals and achievements. Table 1 shows the number of implemented projects between regions under the Kolarctic CBC 2007-2013 and density of interregional links.

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Table 1. Density of Interregional Links in Kolarctic CBC Region Lapland (FI) Murmansk (RU) Norbotten (SE) Finnmark (NO) Troms (NO) Arkhangelsk (RU)

Lapland

Murmansk

Norbotten

Finnmark

Troms

Arkhangelsk

Nurland

NAC

-

35

17

13

12

11

7

4

-

17

12

10

7

7

2

-

5

6

8

4

-

-

5

3

4

-

-

5

3

-

-

3

1

-

-

Nurland (NO) NAC (RU)

-

Source: https://www.keep.eu/keep/programme/147/2007%2B-%2B2013%2BKolarctic%2BENPI%2BCBC

The majority of leading partners represent Finnish organizations (23 projects), then Murmansk Oblast (6), Norbotten (4), and Troms Finnmark (3). It is particularly remarkable that more than half of the projects were initiated by organizations from Lapland (23 projects). In addition, applications from educational institutions predominate: University of Lapland (7), Lapland University of Applied Sciences (5), and Lapland Vocational College and University of Oulu. The high level of network interaction is evidenced by the participation of regional representatives and enterprises from at least three countries, as well as the number of partner-organizations from 3 to 20. For example, the Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov became part of the consortium for the implementation of 6 international projects. Among the Swedish institutions Luleå University of Technology took part in more than 10 projects on tourism, geology, logistics and ICT. For example, collaboration between the academic institutions and the ICT industry was increased due to “Kolarctic IT Education, Networking, Partnership and Innovation”. The special cooperation interest in innovations is demonstrated by research institutes, secondary and higher educational institutions in the Arctic. Only five projects do not have a research or educational component. The contribution of Kolarctic projects to the development of universities is obvious, because it increases academic mobility, networking, stimulates original educational products, opens new scientific directions and attracts extra funding.

The projects that affect human health and environment are implemented by the leading regional organizations – the Norwegian Institute of Air Research (food security), Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (radiation safety) and the State Regional Center for Standardization, Metrology and Testing in the Murmansk region (response to oil spills). For instance, the project “Coastal Environment, technology and innovation in the Arctic” resulted in the integrated approach to monitoring the coastal environment and developing technologies to combat pollution.

Cross-border programs are platforms for discussion among public and private actors that allow revealing regional opportunities and planning investments in competitive projects. Many projects are coordinated by municipal and regional authorities, especially from the Russian regions of Shlapeko

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Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The share of commercial enterprises and business associations is high in projects connected with tourism, innovations, and youth employment. Undoubtedly, international projects give companies a competitive advantage in introducing technologies, training personnel, working out mechanisms for interaction with the authorities etc. The less integrated and effectively more remote is the Nenets Autonomous District where only two projects were implemented (on the use of renewable energy sources and the launch of ethnic and ecologically sustainable tourism).

Based on the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s goals, it is possible to identify the priority areas of Arctic development: effective use of energy, development of mining and construction industries, information and communication technologies and tourism. The greatest importance is given to keeping traditional agricultural industries (reindeer husbandry, hunting and fishing) and promoting plant growing in northern latitudes. The steady directions include support of Indigenous peoples, and promotion of the Nordic identity and Barents culture. However, a cooperation dynamism is still restrained by a lack of regional regulative powers, visa issues, language barriers etc.

Nevertheless, international projects offer opportunities for the Arctic regions to get access to the accumulated knowledge and establish stable data transfer. There is a unique research and educational potential with a wide range of competences in Northern Europe. Established contacts and high concentration of projects in the region lead to the consolidation of local communities for addressing common challenges. Thus, the Kolarctic programme region has every reason to become a knowledge-intensive one. Further innovative development can be connected with border clusters that largely depend on the implementation of large investment projects in the Barents and Baltic regions.

References Makkonen, T., Weidenfeld, A. and Williams, A. M. (2016), Cross-Border Regional Innovation System Integration: An Analytical Framework. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie. doi: 10.1111/tesg.12223.

OECD (2013), Regions and Innovation: Collaborating across Borders, OECD Reviews of Regional Innovation, OECD Publishing.

Retrieved from, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264205307-en.

Innovations for the Arctic through Cross-border Cooperation

Commentary

Encouraging Arctic Cross-Border Entrepreneurship through Collaborative Creative Steps 2.0 Methodology Anzelika Krastina & Anitra Arkko

The viability of Arctic economies depend on many factors. Development and utilization of Arctic human capital can be considered as one of the most important aspects. To move from exogenous towards more endogenous economies, innovation and entrepreneurship are considered to be the key to assuring thriving communities and value creation in the North. (The Arctic Institute, 2017).

However, there are certain challenges for entrepreneurship development in particular in the Finnish Lapland and Barents Euro-Arctic regions.

Entrepreneurship is not the first career choice for young people living in the Arctic. They often prefer to move to the south for better job opportunities, lacking a vision of what the North can offer. Training and education can help reverse that situation. Through specific entrepreneurship and innovation courses with appropriate methodology of experiential learning, many young people reconsider a possibility to establish and develop a company in the Arctic. Many good examples and success stories of student-established companies could be linked to the entrepreneurship training activities at the university. But there could be, and should be, more success stories.

There is an increasing understanding that entrepreneurship education and training needs to be intensively developed and integrated into education. Investing in entrepreneurship education provides one of the highest return on investments (European Commission, 2017). While general entrepreneurship education is considered as an important task at Lapland University of Applied Sciences, for us, acting in the field as entrepreneurship coaches, it is clear that there is a need for such entrepreneurship training methodologies, that take into account the specifics of the North.

Understanding the Arctic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; environment, infrastructure, long distances, climate, cross-border cooperation possibilities â&#x20AC;&#x201C; can help better understand the various opportunities and challenges that exist in the region. Entrepreneurship training needs to be directly linked to real life situations and encourage actual networking with local, regional, international stakeholders. Creative Steps 2.0 methodology model, developed at Lapland UASâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; School of Business and Culture, is an attempt to

Anzelika Krastina is Director of International Relations at the School of Business and Culture, and Anitra Arkko is a Senior Lecturer at the Lapland University of Applied Sciences.

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find new ways of entrepreneurship pedagogics best suited to the entrepreneurship development and education in Arctic circumstances.

Creative Steps 2.0 (CS 2.0) is an innovation workshop model – a guided step by step approach that helps to develop new business ideas. CS 2.0 is also an education methodology for entrepreneurship training. However, it is not a typical business development and innovation workshop. First, CS 2.0 methodology aims to enhance cross-border collaboration and the interaction of actual businesses with students and coaches. Second, CS 2.0 methodology aims to encourage the use of digital tools for better online and distance collaboration. Third, it offers simple and sequential patterns of activities that help all participants of the workshop to progress in their work from one step to another with clear tasks and outcomes. Therefore, it serves as a guideline for any educator or facilitator in various entrepreneurship development situations. CS 2.0 model is based on the original Creative Steps model developed during the Creative Edge project (2011-2013). First version of CS methodology was focusing mainly on local small business development. With an increasing trend of Arctic cooperation, there appeared the need to go beyond local business operations towards a more international collaboration of companies and business developers. CS 2.0 model helps companies located in remote regions of Northern Europe to connect, collaborate and innovate across borders.

CS 2.0 methodology was developed during the Creative Momentum project funded by the EU Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme. It was first piloted in May 2016 under the leadership of Lapland UAS. Eight micro and small companies from different parts of Northern Europe collaborated online with four student groups (sixteen international students) located in the Rovaniemi and Tornio campuses in Finland. Most of the collaboration work between companies and students happened online, while students’ teamwork sessions were held in face-to-face and online mode. Coaches supervised all work, whether online or in class depending on the task performed. The work began by establishing the business case, defining the “customer’s pain” and the potential source of innovation. Through ten collaborative steps, companies and student teams developed actual prototypes of a new innovative service or a product and presented them to Creative Cave Pool – the panel of international judges: business experts who participated in the final pitching remotely and provided their feedback online. In Spring 2017, similar CS 2.0 model testing was carried out by Technichus Mid-Sweden Ltd. Final testing of CS 2.0 model is planned for October 2017 and will be led by the National University of Ireland, Galway. Once all three pilots are completed; project partners will upgrade methodology and further proceed with the integration of the methodology into educational institutions by training of trainers on the use of the CS 2.0 approach.

The feedback of participants (both companies and students) shows that working in a ‘virtual world’ is an innovative way to work across borders and it can offer new possibilities for businesses. “I think international cooperation is growing, so in the future virtual working skills are no more optional but mandatory for us to work productively,” reflected one of the participants. According to the participants, it was easy to innovate through ten defined steps and to see actual progress.

Diversity of workshop participants (different cultures, organizations, age) can be an asset as well as the challenge.

CS 2.0 model piloting leads to the conclusion that entrepreneurship education is not static. New models for entrepreneurship development and cross-border collaboration in the Arctic can be Creative Steps 2.0

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efficient and bring actual results. Coaching (teaching) through these types of models require a multi-dimensional and cross-disciplinary approach. It is a mutually beneficial learning process by all participants, which sometimes can be rather challenging. However, the most encouraging part of the process is the discovery of unexpected sources for innovation found in the Arctic.

References

Arkko-Saukkonen, A. & A. Krastina (2016). Creative Steps 2.0: Step by Step Guidelines to Business Idea. Lapland University of Applied Sciences, Rovaniemi, Finland. Retrieved from, http://www.theseus.fi/handle/10024/121144.

European Commission (2017, 7 September). Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020. Retrieved from, http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/promoting-entrepreneurship/action-plan_en The Arctic Institute (2017, 7 September). High North Dialogue. Retrieved from, http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/event/high-north-dialogue-2017-innovation-arctic/.

Krastina & Arkko

Commentary

Book Release:

The Arctic in the Research of the Luzin Institute for Economic Studies of the Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (KSC RAS) Larissa Riabova The Luzin Institute for Economic Studies of the Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences based in Apatity, Murmansk region is going to publish a book summarizing its research on Arctic socio-economic issues in retrospect and prospect.

The book, The Arctic in the Research of the Luzin Institute for Economic Studies of KSC RAS: Thirty Years of Scientific Search, presents a review of the past, present and future research activities of the Institute for Economic Studies (IES) in the field of socio-economic and spatial developments in the Russian and global Arctic. The overview covers the period since 1986 – the year when the IES was established – till 2016. The edition is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Institute. Until recently, the Institute has been the only academic institution in Russia for Arctic socio-economic research that was located in the Arctic.

The book offers information on the history of the IES, its departments and researchers specialized in the Arctic issues, fields of Arctic research activities of the IES and major accomplishments. It contains retrospective descriptions of national and international projects focused on the Arctic and carried out by the IES, and summarizes the main findings from these studies.

Other chapters represent the inventory of selected presentations on the Arctic at conferences, a catalog of dissertations defended in the Dissertation Council of the IES with their summaries, and a list of books and articles in scientific journals on the Arctic issues published by the IES’ researchers during the past decades. The last chapter describes the IES’ plans for the Arctic research in the near future until 2020, and provides details in terms of priorities for future activities of the Institute’s departments.

Larissa Riabova is the Head of Department of Social Policy in the North, Luzin Institute for Economic Studies, Kola Science Center, RAS.

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The book ends with a concluding section that identifies the main directions in the IES’ current Arctic research as follows: •

Economic aspects of the implementation of hydrocarbon development projects on the Arctic shelf and of the revival of the Northern Sea Route;

•

Strategies for Russia's maritime activities in the Arctic and the mechanisms for sustainable functioning of the fishing industry;

•

Energy security in the Arctic regions of Russia;

•

Tourism development in the Russian Arctic;

•

Sustainable mining and environmental protection in the Arctic;

•

Studies of trends in social and economic development of the Arctic regions and municipalities;

•

Analysis of discrepancies in regional development based on use of mathematical models;

•

Prospects of innovative industrial development and investment policies in the Russian Arctic;

•

Social policy in the Russian Arctic, including its demographic and employment aspects, and strategies for development of social infrastructure;

•

Assessment of social sustainability across the regions of the Russian Arctic;



Evaluation of the governmental policies in the Arctic based on monitoring sociological research;



Corporate social responsibility in the Arctic;



Sustainable development of the Arctic single-industry towns and coastal settlements.

The book will be published in Russian with a short English summary. The list of the IES’ publications on the Arctic issues is supplemented with a separate section for each year on editions that were published in English during the 1986-2016 period.

The book is expected to be released in the Fall of 2017.

The Arctic in the Research of the Luzin Institute for Economic Studies

Section IV: Arctic Change & Innovation in Practice

Pediatric Health Care Services in the Arctic Regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia): Medico-Demographic Indicators Particularly in the Delivery of Health Care Tatyana E. Burtseva, Vyacheslav G. Chasnyk, Antonina N. Grigoreva, Sardana A. Evseeva, Dgulustan A. Chichakhov, Lena N. Afanasieva & Natalya I. Douglas

Federal laws don’t take into account the poor transportation infrastructure, vast territories and low population density in Yakutia which contributes to the rather poor performance of the health care system in the Arctic regions of Yakutia. Traditional lifestyles formed under the influence of specific climatic and geographic factors has resulted in the development of small settlements situated far away from each other and from medical centers. The implementation of “European” approaches to the delivery of health care services to a sparsely populated and vast territory has given birth to a system where remote, rural communities are serviced by a large number of smaller medical facilities and few hospitals with high level care. With the purpose of evaluating the quality of pediatric medical services, and in order to suggest ways to improve the health care system in the Arctic regions of Yakutia, official statistics as well as the results of an anonymous survey of 1904 mothers and 322 medical professionals were analyzed.

The analysis of current pediatric health care services revealed some trends: a decrease in the number of hospital beds, poor medical equipment maintenance, a shortage of qualified medical personnel, and increasing morbidity. A revision of current concepts of medical care in the rural areas of the Arctic zone is needed. New models of pediatric health care services should be based on the following principles: wider use of mobile diagnostic medical units, wider use of web-based information exchange (tele-consultation, medical reports), special training of medical professionals in rural areas, the introduction of automated systems for preventive examination, and risk-based optimization for improving the emergency medical system.

Tatyana E. Burtseva is Head of the laboratory of the Yakut Science Centre for Complex Medical Problems and Professor at the Medical Institute North-West Federal University. Vyacheslav G. Chasnyk is Professor and Head of Department at the Saint Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University. Antonina N. Grigoreva is Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Health Care of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Sardana A. Evseeva is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Yakut Science Centre for Complex Medical Problems. Dgulustan A. Chichakhov is Head Pediatrician at the Ministry of Health Care of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Lena N. Afanasieva is docent at the North-West Federal University. Natalya I. Douglas is Head of Department at the Medical Institute North-West Federal University.

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Among the main causes of poor performance of the health care system in the Russian Far North are the lack of a sustainable transportation infrastructure, vast territories and low population density. Presently twelve of the thirty-four regions of Yakutia have a population of less than 10,000.

There are 586 small settlements of which 44% are difficult to access. Transportation is a significant barrier to health care given that as much as 91.8% of the total area has only a seasonal transport network and 25 of the regions have no steady transportation to Yakutsk or to the neighboring regions (Official site of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), 2017: p. “common”). Existing federal laws do not account for these factors which lead to limited availability of affordable healthcare resources for the inhabitants of rural northern regions of the Russian Federation.

For the people who maintain a traditional lifestyle in the many small, sparsely populated settlements or even in tiny groups of chums/tents situated on the tundra or the taiga, they have a long history of living with a bleak climate and the geographic barriers of living far away from other villages and from administrative and medical centers. The transportation infrastructure in the northern regions of Russia is poorly developed. Taking into consideration the known Russian socio-economic realities as well as past experiences of trying to adopt new foreign transportation network development in the United States and Canada, there has been little significant improvement in the provision of transport services or provisions for future change.

The adoption of approaches to development, validation and assessment of health care services which have been developed for the European part of Russia, to a vast territory which is not evenly populated, has given birth to a system where remote rural communities tend to be serviced by a large number of smaller medical facilities, and only a few hospitals with high level care.

Official statistics show that during the last five years, Yakutia has experienced higher population growth rates than other parts of the Russian Federation (Figure 1). Though a decrease in the growth rate was registered during the last 2 years (2014 – 9.2, 2015 – 8.6, 2016 – 7.6 per 1,000 population), the birth rate is still more than double the mortality rate (Official site of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), 2017: p. “meditsina”). This trend presumes the health care system will need to make an extraordinary commitment to providing safe, high quality care in the future.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of the existing pediatric medical services and to suggest ways to improve the health care system in the Arctic regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

Methods. The study was designed as a population-based descriptive study, based on the results of the longitudinal analysis of the state as well as of the national and regional reports of the Yakut healthcare services. A cross-sectional analysis of the quality of pediatric medical services was described through anonymous questionnaires, which were completed by the mothers of children (n=1904) and medical professionals (n=322) during the years 2013 – 2014 (Figure 2).

Ethical approval of the research was granted by the Ethic Committee at the Saint-Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University.

The questionnaire was designed according to the recommendations of Farris P.W. et al. (2010) and was used to provide an anonymous community survey. Questionnaires were completed by respondents without assistance. The questionnaires for families inhabiting rural areas (n=1415) consisted of 75 questions (88% closed-ended), for families living in the city of Yakutsk (n=489) 103 questions (83% closed-ended); and for medical professionals (rural areas n=226, Yakutsk Pediatric Health Care Services in the Arctic Regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

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n=96) it consisted of 47 questions (83% closed-ended). To determine if there was a significant difference between proportions, a two-sample t-test for percentages (independent samples) was used (Statistics calculator, StatPac, ver. 4).

Figure1. Natural population growth rates in Russia (per 1,000 population) in years 2011 2015.

Burtseva et al.

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Figure 2. Settlements where the survey was carried out through questionnaires completed by medical professionals ( ) and mothers ( ). Blue line – Arctic circle.

Results. According to official statistics, in the beginning of 2015 the population of the Arctic regions of Yakutia was estimated to be about 26,194 with 6,557 children aged less than 15 years and 1,186 adolescents among them (Table 1).

Table 1. Estimated population of the Arctic regions of Yakutia in the beginning of 2015 Region Total Adults Younger than Aged 15-17 population 15 years years Allaikhovsky 2733 1886 712 135 Anabarsky 3387 2185 1024 178 Bulunsky 8404 6111 1953 340 Nizhnekolymsky 4426 3097 1149 180 Ust’-Yansky 7244 5172 1719 353 Arctic regions of 26194 18451 6557 1186 Yakutia, total Yakutia, total 956896 698674 221119 37103 The number of practicing pediatricians is shown in Table 2. The coverage of pediatricians to serve the community has decreased from 22.2 per 10,000 population in 2011, to 16.8 per 10,000 in 2015 (with a total for Yakutia of 17.4). This decrease is consistent with Yakutia’s negative trend for the number of physicians and nurses (Figure 3) and is associated with a reduction in the number of hospital beds (Figure 4).

Pediatric Health Care Services in the Arctic Regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

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Table 2.

Number of pediatricians in the Arctic regions of Yakutia in years 2011 – 2015 Region Number of pediatricians 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Allaikhovsky 2 2 2 2 2 Anabarsky 1 1 1 1 1 Bulunsky 8 9 6 6 6 Nizhnekolymsky 1 1 1 1 1 Ust’-Yansky 6 5 4 4 4 Arctic regions of Yakutia, 18 17 13 13 13 total Yakutia, total 497 472 458 445 …

Fig. 3. Number of physicians and nurses in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in years 2000 – 2015

Fig. 4. Number of hospital beds in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in years 2000 - 2015 Burtseva et al.

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The total number of births in Arctic regions is reported as 450 – 500 per year, with a crude birth rate higher than in the Russian Federation and in all of Yakutia (Table 3).

Table 3. Birth rate in the Arctic regions of Yakutia in years 2011 – 2015 number per 1000 population Region 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Allaikhovsky Anabarsky Bulunsky Nizhnekolymsky Ust’-Yansky Arctic regions of Yakutia, total Yakutia, total Russian Federation, total

18,1 19,7 17,0 17,0 19,7 18,3 17,1 12,6

17,3 18,8 15,6 16,7 16,5 16,9 17,8 13,3

17,1 23,2 15,9 18,5 16,6 18,2 17,5 13,2

23,7 22,1 14,2 18,3 20,1 19,7 17,8 13,3

19,6 20,5 14,0 17,9 17,9 17,9 17,1 13,3

The main causes of dissatisfaction of mothers with the quality of pediatric health care services in rural regions of Yakutia are presented in Table 4.

Table 4. Quality of pediatric health care services in rural regions of Yakutia: The main causes of mothers’ dissatisfaction № Causes of dissatisfaction % of surveyed mothers 1 Shortage of pediatric medical subspecialists 88.2 2 Lack of medical equipment 71.7 3 Unsatisfactory condition of medical equipment 65.7 4 Lack of essential medicines 60.2 5 Lack of enough qualified pediatric medical specialists 39.8 6 High prices of medicines 36.6 7 Poor laboratory diagnostics 16.5 8 Unsatisfactory organization of health care services 11.4 The results of the survey of medical professionals (Table 5) confirm to a great extent the results of the survey of mothers presented in Table 4 adding one more important position: a lack of nurses, identified by 19.7% of respondents.

Table 5. Quality of pediatric health care services in rural regions of Yakutia: the main causes of dissatisfaction of medical professionals № causes of dissatisfaction % of surveyed medical professionals 1 Shortage of pediatric medical subspecialists 71.5 2 Unsatisfactory condition of medical equipment 59.0 3 Lack of essential medicines 41.6 4 Shortage of nurses 19.7 A shortage of pediatric medical specialists and nurses together with a lack of medical equipment and unsatisfactory condition of operative equipment, combined with growing numbers of children with health problems is a great challenge for the existing system of health care. As a consequence, many children must travel long distances to Yakutsk or other towns for health care services. The Pediatric Health Care Services in the Arctic Regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

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survey shows that many families have no opportunity to travel for care because of: absence/poor conditions of roads (36.2%), financial constraints (34.0%), long travel distances (8 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 10 hours) (23.7%) and a lack of transport (6.1%).

To improve the situation and to alleviate dissatisfaction, mobile groups of pediatric medical professionals were organized in order to help local pediatricians. Almost half (52%) of the surveyed mothers point out that the time allowed for examination by specialists of those groups is too short to be adequate for diagnostics and treatment; 22% and 20% conclude that the set of subspecialists is too small and the wait times to see those specialists are too long.

Alongside the problems of chronic pathology management is te problem of management of acute conditions. In Yakutia, the Center for Disaster Medicine controls the air ambulance, and thus is responsible for evacuation of inhabitants from rural regions in cases of medical emergencies. An analysis of official reports from this center reveals divergent trends for the years 2013-2015 (Table 6). Within those years, the total number of evacuations has slightly increased (2013 vs. 2015: +5%) as a result of more frequent (+76%) evacuations associated with pregnancies and deliveries. This increase cannot be neutralized by the decline in other positions including the number of pediatric and surgical evacuations (-19% and -12% respectively). The decrease in the number of evacuations to regional hospitals (43.4% in 2013 vs 38.4% in 2015) and the corresponding increase in the number of evacuations to Yakutsk can be interpreted as a negative tendency confirming the degradation of regional medicine. Thus, more than 95% of flights associated with pediatric emergencies are now directed not to regional hospitals, but to Yakutsk.

Table 6. Main causes of evacuation of the inhabitants of rural regions of Yakutia by air ambulance in years 2013 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2015 Main causes of evacuation 2013 2014 2015 Total number of evacuations 1594 1547 1632 among them particularly: - pediatric cases 643 550 521 - pregnancies and deliveries 118 106 208 - surgical cases 418 389 368 Conclusions. The findings of the existing pediatric health care services in the Arctic regions of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) demonstrate downward, negative trends. These trends include a decrease in the number of hospital beds, poor medical equipment maintenance, and a shortage of qualified medical personnel. These issues contribute to poor health care services which leads to dissatisfaction of families and medical professionals.

One of the approaches to improving health care services is the revision of the existing concept of medical care in the rural areas of the Arctic zone. Our results show that the possibility of a new concept or model of pediatric health care services should be based on the following principles: 1. Wider use of mobile diagnostic medical units, 2. Wider use of web-based information exchange (tele-consultation, medical reports), 3. Special training of health professionals in rural areas, 4. Introduction of automated systems for preventive childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s care, and 5. Risk-based optimization for improving the emergency medical system.

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This model of health care services must provide an individualization of health care in terms of local regulations as well as different financial supports, taking into account the common pathology profiles for the individual region.

The first step requires the development of federal regulations including standards of care, autonomous institutions and financial capacities.

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References Farris PW., N.T Bendle, P.E. Pfeifer & D.J. Reibstein (2010) Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Official site of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), page “common” (2017, May 07). Retrieved from https://www.sakha.gov.ru/o-respublike-saha--kutiya-/atu.

Official site of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), page “meditsina” (2017, May 07). Retrieved from https://www.sakha.gov.ru/meditsina.

Burtseva et al.

The Information Community of the Arctic in Russia: Evaluation of the Expenses for the IT Projects Development, Characteristics of the Labour Costs Calculating Ivan V. Evdokimov, Alexander S. Khaluimov, Nikita V. Sokolov & Sergey E. Golokhvastov

In the Arctic conditions of northern Siberia, the IT-industry represents an important platform for providing globally competitive employment. Hence, evaluation of the expenses related to IT-development is a highly important question for the information community of the Arctic. Nowadays, software solutions provided by the 1C company are leading in the fields of public administration, municipal board and business in the aforementioned region. Adequate assessment of the cost and development time has an important role in the software development. In the field of information technology (IT) specialists often use different metrics based on the software functionality – functionoriented metrics. The models used for evaluation contain a number of parameters. Each of these parameters has a special coefficient, which is based on the company standard. Their values have a direct impact on the software developing cost calculation. Among all of the functionally-oriented assessing methods we can give a special credit to the Function Points (FP) method. The basis of its use is the correlation of parameters of future programming with tables which include special coefficients. To calculate the number of function points, the cost, and the time of IT project development we use special formulas which are based on varieties of the COCOMO model and FP-tables. A special feature of the FP method is a table including coefficients of the empirical complexity for each programming language and IDE, based on the number of operators for one function point. Consequently, this method allows us to estimate the value of the product development not only in terms of its functionality, but also in terms of applied tools. Thus, the subject of this research will be the definition of the value factors which are used to calculate the FP-evaluations on the 1C v.8.3 platform. It will be based on statistical analysis of several regional IT projects. To improve the adequacy of FP-models, we will consider stakeholders of the 1C-based IT-projects as objects of our research. Recent software engineering developments allow us to move away from clichés about the High North, which has been considered only as a supplier of natural resources for many years.

Necessity & Perspectives of the Arctic Information Community’s Development: Clichés about the Far North Exclusively as a Resource Provider As history shows us, the fast exploration and development of new territories comes very soon after the time of its discovering: it’s about the building of infrastructure, which differs from one age to another, the migration of a people to new lands, and the advent of a modern civilization Ivan V. Evdokimov is Associated Professor and Alexander S. Khaluimov, Nikita V. Sokolov & Sergey E. Golokhvastov are students at the Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation.

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there as a consequence of all those things. The Far North is an exception to these “exploration traditions.” The main reason is the location of these territories. It is difficult just to reach them, therefore the challenge of exploring and developing these areas are even more pronounced, even more so a few centuries ago.

Eventually many of these barriers had been overcome. People got the possibility to explore the North, which they couldn’t do before. They began establishing research centers and attracted scientists to the Far North. Generally, they started a serious development of the Far North.

If we look on the continental Far North sides, we will see many similarities: living there was quite hard for a common citizen, especially because of the climate, so few people sought to develop it.

But with the growth of new technologies, people started making expeditions to these lands to determine whether profits were possible from their development.

Here we come to the main reason for Far North exploration – the exploitation of resources. We examine the territories of the Russian Federation, as our country is very well known as one of the main providers of resources in the world. Furthermore, it is not a secret that Russia has many territories which have very weak infrastructure but high resource potential, including the Far North and Far East of Russia e.g. Norilsk, where we have copper and nickel deposits, or Chukchi Peninsula with its gold and tin.

Maybe after finding a legitimate reason to pursue Far North exploration it became apparent that we did not really need to make these lands attractive for permanent settlement, because we can just build some bases which will only be used for resource production. Fortunately, these days most have put this strategy aside, so we can see how people on these lands are trying to build a high quality of living as they would have in more comfortable territories.

Nevertheless, this colonial model of territorial expansion has left its mark on the Far North, and especially on the public perception of it – that the region is just a resources provider. More needs to be understood about this model.

The colonial model is a forcible model of territorial expansion, so we can make a decision that the main issue is that this model is directed towards “deriving” every possible resource. Human resources are no exception. Territories for whom this model is applied are often referred to as colonies. Their main characteristics are: • • • •

Lack of political autonomy, and a special status which usually differs from the status of common provinces; Economic abuse of natural and human resources for the benefit of the metropolis. It often slows down economic growth and results in the degradation of the colony; Capturing of territory by the metropolis, and occupation; and Changing the situation is an objective of the territory’s inhabitants (Makarenko, 2012).

The last point is still relevant today. The successful introduction of information technologies would make a big difference in developing the Far North and improving the quality of life in these territories.

But, despite all this, stereotypes about the Far North as a resource provider settled hard in people’s minds. It was quite normal when resource was the main value in the world, but now, in postindustrial society, priorities have changed. Now human resource is the main value: knowledge,

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technologies, professional of their field – now these are the things, which cost a lot. So it is not wondering that IT-industry has its own important place in modern world.

In this way, when the direction of the Far North development became definite, we can take a look on IT-industry itself.

Figure 1. The image shows us which regions and regions of Russia belong to the territory of the Far North. These territories are taken as a basis in this research work.

Sources of the maps: Russian public organization “Russian Geographical Society” (“RGS”) is a

geographic public organization of Russia, founded on August 18, 1845. One of the oldest geographical societies of the world after the Paris (1821), Berlin (1828) and London (1830). Their maps are used in this article.

Figure 2. On the map of Russia the Siberian Federal District is marked with red borders, which directly relates to the SFU mission. Inside it, orange colored areas are marked, related to our research work. Territories that partially belong within the Far North will be specifically identified in paragraph 3.

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Figure 3. Here are the settlements belonging to the SFU mission, where 1C projects were implemented. Cities are noted not only in areas that are completely controlled by the Far North, but also those that are partly its territories.

Source: http://narfu.ru/aan/news.php?ELEMENT_ID=233183

IT Industry: Concepts, Current Trends and Prospects of Development Assessment of Costs of Development of IT projects & Assessment Methods The discussion of such a thing as an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;IT Industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; should begin with the concept of information technology in general. Information technology is understood as processes, methods of collection, processing, distribution and storage of information, as well as the creation and operation of computers that perform these functions. So, in a broad sense, IT encompasses all processes that take place with information.

Despite the fact that information technologies, in their essence, are not limited to computer technologies alone, most people rightly associate them with this sphere, since the emergence of computers has brought information work to an entirely new level, not comparable even with the influence that, in its time, the appearance of television had on IT. Nowadays, the IT industry is primarily concerned with the creation and further development of information systems, through which IT can more effectively cope with its main task â&#x20AC;&#x201C; reducing time, labour, energy and material costs in all spheres of human activity.

Today, the total volume of the global IT market exceeds two trillion USD. Moreover, the most dynamically developing segment in the global IT market is software development, whose annual growth is about 6%, and this trend has been maintained for the past several years. More than half of this segment is composed of applications of various categories and the remaining parts are formed by development tools and system software. The fastest development is found in the category of applications for collaborative work, specifically for intra-company social networks and for sharing files, with their volume increasing by more than 20% annually. The second fastest growing developments are in applications in the categories of solutions for database management and analytics, with annual growth of about 8%. High demand is also maintained for categories of

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enterprise resource management applications, customer relations and security assurance (IDC, 2014).

In addition, a special place in the further strategic development of information is occupied by socalled cloud technologies, in the analysis of large amounts of data, and in the integration of mobile devices and social networking technologies in a corporate environment. The combination of these technologies is combined into the so-called ‘Third Platform,’ the development of which promises a significant change in business models in most industries in the next few years.

The concept of so-called ‘platforms’ should be discussed in more detail. These terms denote the stages of development of the IT industry market: •

First Platform: formed by a combination of mainframes and terminals, together with a set of applications and users.

•

Second Platform: formed by a set of concepts familiar to any modern user, such as the Personal Computer and the Internet. Among the more professional terms there are: clientserver architecture, LAN and others. The number of applications is measured in the hundreds of thousands, users – in the millions.

•

Third Platform: formed by a huge, extremely fast growing number of different mobile devices, with a constant connection to the Internet, widespread social networks and cloud infrastructure. The number of users is already measured in the billions, and they, thanks to the already mentioned clouds, can use a huge number of applications, services and content in general. Moreover, due to the simplicity and convenience of working with cloud services, and also due to the high activity of users in social networks, the amount of content in the network is growing very rapidly.

In this way, we can conclude that in the near future in the IT industry will be further developed cloud services, social technologies and mobile devices.

In the process of software development, the problem of estimating the material and time costs for the successful completion of IT projects remains extremely urgent, since it is clearly logical that the customer needs to know the exact figures of a project’s cost even before the project is ready.

Moreover, this problem extends not only to the initial stage of choosing the most optimal projects in terms of costs, but also to later stages of adjusting the decisions that have already been taken.

Of course, carrying out such assessments is absolutely impossible without the use of modern economic and mathematical methods.

However, most of the currently available evaluation methods are aimed at business projects, and they do not take into account a number of certain features of the IT sphere related to the availability of special characteristics in projects in this area that require the involvement of deeper and more sophisticated methods of research. Among the existing methods of evaluation in the IT field, the most effective are the so-called parametric estimates that use the relationships between various project-related data and parameters in order to obtain a specific estimate by means of some mathematical formula as a result. In addition, there is the so-called COCOMO model (COnstructive COst MOdel) – an algorithmic model for estimating the cost of software development, which uses collected data on projects being developed that will later be used in calculation formulas of this model (Sheta, 2006: 118-123).

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COCOMO is divided into three levels, depending on the detailing and speed of making an estimate of the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cost: â&#x20AC;˘

â&#x20AC;˘

â&#x20AC;˘

COCOMO Model 1: Basic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; using this type of model, you can perform a quick cost estimate, which, however, will not take into account many factors, such as: hardware limitations, staff experience, using of modern techniques and development tools; COCOMO Model 2: Intermediate â&#x20AC;&#x201C; according to this model, the calculation of the cost estimate is a function that depends on the software's size, as well as on a number of socalled "cost factors", including subjective assessments of product, project, personnel and hardware characteristics; COCOMO Model 3: Advanced/Detailed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this, the most developed model, is a modified COCOMO of the middle level, which takes into account the same characteristics, but with the evaluation of the influence of each of them on the stages of software development.

Among the methods related to parametrics, the following are distinguished: The Use Case Point (UCP) (Clemmons, 2006: 18-23) method, based on the using of examples from the so-called Unified Modeling Language (UML) (Booch, 2005). The general formula is: đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6; = (đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6; + đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;) Ă&#x2014; đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021; Ă&#x2014; đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸, where:

â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6; - Uncorrected use case weight; đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6;đ?&#x2018;&#x2C6; - Uncorrected artist weight; đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021; - Technical complexity factor; đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸đ??¸ â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Environmental complexity factor.

The three-point estimation method, a modified method of PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) (Cottrell, 1999: 16-22), that removes the uncertainty of the estimate by this method. The general formula is: đ??¸đ??¸ =

(đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;+4đ?&#x2018;&#x161;đ?&#x2018;&#x161;+đ?&#x2018;?đ?&#x2018;?)

â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

6

, where:

đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x17D; - Optimistic scenario for the best case;

đ?&#x2018;?đ?&#x2018;? - Pessimistic scenario for the worst case; đ?&#x2018;&#x161;đ?&#x2018;&#x161; - The most likely scenario.

The Function Points (FP) method, (Abran, Robillard, 1996: 895-910; Behrens, 1983: 648-652; Evdokimov, Makeev, Koktashev, 2017: 141-146) which we believe is best for estimating the cost of IT projects, since it is independent of the programming language and can be done at any stage of the project development.

This method uses a number of parameters, the numerical values of which determine the amount of labour and are the standards adopted at the enterprise. These numerical values depend on the following factors: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

Developers qualification; Development tools used; Experience accumulated by the enterprise in software production.

In this method, it is necessary to justify the numerical values of the five corresponding characteristics:

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1. External Input – Elementary process that moves data from the external environment to the application. Data can come from the input screen or from another application. Data can be used to update internal logical files. Data can contain both management and business information.

2. External Output – Elementary process that moves the data computed in the application to the external environment. In addition, internal logical files can be updated in this process. Conclusions mean reports, screens, printouts, error messages, or output files sent to other applications. Reports and files are created based on internal logical files and external interface files.

3. External Inquiry – Elementary process that works with both input and output data. Its result is data returned from internal logical files and external interface files; 4. Internal Logical File – A user-defined group of logically linked data that is located inside the application and is serviced through external inputs; 5. External Interface File – A user-defined group of logically linked data that is located and supported by another application. The external file of this application is an internal logical file in another application.

All outputs, inputs and requests refer to the so-called transaction category. A transaction is an elementary process that is distinguished by the user and moves data between the external environment and the software application.

After calculating these parameters, each of them is assigned a complexity – low, average or high rank, and then a numerical rating of rank.

How exactly the ranking is formed is shown in the following tables 1 to 5.

Table 1. Rank and assessment of external inputs complexity Amount of links to files 0-1 2 >2

Amount of data elements 1–4 Low (3) Low (3) Average (4)

5 - 15 Low (3) Average (4) High (6)

> 15 Average (4) High (6) High (6)

Table 2. Rank and assessment of external output complexity Amount of links to files 0-1 2-3 >3

Amount of data elements 1–4 Low (4) Low (4) Average (5)

5 - 19 Low (4) Average (5) High (7)

Table 3. Rank and assessment of external inquiry complexity.

Amount of data elements Evdokimov, Khaluimov, Sokolov & Golokhvastov

> 19 Average (5) High (7) High (7)

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Amount of links to files 0-1 2-3 >3

1–4

5 - 19

> 19

Low (3) Low (3) Average (4)

Low (3) Average (4) High (6)

Average (4) High (6) High (6)

Table 4. Rank and assessment of internal logical file complexity Amount of links to files 0-1 2-5 >5

Amount of data elements 1 - 19 Low (7) Low (7) Average (10)

20 - 50 Low (7) Average (10) High (15)

> 50 Average (10) High (15) High (15)

Table 5. Rank and assessment of external interface file complexity Amount of links to files 0-1 2-5 >5

Amount of data elements 1 - 19 Low (5) Low (5) Average (7)

20 - 50 Low (5) Average (7) High (10)

> 50 Average (7) High (10) High (10)

In addition, it should be noted that if an external reference uses a file reference both at the input and output stages, it is counted only once. The same rule applies to data elements.

After collecting all the informational characteristics of the product, you need to proceed to the calculation of metrics – Function Points (FP).

The initial data for the calculation from Tables 1 to 5 are summarized in Table 6.

Table 6. Data for the calculation of FP-metrics.

Rank, complexity, amount

Characteristics name

Low

Average

High

Total

External input

?*3=

?*4=

?*6=

=?

External output

?*4=

?*5=

?*7=

=?

External Inquiry Internal Logical File

?*3=

?*4=

?*6=

=?

?*7=

? * 10 =

? * 15 =

=?

?*5=

?*7=

? * 10 =

=?

External Interface File

Total amount (further – TA) = ?

Where:

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â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; quantitative characteristicsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; numerical values of each species for all levels of complexity; Numbers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; complexity assessment.

The quantitative values of the characteristics (?) are multiplied by numerical estimates of the complexity. The values obtained in each row are summed, giving a full value for this characteristic.

These total values are summed vertically, forming the total amount (TA).

Finally, you can start calculating the function pointers (FP) by the following formula: đ??šđ??šđ??šđ??š = TA Ă&#x2014; (0.65 + 0.01 Ă&#x2014; â&#x2C6;&#x2018;14 đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;=1 đ??šđ??šđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x2013; ), where:

đ??šđ??šđ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x2013; â&#x2C6;&#x2019; The complexity adjustment factor (đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x2013; = ������ 1, 14), taking values from 0 to 5, according to the following expressions: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

0 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; No influence 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Incidental 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Moderate 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Average 4 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Significant 5 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Essential

The values are selected as a result of the answers to the questions in Table 7, which characterize the system parameters of the application: Table 7. Defining system application parameters: â&#x201E;&#x2013;

System parameter

1

Data transmission

2

Distributed data processing

3

Performance

4

Prevalence of the used configuration

5

Transaction speed

6

Online data entry

7

Efficiency of the end user

8

Operational update

9

Complexity of processing

10

Reusability

11

Easy installation

12

Easy operation

Description How much data is required to transfer or exchange information with the application or system?

How are distributed data and processing functions handled?

Does the user need to fix the response time or performance?

How prevalent is the current hardware platform on which the application will run?

How often are transactions performed? (Every day, every week, every month)?

What percentage of information need to be entered online?

The application was designed to ensure the effective operation of the end user?

How many internal files are updated in online transaction?

Does the application perform intensive logical or mathematical processing?

The application was designed to meet the requirements of one or many users?

How difficult is the conversion and installation of the application?

How effective and / or automated are the startup, backup and recovery procedures?

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13

A variety of accommodation conditions

14

Simplicity of changes

Was it possible to design, develop and support the possibility of installing the application in different places for different organizations?

Was the simplicity of the change been designed, developed and supported in the application?

We can, using this FP value, generate metrics for some estimates. For example: • • • •

FP ; Expenses Amount of errors Quality = ; FP Cost Unit cost = ; FP Amount of document′s pages Documentation = .

FP

Performance =

To calculate the labour intensity and development time characteristics, you initially need to calculate the expected number of source code lines (SLOC). SLOC is one of the most important attributes of software. This is not only a key indicator of the cost and time of software development, but also the base unit for obtaining other indicators for assessing the status and quality of software. The development of standards for the calculation of SLOC is carried out by the organizations SEI and IEEE. In accordance with them, logical lines of code are used for calculation, and not physical ones, since the number of physical lines varies greatly depending on the style of writing the code. The standards also specify how to read logical strings for each programming language.

To calculate the estimated number of lines of source code, we use a table with empirically derived values based on existing projects and based on determining the number of operators per functional point, and showing the complexity of development for different programming languages.

Based on the previously selected programming languages, the ratio of the number of operators to a functional point for various projects in the previously described business areas was evaluated.

Table 8 shows the average, median, minimum and maximum values of this ratio, ordered by the popularity of programming languages.

Table 8. Recalculation of FP-estimates to LOC-estimates: Programming languages Java Python J2EE C# ASP ABAP JavaScript C++ HTML SQL

Average

Median

Minimum

Maximum

53 24 46 54 51 28 47 50 34 37

53 15 49 59 54 18 53 53 40 35

14 15 15 29 15 16 31 25 14 13

134 60 67 70 69 60 63 80 48 60

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This table is based on the classification of languages into high-level and low-level, proposed by C. Jones, who classified programming languages by the number of operators that they need to implement a single functional point.

Further, by multiplying the functional size of the software and the average value from the table for the selected development language, you can get the predicted value of the project source code.

And using SLOC you can calculate any required LOC-estimate, for example, using the COCOMO model.

LOC = đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x17D; â&#x2039;&#x2026; UFP + đ?&#x2018;?đ?&#x2018;?

Parameters â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;bâ&#x20AC;? can be obtained using linear regression based on completed projects available data (Evdokimov, Makeev, Koktashev, 2017, p. 141, table 2).

To calculate the nominal labour intensity (without taking into account the coefficients of labour costs, cost factors and complexity), the following formula is used, obtained with the help of the COCOMO model:

Т = đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 1 Ă&#x2014; đ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 2 , where: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 1 , đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 2 â&#x2C6;&#x2019; are determined according to table 9; đ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??žđ??ž â&#x2C6;&#x2019;

đ??żđ??żđ??żđ??żđ??żđ??ż 1000

of lines.

Table 9. Coefficients đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 1 , đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 2 :

â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

Software type

N1

N2

Common

3,2

1,05

Semi-independent

3,0

1,12

Embedded

2,8

1,20

Common software â&#x2C6;&#x2019; software of small volume (not more than 50 KSLOC), developed by a relatively small group of experienced specialists in stable conditions; Semi-independent software â&#x2C6;&#x2019; software of medium size (no more than 300 KSLOC), developed by a group of specialists of medium qualification; Embedded software â&#x2C6;&#x2019; software with strict limitations (air ticket reservation system, air traffic control system, etc.).

The development time is calculated by the formula: đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;Ą = 2.5 Ă&#x2014; đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 3 , where:

đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; determined according to Table 10.

Table 10. Coefficient đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018; 3 :

Software type

N3

Common

0,38

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243 Semi-independent

0,35

Embedded

0,32

One serious issue of every method of calculating labour costs is that you can’t show a specific example if you are not part of the development team. Despite that we still can make a summary about which programming language is optimal, if our target is to minimize labour costs of the ITproject.

As mentioned earlier, FP-method is based on the number of operators the language needs to implement a single functional point. For 1C programming language, this number is noticeably lower than for other languages (about 10 operators for 1 functional point). This fact makes this language a priority in development for corresponding subject areas.

It also shows that the Function Point method allows us to evaluate the labour costs even if we are not involved in its development, but its accuracy makes it applicable even on later development stages, whereas, for example, Use-Case method, despite its accuracy on early development stages, doesn’t show the real cost situation in later stages.

Current Condition of the Information Community of the Arctic: Features of Calculating Labour Costs & 1C as a Leader in IT project development Returning to the problems of working in the Far North, it is important to account for the impact of the IT industry. It is not a secret that things such as navigation systems, weather stations, and means of communication, which are taken for granted nowadays, are all IT industry products to a certain degree. So it would be clever to say that all these things are making living conditions in the Far North easier than it would be without those technologies. In almost every aspect of life the impact of software engineering is evident.

Before looking at examples of IT development in the Far North, including using and distributing IT products, we should identify some features of working in these territories, especially in Russia.

Working in Far North regions is associated with many risks: weather conditions which can cause injury and affect health; the loss of high-cost equipment; and weak and expensive infrastructure, for both governments and private companies. Hence, this often means that nobody wants to come North just for the sake of improving the region, which is so distant.

For today, the financial problems are partly solved. According to the 146th and 148th Articles of the Labour Code of the Russian Federation, the remuneration of labour for workers is increased when they are engaged in working in areas that are seen as potentially harmful and/or dangerous.

The same rules are applied for workers employed in jobs in areas with special climatic conditions.

Here we should also notice that IT development itself is not the cause of resource exploitation. In fact, as we stated previously, the high costs of IT in northern conditions are the human resources that are expensive. In IT up to 60% of the expenses are assigned to the salaries of specialists, meaning that it can be quite expensive for employers, especially in the Far North, where there are salary implications.

Imports are almost always more expensive than domestic production – this is one of the main aspects of developing economy. Software development is not an exception here. In every country

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we can find specialists who can develop and improve the IT industry. So the question is not about the presence of domestic software development but about its quality.

In Russia 1C is a leader in software supply. Their solutions, based on ‘1C: Enterprise v. 8.3,’ are very attractive for many public and private companies in Russia because of their cost and quality, which is comparable with software developed abroad.

In the Far North regions their solutions have taken root as well. For example, the Russian Telephone Company has bought 1C: Enterprise software packages for their branches in Tomsk, Lesosibirsk and Eniseisk. It helped them to automate a lot of paperwork and bring their productivity to a new level. Furthermore, they also got qualified support from the distributor, which would be less effective if software had been bought abroad.

The table of introduced software solutions by 1C shows us that the average number of operators for a single functional point is about 50. It means that using 1C technologies may be a lot cheaper than using other development instruments (Evdokimov, Makeev, Koktashev, 2017: 14, table 2).

The leadership of solutions from 1C explains itself not only by import costs, but also, as we mentioned in the previous part, by its features, which have an impact on the calculation by using one of the most accurate methods of labour costs calculating – Function Points –, which can be used even for primary estimating of labour costs. This fact shows that by improving our national software we can support our IT industry without using expensive software and technologies from abroad.

While the perspective of relatively inexpensive national software can help improve the national IT industry, this increases the possibility of expanding the information society in the Far North, for successful cooperation between scientists, IT developers and entrepreneurs, who might be ready to make the Far North a better place for working and living.

References Abran A., Robillard P. N. Function points analysis: An empirical study of its measurement processes //IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. – 1996. – Т. 22. – №. 12. – С.

895-910; Basili V. R. et al. Understanding the high-performance-computing community: A software engineer’s perspective //IEEE software. – 2008. – Т. 25. – №. 4. – С. 29; Behrens C. A. Measuring the productivity of computer systems development activities with function points //IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. – 1983. – №. 6. – С. 648652; Booch, G. (2005). The unified modeling language user guide. Pearson Education India.

Byers, Michael. (2013). International law and the Arctic. Vol. 103. Cambridge University Press.

Clemmons, R. K. (2006). Project estimation with use case points. The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, 18-22.

Cottrell, W. D. (1999). Simplified program evaluation and review technique (PERT). Journal of construction Engineering and Management, 125(1), 16-22.

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Cvecinskij A.S., Tuzhilkin V.S., Voroncov A.A. Sovremennoe sostojanie razrabotok specializirovannyh informacionno-analiticheskih sistem dlja obespechenija osvoenija prirodnyh resursov shel'fa morej Rossii i perspektivy ih ispol'zovanija [Modern condition of infoanalisys systems for procuring of developing of natural resources of Russian sea shelf and perspectives of their using] // Trudy Gosudarstvennogo okeanograficheskogo instituta.

2008. № 211. S. 369-383; Doble M. J. et al. Through-ice AUV deployment: Operational and technical experience from two seasons of Arctic fieldwork //Cold Regions Science and Technology. – 2009. – Т. 56. – №.

2. – С. 90-97; Evdokimov I.V., Bojarchuk N.Ja. Osobennosti strategicheskogo planirovanija razvitija regionov severa Vostochnoj Sibiri [Features of strategic planning of North East Syberia development] // Cennosti i interesy sovremennogo obshhestva materialy Mezhdunarodnoj nauchnoprakticheskoj konferencii. 2013. S. 268-271; Evdokimov I.V., Makeev V.V., Koktashev V.V. Ekonomicheskoe obosnovanie effektivnosti ITproektov v regione Krajnego Severa na osnove metoda Function Points [Economic reasoning of effectivity of IT-projects in Far North based on Function Points methodology] // Mezhdunarodnyj zhurnal gumanitarnyh i estestvennyh nauk. 2017. T. 2. № 3. S. 141-146; Evdokimov I.V., Mikhalev A.S., Kitskalov A. E., Yashevsky D.E. (2017) Osobennosti primenenija metoda Use-Case Points v jekonomike programmnoj inzhenerii s otkrytym ishodnym kodom [Features of application of the Use-Case Points method in economy of program engineering with an open source code.]

Forbes Global 2000 List (2014). Retrieved from, https://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2014/05/07/the-worlds-largest-companieschina-takes-over-the-top-three-spots/#2faa7bb66f61.

Gao G. X. et al. (2012). Breaking the Ice: Navigation in the Arctic //Global Navigation Satellite Systems: Report of a Joint Workshop of the National Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. – National Academies Press. – С. 229.

IDC, IDC CEE Black Book, Q2 2014.

IDC, IDC Worldwide Black Book, Q2 2014.

IDC, Russia Cloud Services Market 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Analysis, 2014.

IDC, Russia IT Services Market 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Analysis, 2014.

IDC, Russia Vertical Markets 2013-2018 IT Spending Forecast, 2014.

IDC, Worldwide and U.S. Mobile Applications Download and Revenue Forecast; Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, 2014.

IDC, Worldwide Integrated Systems 2014-2018 Forecast; State of the Market and Outlook, 2014.

IFPUG: Function Point Counting Practices Manual, Release 4.1.1.

Kemerer, Chris F. (1993). Reliability of function points measurement: a field experiment.

Communications of the ACM. 36(2): 85-97; Kofinas G. et al. (2005). A research plan for the study of rapid change, resilience, and vulnerability in social-ecological systems of the Arctic //The Common Property Resource Digest. – Т. 73. – С. 1-10; Low, Graham C., & D. Ross Jeffery (1990). Function points in the estimation and evaluation of the software process. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 16(1): 64-71.

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Makarenko V. P. (2012). Raspad imperij i problema kolonializmaÂť. [The collapse of empires and the problem of colonialism] // Politicheskaja konceptologija: Zhurnal metadisciplinarnyh issledovanij â&#x201E;&#x2013;1.

Matson, Jack E., B.E. Barrett, & J. M. Mellichamp. (1994). Software development cost estimation using function points." IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 20(4): 275-287.

R. S. Pressman (2000) Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach. McGraw-Hill.

Rajkov A.N. (2015). Informacionnye tehnologii na severe i v Arktike Rossii [Information technologies in the north and the Russian Arctic] // Mezhotraslevaja informacionnaja sluzhba. 3 (172): S. 23-28; Sheta, Alaa F. (2006). Estimation of the COCOMO model parameters using genetic algorithms for NASA software projects. Journal of Computer Science. 2(2): 118-123; Washburn A. L., & G. Weller. (1986). Arctic research in the national interest. Science. 233(4764): 633-639.

Worldwide Big Data Technology and Services 2014-2018 Forecast (2014). IDC #250458.

Evdokimov, Khaluimov, Sokolov & Golokhvastov

‘Future Games’: Enacting Innovation in Greenland Carina Ren & Rasmus Kjærgaard Rasmussen

This article explores how Arctic Winter Games 2016 (AWG), held in Nuuk, Greenland, enacted possible futures through specific policies and practices pertinent to societal innovation in contemporary Greenland. We see the event as a futuring device which engenders possible futures and ties in with current and emerging political and societal agendas. We use the two-year preparation phase of the AWG to explore how it created effects beyond the event proper. Drawing on various discourses and practices of the event, we analyze three central sites where it i) rehearses capacity building and upskilling models, ii) showcases Arctic competences and iii) attempts to mobilize a new culture of volunteering. We argue that the AWG 2016 can be seen as “future games” playing out an Arctic nation in the making, thus adding a new understanding to events as a locus of societal innovation.

Introduction In early 2014, work had slowly started with preparing the Arctic Winter Games to be held in Nuuk, Greenland, in 2016. A local secretariat had been established to initiate the planning and executing of what had already by then been termed the largest event of its kind in Greenlandic history. In April 2014, an update by the general manager of the Arctic Winter Games 2016 could be read on Facebook, in which she stated: Yesterday AWG2016 received an approval of its strategy and communication strategy in the steering committee. I am so looking forward to present it to all of you (…). We are thrilled to gather all of Greenland around this cultural and sport event, where about 2000 people will be coming to Nuuk. But AWG is not only about that week, where everything is launched. It is about those two years, where we as a community will improve and expand our competences, brand Greenland, collaborate in new ways and strengthen the areas of sport and culture in general. (…) I look forward to working with you – because we can do it together  (General Manager Maliina Abelsen, Facebook update, April 2014).

In her update, the general manager makes a number of claims about the event. Contradictory to common understanding of AWG as a one-week youth sport and cultural event, the event is here narrated as being also about ‘those two years’ which precedes it. AWG 2016 does not only take place within the precincts of the host society of Nuuk, but also unfolds in other places, in the whole of Greenland. The event is about something else. As we shall also see in the following, AWG and its strategy points towards the future of Greenland and to new engagements with collaboration, upskilling, branding and volunteering,.

Carina Ren is Associate Professor, Department of Culture and Global Studies, at Aalborg University.

Rasmus Kjærgaard Rasmussen is Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Denmark.

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In this article, we take the reader on a journey of those two years that have since passed and discuss the claim – or promise – of AWG as being something else and more than a week of sports and culture in Nuuk. We propose to see AWG as a futuring device (Gad & Jensen, 2010) where ‘Little’ and ‘Big’ futures (Michael, 2016) co-exist and entangle in different ways. By proposing to explore AWG as a device ‘spilling over’ its immediate purpose, we build on several interconnected theoretical approaches to what we might call ‘futuring’, which are elaborated further below.

After a presentation of our understanding of events and the concept of futuring devices, we present our methodological approach to studying future in the making. We specifically focus on the network of event policies and practices, which engenders possible and manageable futures, continually adjusting to emerging agendas in contemporary Greenland. In our analysis, we describe three sites within this network where AWG entangles with larger societal discourses and concerns, in this case upskilling, branding and voluntariness. We see how AWG becomes an occasion to prototype and rehearse narratives of desirable futures through a range of speculative bets. By seeing events as futuring devices, we are able to empirically trace and engage with enactments of Greenland in the making.

Futuring Devices: Mapping the Performative Effects of Events In this section, we unfold how events play the role of futuring devices. The idea of ‘futuregenerating devices’ originates from Jensen (2010; 2005) who investigates how socio-material actors, like computer systems and policy documents, are able to perform possible futures.

According to Jensen ‘future-generating devices’ can facilitate linkages between people, agendas and practices as they “(…) have very little structure, and few material and discursive limits are (as yet) inscribed in them; to the extent that they do generate more lasting futures, such structures will have to evolve” (2005: 247). Such devices are open to multiple interpretations and used by an array of actors as they feed into existing agendas or lend themselves to policy in-the-making. This approach differs from traditional future research which extrapolates tendencies and trends based on statistical material or scenarios (for a tourism example see Yeoman, 2012) and enables us to explore ‘the future’ as much more dynamic and complex (Brown & Michael 2003).

In this article, we explore how the AWG event and a complex web of related policies and activities are mobilized to ‘do something’ in the present. By looking at events as futuring device(s) we seek to draw attention to the overlooked value of events as the receptacle of and vehicle for different actors’ futurist fantasies. Drawing on our previous research on tourism and nation branding policies, respectively, we argue that events stand in a dual relationship to policy as they enact and feed into both existing policy, and policies in the making (Rasmussen, 2017; Ren, 2016). While acknowledging that events have a discursive and narrative aspect e.g. in the form of their textual materials, we study the event as a social-material actor. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and, more specifically, from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005; Pedersen & Ren, 2015) we focus on the effects and translations (Callon 1986) of the event rather than with its explicit goals, concrete execution or hidden meanings. In relation to the present study of AWG we investigate its role as a futuring device and its relations to Greenlandic development strategies and policies – see next section for details. In unfolding these connections, we follow Michael’s (2016: 509) suggestion to map the “ways in which Big Futures are analytically or rhetorically transformed into Little and vice versa.”

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Methodology Our constructivist approach subscribes to the view of reality as multiple and as enacted (Mol, 2002) and entails a view of the world as ‘messy’ (Law, 2004). Reality does not add up; it is not coherent and cannot be studied as a whole. Thus, we do not explore ways or situations in which AWG ‘adds up’ and we abstain from clearly defining what the AWG ‘is’. Rather, by investigating three sites of entanglement, we show how AWG is enacted as more than a sports event – as indicated by the general manager’s initial statement.

Seeing futures as enacted, we propose the AWG as a good opportunity to study futuring and its discursive and social-material devices in practice. As a way to operationalize the study of a ‘messy’ reality, Latour (1999) proposes to “follow the actor,” that is to pursue the workings and effects of a particular actor. In this case, we describe how AWG ‘travels’ through different sites, appropriates different meanings and through this, how it creates, joins and challenges existing future visions.

Staying open to things as potentially multiple does not mean that AWG can be anything. Instead, and as argued by Mol, it is more than one but less than many. In order to materialize, reality requires hard and ongoing work continually undertaken by actors, human and non-human. In this article we specifically focus on how the event links to future through research questions concerned with what AWG is about and how it links to Greenlandic futures. We do so by describing three specific sites of upskilling, branding and voluntariness which enable us to understand AWG beyond itself.

In our work on Greenlandic futures at the AWG, we make use of a variety of empirical sources and material gathered over a period of over two years through document studies and fieldwork.

For the purpose of generating material on the AWG, both authors travelled to Nuuk, Greenland, five times in total to follow the event preparations during its different stages. During our stays, we presented during workshops with AWG partners, joined a three-day bi-annual business conference in 2015 where AWG played a prominent role, attended the AWG event and took part in different event related activities. We interviewed central stakeholders and sent out surveys with volunteers, sponsors, participants, visitors and Greenlandic non-visitors (see Ren et al., 2016). Media and social media activities related to AWG were also monitored closely.

In order to link the AWG to contemporary Greenlandic development discourses and agendas we compiled a compendium of strategies and policies for the economic and social development of Greenland.1 The main sampling criteria was to include documents concerned with the questions of “where is Greenland going?” and “how is Greenland getting there?” By linking these narratives of the ‘big’ (macro) future to the AWG16 strategy and to the fieldwork, we were able to discern three distinct sites of entanglements which, as we show further on, linked ‘event effects’ in terms of innovation to current ongoing discussions, agendas and policies on upskilling, branding and voluntariness.

Game On – Events & Societal Innovation As previously mentioned, we see AWG2016 as a device to explore Greenlandic futures. Our initial interest into seeing the games as more than just a sporting event was spurred by the way the games where organized. Looking back on 2002 when Greenland co-hosted the AWG for the first time together with Iqaluit, several involved informants recalled how execution was an explicit goal at the time for the AWG team and then general manager, Michael Binzer. AWG 2002 was at the time Ren & Rasmussen

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also seen as a huge event (but only half the size of the 2016 event). It contained logistical challenges of all sorts, from IT and communication, to security, venues, volunteers and much more. Unlike AWG 2016 however, it was not organized along a public-private set-up. Beyond the mere ‘pulling it off’, specific desirable outcomes and values were never explicitly framed or discussed. At an AWG 2016 stakeholder seminar, Binzer stated that the most important outcome and long-lasting effect of AWG 2002 was ‘glue’, societal cohesion and being in it together (statement from “Value seminar,” held October 2014, Nuuk), something which he argued only became visible much later.

This time around, the concerns on effects and outcomes of the AWG secretariat were far more explicit. As stated by Abelsen in an email correspondence in March 2013: we are currently occupied by how to measure the societal results and actually measuring and proving, that AWG is more than a week of celebration. How do we measure for instance if there is more societal cohesion in society, how do we measure if Greenland is actually branded and what is it worth in economic terms? This is something that we will be held accountable for (email correspondence, authors’ translation).

The quote displays an increasing awareness of and interest in working with value creation and might also provide an elucidation of the transformed organizational set-up. One explanation could be the changing roles of the public. AWG’s explicit strategic aim of making it ‘more than a sport event’ is inscribed in an environment of changing public roles and new demands for accountability and thus connects to state-centric theories of contemporary governance and public management (e.g., Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011; see Gad, 2014, for a comprehensive discussion of future Greenlandic statehood and sovereignty). As Cerny (1997) explains, a global search for competitive advantages has led to a situation in which the public or the state, as he terms it, “is no longer able to act as a decommodifying hierarchy (i.e., taking economic activities out of the market). It must act more and more as a collective commodifying agent - i.e. putting activities into the market – and even as a market actor itself. It is financier, middleman, advocate, and even entrepreneur, in a complex economic web” (Cerny, 1997: 267).

New roles and expectations of the public can be retraced in public event organization in which, as argued by Petersen and Ren (2015: 99), “the rising complexity and the increasing wish to work across sectorial divides on events or other big projects require that public administrators, event organizers, researchers and the many other stakeholders involved in the making and valuation of such activities address, rethink or broaden the outcomes of organizing and executing events.” In their work on the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen, the authors describe how the work of a public-private host city company created for the occasion entailed not only the financing, preparation and holding of the music mega-event, but also a difficult venue development project, massive outreach initiatives, sponsor collaborations and agreements on public servants volunteering before and during the event. Similar to the AWG, this strongly contrasted the previous Eurovision event held in Copenhagen in 2001, where the show was organized by the Danish Broadcasting system (DR) in the national sports stadium with little collaboration with any private or public partners.

The parallels in the development of the Eurovision 2001/2014 and the AWG 2002/2016 led us to argue that while Greenland is not (yet) a ‘proper’ sovereign state, new global requirements for a competition state and shifting roles of the public impact on the role of the Greenland public administration. Indirectly, it also influences how events such as AWG are organized and used as ‘Future Games’

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devices for doing other things, in our case to showcase or prototype desirable futures. In line with the special issue theme, we might say that AWG works as a vehicle to innovate by offering smaller prototypes of future societal organization, collaboration and value creation. In the following, we take a closer look at this by focusing on three moments in which AWG policies and practices engage with futures in the endeavors to create ‘more than a sports event’. Our first site of entanglement takes us to the higher circles at a business conference in Nuuk in 2015.

First Site of Entanglement: Capacity-Building from Elsewhere or from Below?

In this section, we explore how AWG interferes with policies envisioning big Greenlandic futures at the business conference of Future Greenland (FG) held in 2015 in Nuuk. The FG conference is a biannual event hosted by the Greenland Business Association and enjoys wide support and interest from a range of actors within Greenland’s political, commercial, media and bureaucratic elites. In 2015, the conference had more than 400 participants – mostly from Greenland and Denmark. Out of a total of eight conference workshops covering themes such as mining, investments, entrepreneurship and tourism, one was dedicated to the AWG event to be held the following year.

An explicitly stated aim of the conference was to debate the island’s future and “the goals and direction for the development of Greenland” (Greenland Business Association, 2015). Especially its overt allegiance to scenario-thinking and strategizing evidenced in the heading “Growth and welfare – scenarios for the development of Greenland” supported this choice. A dominant conference theme was Greenland’s dire economic situation and several of the speakers offered interpretations and historical accounts of the current predicament as well as possible solutions. In this respect, the FG conference was ‘more than a conference’ as it played the role of an incubator and test-tube for innovative ideas and policy-making generating new narratives of Greenland and acting as a futuring device for a nation in the making. This set-up and composition of actors make it a privileged site for studying big futures and in our case how AWG entangles into these.

A central solution offered to remedy the difficult conditions of Greenlandic society proposed by numerous speakers and participants, was the building of capacity and a general rise in the level of education and skills in society. In his key note presentation on Greenlandic future perspectives, Professor Minik Rosing argued that “the decisive factor for developing Greenland is research and education” (Minik Rosing, 2015, translated by the authors). While the view on the need to build capacity was shared by Brian Buus, CEO of Greenland’s business association, he however framed the solution somewhat differently, stating that “the more competences and capital we can attract from outside [of Greenland] – the more we can create locally” (Brian Buus Pedersen, 2015, translated by the authors). As the professor not surprisingly focused on education, the representative of Greenlandic business life focused on attracting skills and other resources from abroad, a discourse which resonates well with the decade long tradition of importing skilled labor to Greenland.

The idea of societal capacity building and up-skilling as a necessity to build desirable futures was echoed in the AWG2016 workshop facilitated by its general manager in which AWG was proposed as a (part of) the solution to resolve the capacity challenge. In her introductory address, the general manager argued that AWG was valuable not only for participants, attendees and the host society but also for business, exactly due to its ability to build capacity by activating and building skills.

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AWG’s vision of “generating pride and joy while developing social voluntariness and societal skills” (AWG strategy) thus aligned with a future narrative on capacity building at the conference and to a wider setting of crafting solutions to the pressing challenges of Greenlandic society at large.

During the workshop, the main assertion was how skills obtained through the planning and holding of the event by sponsors, volunteers and other partners could be used to benefit future public and business projects. To capitalize on and strengthen this ongoing work entailed a realization, the general manager claimed, of the deep need for and dependency on businesses, volunteers and general involvement and on collaboration between all stakeholders. It also meant a realization of how the host society was in fact already ‘sitting’ on knowledge (Ren & Bjørst, 2016). At a moment during her presentation, the general manager kept insisting on how citizens were sitting on a gold mine, at last asking the participants to look under their seats. Fastened underneath every seat, the workshop participants found a candy bar offering much amusement in the crowd. They were really ‘sitting on a gold mine’, which metaphorically alluded to how during a time of failed or halted mineral adventure in Greenland, the ‘real’ goal mine was the one found in people rather than in rocks.

In this first site of entanglement at the Future Greenland conference, the strategy of the AWG event is carefully translated into an ongoing discussion of education and skill development where AWG is offered as a prototype to explore where the Greenlandic society is going. AWG works as a ‘boundary object’ (Star, 2010; Star & Greisemer, 1989) – a flexible narrative which can engage many actors and agendas. The metaphor of looking for and finding gold ‘at home’ however challenged the dominant logic present at the Future Greenland conference of skills, taking on a second, less prevailing understanding of capacities as built in rather than brought to Greenland. By proposing to activate, build and rehearse local skills during the event, AWG interfered with traditional colonial discourses and practices of importing resources and the attraction of necessary capacities from outside of Greenland. From the business conference, we now move forward in time to a few days before the opening of the games. There, we take a look at how AWGs strategic vision to attract ‘global attention’ and the linking ‘to a larger forward-looking and positive presentation of Greenland’ unfolded through an inconvenient storm.

The Second Site of Entanglement – ‘Now We Do What We Do Best’ A few days before the opening ceremony of the AWG 2016 in Nuuk, weather reports looked bleak. A spring blizzard was on its way and expected to peak the day prior to the opening ceremony. That very Saturday, 1250 participants were set to fly to Greenland’s capital city – the highest number of civilians arriving in one day by aircraft to Greenland in the island’s history.

Now, however, bad weather was jeopardizing this milestone in Greenlandic aviation history and, along with that, the successful execution of the upcoming games.

Although the blizzard disrupted the flight from Kangerlussuaq to Nuuk and ended up slightly delaying the AWG 2016 opening ceremony, the event managers were not taken by surprise by this ordinary spring weather phenomenon. As an immediate response, a backup plan was set into effect, changing the traffic program and rescheduling the opening ceremony in order to ensure the smooth execution of the event. AirGreenland, the Danish Defense’s Arctic Command, volunteers,

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and many other actors were brought in to respond to the situation, offering an interesting if nervewracking beginning to this year’s games.

The dramatic actions and measures display the challenges of operating in an Arctic environment, where planning may fall victim to the weather. Spinning this to their advantage, the organizers explained that the blizzard had provided them with an occasion to, in the words of general manager, “do what we do best.” In a press release, the AWG organizers further pointed out that “When weather conditions challenge us, we find solutions and solve it together.” One of the main players involved in the flight bride was the main AWG sponsor of AirGreenland. In their social media coverage of the storm, the company posted texts and pictures on their Facebook page celebrating the collaborative efforts, which had enabled a smooth and swift execution in spite of the difficult conditions. As commented by a user on an AirGreenland Facebook post asking to give the Dash 8 a high five: “It’s perhaps more in its place to give a high five to the crew, Ground Crew and technicians, who have worked a certain body part off to make it succeed” (Facebook comment, 5/3 2016). These statements show how AWG 2016 offers itself as a site to exhibit the Arctic competences necessary to maneuver in unpredictable terrain and as an occasion to demonstrate logistic and collaborative skills.

Figure 1. Flight bridge succesfully completed – with a human touch. This AirGreenland Facebook post was liked by 964 people, shared 25 times and commented by 50 enthusiatisc users.

As argued by mayor and event owner Asii Chemnitz Narup, the AWG 2016 is “one of many windows of opportunities we shall be aware of in the continuous work for attracting business, tourism and science and media attention. As a region, we can and must profit from that” (Narup, 2016). To her, the well-executed logistics and organization of AWG provide benefits that exceed the sport event itself. By publically announcing the measures taken to adapt to and make the best of the situation, organizers invited a global audience to experience a big-scale activation of Arctic competencies in working together, in being flexible and in rapidly adjusting to unexpected circumstances.

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During the games, some of the most popular media stories in the Greenlandic, Danish and circumpolar press ended up being about this storm. The storm related press released, news articles and communication from partners caught on to the dual strategic aims of AWG to “strengthen social skills” and to focus global attention on Greenland (AWG, 2014). As a policy narrative, AWG was casted as an effective platform to demonstrate and brand the skills, assets and capacities of the host society to participants, visitors, community and global media. The values which it spurred were human values and the futures enacted related to collaboration and Arctic competencies.

Third Site of Entanglement – Volunteering Futures While the previous site tells of the AWG as a global platform for the display of Arctic competencies, the third and last story, currently evolving in the aftermaths of AWG 2016, is dominated by another narrative on the outcomes of the event related to societal skills, namely volunteering. In this story, we focus on the current municipal initiative of channeling volunteers from AWG to other public projects. Once again little and big futures entangle, as AWG policies and practices overflow beyond the confines of the event proper, this time into the public administration and the core area of welfare and care. At a municipal level, the engagement of a huge amount of volunteers during AWG has specifically created an opportunities to work with volunteer culture.

According to the strategy, a part of the AWG vision is to develop societal voluntariness (AWG, 2014). As the general manager stated in her Facebook update mentioned earlier on “AWG will be making use of volunteers from the whole of Greenland, who will be going through project training.

We expect a minimum of 650 persons to go through courses in languages, project management, first aid etc. We will be visiting all larger towns and offer courses on volunteering – which we may use in our local communities”. For AWG, working to attract volunteers was not only an explicit and wishful aim but also an economic prerequisite to keep budgets and hence enable the successful holding of the event. Without volunteers, no games. However, as we will see, this immediate event necessity was linked to similar pressing societal needs.

In spite of the very high number of volunteers needed, by the deadline on 31 January 2016 the AWG secretariat had managed to attract 1750 volunteers, surpassing the initial goal of 1700. It did prove to be hard work getting volunteers through the training programs and initiatives, which had already been specified in the strategy. This confirms the general challenge in volunteer management of securing the interest and motivation of volunteers in order to prevent drop-outs (Wilson, 2000). However, by early January 84 volunteers had gone through courses or seminars of project work and five joint seminars for the 63 voluntary committees had been held. First-aid courses had been conducted with 60 volunteers and English courses with 33. Also, courses in voluntary work had been held with approximately 200 volunteers in six different towns.

The sheer numbers and activities display the efforts and accomplishments in recruiting and upskilling a large number of volunteers across Greenland, the least densely populated nation in the world. On their website, AWG reports from the volunteer courses: “The training course has now been held in Qaqortoq and Nuuk. Participants were very interested and avidly involved. We could clearly see that many of them truly are passionate about their voluntary work but lack the tools they need. This tells us that the training courses are valuable to voluntary work and therefore also of value to society. This is

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indeed a field we should acknowledge much more strongly and continue to develop in (the) future” (www.awg2016.org).

The account shows how training courses and other volunteer activities seek to drive the installment of a new culture of voluntariness and to unlock local potential, as also seen during the Future Greenland conference. According to Ren and colleagues (2015: 89), this major and prolonged involvement illustrates how AWG “enters everyday life in a number of powerful ways.” Through the year-long process of planning the event, “connections are forged and requirements are articulated through collaborative efforts of the event actors. Through collaborations with and between civic organizations, educational institutions, the art and music scene and others, new social and public-private configurations are enacted such as citizens-as-volunteers, NGOs-aspartners and companies-as-sponsors” (Ibid.). But the question is whether and how this will turn into longer-lasting effects?

In an interview, the AWG general manager identifies the capturing and anchoring of ‘unlocked’ volunteering capacities - and contact details – as essential to capitalize on a central outcome of AWG. This will entail another actor, the municipality, to take over through a planned volunteer database enabling future contact and re-activation of volunteers for other activities requiring volunteer help. In an interview, Marie Fleischer from Sermersooq municipality argues “we are currently looking at how to make use of these volunteer resources, which is a real strong source of development for our citizens”. While Greenland has previously capitalized on volunteers primarily in the area of sports, the goal is now to broaden the scope of volunteering to support strained welfare service resources. Fleischer confirm that the municipality has “initiated a process where we open up old people’s homes, kindergartens etc., informing about the possibility of joining as a visitor or play bingo with the elders on Sunday, distribute food or go for a walk. So it has provided an opportunity to talk more about volunteering.”

As a project company, the AWG secretariat closed down shortly after the event, in July 2016. At that moment, the many resources, skills and experiences gathered in the secretariat, the 63 event AWG committees and the 1700 volunteers were dispersed. So far, discussions are taking place on how the municipality will be able to transfer volunteer resources to current challenges in building a volunteer culture. In other words, how is the Little future of volunteering in Greenland being translated into a Big volunteering future? Whether this will succeed is an open – but critical – question.

Concluding Remarks: Desirable Arctic Futures In this article, we have sought to show how the 2016 AWG event worked as a site for enacting and rehearsing possible Greenlandic futures. In the beginning of this paper, we proposed that AWG could be seen as a futuring device, where futures were continually produced, tested - and contested - within a complex network of policies and practices. We explored this further at three sites of entanglement, where AWG was enrolled in to emerging issues and concerns – of social capacity building, the presentation and branding of Arctic competencies and of the need to strengthen volunteering.

At the first site of entanglement, the Future Greenland conference, AWG worked as a boundary object, connecting its activities to existing upskilling discourses, agendas and practices and offering an alternative bottom-up approach to capacity building. In the second site of entanglement, a

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‘perfect storm’ leading up to the event opening provided an occasion for organizers and partners to showcase Arctic competences through their collaboration on logistics. This offered the opportunity to brand Greenland as a ‘competent’ nation by building alternative stories to those typically told about the Arctic nation.

The third site of entanglement showed how AWG provided a test site for rehearsing volunteering practices and for building a large-scale volunteering infrastructure. It is presently unclear whether AWG was the decisive moment for the rise of a new Greenlandic volunteering culture and whether technical support will be developed to support it. However, the volunteering activities connected to AWG as described at the third site of entanglement display a clear attempt to link the need for volunteers at AWG to a larger societal requirement.

The three sites unraveled in the present article encompass multiple stories of Greenlandic futures.

Stories that are, we would propose, performative rehearsals of ‘something more’. While AWG values and futures oscillate and are currently not stabilized, the event proposed alternative solution narratives and prototyped new approaches to tackling existing and impending challenges. By bringing together and reshuffling relations between a large number of actors, resources and discourses over a period of two years, AWG interfered with dominant societal discourses and practices pointing towards new, viable reconfigurations of otherwise stable Greenlandic narratives.

Notes 1. The compendium consists of strategic texts on Greenlandic economic development from 2010-2016 and published in official policy documents from the Greenlandic and Danish Governments and in reports from think-tanks and NGOs. The main sampling criteria has been the texts’ explicit reference to i) specific economic development agendas and ii) general more narrative bets on the ’future’ of Greenland. Based on a close reading of the original 2015 AWG-strategy paper, the three main themes of “upskilling,” “branding” and “voluntariness” was discerned and the following compendium texts was therefore secondarily selected based on their semantic proximity to these three themes.

2. Brookings Institution (2014). The Greenland Gold Rush. Promise and Pitfalls of Greenland’s Energy and Mineral Resources, Washington: John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings, 68 pages.

3. Government of Greenland (2010). Hvordan sikres vækst og velfærd i Grønland? [How can growth and welfare in Greenland be secured?], Baggrundsrapport. Nuuk: Skatte- og Velfærdskommissionen, 102 pages.

4. Government of Greenland (2014). Greenland’s oil and mineral strategy 2014-2018 (English version). Nuuk: Department of Business and Minerals; Department of Environmental Affairs, 102 pages.

5. Government of Greenland (2015). “Strategi 2015-2018” [Strategy 2015-2018], Nuuk: VisitGreenland.

Availible at http://corporate.greenland.com/da/nyhedsbrevsarkiv/visit-greenlands-kommendeturismestrategi-for-2015-2018-1/ 6. Government of Greenland (2016). Turismeudvikling i Grønland. Hvad skal der til? National sektorplan for turisme [Tourism development in Greenland. What does it take? National

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action plan for tourism]. Nuuk: Department of Ministry of Industry, Labour and Trade, 76 pages.

7. Governments of Denmark, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands (2011). Strategy for the Arctic 2011-2020. Copenhagen: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 58 pages.

8. Government of Greenland, Government of Denmark (2015). Fremme af kommercielt erhvervssamarbejde mellem Grønland og Danmark [Optimizing commercial business cooperation between Greenland and Denmark]. Copenhagen: Ministry of Business and Growth, 48 pages.

9. Government of Denmark (2016). ‘Danish Diplomacy and Defence in Times of Change. A Review of Denmark’s Foreign and Security Policy, executive summery in English. Copehagen: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, 15 pages.

10. Greenpeace (2014) “Hvor kan udviklingen komme fra? Potentialer og faldgruber i de grønlandske erhvervssektorer frem mod 2025” [Where can development come from?

Potentials and pittfalls in greenlandic business sectors towards 2025], Copenhagen: Rambøll.

11. University of Greenland, University of Copenhagen (2014). To the benefit of Greenland, Nuuk: Committee for Greenlandic Mineral Resources to the Benefit of Society, 52 pages.

References Brown, N and Mike Michael. 2003. A sociology of expectations: retrospecting prospects and prospecting retrospects. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 15 (1): 3-18 Callon, Michel. 1986. Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieux Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 196-223). London: Routledge.

Cerny, Philip G. 1997. Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization. Government and Opposition 32 (2): 251-274. doi: 10.1111/j.14777053.1997.tb00161.x.

Gad, Christopher and Casper Bruun Jensen. 2010. On the consequences of post-ANT. Science, Technology & Human Values, 35 (1): 55-80.

Gad, Ulrik P Pram (2014). ‘Greenland: a post-Danish sovereign nation state in the making’.

Cooperation & Conflict, 49(1): 98-118.

Jensen, Casper Bruun. (2005). An Experiment in Performative History: The Danish Electronic Patient Record as a Future-Generating Device. Social Studies of Science. 35 (2): 241-67.

Jensen, Casper B. (2010). Ontologies for Developing Things Making Health Care Futures Through Technology. Rotterdam/Boston/Taipei: Sense publishers.

Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Latour, B. (1999). Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Routledge.

Michael, Mike (2016). Enacting Big Futures, Little Futures: toward an ecology of futures. The Sociological Review, 1-17. DOI: 10.1111/1467-954X.12444 Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press Petersen, Morten K. and Carina Ren. 2015. Much more than a song contest”: Exploring Eurovision 2014 as Potlatch. Valuation Studies 3 (2): 97-118. 10.3384/VS.20015992.153297 Ren & Rasmussen

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Rasmussen, Rasmus K. 2017. Rethinking Counter-Narratives in Studies of Organizational Texts and Practices. Sanne Frandsen, Timothy Kuhn and Marianne Wolff Lundholt (Eds.).

Counter-Narratives and Organization (pp. 293-332). Routledge, New York and London Ren, Carina. 2016. Cool or hot Greenland? Exhibiting and enacting sustainable Arctic futures.

Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 111: 442-450.

Ren, Carina, Morten Krogh Petersen and Dianne Dredge. 2015. Guest Editorial: Valuing Tourism, Valuation Studies 3 (2): 85-96 Ren, Carina and Lill Rastad Bjørst (2016) “Situated capacities: Exploring Arctic Winter Games 2016 upskilling initiatives”. Knudsen, Rebekka (red.). Perspectives on skills : an anthology on informally acquired skills in Greenland. Kapitel 7.4, Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen. 2016. 206-224.

Star, S. L. (2010). This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept. Science, Technology & Human Values, 35 (5), 601-617. doi: 10.1177/0162243910377624.

Star, Susan. L., and J. R. Griesemer. 1989. Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 190739. Social Studies of Science,, 19 (3) Aug), 387-420.

Yeoman, I. (2012). 2050-tomorrow’s tourism (Vol. 55). Channel View Publications.

Wilson, John (2000) Volunteering. Annual review of sociology, 2000, 26(1), 215-240.

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Briefing Note

Submarine Cables: Bringing Broadband Internet to the Arctic, a Life Changer for Northerners?

Michael Delaunay

The internet has already changed the lives of billions of people all over the planet and still continues to do so. But in order to fully benefit from what the internet can offer, a broadband connection is essential. In the Arctic this is not yet the case. A large portion of the Arctic region suffers from a bad connection. There exists a significant digital gap between the northern and the southern region of the Arctic countries.

For the majority of the inhabitants of the Arctic regions, internet is very expensive, but not only that; it offers a low bandwidth and a low data cap. This is particularly the case in Nunavut where Inuit rely on only one way to connect: via satellite. Other regions can be connected via micro wave or terrestrial fiber optic cables, but not all of them.

Even if the satellite and microwave connect the northerners to the rest of the World, these technologies are likely to suffer due to the harsh environment (ice, snow storms, electromagnetic storms) that can disrupt, and even cut off completely, the only way to communicate for some of the Indigenous communities.

Submarine cables for now seem to be the most reliable, fastest and cheapest option in the long term to connect most of the communities to broadband internet, even in the Arctic. While most of the Arctic communities are settled on shores in the North American Arctic, especially in Canada, the option of laying submarine fibre optic cables to connect them to broadband internet might be a solution.

But why is broadband internet via submarine fibre optic cables vital for the Arctic populations?

How has the internet changed their lives and will it continue to do so?

Michael Delaunay is a PhD student at the UniversitĂŠ de Versailles Saint-Quentin, France.

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Internet, an Everyday Necessity Internet is central to everyday life in the North, especially for Indigenous peoples, and is now considered as a basic need and even a human right. It helps the Inuit to protect their culture and rights by raising awareness via social media. Unfortunately, most of the time they must deal with bad connections and signal problems. However, change could be around the corner with the completion of several projects of submarine cables coming to the Arctic, bringing broadband to the top of the world.

The fact that Connectivity was chosen as one of the four priorities of the Finnish chairmanship of the Arctic Council (AC) from 2017 to 20191 appears to be logical when we combine all the studies published on this subject over the past few years. It reveals the enormous need for a better connection in the Arctic regions. It has been a Northern concern for many years, while reports point towards the need for faster, more reliable and affordable broadband connections for all Arctic inhabitants and especially Indigenous peoples.2 The will of the AC to take this matter into consideration is highlighted by the creation of the Task Force on Telecommunications Infrastructure in the Arctic (TFTIA),3 and the release of two reports on Arctic telecommunications: the Arctic Economic Council’s (AEC) January 2017 report Arctic Broadband, Recommendations for an Interconnected Arctic,4 and the AC’s May 2017 report on Telecommunications Infrastructure in the Arctic: A Circumpolar Assessment.5 A basic need and a human right As with running water, electricity or food, broadband internet access has become a necessity for everyday life. In 2016, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) declared broadband internet as a basic need.6 Perhaps even more than a need, internet has been a legal right for every citizen since 2010 in Finland, an Arctic country where internet access is a universal service obligation (USO) at a minimum rate of 2Mbps since 2015, with a target of 10Mbps by 2021.

In 2016, the United Nations took this further by pushing the vote of a non-binding resolution defining internet access as a basic Human Right.

Amazon prime in the Arctic, a double-edged sword?

Thanks to internet, the everyday lives of some of the northerners have changed in the past few years through the use of Amazon. The Amazon Prime membership was, and still is, an essential tool in everyday life for some of the North American communities.

This status allows customers to ship their purchases from this website for free to almost anywhere in North America7 within a few days, sometimes more for the Arctic regions, for only 79 CDN$ a year for Canadians and 99 US$ for the United States. Like everything in the North, shipping costs are much higher than in the south of the US and Canada. Shipping goods by plane is expensive, and by sealift it is only possible during summer, and even then only for non-perishable foods and supplies. That’s why the free delivery Prime status has become such a boon for the northerners.

In Arctic Alaska, for instance, Prime allows Alaska inhabitants to purchase everyday items for the same price they would pay in the contiguous United States. For example, the owner of one the few hotels in Utqiagvik can serve fresh bread for breakfast every day because he can order his flour Submarine Cables in the Arctic

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on Amazon for a much lower price thanks to Prime. Furthermore, he can fill his vending machine with cheaper candies than the local store paying shipping fees, making local kids happy to be able to buy affordable sweets.

But the benefits don’t just apply to food. They’re seen in schools as well. In Eagle, Alaska, a remote town located near the Canadian border, the towns’ school principal, Kristy Robbins, uses Amazon Prime to provide her school with gym and art supplies, allowing them to last until the end of the year even when the road is closed during winter.8 Before the Prime status was created, people of Alaska living in remote villages who wanted to save money for shopping had to fly to urban areas such as Anchorage or Fairbanks, buy their goods, and then mail them through the United States Postal Service (USPS) or ship them by plane back to their home in the Arctic.

A double-edged sword for Canadian communities Canadian northerners used to also benefit from Prime’s free shipping until April 2015 when Amazon decided to ship for free only to the capitals of the Arctic territories (i.e., Iqaluit, Nunavut; Yellowknife, Northwest Territories; and Whitehorse, Yukon).9 Since then, northerners must pay $29 CDN plus $9.99 CDN per pound of weight, making it impossible to order vital goods at affordable prices.10 The end of Amazon’s free shipping for Canadian Arctic communities had dramatic economic impacts, especially in Nunavut where severe food insecurity continues. Residents can now only rely on local stores where food prices are high, as shown by Feeding my Family’s Facebook page,11where Inuit try to raise awareness by posting pictures of the food prices in local stores12 and the increased costs of Amazon’s delivery prices.13 Free shipping was a real life-changer for Inuit communities, allowing them to buy both food and essentials for everyday life at much lower prices than they were used to in local stores. However, Amazon Prime should not be considered as the solution to food insecurity. On the one hand, it is only accessible for people who can afford a credit card and subscribe to the Prime membership status. On the other, it creates dependency which leaves no backup options in case free shipping is canceled.

The internet is not the only answer to every problem in the Arctic, but it can sometimes be a very useful tool to help diminish the drawbacks of living in the very remote North, and also raise awareness about Indigenous life and living conditions, such as through social media.

A tool to gain from political weight Despite low speed, high prices and data caps14 for internet connections, Inuit are social media savvy. Internet is used, primarily but not exclusively, to gain visibility in media and develop political weight.

This massive use of social media helps Indigenous peoples become more visible to society throughout campaigns in the cyber and the real world, making their voices heard. Whether it is in Greenland, Canada or in Alaska, Inuit use Facebook and Twitter when their culture or way of life is attacked.

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#Sealfie A significant example of the importance of social media is when the American television celebrity, Ellen Degeneres, twitted a selfie taken during the Oscars ceremony in 2014 to raise money against seal hunting. It was, until recently, the most shared tweet in the history of the platform. Following that tweet, Inuit people mobilized together on Twitter and, in opposition, created the hashtag #Sealfie, posting selfies of Inuit wearing seal skin in a bid to defend their traditional way of life and to oppose the seal hunt ban campaign, not only in big communities of the Canadian Arctic but also in remote villages. Thanks to the internet this action had an international echo.

Figure 1. A tweet of an Inuk wearing seal skin

“Idle No More” The Idle No More (INM) movement gained visibility not only because of physical protests around the real world, but also because of activism in the cyber world. It began in late 2012 after four women15 in Saskatchewan, Canada, exchanged e-mails worrying about the effects of the Federal government’s omnibus budget Bill C-45 that threatened the environmental protection of almost all Canadian waterways.

The movement first gathered together Firsts Nations, Metis and Inuit, and then spread all over North America and even around the world with rallies, protests, flash mobs and marches organized in urban centers. In parallel, it took over the cyber world via a very popular hashtag on Twitter, #IdleNoMore, and through a Facebook page.

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The popularity of INM was further amplified through the power of social media. It helped to give this operation an international echo and visibility, and then bypass traditional media.16 It is social media that helped to reinforce this movement and provide it with political legitimacy. Hence, it helped Indigenous peoples to touch the Canadian public opinion; a poll showed that two thirds of Canadians have heard about the INM movement.17 Twitter also helped to create bonds and unity between Canadian Indigenous peoples that might have previously been divided.18 Without an internet connection, Inuit and others Indigenous populations of the North American Arctic would not have been able to join the movement in the cyber world. In fact, it allowed them to become an important part of it, despite living far away from the rallies and marches that were taking place further in the south.

Even if internet is slow, expensive and has data caps in the Arctic, the examples above show how it has already changed the lives of many northerners and especially the Inuit, but many others example exist. The completion of several submarine cables bringing a cheaper and more reliable internet broadband connection, could initiate more changes in northerners’ lives and help them to fully benefit from what internet can offer.

Arctic Submarine Cables Projects to Come

There are five submarine fibre optic cable projects in the Arctic that have been announced so far.

Each one has a different goal: either to connect the Arctic regions and/or to connect Asia, Europe and North America (mostly for data centers and stock exchange markets). However, plans to lay fibre optic cables through the Arctic have previously been scrapped, which draws skepticism to the new projects today.19 The idea is not new, though no-one has managed to lay a cable beneath the Arctic Ocean either in the Northwest or the Northeastern passages. The completion of these projects is a real challenge with not only technological but also financial risks. Those cables require large investments with no guarantee of successful results.

Northwest Passage (Quintillion, Nuvitik, Kativik) The most advanced of all the projects is the Quintillion Network submarine cable, which continued as the Arctic Fibre project after Quintillion purchased it in 2016,20 carrying a slightly different design. The first part of the cable, phase one, was laid during the summer of 2016, close to the coast of Alaska, connecting five villages,21 and at the end of the summer of 2017: Prudhoe Bay in Arctic Alaska. Phase one was announced ‘Ready For Service’ (RFS) by December 1st 2017.22

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Figure 2. The Qunitillion submarine cable route detailed in three phases

In phase two and three, the cable will connect Japan to Great Britain through the Northwest Passage (NWP), therefore connecting the major stock exchanges of the northern hemisphere, while connecting some of the Indigenous communities along the way in the NWP for a much cheaper price than satellite and microwave.23 The main investor of Quintillion is Len Blavatnik24, originally from Ukraine and also the owner of Warner Music.

A QuĂŠbec based company, Nuvitik, wants to give all the Inuit communities of Nunavut the possibility to have access to broadband internet via its Ivaluk Network, and for a much lower price than satellite. Driven by social concerns, this non-profit project is awaiting funding from the Canadian federal government before it can go ahead. To date, the company has not received any money from the federal or the territorial government to kick-start its project.

The other Canadian project, Eastern Arctic Undersea Fibre Optic Network (EAUFON), is led by the Kativik Regional Government (KRG) in northern QuĂŠbec (Nunavik). Quite similar to the previous project, EAUFON is seeking to connect 24 communities of Nunavik, Nunavut and Nunatsiavut to broadband internet via a submarine cable. In October 2016, the KRG awarded a contract to WFN Strategies to lead a feasibility study and risk assessment.25 Greenland The west coast of Greenland will soon have a second submarine cable called Greenland Connect North, aiming to connect Nuuk, Maniitsoq, Sisimiut and Aasiaat to broadband internet.26 It should be RFS by December 2017. This completes the first submarine cable that connects Greenland to North America (via Newfoundland) and Europe (via Iceland) since 2009. TeleGreenland continues to invest in its infrastructure in order to bring broadband internet to more Greenlandic communities.

Northeast Passage In the Russian Arctic, a submarine cable project called Arctic Connect aims to connect Asia, Russia and Europe via the Northeast Passage (NEP), by 2022. This project, evaluated at $700 million USD, is developed by Cinia Group, a company that is 77% state-owned by the Finnish government Submarine Cables in the Arctic

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who is also backing this project.27 With this cable, Finland hopes to further improve its internet network and consequently become a major data hub.28

Figure 3. The Arctic Connect planned route through the North-East Passage

Arctic Connect will include a partnership between Finland, Norway and Russia, all three of which are extremely interested in having this cable in their Arctic regions. The project is supported at the political level by Russia since being discussed during a meeting between the Prime Ministers of Finland and Russia in December 2016.29 Since then, the Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Media has released a statement declaring that it will support the project, while Polarnet and Cinia will create a joint venture to lay this cable in the NEP.30 It seems that the Russian company, Polarnet Project, created in 1999 to lay a cable in the Russian Arctic, is still in the race after a few years of intermission. This cable could help Russian authorities to further develop the NEP, a highly strategic area for the Russian government.

Recently, China also showed interest in this cable during a meeting between the Russian Minister of Communications and Mass Media, Nikolai Nikiforov, and Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Miao Wei, in July 2017, offering to cooperate on the project.31

Conclusion Indigenous peoples, including the Inuit, have already adopted internet and social media because they understand its virtue in terms of political influence, its social-economic advantages for northern rural towns and villages. Without internet access, Arctic issues may have remained isolated from the South, with limited exposure and political weight to influence public opinion.

The five submarine fibre optic cables seeking to bring broadband internet connection to the top of the world may continue to change the lives of northerners by allowing them to benefit from all that the internet can offer such as tele-health, tele-education, e-government, e-business, and maybe even attract new investors to the Arctic as data centers companies. Ultimately, the cyber world will help Indigenous peoples defend their cultures and educate and distribute information about their traditional way of life with a larger audience using social media.

Due to the ongoing thawing sea-ice, the Arctic Ocean is predicted to be increasingly open to the impacts of globalization; not only because of tourism, shipping or oil and gas extraction, but also

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because of new internet highways, hopefully in turn connecting Arctic inhabitants, allowing them to protect their culture while becoming closer to the connected world.

Notes 1. See Finlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, 2017-2019: 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

http://formin.finland.fi/public/default.aspx?contentid=356546.

In The State of Broadband 2016 report, prepared by the UN Broadband Commission for sustainable development, released every year since 2012, was pointed out that still half of the world population is not connected to internet (roughly 3,9 billions). Moreover, those populations are mostly the poorest living in very remote areas and are often minorities.

Arctic Council Task Force on Telecommunications Infrastructure in the Arctic (TFTIA).

See Arctic Economic Council (AEC), https://arcticeconomiccouncil.com/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/AEC-Report_Final-LR-1.pdf.

See Arctic Council, https://oaarchive.arcticcouncil.org/bitstream/handle/11374/1924/2017-04-28ACS_Telecoms_REPORT_WEB-2.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

See CRTC Telecom Regulatory Policy, 2016-496, http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2016/2016-496.htm.

Created in 2007 in the US, in 2013 for Canada.

See Annie Zak (2016, 31 March). Amazon Prime Eases Rural Alaska Pricey Shipping Woes. Alaska Dispatch News. Retrieved from, https://www.adn.com/business/article/amazon-prime-eases-rural-alaskas-priceyshipping-woes/2015/12/20/.

See CBC Radio, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/326-the-pain-of-paying-trackingbabies-and-more-1.3752999/why-losing-the-pain-of-paying-could-end-up-hurting1.4124696.

See Sarah Rogers (2015). No More Free Shipping to Most Nunavut, Nunavik Communities: Amazon. Nunatsiaq News. Retrieved from, http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674no_more_free_shipping_to_most_ nunavut_nunavik_communities_amazon/.

See Feeding My Family: https://www.facebook.com/groups/239422122837039/ See Feeding My Family: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1470590112979035&set=gm.1346537258 792181&type=3&theater See Feeding My Family: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158849114520655&set=gm.130464240 6315000&type=3&theater.

A data cap (bandwidth cap) is a service provider-imposed limit on the amount of data transferred by a user account at a specified level of throughput over a given time period, for a specified fee. The term applies to both home Internet service and mobile data plans. http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/data-cap-broadband-cap They are Nina Wilson, Sheelah Mclean, Sylvia McAdam and Jessica Gordon.

See Christina Coolidge (2013). Idle No More: An Example of the Power of Social Media.

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17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

Simon Fraser University (SFU). Retrieved from, http://www.sfu.ca/olc/blog/indigenouscommunity-stories/idle-no-more-example-power-social-media.

See UPI (2013). Poll: Canadians Aware of Idle No More. Retrieved from, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/01/24/Poll-Canadians-aware-ofIdle-No-More/UPI-52151359070479/?spt=hs&or=tn.

See Karissa Donkin (2013). Social Media Helps Drive Idle No More Movement. Toronto Star. Retrieved from, https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/01/11/social_media_helps_drive_idle_n o_more_movement.html.

For those cables, see Michael Delaunay (2014). The Arctic: A New Internet Highway? In L. Heininen, H. Exner-Pirot & J. Plouffe (Eds). Arctic Yearbook 2014. Northern Research Forum. Akureyri, Iceland. Retrieved from, https://www.arcticyearbook.com/images/Arcticles_2014/BN/Delaunay_AY_2014_FI NAL.pdf.

See Tim Woolston (2016). Arctic Fibre Acquired by Quintillon Networks. Alaska Native News. Retrieved from, http://alaska-native-news.com/arctic-fibre-acquired-byquintillion-networks-22765.

Nome, Kotzebue, Point Hope, , Wainwright, UtqiaÄĄvik See Alan Burkitt-Gray (2017). CEO Quits at Arctic Operator Quintillon. GTB. Retrieved from, https://www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com/article/b149hfrv4w03ml/ceo-quits-atarctic-operator-quintillion?copyrightInfo=true.

See MRA: http://mustreadalaska.com/quintillion-ceo-new-one-project-nearscompletion/.

See MRA: http://mustreadalaska.com/len-blavatnik-governor-helping/.

See TeleGeography (2016). Cable Compendium. Retrieved from, https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2016/10/14/cablecompendium-a-guide-to-the-weeks-submarine-and-terrestrial-developments/.

See Huawei Marine: http://www.huaweimarine.com/marine/marine/commonWeb.do?method=showConte nt&webId=508.

At least since 2016 with the released of a report prepared by the former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, about the opportunity to lay a submarine cable through the Arctic Ocean. See Report on the Northeast Passage Telecommunications Cable Project. Retrieved from, https://www.lvm.fi/documents/20181/880507/Reports+3-2016.pdf/db8fcdda-af984a50-950d-61c18d133f74.

See Thomas Nilsen (2016). Trans-Arctic Fibre Cable Can Make Kirkenes to High-Tech Hub. The Independent Barents Observer. Retrieved from, https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2016/12/trans-arctic-fibercable-can-make-kirkenes-high-tech-hub.

Ibid.

See Ofweek: http://en.ofweek.com/news/Russian-govt-to-support-trans-Arctic-cabledeployment-45944.

See The Arctic: http://arctic.ru/international/20170731/650577.html.

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References Broadband Commission for sustainable development (2016). The State of Broadband 2016, Broadband Catalyzing Sustainable Development (Report). United Nations. Retrieved from, from, http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/reports/bb-annualreport2016.pdf.

Canada Public Policy Forum (June 2014). Northern Connections, Broadband and Canada's Digital Divide. (final report). Retrieved from, http://www.ppforum.ca/splash.htm.

Delaunay, Michael (2014). The Arctic: A New Internet Highway? In L. Heininen, H. Exner-Pirot & J. Plouffe (Eds). Arctic Yearbook 2014. Northern Research Forum. Akureyri, Iceland.

Retrieved from, https://www.arcticyearbook.com/images/Arcticles_2014/BN/Delaunay_AY_2014_FIN AL.pdf Fiser, Adam. (2013). Mapping the Long-Term Options for Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s North, Telecommunications and Broadband Connectivity (Report), Centre for the North, The Conference Board of Canada.

Retrieved from, http://www.conferenceboard.ca/e-library/abstract.aspx?did=5654.

Imaituk Inc. (2011, April 30). A Matter of Survival, Arctic Communications Infrastructure in the 21st Century. (Arctic Communications Infrastructure Assessment Report). Prepared for the Northern Communications & Information Systems Working Group, Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, Canada. Retrieved from, http://www.aciareport.ca/.

ITU (September, 2016), The State of Broadband 2016: Broadband catalyzing sustainable development, ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from, http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/reports/bb-annualreport2016.pdf.

Lipponen, Paavo & Reijo Svento (2016). Report on the Northeast Passage Telecommunications Cable Project. Ministry of Transport and Communications, Finland. Retrieved from, https://www.lvm.fi/documents/20181/880507/Reports+3-2016.pdf/db8fcdda-af984a50-950d-61c18d133f74.

Nordicity (January, 2014), Northern Connectivity Ensuring Quality Communications.

Northern Communications Information Systems Working Group, Government of Yukon.

Retrieved from, http://arcticjournal.com/sites/default/files/ncis_wg_report.pdf.

Submarine Cables in the Arctic

Commentary

Social Media for Health in Nunavik Marie-Claude Lyonnais & Christopher Fletcher

The instant global connection afforded by the internet is now so much a part of daily life that it is becoming hard to imagine when it wasn’t. Social media have reshaped the ways we all interact, our relations with kin, the very notion of friendship, the ways we entertain, and the ways we position ourselves as socio-political actors, shifting, in the process, the constraints of time and geography on belonging. In Northern Canada the development of the internet has been slowed by the technological limits associated with a huge area without road or landline connections. In Nunavik, the Inuit land claims region of Northern Québec, where we have been looking at the use of social media as a means to circulate health information, social media have been widely integrated into the lives and homes of people beginning 2010. Facebook in particular is very popular. The low bandwidth required to operate the platform means that it works reasonably well even in an environment where the bandwidth available for a whole community is less than that of a single house in a southern urban center.

Health-related content of Facebook pages is broad and touches many of the most important social determinants of health among them quality relationships, financial and material resources, social inclusion, healthy local food, work, emotional support, educational opportunities, access to community activities and health services. Every community has multiple public pages that encourage discussion and provide information on topics ranging from hunting to items for sale to community events. Regional and national pages are also popular and in some cases draw disparate communities into new configurations around ideas, history, events, food, and politics. Facebook groups have a growing role as a site where people may express their emotional states and, in some cases, extreme distress. In many instances acts of reaching out for help to friends and community members is effective in marshalling support and solace. These positive stories are balanced against instances of cyberbullying and hurtful gossiping that can bring the recipients to terrible anguish.

While young people are the primary users of social media, the enthusiasm for Facebook reaches all age groups, including unilingual Inuktitut-speaking Elders, who are integrating this mode of communication into their routines. We see many analogies to the community radio stations and the UHF radios favored by hunters on the land. Facebook is so important that, when faced with Marie-Claude Lyonnais and Christopher Fletcher are affiliated with the Department of Social Medicine and Prevention, University Laval, Québec City, Québec.

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an economic choice, more and more homes are choosing to cancel traditional telephone service and retain only an internet connection for access to the internet. In this situation Facebook is an important way to be connected to the community and the principal means to be contacted.

Facebook has become a privileged way to maintain links with and follow the lives of loved ones.

The photo and video capacities of the platform are particularly sought out and transcend language and dialectical differences. While local radio remains a core means of communication, some services and organizations are now turning to Facebook to be in contact with the population. As such, social media plays multiple roles: it is, for instance, a local newspaper; a site for classified ads, places of exchange, and requesting a service or traditional food; and a platform for asking questions and calling on elected officials. Facebook is an exceptional cultural vector and a social mirror that Inuit communities have appropriated in their own way, molding its use to their own reality.

Facebook has undeniable strengths to support professionals and various health care workers in their work. Community social and health workers were quick to recognize the potential of social media for education and as a means of monitoring community health issues. There is a clear consensus among them about the need to have a presence on the social media, yet they are largely prohibited to do so by policy set outside of the region. The Nunavik health system is under the control of the Québec system, which prohibits the use of Facebook for professional purposes.

Some interveners, by force of circumstances, work around this rule by using social media informally outside their working hours.

Despite the undeniable importance of Facebook in Northern communities, we have noted a growing divide between institutional and everyday personal use of the technology. As in the case of the health system, it is quite common for local and regional organizations to block social media on their worksites and to prohibit people from interacting in an official capacity online. While there are justifiable concerns about confidentiality and productivity in the workplace, it seems that opportunities to better engage with and listen to local communities are being missed.

The ‘Feeding My Family’ page is a prime example of the effective use of Facebook for community health. Here, concern about the effects of high food prices on family health evolved from a page with a few members posting photographs of prices at local stores to one with thousands of members in north and south. The virtual community produced actual protests at stores and offices in several communities, and ultimately had repercussions on national northern food and health policy. Similarly, it is now generally accepted that the 2011 Nunavik Regional Government referendum was defeated in part because the proponents did not gauge and contribute to the local social media discussion about the impacts the agreement would have. Some organizations have been granted an exemption to set up pilot projects most of which are limited to using Facebook as a “promotional” showcase of their activities. In doing so they choose to reproduce the model of a poster, and miss the opportunity and challenge of engaging in dialogue through this medium.

Given the potential benefits to community health efforts, we believe it is time to explore ways to allow health care, social service and community workers to have use of social media as part of their efforts to engage with community. Social media already provide a new and powerful voice for northerners, rallying people and communities around common issues, and providing opportunities for Nunavummiut to voice their concerns.

The time is ripe to work within the evolving community mediascape to build knowledge, tools, and skills that promote health and reduce inequalities within communities and between the north Social Media for Health in Nunavik

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and south. There is a strong regional commitment to transform the Westernized health model by prioritizing Inuit values and knowledge. For this to occur, it is necessary to have full community participation, especially among young people. To be successful, this must be done with respect for Inuit culture, and social and communicative norms. Social media are already playing a role in these important objectives.

Telemedicine & e-Health in the Russian Arctic

Commentary

Telemedicine & e-Health in the Russian Arctic Yury Sumarokov

Telemedicine and e-health services are successfully used in the Arctic regions all over the world (Woldaregay et al., 2017). Very long distances and problems of availability of medical services have created the need for wide use of distance technologies and e-health solutions.

Telemedicine in Arctic Russia was introduced in the 1990s. The first Arctic telemedicine network was established with efforts of an enthusiastic team in Arkhangelsk oblast in 1997 (Sorensen et al., 1999). The first network was organized in the framework of international co-operation projects and with the support of the Norwegian Center on Telemedicine (NST) based in Tromsø, Norway (Bye & Manankov, 2007). It became clear that trained staff and quality of communication lines were the main instruments of telemedicine distribution and development.

Now telemedicine is widely used as a complementary service in most Arctic regions of Russia, such as Arkhangelsk oblast, Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Taymir, Yakutia (Sakha) and Chukotka. It is mostly used in sparsely populated areas, where the distances are quite long and delivery of health services is difficult. The most active use of telemedicine is developing in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. For example, in NAO, 17 health centers are connected to a disperse telemedicine network. Teleconsultations with Nenets Okrug Hospital and external hospitals are occurring every day with real results and high economic effect.

This was one of the reasons why Naryan-Mar hosted two international conferences on Arctic Telemedicine in 2014 and 2016 (see Arctic Telemedicine). The Conference participants from many Russian Arctic areas and guests from other parts of the world demonstrated a wide spectrum of different telemedicine and e-health solutions for Arctic needs.

The telemedicine used in Arkhangelsk oblast and NAO cover the different distant diagnostic possibilities including traditional needs of cardiology, surgery, neonatology, distant ECG, X-Ray and even telepsychiatry.

A new bill on telemedicine was introduced in Russia in 2017 (Muravin, 2017). It will allow the patients to legally obtain remote consultations from doctors on the Internet. The newly introduced bill provides a legal framework for use of information and telecommunication technologies in health care. The bill regulates all the telemedicine activities, including: distant visits to a healthcare Yury Sumarokov, MD, PhD, Northern State Medical University, Arkhangelsk, Russian Federation.

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practitioner followed by the issue of patient assessment reports and treatment advice, distant case conferences, e-prescriptions, using telemetric data, maintaining patients e-records and information exchange.

References Arctic Telemedicine. Retrieved from, http://www.arctelemed.ru/doklady.

Bye S.M., & A. Manankov (2007). Telemedicine in practice in Arkhangelsk region, Russia: from a blank page to routine operation. International journal of circumpolar health. 66(4): 335-350.

Muravin A. (2017). Legal Highlights: Digital medicine. First steps to regulating telemedicine in Russia. The Moscow Times.

Sorensen T., A. Rundhovde, V.D. Kozlov (1999). Telemedicine in north-west Russia. Journal of telemedicine and telecare. 5(3): 153-156.

Woldaregay A.Z., S. Walderhaug & G. Hartvigsen (2017). Telemedicine Services for the Arctic: A Systematic Review. JMIR medical informatics. 5(2): e16.

Telemedicine & e-Health in the Russian Arctic

Section V: Arctic Resources & Development

Environmental & Human Impact of the Northern Sea Route & Industrial Development in Russia’s Arctic Zone Diana Dushkova, Tatyana Krasovskaya & Alexander Evseev The consequences of global climate change are mostly portrayed as negative for environment and society, due to the warming in temperatures. However, there are certain benefits from this process as well. One of them is the opening of a polar shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The Northern Sea Route may cut travel time from Europe to Asia by 40% and allow Russia to export its vast natural resources much faster. Some expert assessments point out that remote northern Russian towns which have been experiencing economic depression in the transition period may turn to economic and social revival. But this process may entail new risks for fragile Arctic ecosystems and traditional nature management by Indigenous populations. Most discussions about Russia’s Northern Sea Route focus on shipping traffic, sea ice assessments and expected socio-economic benefits. However, assessments of the impact of further industrialization for the adjacent coastal zone ecosystems and northern residents are still inadequate. Thus, this paper is aimed not only at analyzing the Russian Arctic zone development strategy connected with the Northern Sea Route, but also to highlight the broad spectrum of human and environmental consequences of these activities. Among them, impacts on the economy (national and regional), the environment and population (effects caused by navigation activity and industrialization as well as risks for the coastal ecosystems and Indigenous people) will be assessed.

Introduction Since the beginning of the 21st century the Arctic zone has attracted the attention of many states, including even those which are situated far from it (Germany, China, Japan etc.). This is explained by its richness in natural resources and cultural heritage, and its ecosystem functions and services which are important both at the regional and global scales. Russia is a northern state whose modern economy is closely connected with the economic development of the Russian Arctic zone (Overland, 2010; The Russian Federation Government Program, 2014). Its terrestrial limits were adopted after the President’s decree in 2014 (Figure 1). According to the Russian Federation’s Policy for the Arctic to 2020 (2009), the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation includes a part of the Arctic which involves, in full or in part, the territories of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Murmansk and Arkhangelsk Oblasts (provinces), Krasnoyarsk Kray (provinces), Nenets, YamalNenets and Chukchi autonomous districts, as well as internal maritime waters, territorial sea, Diana Dushkova is Senior Researcher, Tatyana Krasovskaya is Professor and Alexander Evseev is Leading Researcher at the Faculty of Geography at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.

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exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of the Russian Federation adjoining such territories, areas and islands. The terrestrial area of the Arctic zone is about 3,700,000 km2 and the population is about 2.5 million (encompassing only 2% of the Russian population but more than half of the population of the global Arctic region) (Rosstat, 2015).

Figure 1: The Arctic zone of Russia (Lukin, 2016) The impact of global climate change has certain benefits for the Arctic zone. One of them is the opening of a polar shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Several important documents concerning economic and social development of the Russian Arctic zone were adopted recently (SAP, 2009; State Program..., 2014; Strategic planning…, 2013; The Federal Law…, 2012; The rules…, 2013). Among the priority targets mentioned in those documents are the revival and development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), commercial use of the new transport corridor, reconstruction of coastal infrastructure, development of innovation centers etc. (Figure 2) (State Program…, 2014). The NSR is defined as lying between the Kara Gate, at the western entry of the Novaya Zemlya straits, and the Provideniya Bay, at the southern opening of the Bering Strait, for a total length of 5,600 km. There are multiple shipping channels (lines), and the NSR crosses through waters of varying status: internal, territorial and adjacent waters, exclusive economic zone, and the open sea (The Northern Sea Route Administration, 2013). The NSR has been historically important to Russia both economically and socially, especially in the soviet period when it was used solely as a domestic sea route, being closed to international shipping. Today, under conditions of global warming as Arctic ice continues to melt, the NSR is becoming more accessible for navigation (Zalyvsky, 2015). Moreover, Russia has significant interest in transforming the NSR into a strategically important sea line of communication opened to international trade (Strategic planning…, 2013). The NSR may cut travel time from Europe to Asia by 40% and allow Russia to export its vast natural resources much faster (Zalyvsky, 2015). Some expert assessments point out that remote northern Russian towns that have been experiencing economic depression since the period of transition of the 1990s to the early 2000s, may potentially experience economic and social revival (Gordeev et al., 2011; Kuzmenko & Selin, 2014; Zalyvsky, 2015; Zelentsov, 2012).

New economic clusters will be formed, including transportation, providing modern infrastructure (Figure 3).

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Figure 2. Variants of the Northern Sea Route – shipping corridors (Source: Heininen et al., 2014) At the same time all of the documents concerning economic and social development of the Russian Arctic zone mentioned above include special sections concerning the connected environmental and social aspects of the economic development plans. They outline activities directed at nature conservation and support for Indigenous populations. In this connection, it is necessary to study the possible negative effects on local populations for monitoring and control.

Most discussions about Russia’s NSR focus on shipping traffic and sea ice assessments and expected benefits (Lasserre, 2014; Meng et al., 2017). However, assessments of the impact of further industrialization at the adjacent coastal zone ecosystems and northern residents are still inadequate. Thus, the paper is aimed to analyze the Russian Arctic zone development strategy connected with the NSR and to highlight a broad spectrum of human and environmental consequences of these activities. Among them, the impact on the economy (national and regional) and environment (effects caused by navigation activity and risks for the coastal ecosystems) were assessed. In addition, the consequences that the process of Northern Sea Route development may entail for traditional nature management of Indigenous people as well as human health and wellbeing of other populations are analyzed.

The study presented in this paper is based on an analysis of Russian Federal and regional documents relevant to the topic. They include social-economic development programs, Indigenous population support documents, regional reports on environment and human health assessments etc. (e.g., Russian Federation’s Policy for the Arctic to 2020 (2009), State Program “Social-Economic Development of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation up to 2020”).

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Figure 3. Basic centers of transport development (Source: Strategic planning of the development of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation, 2013).

Long term field experiences in different regions of the Russian Arctic enabled the revealing of several gaps concerning possible negative environmental and health impacts. System analysis was the principle method for this study. It also relies on the results of previous research in the framework of the following projects: “Peculiarities of using nature in connection with the conditions of human health in the industrial regions of the Russian North seen from the goal of sustainable development” (2010-2012, Moscow State University), and “Ecological buffer territories as an element of modern nature management structure at the Russian North” (20112013, Russian Foundation for basic research). In addition, the study presents the evolution and extension of research conducted within the project “Diagnostic analysis of the environmental status of the Russian Arctic” (2011) supported by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and Global Environmental Facility (GEF).

Economic and Social Revival of Remote Arctic Towns

The Russian Arctic covers about 18% of the Russian Federation (Gordeev et al., 2011; SAP, 2009; State Program…, 2014 etc.). The spatial development of the Russian Arctic is focused predominantly on exploiting natural resources. Historically, the Arctic has played a key role in the Russian economy because of its mineral wealth but also its significance in terms of shipping and transportation (Heininen, et al., 2014; Zelentsov, 2012). The major and biggest northern route lies in this part of the Arctic: the NSR, supplemented by fragments of the Transpolar Railway (Ruxpert, 2015).

The region has a great number of heavy industrial facilities, including some of the world’s largest metallurgical plants, quarries, mining and processing enterprises, coal mines, radioactive waste storages and other environmentally hazardous facilities. According to regional assessments (SAP, 2009; Rosstat, 2015), the region holds some 200 billion tons of oil equivalent hydrocarbons as well as mineral and raw energy deposits worth the equivalent of roughly 3 trillion USD. It provides more than 30% of the domestic seafood harvest (Strategic planning of the development of the Environmental & Human Impact in Russia’s Arctic

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Arctic zone of the Russian Federation, 2013). The area is also the largest supplier of nickel, gold, copper, tungsten, diamonds, rare metals, and precious stones in Russia (Strategic planning of the development of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation, 2013). In this sense, turning the NSR into a unified national transport corridor and line of communication for further maintaining the region as a zone of international cooperation is one of the main goals underlined in the Foundations of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic to 2020 and Beyond (Medvedev, 2008). According to Russia’s plans for 2020 regarding the multifaceted development of its northern territories, the NSR is perceived as a very important factor in the economic and social development of Russia (Bashmackova et al., 2013; Kuzmenko & Selin, 2014; Medvedev, 2008; The Federal Law, 2012; The Northern Sea Route Administration, 2013; Zalyvsky, 2015).

Moreover, the Arctic is expected to become Russia’s “leading strategic resource base” (Zalyvsky, 2015).

As was already mentioned, the Arctic shipping passage has been used irregularly for about a century, connecting the Atlantic Ocean and markets in the west with the Pacific and its eastern trading partners (Humpert, 2013). However, as Arctic ice in the past years continues to melt, it has brought an increase in the number of commercial transits both for intra-Russian destinational shipping and for international transit shipping (Moe, 2014; Northern Sea Route Information Office, 2015). There are diverse functions for the NSR: global shipping route, strategic point of military control and facilitator of resource extraction. It is expected that not only the shipping industry would be affected by the warming Arctic, but also mineral explorations particularly in northern Russia can be more easily explored due to the melting ice. Furthermore, the Russian economy has grown steadily since 1999 and is supposed to export hydrocarbons from the Russian North either via pipe line southwards or via the NSR westwards (Moe, 2014; Zalyvsky, 2015). Oil and gas are primarily transported from western Siberia to the White and Barents Sea ports via pipelines and by train (Bambulyak & Frantzen, 2005), however, if the NSR was ready for navigation it would reduce the transport time for multiple cargo. Accordingly, it is expected that cost would also be reduced, especially with the anticipated production boom (Zalyvsky, 2015). According to some assessments, it would take only nine days for an oil tanker to travel from the West Siberia and Timan-Pechora basins, via a deep-water terminal on the Barents Sea, to reach the United States, which is much less than a trip from the Middle East or Africa that takes at least two weeks (Heininen et al., 2014). However, as stated by Lasserre (2014), the time and money saved depends on numerous parameters.

Economic development of the coastal zone of the NSR is connected with sea ports infrastructure renovation and construction investment projects that were elaborated and developed by the state in the last years to internationalize the sea route. Among them are new logistic and storage complexes construction in Chersky (the Kolyma river mouth), Belaya Gora (the Indigirka river), Tiksi (the Lena river), Dudinka and Dixon (the Enisey river), Pevek (Chauna Bay of the Chuckchi Sea), Capes Harasavey (the Kara Sea) and Varandey (the Pechora Sea), the Indiga river mouth (the Barents Sea), Pechenga (the Pechenga river entering Pechenga Bay of the Barents Sea) etc. (State Program…, 2014). Murmansk, Archangelsk and Anadyr airports are planned to be transformed into large transport logistic centers both for national and international communications (Figure 3).

According to the Federal program for transport development, 3 billion rubles will be invested to support northern aircraft complexes in 2017-2020.

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While the position of the NSR as a global transportation corridor is perceived as uncertain, its use as a route for moving Russian Arctic natural resources to eastern and western markets is emphasized as the most enduring material driver (Bjørkli, 2015; Heininen et al., 2014). For example, the NSR is used year-round by the Russian Nornickel (or Norilsk) mining and smelting company, the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium and one of the leading producers of platinum and copper. Also, the Taymyr Peninsula holds coal and oil deposits, while the Yamal Peninsula holds Russia’s largest gas reserves, propelling the transport infrastructure development: a liquefied natural gas terminal, seaport and airport were constructed and a railway line is planned in Sabetta (Gordeev et al., 2011; Heininen et al., 2014). At least one platform for offshore oil extraction is in permanent operation in the Pechora Sea. For all these industries, the NSR is an important route for raw building materials and supplies. According to regional reports (Northern Sea Route information office, 2015; Rosstat, 2015), usage and viability of the NSR as an export route to deliver natural resources out of the Arctic to the markets is on the rise. For these territories, the NSR is perceived as a national transport communication route, and a key factor in the dynamic economic recovery of each of the Arctic regions recognized as a strategic reserve of the country (Zalyvsky, 2015).

However, the route still suffers from a general lack of backup infrastructure such as shipment and repair docks, fueling stations and communication, rescue and navigation hubs. Economic crises made the modernization of equipment slow. Berthing facilities in the majority of Arctic ports need repairs as well as reconstruction and dredging to receive modern vessels. In many ports, facilities for recycling are in critical condition. Thus, necessary modernization of the NSR is required, as well as surrounding infrastructure to ensure the viability of the maritime industry. As the Russian government considers the NSR an effective resource for developing the Russian Arctic Zone – both domestically and internationally – it plans to make considerable investments in the NSR and bring its infrastructure in line with international standards. The inclusion of the Northern Sea Route in the priorities of the “Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation until 2030” opens the way for investments in the technological enhancement of transportation infrastructure (Zalyvsky, 2015). The revival of some seaports (e.g., Tiksi) and the construction of a railway to Yakutsk are real steps in developing a new prospective transport corridor from Asia to Europe. The more such projects develop, the faster the population and business areas of the Arctic would be satisfied by the positive influence of the NSR and its role in strengthening the country’s geopolitical position.

According to some economic assessments (Bashmakova et al., 2013; Zalyvsky, 2015), the NSR will be a catalyst for attracting federal taxpayer funding, a macroeconomic sponsor of modernization of business in municipalities of the Russian Arctic.

Impact on the Environment: Actual and Potential Risks Geographically, the territory of the Russian Arctic is characterized by vast expanses of tundra and forest-tundra, islands featuring polar deserts and semi-desert terrain, mountains, lakes, streams and surrounding shelf seas. The area is rich in wildlife with nearly every species of Arctic mammal, including polar bears, Arctic foxes, Greenland whales, narwhals, beluga whales, Atlantic walruses, ringed seals, thousands of wild reindeers and about 1000 varieties of plants (Gordeev et al., 2011).

The area is located within the harsh climate conditions of the Arctic and subarctic climate: low temperatures, heavy snow and short, light summers, permafrost, and ice cover in the seas and rivers characterize the Arctic zone during the long winters.

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Although climate change will allow better shipping routes in the Arctic within the coming decades, there is concern about the impact on Arctic ecosystems. The inevitable growth in anthropogenic impact connected with environment mechanical disruptions and pollution may produce negative environmental changes causing several social effects which are necessary to monitor.

The current environmental situation in the Russian Arctic is a result of intensive industrial activities from the past 80 years. According to different assessments (Dushkova & Evseev, 2012; Gordeev et al., 2011), the territory of anthropogenic transformation of the ecosystems covers 5–10% of the total areas of the Russian Arctic. However, even in the context of extremely low population density of 1–2 persons per km2 (it is almost 10 times lower than the average in Russia), anthropogenic stress here is significantly higher than in the non-Russian Arctic. Twenty-seven of the so-called impact zones have been identified (the number varies depending on actual and potential risks) where pollution has led to environmental degradation and increased morbidity among the local population. The main impact zones include the Murmansk Region (10% of total pollutants from the 27 impact zones), Norilsk urban agglomeration (more than 30%), West Siberian oil and gas fields (more than 30%) and the Arkhangelsk Region (around 5%) (Gordeev et al., 2011; Dushkova & Evseev, 2012).

According to different forecasts, maritime traffic within the NSR in the Arctic region will increase the risk of accidents, which pose an environmental hazard (Bjørkli, 2015; Gordeev et al., 2011; Heininen et al., 2014). Thus, drilling in the Arctic is connected with a risk of oil spills and fracturing of the Arctic’s ecosystems. However, taking precautionary steps may mitigate these potential harms if concerns are taken seriously and investments in extra safety measures and emergency response infrastructure are made (Heininen et al., 2014). The recent international Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution, Preparedness and Response, signed under the auspices of the Arctic Council in May 2015, is a helpful step in the effort to address environmental threats but is still insufficient to solve the problem. There are currently two main official documents – the Federal Law on the NSR (2012) and the Ministry of Transport’s Rules of Navigation through the NSR (2013) – that stipulate conditions of transit and impose new insurance requirements, under which responsibility for possible environmental damage and pollution lies with ship owners, and which set rather costly tariffs for assistance and logistics. In 2014-15, the international Polar Code of Safety for Ships Operating in Polar Waters was adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and entered into force in January 2017.

The marine environment within the NSR may be subjected to both types of pollution, the operational and accidental pollutions, which may carry significant environmental consequences.

The rise in shipping traffic may make the NSR extremely vulnerable to pollution threats such as, exhaust, sewage and garbage from new maritime traffic. Although the majority of ships operating in the NSR are already equipped with pollution prevention equipment to deal with threats, unfortunately not all the requirements may be implemented nowadays. Among them is water pollution from daily activities such as cooking and showering, which is considered by the Arctic coastal states as a minor threat to the environment, and hence is not included in national regulations (Gordeev et al., 2011; Essallamy 2008; Heininen et al., 2014). Another problem is connected with the accidental pollution mentioned above.

Despite numerous environmental problems, which occur in up to 10% of the Russian Arctic, vast areas of its territory are still almost pristine and it remains a biosphere resource of global Dushkova, Krasovskaya & Evseev

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importance (Gordeev et al., 2011). In fact, it may take several decades of monitoring to determine the potential effects of opening the NSR for international shipping traffic on the natural environment (Dushkova & Evssev, 2012; Heininen et al., 2014). Moreover, ecosystem studies in the Arctic Ocean suffer from high costs (i.e., surveying is extremely expensive), harsh climatic conditions, time constraints, and a lack of infrastructure in remote Arctic areas. Long-term studies are needed to analyze the impact of further intensive development of the NSR shipping on Arctic ecosystems and humans.

Potential Impact on Indigenous Populations There is a wide recognition that natural-resource dependent communities in the developing world are especially vulnerable to environmental hazards and environmental change (Bogoyavlensky, 2008; Krasovskaya & Tulskaya, 2013). During the long history of their living and coexisting with nature, northern communities have accumulated valuable knowledge about adapting to the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique environmental conditions. Active industrial development in the Russian Arctic during the 20th century, and the disregard of environmental imperatives in the pursuit of economic goals, has caused dramatic environmental change and negative consequences on the living conditions of Indigenous populations in various Arctic regions (Bogoyavlensky, 2008). The development of the NSR may produce an additional impact on the vulnerability of Arctic communities due to changing societal and environmental conditions.

Russia is the largest Arctic country, as it has half of the land area in the Arctic and about half of the total Arctic coastline. In addition, the largest domestic Arctic population is found in Russia, numbering approximately 2.5 million individuals, among them 82,500 belong to 20 different Indigenous groups (Bogoyavlensky, 2008, Tishkov, 2014). The following live in the coastal zone and adjacent territories: Saami, Nenets, Dolgans, Evenks, Yukagirs, Chuckchi, Evens, Eskimo, Koryak. Many of them are still occupied in traditional nature management/subsistence lifestyles (e.g., reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, etc.) and 25% are nomadic or partly nomadic and annually migrate from Arctic areas to the sub-Arctic and back (Figure 4). Thus natural landscapes provide Indigenous peoples well-being and are an important ethnic-forming factor.

The negative impact on the living conditions of Indigenous peoples has mainly resulted from a forced change of lifestyle (Dushkova, 2017). Among the main reasons, which affect the original habitat of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian Arctic, are increasingly the environmental risks caused by active industrial development and processes associated with climate change. In particular, domesticated reindeer populations are decreasing due to the degradation of winter reindeer pastures by mechanical disruptions connected with infrastructure and industrial sites development, industrial pollution (mining, oil and gas industries) and overgrazing. Consequently, it leads to greater pressure on fragile tundra and forest tundra ecosystems and impacts other types of conventional land use by Indigenous populations (hunting, fishing, foraging).

According to some assessments (Gordeev et al., 2011; Dushkova, 2017; Dushkova & Evseev, 2012), anthropogenic factors affecting the original habitat of Indigenous populations of the Russian Arctic include impact of industrial facilities on reindeer pastures and hunting grounds covering up to 40% of the traditional land use areas. Areas with a high level of anthropogenic impact on territories of traditional land use include: the central part of the Kola Peninsula, TimanPechora, Vorkuta, Pur-Nadymsky, Yamal, Norilsk, Anabarsky, Yano-Indigirsky, Valkumeysky and

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Bilibinskiy regions. In addition large-scale tundra reindeer breeding already suffers from processes of climate change (frequent ice covering of the ground, and summer temperature rise over 100C resulting in herd loss). The effects of climate change also impacts other types of conventional land use (hunting, fishing etc.).

A

B

Figure 4. Life camp herders: Saami in Lovosero tundra, Murmansk region (a), Nenets in Nents

Autonomous district (b) Economic development in the coastal zone may cause conflictual situations for the management of traditional and modern practices. It includes the increase of industrial, settlement, transport and recreation centers which may have negative effects on traditional nature management lands. Their possible variants are shown in Table 1, presenting the so-called nature management conflict matrix (Krasovskaya, 2008). It presents the overlapping of territories exploited for different types of nature management and its ecological effects.

Table 1. Traditional nature management possible conflicts matrix (Krasovskaya, 2008) Economic Potential types of nature management/type of impact on traditional activity in traditional Industrial Marine Terrestrial Settlement Recreational land transport transport management Reindeer +/pollution +/pastures +/poaching breeding fragmentation Marine fishing +/pollution, Disturbances and hunting noise of sea animal populations Fishing +/pollution +/pollution +/depletion of fish resources Hunting +/habitats +/habitats +/poaching +/depletion disturbances fragmentation of hunting (chemical resources and noise pollution) Wild plants +/pollution +/depletion +/depletion picking of resources of resources â&#x20AC;&#x153;+â&#x20AC;? means potential impact

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The vulnerability of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic results from their strong dependence on the use of biological resources – hunting and fishing, especially using a small number of species. Not only industrial impact s(e.g., environmental pollution and landscape transformation) but also consequences of climate change (e.g., reduced sea ice area and its effect on the ringed seal and polar bear etc.) will affect the traditional way of life of Indigenous populations making them more vulnerable to these hazards. In addition, changes in food supply may have the most negative health impacts for Indigenous peoples. Consuming animal food is vital not only for the health, but also for the personal and cultural well-being of Indigenous populations. High levels of stress and even a negative transformation of the traditional way of life poses the risk of not being able to gain access to, and to eat traditional foods because of the high level of industrial pollution or depletion of biological resource potential (wild food resources) (Dushkova, 2017).

Adaptation capacity to such hazards depends greatly on lifestyle, sex, access to resources and other factors (e.g., during soviet times the majority of the population had to switch to a sedentary life that poses more pressure on natural resources etc.) (Revich, 2008). Additional stress and increasing vulnerability provide living in small isolated rural communities with underdeveloped social systems, poor infrastructure, and underdeveloped or remote public health systems. Of great importance are low-income levels, high unemployment rates, poor sanitation, etc.

To complete the data, the semi-structured interviews were carried out between 2006 and 2013 in different localities of Murmansk Oblast, Nenets Autonomous District and the Komi Republic. A key interest was to find out how local inhabitants (Indigenous peoples of the North) evaluate and interpreted environmental change since the industrialization era (i.e., environmental degradation, visible elements, landscape planning etc.), assuming that they are direct consumers and managers of landscape biological resources due to specific relations with spatial surroundings of their everyday life. We conducted 38 semi-structured individual interviews (19 in Murmansk Oblast, 8 in Nenets Autonomous district and 11 in Republic of Komi). In each case study region, both male and female adult residents from Indigenous populations (e.g., Saami, Nentsen and Komi Izem), ages 14 to 62 years, were interviewed from various social and occupational backgrounds. Some of the interviews were based on several meetings; they ranged from 38 to 92 minutes, were conducted in the Russian language and were recorded. The interviews addressed participants’ perception of the environmental situation and its dynamics, its significance and impact on their lives, their relationship to nature and feelings of regional identities, and dependence. (For further interpretation, they were transcribed.)

As indigenous peoples stated in their interviews, the main cause of negative change was the destruction of the traditional way of life. Thus, for Saami living in Lovozero on the Kola Peninsula, the improvement of environmental quality – affected by industrial pollution and ecological degradation – is a greater priority than the improvement of housing conditions, which are poor.

Not only the Saami, but also the Nenets and Komi Izem reported that the climate is becoming less comfortable than in the past for their livelihoods and health. Local Nenets villagers worry about water quality, land and biodiversity being affected by casual oil spills and poaching. Despite acquiring several hectares for reindeer herding according to federal and local legislation protecting their lands, the Nenets feel the impact of the increase of transportation vehicles. Past incidents such as the bursting of pipelines in 2002 which relocated 20,000 herders, symbolize the vulnerability of Indigenous people’s territories. Here we may experience the ambivalence of the

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processes regarding the NSR development: on the one hand, it promotes job employment, while on the other local companies hire workers from other regions. (The environmental impacts are felt locally, but the economic impacts are not.) Although pipelines along the NSR do increase the landâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategic worth, it induces the price of relocation, harms wildlife and promotes badlands development (Gordeev et al., 2011; Meschtyb et al., 2005).

One of the key environmental hazards posed by the NSR that is forced upon the Arctic Indigenous population (e.g., Nenets, Saami) is the negative impact on reindeer herding that is necessary for employment, food and also for cultural identity and cultural heritage preservation (Dushkova, 2007; Krasovskaya & Tulskaya, 2013; Meschtyb et al., 2005). Although reindeer herding is essential to all parts of the land, the NSR places a greater burden on rural villagers. Urban locals develop a short term gain from the NSRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boom of trade and transit due to greater transportation access and job employment from oil fields. Rural locals suffer greater consequences as their food resources (elk, fish, and reindeer) are hunted to feed urban workers (Krasovskaya & Tulskaya, 2013; Meschtyb et al., 2005).

Often conflicts appear because of the fact that traditional land use areas are mainly located within zones of political and economic interests of newcomers, particularly those concerning oil, mineral, and timber production. As reported in interviews, the majority of Indigenous peoples consider poaching, forest fires caused by humans, industrial logging, and clearing of forests for firewood to be some of the most significant issues that affect the physical environments and well-being of their communities. They have often identified the increasing expansion of the oil and gas industry in the Russian Arctic in the last decade as threatening their traditional way of life. Therefore, the preservation of native habitats and traditional land use of Indigenous peoples are of vital importance for them.

An integrated analysis of new clusters of economic development connected with the renovation of the NSR, alongside Indigenous population distribution in the coastal zone, has revealed where new potential impact zones and a reactivation of existing conflicts with traditional nature management are possible. Regions of existing and emerging environmental hot-spots were identified through an ecological hot-spots map (Evseev et al., 2009), the state documents mentioned above, and from field data published in our previous research (Krasovskaya, 2008, 2011, 2016; Evseev & Dushkova, 2011 etc.). They include the Indiga river mouth, cape Varandey, the eastern Yamal peninsula, the Yenisey and the Yana downstream area.

Today, in spite of the existing protective legislation, it is rather difficult for Indigenous peoples to obtain rights for natural resource use; as well they are being affected by the depletion of resource potential in all sectors of traditional land use. The growing attention to this problem, including through international cooperation, creates a possibility that in furthering economic expansion in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, the interests of indigenous peoples will be considered, and that a reliable framework that ensures the preservation of traditional land use and life support of Indigenous population will take shape. The delimitation of traditional land use territories is still the best case scenario for the conservation of natural resources and a support framework for traditional lifestyles of Indigenous peoples (Tishkov, 2014). The existence of such special protected areas could contribute to the preservation of biodiversity and Indigenous communities, as well as promote Indigenous participation in natural resource management.

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Conclusions The activization of national and international interests in the Northern Sea Route occurred due to modern geopolitical processes and economic developments of the Arctic zone in the Russian Federation and worldwide. According to our analysis, the NSR renovation presents both benefits and problems in the coastal zone. Benefits are connected with the economic development of the Russian Arctic, an increase in international trade, the appearances of new employment opportunities for local populations, new technologies, etc. The integration of regional ports and towns within the NSR to the economic development of the Arctic, of course, will be essential for optimism and business promotion, the civic engagement of business and the local populations, and the formation of alternate public opinions about these remote territories (Zalyvsky, 2015).

However, its development may also cause some negative impacts such as environmental degradation due to regular oil spills, deterioration of living conditions of local populations (i.e., local landowners, disruption of the traditional land use of the Indigenous population), increase security dilemmas and accelerate climate change (Heininen et al., 2014). New strategic development plans of the NSRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development demonstrate awareness of these potential problems and outline general approaches to mitigate them. That is why the study of these problems is urgently needed now, in order to elaborate practical measures. Of special importance among them are detailed assessments of the adaptive capacity of traditional land users and the accumulated traditional knowledge for dealing with environmental risks, especially to loss of traditional culture and social identification. Based on the analysis of current state economic and political interests, one may conclude that Russia is open and willing for cooperation with foreign partners that can contribute to exploiting Arctic natural resources, developing sea routes and solving the numerous socioeconomic and environmental problems of the region (Heininen et al., 2014). One of them is appealing to the administration of the NSR as the main state supervisor and the subject of Arctic shipping organizations to ensure the rational use of the NSR, and provide for the ecological safety of the environment and local Arctic communities (Zalyvsky, 2015).

References Bambulyak A., Frantzen B. (2005). Oil transport from the Russian part of the Barents Region. Status per January 2005. Svanhovd, Norway, 91 p.

Bashmakova E.P., Vasiliev V.V., Kozmenko S.Y. (2013). Transportno-infrastrukturnij potentsial Rosiijskoij Arktiki [Transport infrastructure, potential is the Russian Arctic]. Apatity, IEP KSC RAS. 279 p. (in Russian) Bjørkli, H.P. (2015). Arctic Governance: Understanding the Geopolitics of Commercial Shipping via the Northern Sea Route. University of Bergen. 110 p.

Bogoyavlensky, D.D. (2008). Demography of northern indigenous peoples. In: Revich, B. (Ed.) Climate change impact on public health in the Russian Arctic (pp. 14-17). Moscow, United Nations Development Program.

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Gordeev V.V., Danilov A.A., Evseev A.V., Kochemasov Ju.V., Moiseenko T.V. et al. (2011).

Diagnostic analysis of the environmental status of the Russian Arctic. Morgunov B. (ed.). Advanced Summary. Global environmental facility, UN Environmental progr., NPA Arctic project.

Moscow, Scientific World, 171 p.

Dushkova D. (2017). Redefining vulnerability to environmental hazards and challenges to adaptation among indigenous population of the Russian Arctic. In: Kremers, H. and Susini, A. (eds.) LNIS 8 – Lecture Notes in Information science 8: Risk information, management, risk models and applications, 43-57. CODATA-Germany.

Dushkova D., Evseev A. (2012). The Russian North: Environment and human health risk assessment. In: Kremers, H. and Susini, A. (eds.) LNIS 6 – Lecture Notes in Information Sciences 6: RISK Models and Applications, 89–102. CODATA-Germany.

Ecological situation at indigenous population territories (2015). Retrieved from, https://geographyofrussia.com/ekologicheskaya-situaciya-v-mestax-kompaktnogoprozhivaniya-korennyx-malochislennyx-narodov//.

Emmerson, C., Lahn, G. (2012). Arctic Opening: Opportunity and Risk in the High North. Lloyd’s and Chatham House.

Essallamy, M. A. (2008). The Arctic sea routes: marine environmental impacts on effect of the climate change and opening of the passages for international shipping traffic. World Maritime University Dissertations. 260 p.

Evseev A., Belousova A., Ivanov V., Krasovskaya T. et al. (2009). Environmental Hot-Spots and Impact Zones of the Russian Arctic http:/www.acops.org Federal aim program for transport development (2010-2020). Retrieved from, https://www.mintrans.ru/.

Heininen, L., Sergunin, A., Yarovoy, G. (2014). Russian strategies in the Arctic: avoiding a new cold war.

Report. Valdai Discussion Club: Moscow.

Humpert, M. (2013). Arctic shipping – an analysis of the 2013 northern sea route season. The Arctic Institute.

Krasovskaya, T. (2008). Nature management at the Russian North. Moscow, LKI (in Russian).

Krasovskaya T. (2011). Aborigine cultural landscapes of the Russian North as heritage objects.

Geography, environment, sustainability 3(4): 129-138.

Krasovskaya, T.M., Tulskaya N.I. (2013). Aborigine cultural landscapes of the Russian Arctic: identification and mapping. InterCarto. InterGIS, 1(19): 172-175. DOI 10.24057/2414-91792013-1-19-172-175.

Krasovskaya, T.M., Slipenchuk, M.V. (2016). Introduction to Environmental Management.

Moscow: Faculty of geography of the Moscow State University, 224 p.

Kuzmenko, S.Y, Selin, V.S. (eds.) (2014). Geo-ekonomicheskie protsessi v Arktike i razvitie morskih kommunikatsiij [Geo-economic processes in the Arctic and the development of maritime communications]. Apatity: KSC RAS, 266 p. (in Russian) Lasserre, F. (2014). Case studies of Shipping along Arctic routes. Analysis and profitability perspectives for the container sector. Transportation Research A 66: 144-161.

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Lukin, Yu. F. (2016) Russian Arctic or the Arctic zone. Arctic and the North 23: 171-185.

Meng, Q., Zhang, Y., Xu, M. (2017). Viability of transarctic shipping routes: a literature review from the navigational and commercial perspectives. Maritime Policy and Management 44(1): 1641. doi:10.1080/03088839.2016.1231428.

Meschtyb, N.A., Forbes, B.C., Kankaanpää, P. (2005). Social impact assessment along Russia’s Northern Sea Route: Petroleum transport and the Arctic Operational Platform (ARCOP).

Arctic. 58: 322–327.

Moe, A. (2014). The Northern Sea Route: Smooth Sailing Ahead? Strategic Analysis. 38(6): 784802.

Northern Sea Route Information Office (2015). Transit Statistics 2015. Murmansk, Russia (in Russian).

Overland, I. Russia's Arctic energy policy (2010). International Journal. 65(4): 865-878.

Revich, B. (Ed. in chief) et al. (2008). Climate change impact on public health in the Russian Arctic.

Moscow: UN in the Russian Federation Rosstat – Russian Statistical Service (2015). Economic and social indicators in the regions of residence of small indigenous populations of the North. Moscow (In Russian).

Russian Federation’s Policy for the Arctic to 2020 (2009). Retrieved from, http://www.arctissearch.com/Russian+Federation+Policy+for+the+Arctic+to+2020.

Ruxpert – Russian expert encyclopedia (2015). Development Status of Transpolar Railway (in Russian).

SAP – the Strategic Action Program for Protection of the Russian Arctic Environment. Moscow (2009) State Program Social-Economic Development of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation up to 2020. Retrieved from, http://www.pravo.gov.ru. (In Russian)

Strategic planning of the development of the Artcic zone of the Russian Federation (2013). Konovalov, A.M. (ed.). Moscow: SOPS, 503 p. (In Russian) Medvedev, D. (2008). The Basics of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic to 2020 and Beyond. Retrieved from, http://www.arctissearch.com/Russian+Federation+Policy+for+the+Arctic+to+2020.

The Federal Law of July 28, 2012, N 132-FZ “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation Concerning State Regulation of Merchant Shipping”.

The Northern Sea Route Administration (2013). Application for Admission to navigate through the Northern Sea Route Area. Retrieved from, http://asmp.morflot.ru/files/fileslist/20130821133955en-20130716120054enApplication%20for%20Admission%20to%20navigate%20in%20the%20NSR.doc

The rules of navigation through the water area of the Northern Sea Route (2013, 17 January). Approved by the order of the Ministry of Transport of Russia, 7.

Tishkov, V. (2014, February). Indigenous Peoples: Development for Preservation. Russian International Affairs Council. Retrieved from, http://russiancouncil.ru/en/inner/?id_4=3074.

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Zalyvsky, N.P. (2015). The Northern Sea Route: the potential of expectations and the real functioning problems. Arctic and North. 20: 32-50.

Zelentsov, V.V. (2012). Development of Arctic Transportation in Russia. Asia-Pacific Journal of Marine Science and Education. 2(2): 9-16.

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Managing the Barents Sea: Comparing Norwegian & Russian Offshore Oil-Spill Prevention Policies Troy J. Bouffard

The Barents Sea has long been a testing ground for cooperation between Russia and Norway. Driven by mutual economic interests, the two states have worked together in previous decades to oversee a shared commercial fishery.

More recently, off-shore oil production has become a Russo-Norwegian focus. Emerging petroleum production provides an opportunity to assess environmental stewardship in the region. In particular, this study explores the differences and influences in Norwegian and Russian offshore oil-spill prevention policy in the Barents Sea. The study focuses on how each state’s national and economic strategic objectives translate into domestic policy, and how such influences are reflected in operational mandates and behavior. Principal-agent (a.k.a. agency) theory and case studies provide the framework for this study through a defined view of the contractual relationships between the governments (principals) and industry (agents). Findings indicate that 1) there is no mutual policy for the shared environment, 2) there should be, and 3) divergent issues can be identified and potentially overcome. Additionally, the approach to prevention policy by Russia’s governmental authorities yields concerns regarding operational intent while Norway’s public-sector principles likely instill more confidence in outcomes. As the Barents Region continues to foster a convergence of bilateral (and multilateral) interests, this study helps identify relevant prevention policy decisionmaking factors while contributing to further understanding and expectations for activities in the Barents Sea.

Introduction For decades, Russia and Norway successfully worked together, despite occasional conflicts, to manage a world-class fishery. One area presenting significant challenge has been the disputed maritime territory known as the “Gray Zone,” which accounted for twelve percent of the Barents Sea total area. As Russian and Norwegian interests shifted from fish to offshore oil and gas production due to expanding exploration activity, Russia and Norway addressed their Gray Zone dispute with the Barents Delimitation Agreement in 2010. The distinct motivation for this agreement, supported by numerous sources, including the national strategies for both states, strongly indicates ambitions to protect fisheries, often with implicit acknowledgement to energy Troy J. Bouffard, MSG, U.S. Army (Ret.) is a full-time instructor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Department of Defense Contractor with a Master’s degree in Arctic policy. This article is an updated adaptation based on previous thesis work.

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exploration and production as an underlying factor, possibly only minor (Filipek & Hruzdou, 2011: 231; Henriksen & Ulfstein, 2011: 8-9; Jensen, 2011: 158; Moe, Fjærtoft, & Øverland, 2011: 150152; Neumann, 2010).

Interest and investment in Barents Sea offshore production clearly increased in the last decade.

However, the international community lacks a clear understanding of how both nations intend to approach production risks. Given recent Barents Sea oil production and exploration increases and the likelihood of expansion in the future, it is an apt time to explore Norwegian and Russian offshore oil-spill prevention policy. To what extent do Norway and Russia coalesce in their oil spill prevention policies in the Barents Sea? What explains congruence or variation in their approaches?

As joint stewards of the Barents Sea, with statutory requirements regarding any cross-boundary reserves in place, it is appropriate to analyze and compare their regulatory regimes to identify factors that shape oil-spill prevention policy development and implementation.

Currently, both Russian and Norwegian oil project leads in the Barents Sea are state owned.

Accordingly, a principal–agent framework offers a useful lens to examine potential outcomes for this study where the principal is the state and the agents are the oil companies. Under this framing, national interests informing oil production strategies likely play a significant role in oil-spill prevention policies. In particular, Russia and Norway’s differing geopolitical goals offer significant insight into the respective motivations behind each nation’s oil-spill prevention policies, and may even inform expectations. This argument emphasizes three key points explored in detail throughout the article: 1) no shared prevention policies exist for the shared Barents maritime regions, 2) shared policies should be established as a result, 3) divergent aspects can be identified and overcome in order to achieve mutually beneficial (shared) policies. The findings reveal the potentially leading cause of discrepancy indicating that, as principals, Norway largely enforces high standards over production operations to maintain a stable domestic economy, while Russia employs its energy production capabilities to expand global influence.

This study reviews the relevant context concerning petroleum projections, oil spills in the Arctic, prevention policy fundamentals, and the history of Norwegian and Russian energy policies.

Additionally, a case study of each nation will serve as the basis of this inferential study.

Background As a long-time legal and academic authority concerning oil-spill prevention policy, Dr. Mark Cohen (1986: 176) loosely defines oil-spill prevention as a general responsibility of government.

According to Cohen, it is government’s responsibility to monitor and enforce adopted policies, absorbing deterrence as a social cost. Government, being reasonably unable to directly monitor all oil producing activities, must make decisions with imperfect information about the level of pollution or source, and must instead create incentives for oil companies to internalize prevention measures, thus reducing risks. This study specifically emphasizes aspects of prevention as opposed to response, mitigation, recovery and other phases of an oil-spill incidents.

Oil Estimates and Commitments in the Barents Sea A 2008 watershed report estimated the offshore Barents holds a total of 9.5 billion barrels of technically-recoverable oil (Bird et al., 2008), with slightly higher figures reported more recently (Krisel, 2015). In 2016, officials reported Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) reserves of discovered oil at about 1.8 billion barrels (Erlingsen, 2016), while undiscovered estimates climbed Managing the Barents Sea

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to over 3.6 billion (Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, 2016: 26). In 2017, Director General of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate Nyland announced increases to about 5.25 million barrels in the northern part of the Barents, effectively doubling previous estimates while elevating the share of Barents undiscovered resources within the entire NCS from 50% to 65% (Figure 1) (Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, 2017). In the Southeast part of the Barents Sea of Russia, the Prirazlomnoya platform produced over 30 million barrels of oil since initial production in 2014, with 19 billion more expected in 2017 (“Four Million Tons of Oil from Prirazlomnoye”, 2017).

More recently, Norway announced plans to propose a record number of oil exploration blocks (Adomaitis & Doyle, 2017). Russian plans in the Barents mainly involve a contract with oil giants Rosneft and Eni to pursue undiscovered reserves in the Fedynsky (Figure 2) and Central Barents blocks in 2018 that jointly represent estimated reserves of 14 billion barrels of oil (Owen, 2012).

This intention was reaffirmed by Putin during a visit to the Arctic (“Meeting on Arctic region’s comprehensive development,” 2017). Although early-phase exploration estimates are inherently uncertain, the Barents has historically supported expanded estimates as well as proven reserves in later phases.

Oil-Spill Concerns in the Arctic and Barents Sea The Barents Sea (Figure 1) is one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Oil spills represent the greatest risk to regional marine ecosystems while requiring the mostly costly response efforts (Emmerson & Lahn, 2012).

Figure 1. The Barents Sea defined by the International Hydrographic Organization

Source: Boundary information provided by Marineregions.org. Map adapted from CIA World Factbook Regional Maps https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook//graphics/ref_maps/political/jpg/arctic_region.jpg.

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Marine ecosystems in the Barents are generally simple, meaning a disruption of one link in the food chain can severely affect the remaining system (Kommedal, Bagi, & Hemmingsen, 2015: 234235; Stokke, 2000). An oil spill has the potential to additionally disrupt gestation and development of new fish, to harm and kill vulnerable marine life, and to jeopardize fish stock habitat (Dean & Barry, 2005: 221), presenting some degree of adverse sub-lethal effects at a minimum.

Oil pollution effects in a polar marine environment vary depending on location, but, broadly speaking, can create longer-lasting impacts than in other climate zones. Bacteriological breakdown of petroleum pollutants, for example, occurs more slowly in polar areas than in more temperate regions (Stokke, 2000: 130). Certain low-energy Arctic shorelines can remain polluted from one year up to several decades, whereas oil pollution on non-Arctic, high-energy coasts usually only remains up to a year (Brubaker, 1993: 14). Sea ice constantly moves if it is not locked to a coast (land-fast) or seabed (bottom-fast), allowing oil to be transported great distances and introduced into other ecosystems (Figure 2).

Oil can saturate ice leads, coat the undersurface of ice and accumulate against ice edges (Isaksen, Bakken, & Wiig, 1998: 14); these very ice edges and leads support important migration, habitat, and subnivian processes (Engelhardt, 1983: 200), with the-Ice Marginal Zone being one of the densest environments for biological production within a sea (Winther & Vongraven, 2014).

Additionally, the coastal zone of the Kola Peninsula (the Barents, Pechora and White Seas) is notable for high levels of biodiversity (Matishov, Golubeva, Titova, Sydnes, & Voegele, 2004: 62).

As a microcosm representative of the entire Arctic, the Barents is vulnerable to all of these threats.

Figure 2. Currents and waters masses associated with the Barents Sea

Source: Havsforskningsinstituttet (Institute of Marine Research, Norway).

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Prevention Policy Preventing oil spills requires governmental mandates and industrial compliance. Discerning and implementing principal actor policy intent between operations and outcomes increases the challenge. At the highest-level policy-making authority, crafting regulations often involves architectural frameworks that are “necessarily vague.” This deliberate ambiguity allows subordinate agencies to adapt regulation to meet intent through discretionary application. Such latitude allows pragmatic flexibility, but also invites abuse. Of note, pollution prevention policy is rarely as explicit as pollution response policy, which is normally presented in clear terms as a ‘policy’. Instead, prevention-related policies normally take form through regulations, where preventive intent can be little more than implied directives. For example, the U.S. Clean Water Act of 1977 (and subsequent amendments) specifies no discrete pollution prevention measures, but implies an expectation of the development of preventative regulations (Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, 2008: 104).

Historical Context of Norwegian Offshore Oil-Spill Prevention and Regulation Norway developed its principles and values concerning oil policies in three distinct phases: 1) the transition from foreign to domestic petroleum project control in the early 1970s, 2) the establishment of Norway’s oil industry in the late 1970s, and 3) the adoption of performancebased regulations in 1980.

During the first phase, as operations for inaugural oil production developed, Norway’s government created plans to transition out of what was largely a foreign controlled enterprise. As Norway promoted “absorptive capacity” within domestic enterprises and national institutions (Engen, 2009: 2), an internal petroleum regulatory regime ensued. However, the government’s dependency on oil-company support meant that industry gained significant influence over regulatory development and adoption as well as diminishing government’s role in oversight.

In the second phase, during the early 1970s, Norway sought to formally create industrial and governmental infrastructure to support its nascent oil industry. Norway established the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), the Ministry of Oil and Energy, and a state-owned oil company, Statoil (Engen, 2009: 10). Concession laws clarified the relationship between the government and the petroleum industry while simultaneously guaranteeing the rights of firms and reinforcing state sovereignty over the Norwegian continental shelf (Figure 3). In 1973, the NPD formed with little petroleum experience, levying strict regulations to offset the agency’s weaknesses. Within a few years, the Norwegian public administration developed sufficient institutional competence within the petroleum industry to increase oversight of the regulatory regime.

The third phase started after Norway experienced devastating offshore accidents. The first disaster happened on April 22nd, 1977. Known as the ‘Bravo Blowout,’ oil well B-17 under Phillip’s Bravo rig suffered an oil and gas pressure incident due to an improperly placed upside-down blowout preventer ("Ekofisk Bravo Oil Field,"). The second disaster, named after the platform Alexander L. Keilland, occurred on March 27th, 1980 in the Ekofisk area ("Norway’s Petroleum History," 2010). One of the rig’s five support columns broke off, causing the rig to capsize (Figure 4). After intense search and rescue efforts, only eighty-nine of two hundred and twelve individuals working on the platform were saved. Following Keilland, public outrage prompted the Norwegian energy ministry and NPD to enact significant policy reforms (Lindoe, Baram, & Paterson, 2012: 5).

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Figure 3. Map of Norwegian Continental Shelf showing new area

Source: Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.

Figure 4. The Alexander L. Keilland platform capsizing

Source: NTB Photo Archive

Norway’s policy agenda changed to include a major regulatory paradigm shift from a reactive regime based on prescriptive and technical requirements toward a risk-based, proactive regime with working legal requirements (Engen & Lindøe, 2014: 1). Norway’s policy reform process

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resulted in a system based on egalitarian principles involving a tripartite arrangement between the government, employers, and employees, with an emphasis on risk reduction and safety though performance.

Contemporary Russian Offshore Environmental Protection Policies and Regulations Understanding the political attributes within Russia’s current oil industry benefits with familiarity of the post-Soviet privatization and re-nationalization episodes. Within a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, most of Russia’s oil industry became privatized. As the liberal-oligarchic model took hold over energy policy, Lukoil and Surgut reformed to private companies by insiders while Yukos and Sibneft shortly thereafter privatized through a loans-for-shares program (Åslund, 2006: 323). Amongst the many effects included the government’s significantly decreased capacity to conduct oversight of the companies. The then incoming President Putin saw a need to reverse plummeting oil production shares enabled by Yeltsin’s state asset-selling program. Putin’s strategy, legitimized partly by his (alleged) dissertation, focused on economic recovery through renationalizing the dominant oil (and gas) companies in order to allow state-controlled entities to compete in the world market more effectively (Bradshaw, 2009: 5). As part of a broader reconsolidation effort toward state power, Putin eventually attained effective resource nationalism in support of his continuing global-influence vision.

As part of recentralization priorities, post-Soviet Russia’s history of oil production and regulation has largely been driven by Russia’s foreign interests. To this end, Russia established national oil companies without pursuing stringent or effective government oversight, especially in cases where the regulatory burden might conflict with Russian economic or geopolitical interests.

Under Putin’s lead during the lucrative post-Soviet petroleum era, Russian sought to align oil projects with national interests and goals. However, there have been substantial barriers to actually pursuing these interests while creating useful alignments. Russian oil companies highlighted several faults with the existing regulatory regime, deriving from: 1) the unplanned and cumbersome way the system originated and evolved; 2) the side effects of recentralization of power; and 3) confusion and conflict over goals (Thane, 2012: 384). Bureaucratically, the transition period to post-Soviet Russia could have been an opportunity to implement a new approach to oversight. Instead, the complex Soviet bureaucracy endured into the new era, with new systems added alongside the legacy systems. During the transition period, the pressure to produce oil eclipsed national interest in regulating the oil industry. The laws and regulations in place remained largely ineffectual, owing to a lack of enforcement and of opposing priorities. Licensing pressures help explain part of the problem, as the government focused on assigning resources to oil companies as quickly as possible, giving little attention to regulatory enforcement. During Putin’s early efforts to restore strong central powers, the regulatory system became unpredictable, arbitrary, and largely ineffective (Thane, 2012: 387).

Although the Russian constitution has the foundational capacity to address ecological safety, two notable problems persist: 1) legislation and normative legal acts endure inconsistently as a system of laws regarding environmental protection and management, and 2) responsibility for violations of laws needs to be strengthened to support punishment of environmental crimes and related offenses (A. Ivanova, 2013: 644-645). However, the problem does not seem related to a lack of federal laws, decrees, resolutions, and orders. By 2008, The Russian Federation maintained an Bouffard

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extensive base of more than fifty legal documents that governed oil-spill prevention alone, resulting in regulations that are not coherent or based on a unified state policy or approach to oilspill prevention. (M. Ivanova, 2011: 4). Russia’s fragmented regulatory regime has not gone unnoticed. Senior government officials throughout the polar region express views that Russia continues to possibly represent the most expansive actor in offshore oil (and gas) production with the least amount of regulatory clarity (Ebinger, Banks, & Schackmann, 2014: 25).

Alternatively, Putin’s forceful restructuring of agency oversight and control may improve regulatory expectations even though the federal approach to bureaucratic governance over the oil industry continues to dictate requirements through prescriptive-based regulation. Additionally, Russia actively participates in the Barents 2020 program with Norway which indicates tangible efforts to improve offshore operations leveraging opportunities to cooperate as well as find ways to improve Russia’s policies and operations. Altogether, this may represent the current extent of viable means to eventual effectiveness toward Russia’s offshore oil-spill prevention.

Framework and Cases Framework – Theory and Methodology This article relies on agency theory, also known as principal-agent theory, to guide a particular scope of a relationship. The theory invokes the metaphor of a contract, specifically a behaviororiented or outcome-oriented contract, in which one party (the principal) delegates work to another (the agent) for the purposes of analyzing the dynamics between the two (Eisenhardt, 1989). Additionally, agency theory provides a ‘unique realistic, and empirically testable perspective on problems of cooperative effort’ (Eisenhardt, 1989: 72).

Case study as a methodology is a form of qualitative research that can advise evidence-informed decision making in the policy realm (Baxter & Jack, 2008). Case study is the detailed examination of an aspect of a historical episode to develop or test explanations that may be generalized to other events (George & Bennett, 2005: 5). The cases in this article are diverse assortments of perspectives regarding policies and behaviors conceivably shaped by the respective underlying oil-revenue interests of Russia and Norway. Data within each case represents aspects of relationships between relevant state and industry actors with regards to potential rent-seeking and influence over prevention policies. This approach seems optimal for selection criteria, since Norway and Russia represent the state sovereignties that are the legal and de facto stewards of the Barents Sea. Furthermore, the Russian and Norwegian energy sectors are dominated by their state-owned petroleum companies. For this purpose, Russia and Norway are not only the principals as states, but also as corporate owners of the lead agents.

Case 1 – Aspects of Policy Influence for the Russian Federation Portions of publications cited below emphasize global political economic influence while others emphasize safety and environmental aspects of resources management. However, researchers consistently, if implicitly, acknowledge Russian ambitions to access offshore oil reserves in order to offset terrestrial reductions in production currently underway.

Andreyava and Kryukov (2008: 246) provide insight on the energy sector’s significance to Russia and the global market by describing the “Russian Model.” They find that Russia’s guiding principles and offshore oil and gas development strategies are distinct from other oil producers.

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Russian authorities regard the oil and gas sector as the basis of the Russian state’s power within the world economy. Owing to a weak judicial system, the corporate and government/bureaucratic play an outsized role in prescribing requirements for the sector.

A 2011 New York Times (Kramer & Krauss, 2011) article provides further context to decisions made for Arctic offshore exploration. In 2008, the Russian parliament easily passed amendments to subsoil legislation that allowed the Ministry of Natural Resources to transfer offshore blocks to state-owned companies. The move anticipated and supported Russia’s maintaining its status as one of the world’s top oil producers and a significant factor in the global energy balance.

In a paper analyzing the scope and limits of Russia’s capacity to use oil and gas as strategic resources to revive Russia’s fortunes as a credible global power, Hashim (2010: 265) explains that the relative weakness of Russia’s economy and military compared to the Atlantic Alliance has forced current leadership to focus on leveraging energy as a weapon. Russia has a tendency to use the energy sector as “commanding heights” or “national champions” to leverage Russia’s geopolitical stature and has become an impediment to relations with [the EU] part of the West (Hashim, 2010: 272).

Orttung and Overland (2011: 75) express similar observations in an article that argues that Russian leadership has pursued a rational set of political economic goals in its foreign energy policy. Their basic premise is that Russia’s political leaders use energy to pursue advantages in expanding Russia’s influence abroad. Several authors draw analogous conclusions (Newnham, 2011; Rutland, 2015; Smith, 2008; Stegen, 2011; Woehrel, 2010).

Feklyunina (2012), too, interprets Russia’s energy policies (Energy Strategy of 2003) in terms of their capacity to further its strategic interests while pointing out that Russian elites are very sensitive to perspectives on the image of its state-owned companies. Russia’s move to shut the natural gas pipe to Ukraine in 2006 and the ensuing crisis vividly illustrated the Federation’s willingness to use its energy resources as a political weapon. Feklyunina emphasizes Russia’s rapid and almost violent response to the situation as indicative of its traditional method of handling such issues.

With Arctic hydrocarbons defined as a strategic natural resource asset, Harsem et al. (2011) conclude that the Russian government would not likely put constraining measures on the petroleum industry. Similarly, Ariel Cohen (2007) argues that Russia hopes to influence geopolitical conditions, such as NATO expansion, by using energy as leverage while it seeks recognition of its predominant role in former Soviet space.

Russian academics have also weighed in on Russia’s Arctic offshore production operations.

Pavlenko et al. (2014: 661) provide significant detail about the increased risks involved with Arctic petroleum activities and admit that Russian technology and industrial culture cannot readily prioritize ecological safety. They conclude that more effort should go into prevention mechanisms.

Among other policies, Mow and Rowe (2008: 112-113) consider a 2003 Ministry of Natural Resources strategy concerning the continental shelf. Given that Russia’s continental shelf in the Arctic accounts for 30 percent of the world’s total, it is no surprise that the nation developed a specific strategy for it. The authors note several obstacles to Russia’s efforts to meet its oil production goals, including the following two that speak to risk: 1) a poorly developed infrastructure supporting production, and 2) an insufficiently developed legal framework that is not adapted to offshore strategy.

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Keil (2015) relies on recent scientific modeling that shows how an oil spill will spread in open waters and addresses the insufficient regulations to prevent or respond to such an incident, including ineffective liability caps that protect companies. Although Russia often supports unlimited liability, companies can exploit gaps by claiming unforeseen or unstoppable circumstances (force majeure). Russia also has a pattern of politicizing liability enforcement and environmental regulations. Keil also notes that resource-endowed, but dependent, countries like Russia often favor less strict environmental regulation in order to facilitate cost-effective access and production.

Wilson (2006) analyzes the relationship between industry representatives and local peoples at Sakhalin 2, involving ‘frontier’ circumstances concerning issues with safety and the environment, among other things. Wilson finds that company representatives determined that domestic laws and compensation mechanisms would have to suffice, suggesting that safety violations were not only deemed acceptable, but that both authorities and corporate leadership preferred to ignore safety regulations aimed at prevention.

Stevens et al., (2013: 73) note an absence of strategic focus owing to natural resource management having become embroiled in political competition and conflict among elites. A lack of consensus among the elites about the best form of subsoil (including shelf) management will likely cause regulatory regimes to remain in flux (Stevens et al., 2013: 73). Incompetence and corruption within key regulatory and enforcement institutions further detract from effective, responsible natural resource management (Stevens et al., 2013: 80).

Spiridonov (2006) provides an analysis of the number and effectiveness of impact studies concerning offshore production in the Circumpolar North and concludes that a strategic environmental assessment, as well as environmental impact statements, could benefit and strengthen the regulatory regime of the Russian petroleum industry.

Greenpeace presents a dismal record of terrestrial oil spill violations to construct an argument that Russia should not be trusted to conduct safe operations in the far more complex environment of the Arctic offshore region. The Executive Summary of a 2012 Greenpeace report states: If Russian oil and gas industry for an extended period of time could not bring regulations to the existing fields, there is no reason to hope that it will show any more responsible attitude to environmental issues when developing the Arctic Shelf (Russian Arctic - Offshore Hydrocarbon Exploration: Investment Risks, 2012).

Furthermore, the NGO argues that the higher operation costs in the Arctic will encourage expedited time periods between licensing and production by circumventing environmental impact and safety measures (Russian Arctic - Offshore Hydrocarbon Exploration: Investment Risks, 2012: 21).

Moe (2010) finds Russian attitudes about environmental management to be essentially laissez-faire, wherein the phrase “let us wait and see what happens” is not an uncommon Russian response to hypothetical dilemmas.

Case 2 – Aspects of Policy Influence for Norway As Norway’s oil industry expanded in the 1970s its leaders strove to avoid the “Dutch Disease” by maintaining a balanced economy. Gelb et al. (2002: 8) observe that ‘Mainland Norway’ worked to maintain competitiveness in other economic sectors as the excitement surrounding oil and gas Managing the Barents Sea

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prospects built. Currently, a statutory amount of petroleum revenue goes into sovereign wealth savings, in part to prevent deindustrialization (“The Rich Cousin,” 2013). Such strategic choices enhance Norway’s ability to maintain macro-economic stability and reasonable growth even under unfavorable oil market conditions (Barnett & Ossowski, 2002: 18).

Mjøset and Cappelen (2011: 12) studied the integration of the Norwegian oil economy into the world economy over a four-decade span. They found that Norway could have been susceptible to the Dutch Disease and Resource Curse. Excessive exploitation of oil too quickly would have strangled the non-petroleum sectors without disciplined fiscal policy to control the reliance on oil income.

In the previous case study, Rutland (2015: 69) also concluded that Norway effectively adapted to the arrival of oil riches. He found that Norway avoided Dutch Disease through technological achievements in the industry as well as confidence in the democratic processes that focus on channeling back oil wealth to the nation’s collective benefit.

According to Listhaug (2005: 835-836), Norway clearly avoided larger problems associated with resource curses, suffering only a mild form of the economic ailment. However, throughout the initial years, much of the public pushed for new oil wealth to finance a higher proportion of current government expenditures than the government deemed prudent. The Norwegian government stood relatively firm with an eye toward long-term stability, regardless of the short-term political risks.

Bjerkholt and Niculescu (2004: 164, 177-178) outline Norway’s political commitments in their study of fiscal policy and non-renewable natural resources. They found that Norway focused primarily on net-worth risk by saving oil revenue in their unique fund and creating simple transparent rules to deal with market-related fluctuations. Eventual consensus allowed Norway to install and maintain a rules-based framework even during economic recessions.

Mehlum et al. (2012) also reference the resource abundance of a nation as a common cause of poor economic performance. Norway’s strong rule of law, property rights and a well-functioning state bureaucracy further supported oil income as an asset rather than liability. With a wellestablished labor movement at the time, other industries remained stable, and resource wealth from oil benefited society broadly.

Holden (2013) and Larson (2005) state that the literature suggests that countries with abundant natural resources generally experience lower economic growth than other countries. The lessons from the 1970s showed that Norway began to experience the Dutch Disease when petroleum wealth led to increased public consumption. The Norwegian government formed a commission that recommended a measured oil production pace to ensure future resource wealth. Fiscal discipline on the broader economy as well as monetary policy focused on stable and diverse economic strategies led to reduced pressure on the oil industry to overemphasize maximum production (Holden, 2013).

Strømsnes et al. (2009) studied the presence and effectiveness of Greenpeace in Norway and found that their presence and following were largely non-existent, given strong local support for existing policies and lack of egregious incidents.

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The Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) of Norway, an independent government regulator, issued risk reduction principles as part of Norway’s Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) regulatory frameworks in February 2010. The framework mandates compliance with HSE legislation accountable to internal requirements and acceptance criteria, meaning that the agency sets the conditions, and the oil companies are allowed and expected to implement requirements in a selfregulatory manner (“Regulations Relating to Health, Safety, and the Environment in the Petroleum Activities and at Certain Onshore Facilities: Risk Reduction Principles,” 2013). Furthermore, in cases of uncertainty, producers must choose solutions that reduce risk, illustrating that Norway’s regulations for petroleum operations are risk-based with the aim to minimize the threat of accidents and environmental damage (“Regulatory Principles,” 2016).

During her first full term in the late 80s, Prime Minister Brundtland published an article concerning the politics of oil. As noted in a speech at Harvard in 1987, she stated the following: “To be able to play a positive and stable role in the global energy picture, and to avoid becoming too dependent on the petroleum sector, we have decided to deplete our petroleum resources at a moderate and long-term basis. Orderly conditions and operations are significant for global economic development, and important if oil is to be exploited in an environmentally sound manner” (Brundtland, 1988: 104, 106).

Throughout both cases presented in this section, a plethora of sources provides consistent perspectives from a variety of scholars and authorities. The following section discusses the case study in aggregate to support qualitative analysis and application as viewed through the established lens of agency theory.

Findings Russia The Russian case study relies on perspectives gained from decades of petroleum-related activity prior to operations in the Barents Sea. The lack of current operations or disasters in this region provides the rationale for deduction based on historical perspectives. The data for the Russian case study illustrate four consistent conditions: 1) the energy sector is the most important component of Russia’s economy; 2) the Russian state deliberately positioned itself as the majority owner and controlling entity in the energy sector: 3) Russia prefers a prescriptive regulatory approach for increased operational control; and 4) Russia’s energy strategy relies on coercive, political influence over both upstream and downstream oil-production and related activities.

Russia’s questionable record concerning oil pollution suggests a degree of acceptance of what the international community might deem as irresponsible behavior in pursuit of optimal production levels. This dynamic is essential to understanding the connection between Russia’s priority interests and how it translates to operational risks. Russia largely controls every aspect of upstream activity short of the operations themselves. The evidence suggests that Russia fosters conditions for its oil companies to assume relatively high risks. With regard to regulating oil production, Russia presents itself as sufficiently responsible. However, the evidence further suggests that Russia, as principal, may allow oil companies, as agents, enough latitude to exploit gaps in the regulatory regime in order to ultimately enable long-term progress toward national goals (Table 1).

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The Arctic has become a predominant Russian priority in domestic and foreign policies, acknowledged as strategically important to future socio-economic development, and hence to Russia’s position in international affairs (Zysk, 2015: 437). Advanced petroleum industries and state actors attempt to maintain a balance between current production (hydrocarbons being extracted) and future reserves (hydrocarbons to be extracted). As terrestrial production in Western Siberia is waning, Russia is keenly interested in exploiting its continental shelf resources, including the Fedynsky High area (Figure 5).

Table 1. Comparison of prevention policy indications between Norway and Russia Petroleum Regulatory Regime Comparisons Indicator of Prevention Norway: Performance-Based Russia: Prescriptive-Based Expectations (Results/Outcome Oriented) (Mandated Actions) Accountability Decreased ability to establish Rules favor private interests over • Legal •

Bureaucratic

•

Professional

R&D (Operator Innovation) Environmental Focus Production Focus Oversight of Operations Regulatory Administration

metrics and measurable goals

public interests

Inability to assess or predict outcomes Behaviors reliant on adherence to performance goals Increased opportunity with higher costs

Inconsistent enforcement

Higher Lower Facilitates self-reporting Legal autonomy - decisions delegated to agency lead

Lower Higher Requires engagement of principal Structural autonomy - susceptible to political intervention

Susceptible to corruption and less qualified/untrained personnel Little opportunity but less costly

Sources: (Christensen & Yesilkagit, 2006; May, 2007)

Over the last several years, Russia has directed its formidable energy revenues elsewhere, rather than reinvesting in desperately needed offshore operational capacities. In particular, research and development of exploratory phase technologies and sector manufacturing capabilities notably suffer (Hasle, Kjellén, & Haugerud, 2009). Relevant components include platforms, rigs and ships (retooling legacy naval yards), which suggests an inability or willingness to prioritize effectively (Gaddy & Ickes, 2013: 98-99). Russia’s national defense budget increased from $15.6 billion in 2006 to $51.8 billion in 2015 (Klein, 2016: 25) and steady into 2016 (Galeotti, 2017; Tian, Fleurant, Wezeman, & Wezeman, 2017). Budget allocations for the north are far more focused on developing Arctic military capabilities (offshore included) as opposed to offshore production capabilities. Although much of Russia’s recent defense spending in the Arctic involves recapitalization of legacy infrastructure for dual-use, search-and-rescue stations along the NSR, this can be considered secondary, or even tertiary to natural resource protection, to the national priority propelling military modernization. Such emphasis on defense-related capital expenditures, rather than petroleum operating expenditures, suggests that investment in pursuing risk reduction and related prevention efforts will not be a priority.

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Norway The following characteristics helped form Norwayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy identity: 1) the early transition from foreign reliance while bolstering an inclusive domestic workforce culture; 2) a reliance on a performance-based regulatory regime that emphasizes agency competence and integrity toward optimal safety and environmental outcomes; 3) recognition as a relatively small state in the international community, but a large player in the global energy spectrum; and 4) domestic economic goals, gaining influence in a competitive balance with political objectives, that guide engagement in the global economy.

Figure 5. Map of Fedynsky High and main elements of geological structure

Source: Norwegian Petroleum Directorate

The integration of substantial oil revenues into the Norwegian economy in the 1970s tested the capacities of institutions and society to manage the new revenues prudently. Early in its energy wealth, Norwegian policymakers understood that market forces left to themselves would produce a crowding out effect with petroleum revenue gradually supplanting other industrial income.

Committing to a diversified economy and sound fiscal policies helped Norway weather such difficult times. Nonetheless, segments of Norwegian society and government justifiably believe that the nation continues to focus too much investment on the oil and gas industry over others, thereby suppressing additional diversification. Other efforts to bring oil revenue online safely seemed largely nominal under the circumstances.

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Norway effectively managed inflation, employment, wage control, trade, and the value of the krone through monetary policy aimed in part at macroeconomic stabilization (Svensson, Houg, Solheim, & Steigum, 2002: 29). Norway wisely maintained fiscal diversity over rapid wealth surpluses despite the oil boom.

Norway’s managed approach through the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) indicates that this representative of the principal (as a regulatory authority for the Norwegian Continental Shelf [NCS]) does not rely on vertical, superordinate authority but rather horizontal cooperation with other actors for regulatory development and implementation success. In this sense, the PSA acts just as much as a mediator as it does an administrative authority. Public-sector commitments and industry acceptance manifest as mutual respect regarding prevention goals. While Norway, as principal, retains authority to administer punishment concerning violations, there is likely to be greater understanding and acceptance of such actions, due to the cooperative nature of the regime structure, as recently demonstrated with PSA inspection of Eni operations at the Goliat platform (Figure 6) in the Norwegian Barents (Nilsen, 2017).

Figure 6. ENI-operated Goliat FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage, and Off-loading) platform

Source: ENI Norge

However, Norway has not been without its problems since the catastrophes over 35 years ago, as indicated by minor complacency issues recently (Kent, 2017). Before problems magnify, in keeping with proactive principles, the Norwegian government mandated an offshore study (“Minister Hauglie announces new white paper on petroleum safety,” 2016) while the PSA conducts a Bouffard

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comprehensive response program (Petroleum Safety Authority Norway, 2017; “Reversing the Trend,” 2016).

Conclusion Although a performance-based versus prescriptive-based approach to prevention goals could theoretically produce the same desirable results, that is not likely the situation for the Barents Sea. The principal-agent theory used in this study provided a focused method for considering how state and industry decision makers may determine and focus offshore production policy strategies. The framework and aggregate-level case study methodology helped establish individual policy circumstances for Norway and Russia, which allows further consideration of overlapping issues and expectations more reliably.

The research question posed in this article considers the extent as well as reasons explaining the divergent policy approaches for Norway and Russia. Both face significant bilateral deliberations ahead for elements of their shared maritime region. The article provides compelling evidence that no shared policy exists for offshore oil-spill prevention, yet there is a clear need for one. The goal of this study was to offer a focused insight into strategic influences that might contribute to understanding and expectations. Furthermore, the article helps to identify where issues diverge and ways to develop recommendations for overcoming difficulties in establishing joint solutions through shared policy.

Individually, Norway’s system, by design, facilitates petroleum activity by promoting a methodology of “governing within” (Nordtveit, 2015: 155) whereas Russia prefers a top-down style of governance. Moe (2010: 245) describes very different constraining forces between Russia and Norway with regard to offshore development in the Arctic. In Norway’s case, self-imposed constraints, driven by discernable national interest, translate into environmental precautions that determine the pace of development and otherwise control oil production activities in favor of safety. Alternatively, Russia has lofty global objectives and requires energy revenues to realize them. The oil industry supports these goals through less prudent, or restrictive, and more permissive practices to maximize production levels.

Overlapping concerns reveal that separate systems and processes may need to be addressed through policy partnership efforts to reduce incompatible factors that transcend state antecedence.

While accounting for relevant facts and assumptions, filtering primary actors through principalagent theory facilitates efforts to identify policy limitations as well as areas to strengthen policy cooperation. Regional perspectives make matters even more complicated. For example, European Union officials, on no less than three separate notable occasions, negotiated to impose a variety of significant restrictions on Arctic offshore activities, including an Antarctic-like treaty as well as total drilling bans (Council of the European Union & European Parliament, 2013; European Parliament, 2008; Stępień & Raspotnik, 2017). Such efforts have failed thus far. Especially notable was the demise of the concept for the Antarctic-like treaty, soundly marginalized after the “Arctic Five” (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Russia, and the United States), signed and reaffirmed the Ilulissat Declaration in 2010 and 2012 respectively, announcing clearly to the world that UNCLOS remains the instrument of choice to manage Arctic maritime sovereignty issues.

Canadian scholar Michael Byers (2013) presented an enduring and compelling assessment of existing environmental agreements and efforts, stating that “more cooperation is needed, and

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quickly, on regional standards for oil spill prevention.â&#x20AC;? Such sentiment essentially represents the current circumstances for the Barents Sea. As industrial activity in the Barents Sea predictably grows, continued research can provide much needed and value-added perspectives for any number of complex political and economic dynamics. Finally, in the relatively early stages of energy production in the Barents maritime environment, further exploration of national interests and resulting behaviors emphasizes the need to contribute additional knowledge that helps foster cooperation and policy development.

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Barnett, S., & Ossowski, R. (2002). Operational Aspects of Fiscal Policy in Oil-producing Countries: International Monetary Fund.

Baxter, P., & Jack, S. (2008). Qualitative Case Study Methodology: Study Design and Implementation for Novice Researchers. The Qualitative Report, 13(4), 544-559.

Bird, K. J., Charpentier, R. R., Gautier, D. L., Houseknecht, D. W., Klett, T. R., Pitman, J. K., . . . Wandrey, C. J. (2008). Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal: Estimates of Undiscovered Oil and Gas North of the Arctic Circle. Retrieved from http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3049/ Bjerkholt, O., & Niculescu, I. (2004). Fiscal Rules for Economies with Nonrenewable Resources: Norway and Venezuela. In G. Kopits (Ed.), Rules-Based Fiscal Policy in Emerging Markets: Background, Analysis, and Prospects (pp. 164-179). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Bradshaw, M. (2009). The Kremlin, national champions and the international oil companies: The political economy of the Russian oil and gas industry. Geopolitics of Energy, 3.

Brubaker, R. D. (1993). Marine Pollution and International Law: Principles and Practice. London, U.K.: Belhaven Press.

Brundtland, G. H. (1988). The politics of oil A view from Norway. Energy Policy, 16(2), 102-109.

Byers, M. (2013). International law and the Arctic (Vol. 103). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Christensen, J. G., & Yesilkagit, K. (2006). Delegation and specialization in regulatory administration: a comparative analysis of Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. In T. Christensen & P. Laegreid (Eds.), Autonomy and Regulation: Coping with Agenices in the Modern State (pp. 203-234). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

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Rutland, P. (2015). Petronation? Oil, gas, and national identity in Russia. Post-Soviet Affairs, 31(1), 66-89.

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Managing the Barents Sea

Part of the Master Plan?

Chinese Investment in Rare Earth Mining in Greenland Jesper Zeuthen

Western governments frequently perceive Chinese investors in natural resources as driven by strategic state interests to a much larger extent than investors from Western countries, who supposedly operate according to market economic norms without states pulling them in particular directions. This article studies a potential Chinese investment in mining minerals which are strategically important to China in a region that is widely argued to be of strategic importance to China. By making a content analysis of Chinese language articles on mining, and through interviews with some of those involved in organizing Chinese investment in the rare earth elements (REE) and uranium mining project at Kvanefjeld near Narsaq, Southern Greenland, the article studies how country specific Chinese priorities and a sector specific political economy affect a Chinese enterprise investing in the Kvanefjeld project. The article seeks to 1) add substance to the many speculations on Chinese intentions in Greenland that have dominated discussion in the Danish media, and to some extent also politics and academia, and to 2) add understanding to how state and market interact in Chinese REE mining projects overseas. The article shows that while much Chinese state attention is clearly directed towards the supposedly strategically important investments in Greenland, and state incentives play a large role, the amount of coordination and strategic focus is very limited.

Introduction: Strategies, Markets and Minerals Within China studies, Chinese state owned enterprises are frequently regarded as actors that operate commercially within a fragmented authoritarian system in which different sectors and levels of authorities set different policy goals (Downs, 2011; Mertha, 2009). Commercial demands, incentives set by various sections of the government, and personal political ambitions all play a decisive role, and only in cases of high political priority do the different agendas of the Chinese state actors coincide, it is argued. Western governments, on the other hand, regard Chinese enterprises as potential threats to the liberal economy and fear that hidden state agendas may play a decisive role in investment plans (CIA, 2017; Danish Defence Intelligence Service, 2014). Yet, as pointed out by Machacek (2017), Western statesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; classification of minerals as strategic (REE is Jesper Willaing Zeuthen is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark.

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one of these resources) also challenge market forces. Several wars in the Middle East have shown how commercial oil interests and politics may sometimes be difficult to distinguish in the West (Looney, 2012).

Despite the strategic interests of states in natural resources among countries under the Western hemisphere, the discourse of Western countries has emphasized that natural resources are traded in a liberally organized economic system (Machacek, 2017). With China becoming an increasingly important actor in the global mining sector, this combination of a common belief in a liberally organized market and a continued opportunity to secure supplies of strategically important natural resources for the countries governing the liberal economic institutions are threatened. As a consequence, the way in which state and commercial interests are interlinked in Chinese-owned mining companies has been studied intensively (Jakobson, 2009; Economy & Levi, 2014). The REE-sector is particularly interesting, because REE are considered strategically important by both China and the US/EU (Machacek, 2017; Rao, 2016).

By defining China as a near-Arctic state, ensuring that China has become an observer in the Arctic Council and has intensified its investments in Arctic research, China’s government has increased its focus on the Arctic (Bertelsen, Li & Gregersen, 2016). Being the most promising REE project in the Arctic (Riesgo García et al., 2017), the Kvanefjeld case is thus a most likely case of a coordinated Chinese effort to engage in a mining project. The article first studies how China’s interest in mining in Greenland has been perceived and expressed. It then moves on to study China’s interest in REE, before finally exploring how REE-priorities and Chinese geo-political foci are linked in the Kvanefjeld case.

The article is based on a document analysis of Chinese-language documents retrieved in the Chinese Academic Journals Database (CAJ), conversations with Chinese and Danish government and business consultants and representatives, and archival studies of potential Chinese investors.

China’s Interest in Mining in Greenland Greenlandic-Danish perceptions of China’s interest in REE from Greenland At a referendum held in 2008, Greenland voted for a new act of self-government. Greenland gained full autonomy over most policy areas. It is of particular interest for this article that Greenland gained autonomy over underground resources. However, income from selling licenses would be counted against annual transfers from Denmark to Greenland (currently around DKK 3 billion, or more than 25% of Greenland’s GDP). Denmark and Greenland maintained a common security policy making Denmark maintain control over the export of uranium and placing REE in a grey zone.

Following Greenland’s increased autonomy over natural resources, and an apparent Chinese interest in mineral deposits in Greenland, potential Chinese mining activities became the focus of an ongoing debate between Denmark and Greenland about Greenland’s prospects as an increasingly sovereign nation state. Denmark’s current minister of defense (then a leading opposition politician), Claus Hjort Frederiksen, warned that Greenland might become a Chinese appendix if Greenland were to rely on Chinese resource investments (Frederiksen, 2013).

Greenland’s then Prime Minister, Kuupik Kleist, on the other hand, argued that Chinese investors might not be much different from other investors; indeed, his experience from potential Asian investors was that they were more humble and had spent much more time on understanding Chinese Investment in Rare Earth Mining in Greenland

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Greenland than most potential Western investors. Western investors, he argued, were impaired by their “master mentality” (Weekendavisen, 2013). Along with the extraction of uranium, one of the key points in the discussion on mining was Greenland’s possible allowance of extraction of REE, a group of minerals categorized as strategically important by the US, the EU and China that frequently occur along with uranium. Most of the world’s REE are extracted in China. Following a decrease in demand, the majority of the major projects that at the time seemed promising now appear quite far away from attracting sufficient investments, leaving the REE deposit at Kvanefjeld along with the Citronen zinc project in Northeastern Greenland as the only major projects that might realistically attract investments (Têtu & Lasserre, 2017). The fear of members of the Danish central administration has been that Greenland would uncritically export strategically important minerals to China. This fear was expressed by Rear Admiral Niels Wang, among others, who said that China was thinking much more strategically about REE than Denmark and Greenland and urged for cooperation on mining within the Kingdom (Halskov & Nielsen, 2012).

While China’s intentions in Greenland were widely discussed in the public debate, the assessment of China’s intentions in Greenland remained largely speculative since actual Chinese activity in Greenland was limited. While the mere lack of actual activities would seem to indicate that Chinese investments in Greenland would not harm the country, fear of Chinese intentions continued to play a role in the relations between Denmark and Greenland. A former navy facility was thus taken off the market by the Danish Defence in late 2016, allegedly because the Chinese company General Nice Group had shown interest in buying it (Breum, 2016). In 2014, General Nice Group took over the remains of London Mining Greenland, which was planning to develop a very large iron mine at Isua.

In September 2016, it was announced that the Chinese company Shenghe Resource’s had agreed to buy 12.5% of the shares of the Australian-based Greenland Minerals and Energy (GME), which is seeking to develop a REE and uranium project at Kvanefjeld. According to the original Chinese document, “when the mining license to the Kvanefjeld project was obtained and technical optimization was finished” […] Shenghe Resources could “choose to acquire no more than 60% of the project stock based on commercial terms negotiated by the two parties” (Shenghe Resources, 2016, author’s translation). However, the legal assessment was that Shenghe Resources did not obtain this option without the permission of Greenland’s authorities (Naalakkersuisut, 2017). GME currently holds an exploration license at Kvanefjeld and is in the process of applying for a development license.

The strategic importance of Greenland This sub-section attempts to look beyond the Danish-Greenlandic debate and study China’s interest in Greenland from a Chinese perspective. China’s interests in the Arctic have been widely discussed for almost a decade now. So far, China does not have a publicly announced Arctic strategy, however. Focus in the study of China’s interests in the Arctic in general has been on the control over potential Arctic sea-routes, and on the way in which, through various forms of diplomacy, China is attempting to maintain and secure access to the Arctic, an area characterized by relatively open international access, but with the sovereignty of old great powers and close official or de facto US allies (Bertelsen & Gallucci, 2016). Few studies focus more intensively on China and Greenland (Mortensen, Su & Mouyal, 2016; Boersma & Foley, 2014; Sørensen, 2014;

Zeuthen

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Têtu & Lasserre, 2017). Most of these studies focus on resource politics and agree that China does have a state interest in Greenland, but that this interest has been overestimated.

The most comprehensive study of the interests of Chinese mining companies’ in Greenland was conducted by Têtu and Lasserre (2017) and provided a relatively complete survey of Chinese companies that at some point have expressed an interest in Greenland’s mineral resources. Their study convincingly shows that potential Chinese investors assess Greenland to be less attractive than other potential mining sites due to lack of infrastructure, strict regulations, and cultural barriers. However, their study includes neither Shenghe Resources nor the Chinese authorities, which might have directed the interests of the companies towards Greenland.

In this sub-section, I compare China’s interests in Greenland with those in other countries and territories.

Total

Laos

Iceland

Kazakhstan

(哈萨克) Canada

South East Asia

Vietnam

The Arctic

(北极)

Australia

Africa

Sudan

Norway

Denmark

Greenland All articles

786

19,173 14,150 6,180 44,289 60,375 9,397

22,235 30,652 68,730 12,203 2,822 5,523 3,570,978

182

1,576

2,873

Of which mentioning resources

2,048 1,066 4,589 6,211

1,071

4,143 6,621 2,779

393

907

199,231

Table 1. Numbers of articles published in 2016 mentioning selected countries and territories In order to obtain an overview of China’s relative interest in Greenland, I have counted articles mentioning selected countries and territories either in the Arctic and/or attracting large Chinese resource investments in the very comprehensive CAJ database, which contains purely scientific articles as well as reports presenting background knowledge for policy makers. I assume that the interest in Greenland was limited in 2004 and study the change in relative interest since that year.

Based on the proportion of articles mentioning Greenland, the interest in Greenland is declining compared to that applying to most other localities (see figure 1).

If we choose to only focus on articles mentioning mining（矿, a character appearing in several mining related words), oil or REE, however, we find that Greenland draws relatively more attention than most other countries over time. Greenland is then seen to be at the level of several of the Southeast Asian countries in which infrastructure and resource investments are prioritized through the One Belt One Road Policy introduced in 2013 (OBOR).1 In fact, only Kazakhstan, where the OBOR policy was first introduced, is increasing the level of attention at a speed which is clearly higher than that of Greenland, possibly because the mentioning of OBOR often includes Kazakhstan. Attention towards Iceland is at a high level, both when resources are mentioned and when they are not. Since Iceland is not rich in resources, it is probably the general attention towards Iceland and Iceland’s possible role for China’s access to the Arctic that also trigger the high level when resources are mentioned (fig. 2 and fig. 3).

Chinese Investment in Rare Earth Mining in Greenland

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Figure 1. Relative changes in numbers of mentionings of selected countries and territories since 2004 using Greenland as index

200 180 160 140 120 100

80 60 40 20 0

2004

2005

Greenland Sudan

The Arctic (北极) Canada Laos

2008

2010

Denmark Africa

Vietnam

Kazakhstan (哈萨克)

2012

Norway

2014

2016

Australia

South East Asia Iceland

Zeuthen

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The focus on Greenland increases when we turn to articles written by authors affiliated with the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) (authors affiliated to an institution including the characters 国土(guotu), which is a combination of characters exclusively used for the MLR or subordinate organizations). In this case, only relative changes since 2004 in mentionings of Quebec and Iceland are higher than those of Greenland. Since the Chinese minister of land and resources in 2012 was the first and so far only Chinese minister to visit Greenland, and since many of Greenland’s attempts to shape interest for mining in Greenland have taken place through the annual China Mining Conference, organized by the MLR, it is hardly surprising a higher concentration of interest in Greenland is found in the MLR. As Table 2 shows, total numbers are very limited, however, which signifies that small changes may have large implications, especially for Arctic localities.

Quebec

Alaska

Total

84

Laos

469

Iceland

91

Kazakhstan

73

(哈萨克)

(北极)

42

Canada

Africa

188 365

South East Asia

Sudan

15

Vietnam

Norway

66

The Arctic

Denmark

35

Australia

Greenland

20

14

32

19

48

7,850

Table 2. Mentionings of selected countries and territories in MLR articles in 2016.

Fig. 4. Authored by the MLR and mentioning selected Arctic or near-Arctic localities (2004 = index 100)

Fig 5. Authored by the MLR and mentioning selected mining countries 250

700 600

200

500 400

150

200

100

300 100

0

2004

2005

Greenland Norway Canada

Quebec

2008

2010

2012

Denmark

2014

2016

The Arctic (北极) Iceland Alaska

50 0

2004 2005 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 Greenland

Sudan

Vietnam

Kazakhstan (哈萨克)

Africa Laos

Australia

Articles mentioning specific countries and territories differ vastly, ranging from articles studying investment opportunities for mining in all countries over specific experiences with urban planning (an important task of the MLR) to geological studies of specific mining sites. I have made no attempt to single out articles on mining, since Bertelsen, Li and Gregersen (2016) argue that Chinese Investment in Rare Earth Mining in Greenland

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cooperation within one area may take place with the aim of co-operating in another area with a higher priority. Some of the articles mentioning Greenland study specific project opportunities or the investment climate of the country. Assessments of Greenland made by the same department vary from assessments that Greenland authorities would be so eager to generate investment that strict environmental regulations will not be implemented (Xu, 2013) to studies arguing that the very clear, strict and implemented regulations are the major asset of Greenland as a mining destination. (He, 2015). The MLR carries out thorough work in Greenland, yet the ministry does not appear to have a clear view on what the possible means of accessing Greenland might be.

Documents authored by the MLR appear to be written with geologists and investors in China’s mining sector as their main audience. Chinese documents on foreign policy interests in the Arctic and Greenland are also available. Their continuous call for a coordinated Chinese-Arctic strategy appears to reconfirm the lack of coordination on the part of China (Bai, 2013). The mere fact that no major Chinese investments have yet been made also appears to indicate that China’s interest in Greenland is limited. As the interest of the MLR discussed above shows, the lack of a coordinated state focus does not necessarily imply, however, that there is no state interest in mining in Greenland. The Chinese Ambassador to Denmark 2013-2017, Liu Biwei, worked for CHALCO (Aluminum Corporation of China Limited), one of the owners of Shenghe Resources, prior to his posting to Denmark. My survey of CV’s from Chinese ambassadors in 20 mining countries shows that all ambassadors (including the Ambassador to Denmark) have their primary backgrounds in the ministry of foreign affairs, including posts in multilateral organizations. Liu Biwei was the only ambassador who had a posting outside of the MFA for a short period of time before his posting as ambassador. However, when CHALCO visited Denmark in 2015, the Chinese Embassy only reported on visits to Danish organizations that were not related to Greenland (Chinese Embassy to Denmark, 2015).

REE in International and Chinese Politics I now proceed to study how the structure of the REE sector in China affects Chinese investment in REE from overseas.

China and REE REE are a series of minerals always occurring together, albeit in varying proportions, which have become important following recent technological development. Techniques for separating REE have been refined within recent decades, and the minerals are important for magnets and other essential elements applied in the electronic, military, and automotive industries. In other words, REE have become important in the period coinciding with the growth in innovative industries in China. Since a considerable share of the most readily accessible REE-deposits were found on Chinese territory, and China, at the same time, mastered the technologically demanding separation process and was willing to pay the environmental consequences caused by the very polluting extraction and separation processes, it is no surprise that China became a leading producer of REE, in 2015 producing as much as 90% of the world’s supply (Rao, 2016: 2191).

China’s monopoly on REE-processing and fear that China would use its monopoly as leverage led to Australia banning the planned acquisition in 2009 of the Australian company, Lynas, which controls one of the few REE processing plants outside of China, by China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Co (CNMC) (Keenan, 2011). In 2010, China attempted to use its monopoly on REE Zeuthen

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supplies by banning the export of REE badly needed in Japan’s automotive industry as a method of punishing Japan in a conflict over a detained Chinese fishing boat at islands claimed by both countries (Ting & Seaman, 2013). The 2010 ban illustrated, however, that China’s REE-industry was so fragmented that controlling exports turned out to be difficult. Minor REE producers controlled by private investors or local state authorities soon found channels to smuggle processed REE out of China, and exported these to Japan. The Chinese export quota system intended to control exports of REE did not work, and when several countries, including the US and Japan, won a case against China’s alleged monopoly on REE in the WTO in 2014 (Economic Information Daily, 2016; WTO, 2014), China’s export quota system had to be abolished.

The latter accelerated a reform of the entire Chinese REE sector, which had already been introduced some years earlier. At that point, as was the case for the mining sector in China in general, the REE sector was dominated by enterprises controlled to various extents by different entities within the state system. In the process of reforming the REE-sector, China’s State Council decided, however, to support a few selected large enterprises which should dominate the sector.

These six large groups of enterprises which included both enterprises controlled by the central government and provincial governments were encouraged to acquire smaller producers and were given top priority when quotas for production (not export) of REE were assigned (Rao, 2016). In addition, environmental control over the production of REE would be tightened. These reforms were all linked to the increased control over the production of REE and, by implication, also to the control over the export of REE, since the six big enterprises would also be subject to more direct state control than the smaller enterprises which had previously played a large role in the sector (Economic Information Daily, 2016). The reforms had relatively little to do with the extraction of REE overseas, however, unless the REE extracted overseas were to be separated in China.

REE from overseas English language literature discussing REE mining outside China focuses on how China dominates the REE sector in general, but does not discuss how China might invest in REE mined overseas (Riesgo García et al., 2017). When Chinese companies invest overseas, their methods of gaining access to the extraction of REE deposits are different from those applied within China, since production quotas only apply to REE processed in China. The chairman of Shenghe Resources explained to me that access to credit depended on, among other things, the strategic importance of the region in which the enterprise is planning to invest. In countries regarded as strategically interesting, such as OBOR countries, the chances of getting access to credit from Chinese state banks were higher (He, 2017).

In the Kvanefjeld case, fear of Chinese dominance over REE has led to fear that China would try to buy itself into controlling new projects outside of China in order to prevent these from diminishing Chinese control of REE (Danish Defence Intelligence Service, 2014; Halskov & Nielsen, 2012). I have not found any documentation of any such intentions in Chinese language literature. While certain investment consultants asses that China might become a net importer of some of the REE minerals within a decade (Mining.com, 2017), the main issue still appears to be over-production of REE (Economic Information Daily, 2016). The production quotas, the concentration of ownership of enterprises within the sector, and tighter control of the production Chinese Investment in Rare Earth Mining in Greenland

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process all contributed to solving some of these issues. However, the import of REE from overseas might counter some of these initiatives.

Investors Navigating between Strategies, Quotas and Capital Plans for exploration at the Kvanefjeld site date back to 1944 when the first explorations for a uranium mine were initiated (Knudsen & Nielsen, 2016). These plans were revitalized when GME bought an exploration license to study the prospects for developing an REE and uranium mine in 2011. There were several obstacles to the project: notably the fact that the Greenlandic government was against any extraction of uranium, an inevitable by-product of the REE at Kvanefjeld, and lack of finances. After a fierce debate in Greenland resulting in permission by Greenland’s government to exploit uranium and Denmark’s subsequent implementation of an export system within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regime, the first obstacle was solved. As of writing (September 2017), GME’s application to develop the mine is being evaluated by the Greenlandic authorities. Yet the financial situation of the project still appears unclear, and considerable criticism is being levelled over the environmental consequences of building the mine close to one of Greenland’s few towns (van Leeuwen, 2017).

State Council

CNMC

NFC

Owner / Controlling i ti Influencing organization

SASAC

Chalco

Assigns REE production quota

Owns 2%

MLR CGS

Institute of Multipurpose Utilization of Mineral

Owns non-controlling share, assigns chairman, founder

Shenghe Resources

Controlled

Influenced

Figure 6. Ownership/line of command of Chinese enterprises interested in Kvanefjeld. SASAC: State Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. CGS: China Geological Survey (NFC 2017; He 2017)

Shenghe Resources’ buy-in came after a long time of cooperation between the state-owned ‘China Non-Ferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd.’ (NFC, a subsidiary of CNMC) and GME, which GME had hoped would result in the company eventually facilitating the financing of the Kvanefjeld project (Greenland Minerals and Energy, 2015). See figure 6 above.

In 2014 and 2015, GME and NFC signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) which focused on technical cooperation on developing the mine. The NFC made a number of specifications,

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however, and in press releases to the Australian stock exchange, GME expressed that part of the plan was for the large state-owned enterprise to eventually facilitate the financing for the project (Greenland Minerals and Energy, 2015). NFC is a state-owned enterprise (SOE) founded by CNMC through a decree from the State Council in 1983 with the purpose of setting up projects overseas. This causes it to be much more experienced with overseas involvement than most other Chinese mining companies. Being closer to the central state implies a higher potential for direct state control, but also a higher degree of politically acceptable behaviour. Centrally owned SOEs usually have better working conditions than most other companies within the same sector (Chen & Chan, 2010). NFC remains engaged in the Citronen project.

Despite hopes that NFC would invest in the mine, the company made no such investments, and for unclear reasons at the time. At the same time, the British-owned company London Mining’s plans of opening a very large iron mine at Isua were crushed by London Mining’s bankruptcy.

Though the remains of London Mining Greenland were bought by the privately owned Chinese mining company, General Nice, the new owner did not appear to have any realistic plans for developing the Isua project within the near future. In spite of being privately owned, General Nice owns several projects overseas together with state owned enterprises. In the Chinese mining sector, the acquisition of London Mining was regarded as an example of a new trend by which privately owned enterprises would be first movers in buying mines overseas (Rao et al., 2015).

This trend had started because since his accession to power in 2012/13 as part of ongoing SOEreforms, Xi Jinping had tightened regulations on SOEs investments overseas. A spokesperson from China’s mining association commented, however, that a private company like General Nice did not have the experience required to buy a mine in the challenging Arctic environment (Du, 2015).

When Shenghe Resources agreed to buy 12.5% of GME’s stock in September 2016, GME presented the company as privately owned. When I visited the company in early 2017, I had a chance to interview the company’s chairman. The interview took place in the headquarters of the sub-division of China Geological Survey (CGS), which had founded the company, and the chairman of the company was also the director of the sub-division in which he had worked as a civil servant for 35 years. He explained that both the CGS subdivision and the company were mainly interested in technically optimizing the Kvanefjeld project so as to make it more profitable.

The company had been introduced to the Kvanefjeld project through GME’s intensive marketing for finding potential investors. No staff from the CGS sub-division or from the company had been to Greenland. Shenghe Resources believed that they would be able to develop a solution that was technically superior to the one GME was currently applying for. Coinciding with the acquisition of a share in GME, Shenghe Resources had also invested in an REE separation plant project in Vietnam which had already been under development and would be one of the few separation facilities outside of China. The project was not yet fully developed, and more investors would be needed to realize the Vietnamese project. The director regarded the investment in Greenland as an initial phase, and did not consider it a large commitment. In both cases, it was the expectation of the director that funding would be available through state banks, which would be positive towards the projects because they were located in an OBOR country (Vietnam) and in the Arctic (Greenland), respectively. However, funding would also depend on the feasibility of the plans the company was about to develop.

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It was unclear how the company would deal with production quotas. The director explained how the company had been successful in convincing one of the six big companies with access to production quotas, CHALCO, to buy 2% of its stock. This meant, the director believed, that the company would have access to production quotas. While Shenghe Resources enjoyed this privilege, only 19.9% of the company was owned by the sub-division of CGS, which meant that it was still defined as privately owned despite the fact that CHALCO and several other state-owned enterprises also owned shares in the company. According to the director, this meant that unlike NFC, Shenghe would not need the approval of the state council to invest in Greenland. The director explained that despite the bad weather in Greenland, developing a mining project there might in many ways be easier than in China, where REE were currently tightly governed, not least as regards environmental demands.

It did not appear that Greenland was a high priority for Shenghe Resources, but an assessment that Greenland might be a priority to the bodies that might finance the project was included in their considerations. However, the entire idea of investing in REE overseas might be a way to apply the expertise of the CGS sub-division somewhere, considering the tightened domestic control. By buying a processing plant in Vietnam, Shenghe Resources might be able to produce REE even without a quota.

Conclusion Aspirations for remaining part of China’s resource strategy by becoming part of Chinese geographic priorities appear to have played an important role for Shenghe Resources’ engagement in Greenland. However, there does not appear to be any master plan; indeed the policies of limiting the production of REE and encouraging investment in the Arctic appear contradicting. Had the strategic priority of REE from Greenland been higher, attracting investors with more direct links to the central state, such as NFC, would have been more likely. This would, for better or worse, make investment more likely. With a well-connected investor, both political and commercial dialogue would be possible. This could be an advantage in the negotiating processes between Greenland and the investors on the social and environmental impact of the project. With the current investor, who is less directly connected to Beijing, this dialogue may be more challenging.

The thoughts expressed by the chairman of Shenghe Resources that Greenland has less challenging environmental conditions than China suggest that more attention needs to be paid by Greenlandic authorities to an investor like Shenghe than would have been necessary if NFC had remained a part of the Kvanefjeld project.

Notes 1. The Chinese government has recently announced that it prefers the translation “Belt and Road Initiative”. Since “One Belt, one road” is a closer translation of the unchanged Chinese concept “一带一路”, and the abbreviation OBOR is already frequently used in the English literature, I choose to refer to the policy as OBOR.

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Bertelsen, Rasmus Gjedssø, & Vincent Gallucci. 2016. “The Return of China, Post-Cold War Russia, and the Arctic: Changes on Land and at Sea.” Marine Policy 72: 240-45. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2016.04.034.

Bertelsen, Rasmus Gjedssø, Xing Li, & Mette Højris Gregersen. 2016. “Chinese Arctic Science Diplomacy: An Instrument for Achieving the Chinese Dream?” in Elena Conde and Sara Iglesias Sánchez(eds.): Global Challenges in the Arctic Region: Sovereignty, Environment and Geopolitical Balance.

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Boersma, Tim, & Kevin Foley. 2014. “The Greenland Gold Rush: Promise and Pitfalls of Greenland’s Energy and Mineral Resources.” Brookings Institute, Washington D.C. Breum, Martin. 2016. “Løkke Stopper Kinesisk Opkøb I Grønland.” Information, December 19.

Chen, Meei-Shia, and Anita Chan. 2010. “Occupational Health and Safety in China: The Case of State-Managed Enterprises.” International Journal of Health Services 40(1): 43-60. doi:10.2190/HS.40.1.c.

Chinese Embassy to Denmark. 2015. “驻丹麦大使刘碧伟陪同中铝公司代表团访问哥本哈 根投促局和马士基集团总部.” [“Ambassador to Denmark, Liu Biwei, accompanies CHALCO delegation during visits to Copenhagen Capacity and Maersk”]. Retrieved from, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/cedk/chn/zdjl/t1319688.htm. [accessed September 7, 2017].

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Copenhagen. Retrieved from, https://feddis.dk/SiteCollectionDocuments/FE/EfterretningsmaessigeRisikovurderinger/Risikovurdering 2014_EnglishVersion.pdf. [accessed September 7, 2017] Downs, Erica. 2011. “Inside China, Inc: China Development Bank’s Cross-Border Energy Deals.” 3. John L. Thornton China Center Monograph Series. Washington D.C.: Brookings.

Du, Juan. 2015. “General Nice Group to Take over Greenland Mine.” China Daily Europe, January 13.

Economic Information Daily. 2016. “稀土‘十三五’规划发布 六集团 2020 年完成全行业整合 -产业·期货-新闻-上海证券报·中国证券网 [REE 13th Five Year Plan Announces Full Control of Sector by Six Enterprises by 2020].” 经济参考报, October 19. http://news.cnstock.com/industry/sid_rdjj/201610/3924402.htm.

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Frederiksen, Claus Hjort. 2013. “Kommentar: Grønland Kan Ende Som et Kinesisk Vedhæng.”

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Greenland Minerals & Energy. 2015. “Australian Public Company GGG Signed MOU with NFC to Focus on the Development of the Kvanefjeld Project in Greenland.” April 7. Retrieved from, http://www.ggg.gl/docs/ASX-announcements/australian-public-company-GGG-SignedMOU-With-NFC-to-Focus-on-the-Development-of-the-Kvanefjeld-Project-in-Greenland.pdf. [accessed September 7, 2017].

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Halskov, Lars, & Hans Davidsen Nielsen. 2012. “Kina vil tjene milliarder på råstoffer i Grønlands Undergrund [China to Earn Billions on Raw Material from Greenland’s Underground].” Politiken, June 12. http://politiken.dk/udland/ECE1653114/kina-vil-tjenemilliarder-paa-raastoffer-i-groenlands-undergrund/. [accessed April 2, 2017] He, Jinxiang [何金祥] (2015) 近 5 年来格陵兰矿业发展的基本情况 [Basic Conditions of Mining Development in Greenland the last five years], in:国土资源情报 [Land and Resources Information], no. 11, pp. 35-40.

He, Zesong. 2017. Author’s interview with Mr. He Zesong, Director of Institute of Multipurpose Utilization of Mineral Resources, China Geological Survey and Chairman of Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Ltd. Chengdu. February 13.

Jakobson, Linda. 2009. “China’s Diplomacy toward Africa: Drivers and Constraints.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 9(3): 403–33. doi:10.1093/irap/lcp008.

Keenan, Rebecca. 2011. “Australia Blocked Rare Earth Deal on Supply Concerns.” Bloomberg News, February 15.

Knudsen, Henrik, & Henry Nielsen. 2016. Uranbjerget: om forsøgene på at finde og udnytte Grønlands uran fra 1944 til i dag. [The Uranium Mountain: Exploring uranium in Greenland since 1944] Copenhagen: Vandkunsten.

Leeuwen, Jan Willem Storm van. 2017. “Comments on: Kvanefjeld Project. Environmental Impact Assessment,.” Ceedata, Chaam, The Netherlands.

Looney, Robert E. 2012. Handbook of Oil Politics / Editor, Robert E. Looney. Routledge International Handbooks. London: Routledge.

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Mertha, Andrew. 2009. “‘Fragmented Authoritarianism 2.o’: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process.” The China Quarterly, no. 200 (December): 995-1012.

Mining.com. 2017. “China to become net importer of some rare earths.” January 2. Retrieved from, http://www.mining.com/china-become-net-importer-rare-earths/. [accessed June 11, 2017] Mortensen, Bent Ole Gram, Jingjing Su, & Lone Wandahl Mouyal. 2016. “Chinese Investment in Greenland.” Advances in Polar Science, September, 192–99. doi:10.13679/ j.advps.2016.3.00192.

Naalakkersuisut. 2017. “Stadig Bestemmende Indflydelse i Kuannersuit Projektet Naalakkersuisut.” [[Greenland] ”maintains decisive influence in Kvanefjeld project”] June 13.

Retrieved from, http://naalakkersuisut.gl/da/Naalakkersuisut/Nyheder/2017/06/130617Stadig-bestemmende-indflydelse-i-Kuannersuit-projektet [accessed June 14, 2017] NFC. 2017. “十大股东_中色股份.” [“NFC: The ten largest shareholders”]. Retrieved from, http://www.nfc.com.cn/templates/T_new_list/index.aspx?nodeid=24. Accessed [August 28, 2017] Rao, Zhenbin, Cai Sijing, Peng Chongmin, & Deng Yongshan. 2015. “中国矿业对外投资的动 因及发展趋势 /THE MOTIVATION AND DEVELOPMENT TREND OF CHINA’S MINING FOREIGN INVESTMENT.” 中国钼业/China Molybdenum Industry, No. 06: 1–6. [in Chinese with abstract in English] Rao, Zhenbin. 2016. “Consolidating Policies on Chinese Rare Earth Resources.” Mineral Economics 29(1): 23–28. doi:10.1007/s13563-016-0081-8.

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Riesgo García, María Victoria, Alicja Krzemień, Miguel Ángel Manzanedo del Campo, Mario Menéndez Álvarez, & Malcolm Richard Gent. 2017. “Rare Earth Elements Mining Investment: It is not all about China.” Resources Policy 53: 66-76. doi:10.1016/j.resourpol.2017.05.004.

Shenghe Resources. 2016. 盛和资源控股股份有限公司 关于控股子公司乐山盛和拟认购格 陵兰矿物能源有限公司 股权的公告. [Shenghe Resources Holding Co., Ltd. Announcement on the equity interest of the subsidiary Leshan Shenghe in the proposed purchase of Greenland Mineral Energy Co., Ltd.]. Shenghe Resources Public Announcement no. 2016-063 Sørensen, Camilla T. N. 2014. ”Changing geo-political realities in the Arctic region: Possibilities and challenges for relations between Denmark and China.” In Newsletter for Center for Polar and Oceanic Studies, 3(2), 2-7.

Têtu, Pierre-Louis, & Frédéric Lasserre. 2017. “Chinese Investment in Greenland’s Mining Industry: Toward a New Framework for Foreign Direct Investment.” The Extractive Industries and Society, June. doi:10.1016/j.exis.2017.05.008.

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Weekendavisen. 2013. “Er kinesere værre end andre kapitalister?” [“Are Chinese really any worse than other capitalists?”] January 18.

Chinese Investment in Rare Earth Mining in Greenland

The Changing Arctic & the Development of Hokkaido Juha Saunavaara

While changes in the Arctic evoke many concerns, they also serve to raise hopes and inspire plans that are being incorporated into the policies of nations far from the shores of the Arctic Ocean. This study considers Hokkaido as an example of a region in which development has been linked to new Arctic possibilities by both public and private actors. The main issues under discussion are the Northern Sea Route and the submarine communications cables that pass through Arctic waters. Proponents of the former have concentrated on the concept of ‘geographical advantage,’ suggesting that it is possible for Hokkaido to become the East Asian hub of the Northern Sea Route due to its favourable geographical location. The latter issue has received less attention from the public and various economic interest groups, though actors involved in the data center and cloud network industries have demonstrated particular interest in submarine cables. The debate surrounding potential new opportunities has also contributed to the (re-)emergence of demands for tighter direct connections between Hokkaido and other northern regions. This study also demonstrates the significance of having a small number of local opinion leaders, maintaining close ties between actors representing both the public and private sectors and considering existing demands for greater concreteness in terms of plans. In other words, utilizing the vocabulary of knowledge phase literature, it can be concluded that calls to advance from the exploration and examination phase to the exploitation phase have been made in Hokkaido.

Introduction The changes that are occurring in the Arctic evoke global concerns and fears. At the same time, they also serve to raise hopes and inspire plans that are being incorporated into the policies of nations far from the shores of the Arctic Ocean. This study considers Hokkaido as an example of a region wherein development has been linked to new Arctic possibilities by both public and private actors. While the search for new solutions is based on a wide approach whereby possessing a northerly location is viewed as an advantage rather than as an obstacle to development, the main issues under discussion have been the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and the submarine communications cables that pass through Arctic waters. Advocates of the former have concentrated on the concept of ‘geographical advantage’, suggesting that it is possible for Hokkaido to become the East Asian hub of the NSR due to its beneficial geographical location.

The latter issue has received less attention from the public and from various economic interest groups. However, academic circles and private enterprises involved in data centre and cloud network businesses have drawn attention to the possible connections between Arctic cable connections and the revitalisation of Hokkaido’s economy, which they claim could be achieved

Juha Saunavaara is an Assistant Professor at the Hokkaido University Arctic Research Center.

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through the development of the local ICT industry. The debate surrounding these new opportunities has also contributed to the (re-)emergence of demands for tighter direct connections between Hokkaido and other northern regions.

When these initiatives are researched, particular attention is typically paid to three issues: the existing institutional setting and the prevailing means of gathering and disseminating policyrelevant information concerning the Arctic; the role of and cooperation amongst Hokkaido-based public and private actors in the promotion of different initiatives; and the interaction between regional, national and international actors who take part in or contribute to various decisionmaking processes. To place this study in the context of a conceptual framework, a reference can be made to territorial knowledge dynamics. In other words, the geographical patterns of knowledge exchange and the interactions between actors such as firms, research and education facilities, economic interest groups and local and regional authorities are emphasised (Halkier & Cooke, 2010: 20). It is assumed that aside from elaborating on the Arctic involvement of Japan, this case study will also be valuable to researchers and policy-makers who are interested in the regional development of northern and Arctic areas.

This article is based on an analysis of published policy papers, newspapers and journal articles.

Additionally, the author has conducted several personal interviews and made observations while participating in various events within and outside Hokkaido. Finally, the author has recognised his current involvement in the processes he is researching. The position of the author has changed over the course of completing this project. At the beginning, he was an outsider living and working thousands of kilometres away from Hokkaido. However, the author gained employment at the Hokkaido University Arctic Research Center in January 2017, and is now an actively participating observer who can initiate or at least contribute to events and discussions taking place in Hokkaido.

Hokkaido-based Interest In and Initiatives Concerning the Arctic Despite its geographical distance from the region, Japan has been interested and involved in the Arctic for many years. Japan was one of the contracting parties whose representatives signed the Svalbard Treaty in 1920, and the origins of Japan’s Arctic research efforts date back to the late 1950s. The 1990s witnessed a great diversification of activities due to increased international cooperation. The National Institute for Polar Research (NIPR), founded in 1973, established a permanent research station in Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard in 1991; that same year, Japan joined the cause of the International Arctic Science Committee. This was soon followed by the introduction of the International Northern Sea Route Programme (INSROP), which was initiated by Norway, Japan and Russia. An international effort to study the potential utilisation of the NSR (divided into Phase 1, which ran from 1993–1995, and Phase 2, which covered 1997–1999) was succeeded by the Japan Northern Sea Route Programme (JANSROP), which reflected the needs of the shipping industry and analysed the feasibility of NSR usage. The two-phase project continued until 2005 and placed particular focus on the eastern part of the NSR. As a result, the Japanese shipping industry concluded that the uncertainties surrounding the NSR negated its feasibility (Tonami & Watters, 2012: 93-96; Ohnishi, 2016: 172-175).

When the research conducted by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and the participation of the Japan Oil, Gas and Metal National Corporation (JOGMEC) in the Kalaallit Nunaat Marine Seismic Project, which ran from 1990 to 1996, are The Changing Arctic & the Development of Hokkaido

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considered along with the above-mentioned activities, it can be argued that Japan was very much present in the Arctic community even before it submitted its application to be granted observer status by the Arctic Council in July of 2009. Before that observer status was awarded in May of 2013, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) established the Arctic Task Force and created the position of Ambassador in charge of Arctic Affairs. Meanwhile, Japanese interest in the NSR was revived as commercial activities emerged and developed. Additionally, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) established a special committee to investigate the usability of the NSR in August of 2012 and organised the Public-Private Coordination Meeting to disseminate knowledge about the economic possibilities associated with the Arctic in May of 2014. Finally, in October of 2015, Japan released its first Arctic Policy; this release had been preceded by the Basic Plan on Ocean Policy in April of 2013, which also focused on the Arctic Ocean (Tonami & Watters, 2012: 95-97; Ohnishi, 2016: 173-178).

Alongside improvements in national development, Hokkaido emerged as the region with the greatest level of interest in the Arctic. This Hokkaido-based interest, however, has been strongly associated with discussions regarding the future of the NSR. According to Professor Shūji Koiso, former Hokkaido Development Agency official and adviser of the Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development, the idea that Hokkaido could play a special role in economic activities connected with the NSR was first discussed within the Hokkaido Development Agency in 1984 (Koiso, personal communication, August 12, 2015). However, this issue did not become a focus of political agendas and public debates until the early 2010s. Although the 7th Hokkaido Comprehensive Development Plan (MLIT, 2008) did not specifically refer to the NSR but rather explained Hokkaido’s advantageous position vis-à-vis shipping routes between North America and East Asia, the Hokkaido Prefectural Government, the Hokkaido Development Bureau and the city of Tomakomai, which hosts one of Hokkaido’s major ports, were prompted to study the possibilities surrounding potential new transportation routes in 2012 (Inano et al., 2012; Hokkaido Shimbun, 2013; Kawai, 2014). Notably, all of these actors have continued their studies to this day.

Meanwhile, some members of the Hokkaido Assembly have demonstrated their interest in this topic by posing questions regarding Hokkaido’s approach to the NSR to the Governor during assembly meetings (Kasai, 2015; Ikemoto, 2016; Kasai, 2016). The current (8th) Hokkaido Comprehensive Development Plan (MLIT, 2016) also recognises Hokkaido’s potential to become the East Asian hub for the NSR. It should be pointed out, however, that aside from Hokkaido, the prefecture of Aomori (located at the northern edge of the Honshu Island) has expressed similar hopes and plans in relation to the NSR. Since 2015, the role of the Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development (Hokkaidō Keizai Dōyūkai)—a business lobby that issues policy recommendations—has become highly significant.

The most obvious sign of the intensification of NSR-related activities was the March 2015 establishment of a working group tasked with studying this issue. This working group gathered information and organised four seminars that approached the issue of the NSR from different angles before publishing a mid-term report in August of 2016. This document can be viewed as a small step away from simply re-summarising often-mentioned possibilities (i.e., that Tomakomai harbour, being a modern harbour that is supported by a large industrial hinterland and that maintains favourable land and air transportation connections closest to the Bering Strait, could became a hub for container shipping wherein cargo is transferred from ice-classed vessels to regular container ships; that Hokkaido could be developed as a support base and service provider Saunavaara

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for NSR traffic; and so on) and towards an attempt to describe concrete activities that are necessary to the realisation of various observed possibilities (Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development, 2016). While the increasing demand for LNG in Hokkaido has spurred similar interest in Arctic LNG, local plans vis-à-vis the NSR are tightly linked to the possible development of container shipping practices using potential new routes. Importantly, the relatively limited flows of international bulk cargo to Hokkaido originate, at least at the moment, from areas that cannot utilise the NSR (Otsuka, personal communication, July 20, 2016).

In addition to introducing the possibilities of the NSR, the current Hokkaido Comprehensive Development Plan (MLIT, 2016) addresses the fact that data centres are well-suited to Hokkaido’s relatively cold climate. Additionally, the Hokkaido Prefecture’s policy paper concerning the NSR, which was compiled by the Office of Logistics and Ports and published in February of 2016, also briefly mentions the submarine communications cables that could be laid in Arctic waters (Hokkaido Government, 2016: 26). The origins of these sorts of official signs of recognition can be traced back to 2010, when the Cloud Networks Infrastructure Workshop (Gurōbaru— Kuraudonettowaakusu Kenkyūkai), chaired by Professor Yamamoto Tsuyoshi from Hokkaido University and consisting of representatives from various ICT companies, was established. Four years later, this group proposed the laying of a new submarine communications cable to connect Hokkaido and the main cities of Honshu. This new cable was to be laid in the Japan Sea rather than on the Pacific Ocean side of the main island, where all other existing cable network systems were concentrated. The landing site of these cables is near to the Tokyo metropolitan area, where the majority of Japan’s data centres and servers are located despite Hokkaido’s advantageous conditions (e.g., its colder climate, smaller risk of earthquakes and tsunamis, greater availability of land at reasonable prices, and so on). While rises in the price of electricity following the shutdown of the Tomari nuclear power plant have obviously affected the attractiveness of Hokkaido as a possible location for such a project, the high price of electricity is a feature that is typical of all of Japan (Cloud Networks Infrastructure Workshop, 2014; Kaihatsu kōhō, 2014; Yamamoto, personal communication, January 27, 2017).

While the Hokkaido-based research group was conducting its research, the April 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami revealed the vulnerability of existing networks; it was then that a new Arctic dimension appeared. A Canadian company called Arctic Fibre approached actors in Hokkaido and presented the idea of utilising Japan’s northernmost island as a landing site for a submarine communications cable that would connect Japan with the new cable system that was to be constructed in Alaska. Arctic Fibre’s grand plan was to build a nearly 16,000km long submarine fibre optic cable connection between Asia and Europe that would route through the Northwest Passage (Cloud Networks Infrastructure Workshop, 2014; Yamamoto, personal communication, January 27, 2017). When the project was funded in 2015, Quintillion Subsea Holdings, based out of Anchorage, Alaska, acquired Arctic Fibre’s assets and became the company that would build and operate the system. The new cable system in Alaska has now been completed, though decisions concerning the so-called Phase 2 project (the connection between Alaska and East Asia) have yet to be confirmed. While the illustration on Quintillion’s home page designates Tokyo as the location of the Japanese end of the cable, the question concerning the planned landing site in Japan is, according to a company representative, currently under consideration (Woolston, personal communication, March 9, 2017).

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The establishment of the interdisciplinary Hokkaido University Arctic Research Center (HU ARC) in 2015 can also be emphasised as a factor that has stimulated discussion in Hokkaido concerning the Arctic. The establishment of HU ARC was directly connected to the release of the Arctic Policy, which emphasised Japan’s aspiration to contribute in Arctic research and scientific cooperation. Aside from continuing Japan’s long tradition of supporting the natural sciences visà-vis the Arctic, the new institution also emphasises the social sciences and supports a research group that concentrates on questions concerning the NSR. In cooperation with the two other pillars of Japan’s Arctic Policy, NIPR and JAMSTEC, the HU ARC is in charge of the national flagship project called the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability (ArCS). The same actors play leading roles also in the Japan Arctic Research Network Center (J-ARC Net), which organises open seminars that promote industry-academia-government collaboration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the NSR was the theme of the first events held in Sapporo and Tokyo.

Opinion Leaders and Cooperation Between the Hokkaido-based Public and Private Actors in the Promotion of Different Initiatives The main institutional actors involved in discussions concerning Hokkaido’s Arctic possibilities can be easily recognised. However, to better understand the characteristics of the people and organisations involved, and to fully comprehend the entanglement of various actors, the content of the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper – the most visible Hokkaido-based media outlet – was analysed. Based on an observation that both the NSR and potential Arctic submarine cables emerged as topics of interest over the past decade, the content of this newspaper (from 2010 onwards) was studied.1 Based on a research hypothesis that relied upon the author’s personal observations, it was expected that a small number of individuals would be repeatedly featured in articles that connected themes relating to the NSR and submarine cables to the regional development of Hokkaido. The characteristics and backgrounds of these individuals were then analysed in light of the concept of the ‘opinion leader’. In this study, the understanding of opinion leaders borrows, for example, from the ideas of Burt (1999). Thus, such figures are defined as opinion brokers who carry information across the social boundaries that exist between groups. In other words, they are not necessarily group leaders with the authority to make final decisions, but are instead brokers between groups or actors at the edge rather than at the top.

Although this analysis was based only on a calculation of the quantity of articles published in Hokkaido Shimbun and the number of references made to individuals who were quoted or somehow recognised as authorities or knowledgeable persons vis-à-vis the NSR or Arctic submarine cables, clear changes were visible. Only a few articles linked the NSR to Hokkaido’s development in 2011 and 2012, but this number rapidly rose to 17 in 2013 and 2014. The frequency of articles decreased slightly in the following years, though the first half of 2017 witnessed another boom in NSR-related articles. The significant increase in the number of articles published in 2013 can be partly explained by the fact that a series of articles focusing on the Tomakomai harbour were published in celebration of its 50th anniversary year. While a vast majority of the early articles did not cite or refer to any specialist, the opinions of Kashiba Michinori, a representative of the Tomakomai Port Authority, and Professor Yamada Yoshihiko of Tokai University were occasionally mentioned in 2013 and 2014.

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However, a clear change associated with the establishment of the NSR Working Group of the Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development occurred in 2015. Henceforth, the published articles mainly concentrated on the activities of the working group and of Yokouchi Ryūzō, the head of the Committee, who strongly advocated the idea that a connection exists between the NSR and the development of Hokkaido during public discussions of this topic. Furthermore, Otsuka Natsuhiko, first as a specialist from a consultant company and later as a professor at HU ARC, was regularly mentioned in the pages of the Hokkaido Shimbun throughout the observation period.

Professor Otsuka embodies the definition of an opinion leader as a person who has belonged to and who has connected the various spheres of private business, public administration and academia. While Chairman Yokouchi is clearly a leader within his organisation who investigates the opinions of experts and advisers, he is also an actor who crosses boundaries and transmits the wishes of economic actors to representatives of the public sphere. The working group itself is certainly another example of a party that supports the spread of information and ideas between different actors. In addition to putting pressure on and motivating local and regional policy-makers to act, the working group also consists of advisors who represent the Hokkaido Prefectural Government and the Hokkaido Development Agency (Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development, 2016). The recent J-ARC Net NSR symposiums that were organised by the staff of HU ARC can also be considered forums that facilitate the crossing of boundaries. In the academic setting of these symposiums, actors representing the public and private spheres are brought together. In addition to these public activities, interpersonal relationships and unofficial cooperation clearly plays a key role in these discussions. Ultimately, opinion leaders have also affected the Hokkaido-centred discussion through their significant yet often unseen contributions to reports and policy papers published by various organisations.

Actors who seek to promote the development of Hokkaido’s connectivity and data centres via the introduction of new submarine cable projects have been able to ensure that their voices are heard; for example, the Hokkaido Comprehensive Development Plan was drafted in such an effort (Yamamoto, personal communication, January 27, 2017). However, the newspaper analysis revealed a lack of public awareness and discussion concerning this topic. Notably, only one article about the submarine communications cable and Hokkaido development was published by Hokkaido Shimbun. Furthermore, a quick search of the databases of major national newspapers did not uncover any articles referring to this subject. The only article to do so was published on May 27, 2014, one day after Professor Yamamoto submitted a plan to develop Hokkaido as a base of international communication infrastructure to the Hokkaido Governor. This relatively short article summarised the research group’s main points, though it did not pay specific attention to the Arctic cable initiative (Hokkaido Shimbun, 2014).

In recent years, Hokkaido-based discussion concerning Arctic submarine communications cable projects and their potential connection to Hokkaido’s development has been rare. While the Cloud Networks Infrastructure Workshop prepared plans that could be realised, provided that the necessary funding could be secured, the project to lay a new cable between Hokkaido and Honshu has been placed on the back burner. At the same time, a representative of the Hokkaido Prefectural Government confirmed that he had heard about a Finland-based plan to lay a submarine communications cable between East Asia and northern Europe through the Northeast Passage The Changing Arctic & the Development of Hokkaido

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(NEP) when he visited Finland in 2016 as a part of a larger delegation. However, neither the representative nor his colleagues were aware of any ongoing discussions regarding submarine communications cables within the Hokkaido Government (Office of Logistics and Ports, personal communication, April 18, 2017). However, it may be possible to interpret the many presentations that have discussed Arctic cable initiatives at seminars organised in Sapporo and Tokyo during the first half of 2017 as signs of re-emerging interest in this issue. These speeches were given by the author or by Professor Yamamoto, who was also an invited speaker at the Second Top of the World Arctic Broadband Summit held in Oulu on June 14–15, 2017. The same persons will organise a seminar in Sapporo that concentrates on the Arctic submarine data cables, data centres and the development of northern regions in mid-October 2017. Moreover, the lack of public discussion surrounding the issue of communications cables has been accompanied by decreased levels of attention from economic interest groups. This situation may reflect local industrial structures and traditions. Whereas transportation is an ‘old’ industry with clear revenue logic and direct or indirect connections to various major companies, Hokkaido lacks a large ICT company.

Although branches of large national firms exist on Japan’s northernmost island, local economic interest groups are often dominated by the largest regional enterprises (Yamamoto, personal communication, January 27, 2017).

Acknowledging that professional discussion mainly occurs within a limited circle of actors and that only a small number of people are recognised as authorities in public discussions is not necessarily a surprising observation. After all, the Arctic is a new and emerging issue that lacks a direct connection to the physical environment of Hokkaido or to the routines of daily life or the experiences of most of its residents. Whether the dynamics of knowledge generation and dissemination are different in, for example, Nordic countries, which have similar population bases but wholly different approaches to the Arctic due to their geographic proximity, is an interesting question that remains outside the scope of the current study.

Hokkaido-based Arctic Initiatives and Interactions between Regional, National and International Actors There are several channels through which regional actors can approach national decision-makers.

The most institutionalised means of exercising influence occurs when the representatives of the Hokkaido Government explain various Hokkaido-based plans and models to, for example, the representatives of MLIT, which has a coordinating role in Japan’s port policy. It seems, however, that while Japan’s national Arctic policy focuses on the NSR, additional concreteness in terms of plans and actual evidence regarding the commercial utilisation of the NSR is required before the central government will consider supporting these local projects through, for example, the allocation of funding (Abe, personal communication, April 13, 2017; Office of Logistics and Ports, personal communication, April 18, 2017). The visit of the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to Hokkaido in May of 2014 can be cited as an example of direct influencing. During that visit, local industry and commerce representatives were able to directly express their wishes for governmental support of Hokkaido’s efforts concerning the NSR (Kawai, 2014). Another channel through which Hokkaido-based projects could gain visibility involves approaching Diet members elected from Hokkaido. However, while some members have expressed interest in the NSR, no parliamentarian from Hokkaido has gained national recognition Saunavaara

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as an ardent supporter of or expert in this issue. When the opposition grilled the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism about Japan’s insufficient interest in the NSR during a meeting of the Japanese Diet on March 3, 2017, the questions were posed by a representative from Okayama (Tsumura, 2017). However, it is obviously an intraparty matter to decide who will pose questions to a representative of the Cabinet, and it must be noted that the outcome does not necessarily reflect the interests of individual Diet members.

It is also worth noting that the government can only affect the development of port facilities in Japan, aid in the solving of international problems and assist in the building of connections between Japanese and foreign actors; thus, the government can only have an indirect effect on the decisions made by private trading and shipping companies. Ultimately, it is the companies themselves who decide on the logistics chains through which different products or raw materials are transported. The same is true in the case of cables. While the role of the state has historically been significant in terms of civil engineering development and the construction of communications infrastructure, today a small number of companies – including, among others, NTT, KDDI and Softbank – play a central role in such matters. These Tokyo-based actors tend to base their decisions on the logic of a market economy and do not focus particular attention on the development of certain regions (Yamamoto, personal communication, January 27, 2017).

Finally, it can be pointed out that the scientific community and HU ARC has a role to play in the communication between Hokkaido and central government. Hokkaido University itself is a national university and the scholars who work at HU ARC regularly interact with representatives of different ministries and hold positions in various international organizations as representatives from Japan.

International cooperation largely adopts one of two basic forms. For instance, Hokkaido-based actors have organised joint events with domestic and international partners and have invited foreign experts to Japan. Conversely, delegations have also been sent abroad to gather information, to network and to increase awareness of Hokkaido’s interest in the NSR. While it is not feasible or helpful to list all such activities, it can be concluded that Russian and Norwegian partners seem to have played the most prominent role in these initiatives. The third J-ARC Net open seminar which was organised on July 24, 2017 included a presentation from the representatives of China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO) and was succeeded by site visits and discussions between COSCO and Hokkaido-based enterprises. This was one but exceptionally visible example of the growing importance of Chinese partners. Meanwhile, a visit to Murmansk and Helsinki in August of 2016 provides a recent example of international activities that reflect the close cooperation between different actors in Hokkaido. In addition to the vice-Governor of Hokkaido and the representative of the Office of Logistics and Ports, this delegation consisted of leaders of the Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development, representatives of the major Hokkaido port cities and two recognised experts in the NSR who also served as advisers for the NSR Working Group (Hokkaido Government, 2017).

The participation of Hokkaido-based actors in efforts to inspire international cooperation regarding Arctic communications cable initiatives has been limited during recent years. Aside from certain developments in Hokkaido, this situation also reflects the advancement of individual projects. In addition to the various projects mentioned thus far, it should be noted that the Russian Optical Trans-Arctic Submarine Cable System, which received approval from the Russian The Changing Arctic & the Development of Hokkaido

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Intergovernmental Commission for Information and Communications Technologies in October of 2011 and gained financial support from the Ministry of Telecommunications in January of 2013, has not generated a great deal of discussion in Hokkaido (Delaunay, 2014; Yamamoto, personal communication, January 27, 2017). Meanwhile, aside from issuing recommendations that are directly connected to shipping and harbour activities, the NSR working group’s mid-term report also refers to the concept of paradiplomacy and encourages the development of relationships between Hokkaido and other northern regions. In other words, the report recognises that diplomacy and international relations do not only occur between states, but also between regions and local governments. While the need to cooperate with other regions who share interest in the Arctic is hereby demanded, concrete steps in this direction have yet to be taken (Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development, 2016; Koiso, personal communication, March 23, 2017).

However, the past success of the Northern Regions Plan (Hoppōken kōsō), a policy that aimed to support the development of cooperation between Hokkaido and other northern regions, lends credence to these newly-emerged hopes. As a legacy of this policy—which was incorporated into official Hokkaido Comprehensive Development Plans from the early 1970s onward and which, most importantly, led to many concrete acts of interaction and exchange—regional actors already have international connections and play an important role in such organisations as the Northern Forum and the World Winter Cities Association for Mayors. This policy lost visibility in the early 2000s when the old institutional pillars that had supported it also disappeared. According to Mitsuo Iguchi, chairman of the Hokkaido Finland Association, this change can be partly explained by the fact that the policy had achieved success and accomplished its goals. Perhaps the current changing environment has created a need for new forms of cooperation (Koiso, personal communication, March 23, 2017; Iguchi, personal communication, March 23, 2017).

Conclusion If one attempts to conceptualise the developments that have taken place in Hokkaido, one can hardly refer to a policy transfer process – i.e., the processes by which knowledge about the policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas that exist in one political setting are used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political environment (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Benson & Jordan, 2011). The lack of a western NSR hub also means that there are no existing policies that can support the development of such a hub in Japan. In short, no ideal benchmarking cases are available. Furthermore, despite one source having mentioned that Dubai’s development as an international container port serves as an example of the utilisation of one’s advantageous location, no serious attempts to implement a policy model that would be recognised as successful in other geographical contexts have been identified.

As the importance of gathering and disseminating information regarding the NSR has been emphasised in Hokkaido, the vocabulary of knowledge mobility, which refers to the movement of knowledge within a network or, for example, from one spatial context to another, is better suited to the description of past activities. In knowledge mobility literature, the generation of knowledge is described as an investment in and the driver of future economic development. Therefore, it is assumed to play an important role in the development of various strategies (Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006: 660; Halkier et al., 2010: 14; Henriksen & Halkier, 2012: 14). However, while the gathering of knowledge has thus far been emphasised, different actors in Hokkaido have also recognised the need for a ‘next step’. With respect to the literature on knowledge phases, it can be concluded that Saunavaara

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demands to advance from the exploration and examination phase to the exploitation phase have been made in Hokkaido (Halkier et al., 2010: 8, 14). In practice, this refers to the need for greater concreteness in terms of plans and policies.

Various organisations have conducted many studies concerning the NSR, and they have identified many possibilities vis-à-vis the new route. At the same time, however, this particular process has seemed to advance in an unorthodox manner. Rather than searching for the most efficient and feasible distribution channel for products or raw materials, Hokkaido-based actors have attempted to identify cargo that might benefit from the usage of one peculiar shipping route. While shipping companies’ capability to offer the desired service (transportation through the NSR) has improved, in large part—but not only—due to changes in the sea ice situation, demand from the trading company side is still lacking. While dependence on actors and developments outside Hokkaido is, of course, an issue, the Hokkaido Committee for Economic Development is currently attempting to identify suitable Hokkaido-originating cargo that could be transported via the NSR. Based on previous assessments, it can be expected that frozen food products are likely to be discussed. While not directly related this issue, recent plans to construct new cold storage facilities in Tomakomai harbour to support the export of Hokkaido-based foodstuffs can be considered a parallel development (Hokkaido Shimbun, 2017; Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 2017).

Finally, despite their ambition and long-term plans, actors in Hokkaido seem to have relatively cautious expectations concerning the proposal’s development over the coming years. The process that may eventually lead to a situation wherein Tomakomai is recognised as an international hub port is unlikely to begin as a regular liner service; instead, it is likelier to originate as a tramp service used to transport cargo between larger East Asian harbours and northern Europe. However, the question remains as to whether Japan’s national policy will encourage the concentration of international container traffic into the major ports of Yokohama, Osaka and Kobe or whether a port such as Tomakomai, which is able to serve only relatively small container ships (up to 2,000 TEU), will have a greater role to play. Realistic approaches can also be based on lessons drawn from previous developments. While Japan’s geographically advantageous position vis-à-vis the shipping route between East Asia and North America has been recognised, and though a great number of vessels transporting cargo between these leading markets pass through the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaido and Aomori Prefecture, few ships ever stop in Hokkaido. Similarly, the existing lack of funding for a submarine cable system that would greatly improve Hokkaido’s domestic connectivity may limit expectations for international projects of entirely different scales.

If one recognises the potential realisation of even the most optimistic forecasts concerning climate change and the decline of sea ice as another factor that could postpone or restrict Hokkaido-based plans, one also reveals something about the dilemma that is familiar to researchers who work on topics of this kind. Eventually, one must decide whether it is right or acceptable to approach (unwanted) changes in the Arctic environment through the lens of economic possibilities, which may emerge far from the Arctic.

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Notes 1. Material was collected by research assistant Fukuda Chizuru, of the Hokkaido University Public Policy School, in February and March of 2017. She utilised the digital archives of the Hokkaido Shimbun, which are accessible through the Hokkaido University Library.

Acknowledgments In addition to Hokkaido University Arctic Research Center, support for this article was also provided by the Global Station for Arctic Research, Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.

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Delaunay, M. (2014). The Arctic: A New Internet Highway? In L. Heininen, H. Exner-Pirot & J. Plouffe (Eds.), Arctic Yearbook 2014 (pp. 503–510). Akureyri, Iceland: Northern Research Forum. Retrieved from, https://www.arcticyearbook.com/images/Arcticles_2014/BN/Delaunay_AY_2014_FIN AL.pdf.

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The Political Economy of Arctic Reality Television: The Spatial Communication of Ice Road Truckers &

Deadliest Catch Derek Moscato

Transformative technological, environmental, and political events in recent years have converged to emphasize a turn to spatialization within the study of media and communication, in particular within studies of the political economy of media. The Arctic, as a global region denoted by economic growth, ecological transformation, and increasingly dynamic international politics, presents a natural focal point for the impact of spatial media. This study examines both History Channel’s reality television program Ice Road Truckers and its Discovery Channel counterpart Deadliest Catch, including the programs’ histories and their implicit or direct roles in influencing discourse about the Arctic and sub-Arctic’s economy and ecology. How do these programs articulate a discourse about the North American Arctic for a mass audience, and how does this discourse relate to real-world ecological and economic conditions of the region?

The 10-year anniversary of History Channel’s hit reality television program Ice Road Truckers provides opportunity for renewed reflection on the relationship between global media, their audiences, and policymaking in the Arctic. In the summer of 2016, History crowed about its forthcoming “landmark tenth season” for the program—which features long-haul truckers driving rigs over frozen lakes and rivers to remote resource extraction sites in Canada’s far north as well as Alaska (Wray, 2016). Just three months previous, Canada’s federal government had announced the 2017 completion of an all-vehicles highway connecting Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk—the same winter route travelled in previous seasons of Ice Road Truckers. It would allow ordinary drivers to reach the Arctic Ocean for the first time (Hume, 2016).

This study examines both History’s Ice Road Truckers and its Discovery Channel reality television counterpart Deadliest Catch, including the programs’ histories and their implicit or direct roles in influencing discourse about the Arctic and sub-Arctic’s economy and ecology. How do these programs articulate a discourse about the North American Arctic for a mass audience, and how does this discourse relate to real-world ecological and economic conditions of the region? The parallel trajectories of media and technology/transportation in overcoming Arctic geographies

Derek Moscato is Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington.

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conjure up Canadian historian and communication theorist Harold Innis’s conceptualization of spatialization and international communication.

The role of spatialization looms especially large in the Arctic, where media play a substantial role in communicating from—and about—the region to the rest of the world. Having emerged as a crossroads of globalization, resources extraction, and environmental protection/degradation, reality television programs like Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch highlight the region’s economic potential through the commodification of natural resources to a global television audience. They simultaneously romanticize and commodify the North American Arctic, transmitting images of frontier adventures, conflicts, and resource extraction activities into households across the continent and internationally. To this end, the North American Arctic’s best-known reality television programs present a compelling case study for the production and impact of spatial communication.

Spatialization: The Role of Media and Technology Transformative technological, environmental, and political events in recent years have converged to emphasize a turn to spatialization within the study of media and communication, in particular within studies of the political economy of media. Understood as a sustained effort to establish connections between media, time, space, and structures of power (Mosco, 1996), spatialization would appear to enjoy an outsized influence in remote, isolated, or frontier geographies. The Arctic, as an international geographic region impacted by economic growth, ecological transformation, and increasingly dynamic international politics, presents a natural focal point for the impact of spatial communication. The mediation of territorial disputes between Arctic nationstates, as well as communication emanating from governance bodies such as the Arctic Council, are but two examples of the role of media in disseminating Arctic information over space and time.

While the term spatialization was coined by social theorist Henri Lefebvre in 1979 to denote the overcoming of space and time in social life, it was Harold Innis who decades earlier adjoined the concept to media and communication (Mosco, 1996: 173). Innis’ early interest in spatial logistics is reflected in his PhD thesis at the University of Chicago, devoted to the formation of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and his subsequent staples thesis, highlighting the foundational role of hard commodities and resources extraction activities in society. Later, in his book Empire & Communications (1950), Innis put forth his venerable time and space theory, establishing himself as a forerunner in the study of international communication. Within this framework, time-based media—including clay or stone tablets, manuscripts copied on parchment, or oral communication such as poems—carried traditions and rituals over time and generations, favoring stability, community, and tradition. Conversely, space-based media—which convey information to many people over long distances, but have shorter exposure times—facilitate rapid change, materialism, and empire. Applying the framework to ancient civilizations, he showed how an imbalance between these two propositions could precipitate chaos, conflict, inequality, and war (Innis, 1950).

Other scholars have built upon Marx’s explanation of “the annihilation of space by time” to similarly connect rapid technological change and economic growth associated with modern capitalism to massive changes in the conceptions of space and time (Harvey, 1990). Spatialization provides media companies with new opportunities for content dissemination and relating hitherto separated audiences and geographies. The parallels between global media and transportation

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systems are important to note, and often work in tandem to shape political and economic institutions (Innis, 1980). Both transportation and communication are utilized by capitalism to minimize the time it takes “to move goods, people and messages over space, thereby diminishing the significance of spatial distance as a constraint on the expansion of capital markets” (Mosco, 1996).

Barnes (2005) argues that the space- and time-based properties of communication postulated by Innis can be found within the commodities themselves, thus situating spatialization as an approach to understanding the global dimensions of communication technologies but also the staples that underpin it. Connecting space-time biases of resources to Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism, he highlights the importance of recognizing the commodity’s social relations if it is to be fully understood. Each staple or resource embodies a spatial or temporal imperative—a “space-time bias”—that is realized with the advent of its extraction or trade.

Staples such as fish, lumber, or minerals also drive a wedge between the economic interests of wealthier core regions and those of periphery geographies, where such staples are abundant. This metropolitan/hinterlands dualism has been attributed to Innis as an effort to resist “the dominant and myopic paradigms in research set by metropolitan institutions and intellectuals” (Watson, 1977: 45). Notably, Innis’s approach was borne of a mindset of Canada’s resource economics: “He was a colonial intellectual, constantly struggling to overthrow the yoke of European habits of mind in order to present a made-in-Canada interpretation of his country's history and development… he constantly tried to break out of the rut of colonial thinking, and to think new thoughts relevant to his own time and place” (Barnes, 2005). Later in his career, Innis set out to lead the University of Toronto’s 1944 Arctic Survey—seen as a major milestone in the advent of northern studies in Canada. The project was seen as something of a disappointment, as it was saddled with competing national agendas (from Canada and the United States) and a variety of research topics, but it furthered Innis’s interest in communication (Evenden, 1998). Innis was arguably the first communication scholar, and certainly the most visible social scientist, to align the future of the Arctic and a broader sense of ‘nordicity’ with the advancing roles of technology and media in daily life.

Studies of spatialization within the political economy of communication paradigm are not universally embraced by media studies scholars, however. Some understandings of the framework are argued to focus too extensively on media concentration as an extension of institutional power, all the while ignoring the rapid, complex changes wrought more broadly by globalization—in part because the literature has failed to keep pace (Hackett, 2000). There is merit to such criticism, particularly in consideration of this study’s focus on a unique electronic media format. The proliferating genre of reality-based television programs dealing with North America’s Arctic and sub-Arctic presents new challenges for the communication scholar. Such programs are at once technological phenomena—transmitting powerful images and soundscapes of the region to millions of households across the continent and the world—yet at the same time they produce a specific form of media content arising from particular political, economic, and ecological worldviews and real conditions. The mediating effects of such programs, then, are to be found within the electronic medium of television (and similarly diffused electronic media), but also within the specific information and plotlines presented in this sub-genre of reality-based shows,

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themselves predicated on Arctic and sub-Arctic resource industries and extractive activities such as fishing and mining.

One avenue forward comes from Innis’s University of Toronto colleague Marshall McLuhan, whose media research was deeply influenced by Innis’s writings on the properties of various media throughout history. McLuhan’s own conceptualization of spatial communication was based upon Innis’s time-versus-space dualism, but also incorporated advances in electronic media to foster an understanding of such media spaces as “processual, dynamic, and relational” (Cavell, 1999).

Inherent within McLuhan’s understanding of electronic communication was the relationship between what was communicated and the context in which it was communicated: Given that electronic media allowed for instant communication, communication took on an iconic quality, with communication taking place all at once, spatially, rather than in a linear fashion. By theorizing the context of communication, McLuhan was able to develop a theory of communication sensitive to the social and material emplotments of communications (Cavell, 1999).

Such a view aligns with but also builds upon Innis’s original spatialization project, what Barnes describes as the recouping of both “the interesting spatial and temporal relations submerged within” understandings of the natural resource, as well as the “multifarious and twisted threads of its far-reaching geography and history” (2005: 112). Here too, McLuhan’s interest in parsing out the attributes of various media forms is grounded in Innis’s earlier work. For Innis, electronic media such as the telephone and radio were biased toward space because they overcame the barriers of large distances and remote geographies.

Among international geographies, the role of spatialization may be especially pronounced in the Arctic. International news media have been increasingly active in relaying the region’s ecological story—particularly around climate change (Christensen, 2013)—as well as the geopolitical race for natural resources, including energy (Øverland, 2010). However, it is television entertainment programming that promises viewers a weekly recurring ensemble of cast members and narratives dealing with the ecology and economy of the North American Arctic. In turn, producers are rewarded with substantive audiences, both nationally and abroad. To put this in perspective, on May 16, 2017, Deadliest Catch enjoyed a television rating in the U.S. that bested any of the prime time offerings from major cable news networks, including CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News (Welch, 2017).

Given the relatively long-term success of Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch, it is helpful to understand, in the spirit of McLuhan, both what these shows communicate but also the context in which they are communicated. Ice Road Truckers notably introduces television viewers across North America and the world to a form of long-haul truck transport that daringly crosses frozen lakes and rivers in order to haul supplies and commodities to diamond, gold, and oil sites in some of the continent’s most northerly and isolated reaches. Similarly, Deadliest Catch is premised upon the dangers associated with nautical transport and resource extraction in the profitable fisheries of the Bering Sea. On the quest for Alaskan king or Opilio crab, fishermen regularly haul in millions of dollars’ worth of the ocean commodity. Deck hands risk their lives in this perilous line of work—a fact not lost on transfixed viewers, who have made it one of Discovery’s flagship television programs. These programs, for their millions of viewers watching at home, articulate a distinct message about social, economic, and ecological conditions in the North American Arctic.

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In doing so, they continue a longstanding tradition of historic constructions within popular culture about the Arctic as both a frontier and a site of struggle between humankind and nature.

Deadliest Catch : Cowboys of the Bering Sea One of the first, and best-known, reality television programs depicting working life in the North is Deadliest Catch, which has aired on the Discovery Channel since 2005 and is broadcast in more than 200 countries. It has garnered attention from a wide range of scholarly camps, including management scholars, who have compared leadership styles of fishing boat captains to the financial success of their vessels (Covey & Ewell, 2015). Others have interpreted the program through the lens of hegemonic and working-class masculinities (Blair, 2013; Kirby, 2013; Buchanan, 2014) or as a case of labor versus capital—a class struggle rooted in “expropriation and proletarianization” involving both manual labor (the crab fishermen) and the skilled, creative labor of television workers (Wells, 2015).

The program has proven to be one of Discovery’s biggest hits, and at the same time is credited with helping to usher in the current proliferation of Alaska reality television programs. It is a prime example of media-articulated spatialization depicting both the overcoming of oceanic space and a dominance over nature. During the show, a radar tracker regular alerts viewers to where the competing fishing vessels are located in the Bering Sea as they seek out optimal conditions for seasonal crabbing. The same program keeps track of the financial valuation of each boat’s haul of crab. Here, Deadliest Catch is notable for its mediation of the Alaska crab fishery, including its labor and economic practices.

The program also provides viewers with a first-hand perspective of what life is like on the Bering Sea for the state’s crab fishermen. Deck hands featured on the program are no ordinary reality television stars. They endure rogue waves, freezing temperatures, sea sickness, and highly dangerous working conditions—in addition to interpersonal conflicts and personal struggles. Polar conditions are situated prominently in the program, as deckhands regularly fight off the accumulation of ice on the boats. Ice packs that form at sea can also trap vessels, posing an ongoing challenge for their captains. These boats—with names like the Northwestern, Cornelia Marie, and Time Bandit—are navigated through some of the most dangerous fishing waters in the world. The tragic Bering Sea sinking of the fishing vessel Destination on February 11, 2017 off of St. George Island, taking the lives of six crew members, is but one reminder of this reality. Both the dangers and demanding working conditions inherent within this line of work are rationalized by handsome paydays—at least when the crab boats are successful. A season of Alaskan king or opilio crab fishing can net millions of dollars for a boat, and tens of thousands of dollars in income for deck hands. To compensate for the daunting weather and dispiriting working conditions that crew members regularly face, financial compensation therefore takes on a heightened salience. The knowledge of a big payday allows crew members to enjoy (along with their viewers) some maritime camaraderie and the euphoria associated with a big catch.

A more recent challenge for the show’s participants, however, has come in the way of climate change. Increasingly, the program’s participants have emerged as high-profile spokespersons on issues of Arctic ecology and climate. At a 2017 climate forum hosted by CNN and featuring Al Gore, the former vice president was engaged by crab fisherman Keith Colburn, captain of the program’s Wizard vessel, on how climate change is impacting the Alaska fishery. Furthermore,

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during the program’s 13th season, the fishing boats of Deadliest Catch confronted the reality of warming oceans—rendering traditional fishing grounds unproductive and decades-old maritime expertise obsolete. Some captains decided to venture into colder, deeper waters—often unchartered territories—while others stuck to conventional grounds. In either scenario, there is more drama for viewers at home. Underlying workplace conditions remain intact: Crew members still deal with physical injuries, anxiety, conflict, and isolation. Climate change has merely raised the stakes.

This narrative formula has allowed the program to “carve out a distinguished place in the history of U.S. maritime storytelling” while juxtaposing “extreme danger with cowboy-style free enterprise, bravado and macho sentimentality” (Blundell, 2017: paras. 2 and 4). In spite of this master frame of frontier heroics, the program is not immune from the ecological impacts of a warming planet. Here, reality TV is positioned to diffuse a message of climate change even when its audience is not universally friendly to the message’s implied politics. Yet the interplay between a healthy fishery and climate change mitigation is obvious for the show’s fans: Unlike so much reality TV, it is a show for looking at, not looking through, and at times it’s as though you are inside an epic contemporary adventure novel. Let’s hope those intrepid sailor cowboys can find those crabs, though, before the waters start to boil (Blundell, 2017: para. 18).

Deadliest Catch isn’t alone in mediating a recent message about the concrete impacts of global climate change amid a bigger picture of resources extraction. Its History Channel counterpart is also contending with the confluence of changing weather and traditional economic activities in the North American Arctic.

Ice Road Truckers : The Arctic’s Road Warriors A coalescing of Arctic transport, supply chain management, and regional ecology, the 2007 launch of Ice Road Truckers represented a milestone for the then 12-year old History Channel in more ways than one. With 3.4 million viewers watching the premiere episode, the program’s debut became the most-watched original telecast in the channel’s history; and its most successful original program (Rogers & Rocchio, 2007). Produced by Thom Beers, who also produces Deadliest Catch, the program features long-haul truck drivers who traverse the North American Arctic’s wild frontiers in white knuckle fashion—most notably over frozen lakes—while delivering cargo and infrastructure to mining sites and other resource extraction operations. Ice Road Truckers holds the distinction of filming in two countries–in addition to the U.S. state of Alaska it has also filmed in the Canadian territories of the Yukon and Northwest Territories, and the provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba. Following its focus on Canada’s North in seasons one and two, the program sets its sights on Alaska starting in season three. From Anchorage, the seasoned polar route truckers head out to Fairbanks, Coldfoot, Deadhorse, and the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay. They drive over frozen rivers and swamps to reach the communities of Bettles and Nuiqsut. More recent seasons have seen the ice road trucking action return to Canada.

Like Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers has come under much scrutiny for its representations of masculinity and the working class (Fleras & Dixon, 2011) as well as the tensions inherent in depicting blue-collar work within the larger economy of corporate networks, audience demographics, television advertising, and existing conceptions of class structure and class consciousness (Sullivan, 2011). Similarly, Blair (2013) situates programs like Ice Road Truckers The Political Economy of Arctic Reality Television

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as a continuation of the masculine hero depictions found in mythology and entertainment— emphasizing discourses of heroics but also working-class tribulations.

The approach to the program’s 10-year anniversary in 2016 occurred during discussions in Canada about the completion of the Inuvik Tuktoyaktuk Highway—a 137 km raised roadbed build atop permafrost and traversing a landscape dotted with thousands of lakes and streams. The road is described as bringing “new opportunities and new stresses to the North by opening a small, isolated community to the outside world” (Hume, 2016: para. 5). It also follows the same route as one of the ice roads featured in the TV program—a fact well-publicized by Canada’s national media outlets. In spite of some detractors, the highway has well placed supporters, including former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was described as seeing the highway in terms of both Arctic sovereignty and as a “road to resources.” This aligns with the view of the highway being symbolically much more significant than merely a gravel roadway. Rather, it is the first year-round road connecting Canada’s Arctic coastline to the rest of the country (O’Connor, 2016). Polar highway boosterism also comes from those tasked with tourism promotion in the region. As a marketing manager for the Yukon government eloquently noted, “interest in getting to the end of the road and dipping your toe in the Arctic Ocean will be high” (Hume, 2016: para.

29).

The increased prominence of all-season land roads corresponds with the television program’s engagement with climate change—creating environmental and weather problems in the North, but also impacting the way of life for the ice road’s drivers. According to a promotional statement from History, the truckers “may have finally met their match, as global warming and El Niño are creating a winter like no other before…expected record warm temperatures will create a worst-case scenario resulting in a winter road season so short that there won’t be enough time to deliver all the supplies to the communities” (History, 2017: para. 2). With Canada’s network of 3,300-plus ice roads becoming increasingly unreliable, thanks in part to warming autumns and thinner natural lake ice, pressure is mounting to build all-season roads at a cost of $450,000 per mile (Levin, 2017). Ice Road Truckers has provided a popular entry point for Canadians, and a larger audience interested in the North American Arctic, to enter such discussions about the ongoing viability of ice roads and their post-climate change allseason alternatives. At the same time, the dangers associated with less reliable ice roads creates a greater degree of risk for drivers. Like Deadliest Catch, climate change impacts the material conditions in which Ice Road Truckers is produced and televised, but it also raises the stakes within the mediated drama itself.

Spatial Mediation, Audiences, and the Reality of Arctic Television Both Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch are emblematic of the new ways in which the Arctic is communicated to popular audiences in North America and globally. The showcasing of dramatic natural imagery, alongside the heroics emanating from the shows’ protagonists, situates this genre of reality television as a unique medium—one that stands in for a larger set of economic and ecological issues related to the Arctic. These include the role of ongoing natural resources extraction—which is situated as the end goal for the transport adventures on the Bering Sea or the ice roads of the North. Industries such as fishing, mining, and energy are depicted as lifeblood to communities and workers—and the chief objectives for the dangerous expeditions which are

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central to the programs’ narratives. They also include the role of dangerous work on the Arctic frontier, and how these labor practices intersect with local economies and geographies.

At the same time, these entertainment programs, and the industrial work they promote, are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) aware of the central role of the natural world to their existence.

In the past year, the issue of climate change has become particularly salient in both programs— and the ecological perils associated with a warming Arctic are not merely mediated as fact, they actually change the direction of the shows’ narratives and provoke commentary from program cast members. This happens during the show but also within a larger public sphere. Thus, while this genre of Arctic reality television continues to endorse a form of capitalism that draws immediate value from ecological exploitation, it also communicates a message about the fragile condition of the region’s ecology, the foundation for such economic activity. Given the longstanding popularity of both programs, such seemingly contradictory messages embedded into the shows have significant implications for public opinion and by extension region-specific environmental and social policies.

Insight here comes from Moore (2007) who provides a theory of capitalism as world ecology, a perspective that connects the accumulation of capital to the production of nature: “Capitalism does not act upon nature so much as develop through nature-society relations” (2). While such contradictions are embedded in the production of these programs, they also exist within the narrative structures of the shows themselves. In her examination of Ice Road Truckers’ third season, Schell (2012) turns to the concept of the technological sublime to highlight how the rhetoric of the technological (the technology underpinning both ice roads and the vehicles traversing them) and natural (the Arctic’s pristine environment) can co-exist. The same argument can be extended to the adventures of Deadliest Catch vessels like the Time Bandit or Cornelia Maria—nautical marvels in terms of the conditions they can survive—on the Bering Sea. Such a paradoxical storytelling strategy is optimal for maximizing television audiences, because it advances a proindustrial stance without dismissing the appeals of environmental conservation. Its environmental politics, then, are open to interpretation.

For viewers outside of the North, the usage of contradictory aesthetics and a “hyperbolic language of fear” reinforces existing notions of Alaska and the North as “equally fascinating and forbidding” (Schell, 2012: 135) and “an especially beautiful and adverse environment in which to live and work” (138). Robe (2015) picks up on these themes of spectacle and contradiction within depictions of nature in reality television. Referring to the Deadliest Catch’s spawning of newer programs like Animal Planet’s Whale Wars, he underscores the medium’s ability to simultaneously promote and undermine wildlife conservation campaigns: “Media coverage serves not as a byproduct of such activism but as a key ingredient in organizing it, popularizing its message” (para. 6).

Yet the same cannot be said for representations of Indigenous communities in the North American Arctic television genre—Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch included. Most of these programs have not adequately grappled with issues facing Indigenous peoples in the regions where they operate. There have been exceptions. At least one fictionalized, non-reality television program produced by Canada’s national broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, attempted to bridge this gap. The drama Arctic Air, which aired for two years between 2012 and 2014, combined the heroism of Canada’s tradition of bush pilots and Arctic aviation with representations of Indigenous peoples and communities. While innovative for depicting the North as a place where

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people live, and for featuring Indigenous people as protagonists, the show still contributed to a normalization of resources development and extraction (Hulan, 2016). This adds to the critiques of many revolving around these television programs, reality or otherwise—in terms of their contested representations of social relations and ecologies, and their ultimate influence on wider public perceptions of the Arctic.

Television programs depicting mastery of rugged geographies and environmental spaces are not unique to the Arctic. Yet no other region has attracted the same degree of attention or the sheer number of reality programs. In Alaska alone, there have been well over 20 such programs—with titles such as Alaska Bush People, Bering Sea Gold, Gold Rush, and Alaska: The Last Frontier. The proliferation of these programs has been attributed in part to tax credits aimed at attracting Hollywood movie studios to the state and the initial success of Deadliest Catch. The rush to production has not been universally embraced, however. An editorial from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner lamented both the “oversimplifications and distortions of reality shows (that) have rubbed many residents the wrong way” and the tendency of some of these television stars “to play fast and loose with Alaska’s laws” (2014: para. 4). The latter includes cast members from Alaskan Bush People fraudulently receiving $20,000 in dividend checks from Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which is funded by state oil revenues, while they lived out-of-state. These programs are thus not immune from negative publicity in their own jurisdictions.

Despite these well-documented blemishes, the allure of television programs about Arctic geographies remains, for producers and audiences. The most successful of these shows enjoy an ongoing popularity with audiences—even in the North. As one correspondent noted in her travel diary of Alaska’s Dalton Highway, programs like Ice Road Truckers have “immortalized” ice road drivers as local legends (Duin, 2016). Reality television not only influences the way the North is understood from the outside and from afar—it allows communities in the North American Arctic to see themselves and their ecologies through the dramatic narratives of the genre. The same can be said of Deadliest Catch. Some regional critics accuse the program of both sensationalizing the Bering Sea crab fishery and spawning a wave of less successful reality shows about Alaska. Yet a study of American television viewing habits shows that Deadliest Catch’s strongest viewership lies in, perhaps counterintuitively, Alaska. As viewers cluster themselves into “cultural bubbles,” even viewers in the North show preferences favoring programs about their geographies and social organization (Katz, 2016)—grumblings of overwrought storylines notwithstanding.

The popularity of such shows has even translated into rethinking tourism in the North. One Alaska-based Ice Roads Truckers-themed attraction for tourists included a fully-guided tour of the Port of Anchorage, where fans of the program could see where and how cargo arrives before being loaded onto ice roads-ready vehicles. Nearby, at the Carlile Transportation trucking yard in Anchorage, they could climb into a Class 8 sleeper truck or enjoy a 10-minute ice-road simulator experience, including navigating the Dalton Highway in white-out conditions. Much of this mirrors the Deadliest Catch’s spin-off tourist attraction in the same state: The Bering Sea Crab Fisherman’s Tour. The tourist package promises all of the thrills of crab fishing without the perils of open sea marine transport, and the opportunity “to marvel at the variety of marine creatures caught in barrel pots and hauled up on deck” (Viator, 2017: para. 1).

At least one other indicator highlights the integration of reality television into Alaska’s economy and cultural life: The Alaska Dispatch News employs a reporter devoted to Alaska’s reality television

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landscape, including reality TV star sightings in cities such as Anchorage and Fairbanks. Perhaps this is a culmination of the fascination in popular media artifacts hailing from the North. The interplay of popular culture with life in the Arctic, along with ensuing fandom, is nothing new.

Jack Krakauer’s best-selling 1996 book Into the Wild, about one man’s existentialist trek into the Alaska backcountry, has since turned into a Hollywood production and has gained an international following. Even a young Harold Innis was captivated by Jack London’s book Call of the Wild, inspiring the scholar’s first expedition to the Arctic in the early 1920s (Evenden, 1998). Yet the meteoric rise of Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers during the past decade, and the many likeminded shows that have attempted to follow their success, is perhaps the most visible pop culture milestone for Arctic media to date.

The enduring role of popular culture in communicating the North American Arctic should not be understated. As both television programs pass milestones of their own in recent years—the 100th episode for Deadliest Catch, and a 10-year anniversary for Ice Road Truckers—it becomes evident that both have transcended the genre of novel reality television programming. They have emerged as influential media franchises that have lifted up their respective networks but also a style of television programming that marries economy, working life, and renderings of Arctic ecology as final frontier. The sociological ramifications of such programs—including specific representations of identity and labor within the shows—have captured the strongest interest from the scholarly community. Yet the materiality of such entertainment programming is surprisingly often overlooked—even as staples emerge as the focal point of the shows and the engine of their production. The narratives of both programs are dependent on the extraction of resources such as fishing or mining as a catalyst for these labor practices. They are also dependent upon the ecological conduits to such economic activities—the nautical routes of the Bering Sea, or the far north’s winter ice roads sending trucks to remote communities and work sites.

In this sense, these programs bring Innis’s conceptualization of space-based communication full circle. They utilize electronic media to transcend geography and distance. They are a function of staples such as precious metals or the crab fishery, and yet they also influence their future by shifting perceptions about the ecology of the Arctic and the long-term sustainability of these resources. They set the stage for mainstream consideration, or even promotion, of the all-vehicles highway connecting Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk. Finally, they are a manifestation of Innis’s vision of the far north as a colonial outpost, or at least an environmental periphery, at the mercy of central institutions such as banks, governments, and even television studios located in the metropolitan core. In spite of popular assertions to the contrary, reality television is grounded in its own reality.

And yet to fully account for the political economy that these reality programs help to both represent and create for the Arctic, it is useful to draw also from Innis’s colleague Marshall McLuhan. Critical to understanding the significance of both shows lies not only in what is transmitted within these programs, but also the contexts in which they are communicated— including regional industry, community, history, and geography. McLuhan’s interpretation of electronic media as simultaneously spatial and iconic helps account for not only the way it influences the perceptions of audiences at home, but how such communication cycles back to realworld conditions. As the navigators of potentially treacherous ice roads and nautical passages conquer the Arctic’s geography and transform themselves into frontier heroes, their overriding message about the Arctic’s ecology and economy resonates across a different kind of space to a

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global audience of millions. It would be unwise to dismiss these programs, then, as anything but an integral part of discourse about the region and its future.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Western Washington University for a Summer Research Grant supporting this study; as well as participants from the University of Oregon’s What is Media?

Conference who provided valuable feedback on this topic.

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Evenden, M. (1998). Harold Innis, the Arctic survey, and the politics of social science during the Second World War. Canadian Historical Review, 79(1): 36-67.

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. (2016, January 15). Editorial: Disrespecting the Last Frontier: Alaska-based reality TV shows becoming known for bad behavior. Retrieved from: http://www.newsminer.com/opinion/editorials/disrespecting-the-last-frontier-alaskabased-reality-shows-becoming-known/article_6bc2f9c4-bb43-11e5-97723716084a75a6.html.

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Fleras, A., & Dixon, S. M. (2011). Cutting, driving, digging, and harvesting: Re-masculinizing the working-class heroic. Canadian Journal of Communication, 36(4): 579.

Hackett, R. (2000). The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal.

Canadian Journal of Communication, 25(2). Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2000v25n2a1159 Harvey, D. (1990). Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination1.

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80(3): 418-434.

Hulan, R. (2016). “Indigenizing” the Bush Pilot in CBC’s Arctic Air. Northern Review, (43): 139162.

Hume, M. (2016, April 15). Highway will soon let regular drivers reach Artic Ocean for the first time. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/britishcolumbia/highway-will-soon-let-regular-drivers-reach-arctic-ocean-for-firsttime/article29651915/.

Ice Road Truckers: About. Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/shows/ice-roadtruckers/about.

Innis, H. (1950). Empire and Communication. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Katz, J. (2016, December 27). ‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 maps of the U.S. cultural divide. New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/26/upshot/duck-dynasty-vs-modernfamily-television-maps.html.

Kirby, L. A. (2013). Cowboys of the High Seas: Representations of Working‐Class Masculinity on Deadliest Catch. The Journal of Popular Culture, 46(1): 109-118.

Levin, D. (2017, April 19). Ice roads ease isolation in Canada’s north, but they’re melting too soon. New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/world/canada/ice-roads-ease-isolation-in-canadasnorth-but-theyre-melting-too-soon.html.

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Mosco, V. (1996). The political economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal (Vol. 13). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

O’Connor, J. (2014, January 8). ‘When my family came here… there were six log cabins”: Tuktoyaktuk set to change with permanent road to the rest of Canada. National Post.

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Rogers S. & Rocchio C. Ice Road Truckers debut sets The History Channel Ratings Record.

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The Economic Development of Arctic Navigation: A Systematic Literature Review Florian Gauthier

The Arctic has recently become one of the most intriguing regions of the globe. The USGS report of 2008 put an emphasis on the enormous potential energy reserves in the region. The Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (AMSA) of 2009 gave hope of an ice-free Arctic far sooner than expected. This resulted in an ever-increasing focus on the Arctic’s economic potential.

(Howard, 2009) Traditional Arctic players were thus not alone anymore. Many countries (e.g. China) and enterprises increased their activities in the region. Navigation is one of the two main economic sectors with incredible potential for decades to come. The other one is obviously the energy sector. Numerous authors have discussed Arctic economic development during the last decade. So how has it evolved since 2007? And what is the state of knowledge today? To answer these questions, this review focuses on the literature of Arctic navigation in order to find gaps. As research is rapidly growing and evolving, the purpose of this literature review is to assess the state of the literature and its current gaps.

Introduction Over the past decade or so, the Arctic has become one of the most intriguing regions on the planet.

First, in 2007-2008, the International Polar Year (IPY) drew global attention and awareness to the Arctic region (Comba, 2011). Second, the USGS report of 2008 highlighted the enormous potential energy reserves of the region. Their projections were that 30 percent of gas reserves and 13 percent of oil reserves worldwide were in the Arctic. These resources could potentially translate into 90 billion barrels of oil and forty-four of gas (USGS, 2008). Third, 2008 represented a turning point for Arctic geopolitics with an important increase in military activity in Western Arctic states and Russia (Brutschin & Schubert, 2016: 154). The Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (AMSA) of 2009 gave hope of an ice-free Arctic far quicker than expected, as soon as 2015 (AMSA, 2009).

This resulted in an ever-increasing focus on the Arctic’s economic potential.

These developments caught the attention of media around the globe, fueling beliefs that the Arctic was developing as a new el dorado and a region with a high level of potential conflict for natural resources (e.g., Borgerson, 2008; Howard, 2009; Unger, 2014). However, the rush for resources never materialized (e.g. Ash, 2016; Mayer, 2013) and the arms race was downplayed (e.g. Baev, 2015; Heininen, 2016: 6; Lasserre et al., 2012; Hilde, 2014: 160). At the same time, the new developments attracted new non-state actors to the region such as transnational corporations (TNCs), and Asian states such as China and Japan who were accepted as observer states at the Florian Gauthier is a Ph.D. Candidate at l’École Nationale d’Administration Publique (ÉNAP), Montréal, Québec, Canada.

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Arctic Council in 2013 (Arctic Council, 2017; Myers, 2013). Some of these state actors had been involved for years in scientific research before all these developments began to attract global attention (e.g. Sun, 2014; The Arctic Institute, 2017) The Arctic region has two main potential avenues for major economic development and impacts: the energy sector (see USGS, 2008) and marine transportation (Buixadé Farré, 2014; Meng et al., 2016). The latter is the first of two broad potential economic developments that must be addressed because no energy investment would be viable without it (AMSA, 2009, 120). The Arctic transportation routes need to be viable in comparison to traditional sea routes such as the one linking East Asia to Europe through Malacca and Suez. However, due to the harsh conditions and to the actual regional situation, Arctic shipping is for now mostly limited to destinational traffic, and experts agree that it will be the case for the foreseeable future (e.g., Buixadé Farré et al., 2014) The purpose of this article is to assess the rapidly growing and evolving research in the field of maritime shipping. This is necessary to draw the web of knowledge throughout the field and identify trends and gaps (Knudsen, 2013: 282) Indeed, only one other systematic comprehensive review has been published on Arctic navigation (Meng et al., 2017), and its focus was on the models and scenarios proposed in the literature.

The larger goal of this review is to provide new insights for future research. The following review explores the literature from the last ten years (2007-2017). The paper is organized as follows.

Firstly, the methodology and the challenges of this research are discussed. Secondly, the research opportunities identified in AMSA on different components of Arctic maritime navigation are used to study the literature of the last ten years. Thirdly, a title analysis of the 2016 and early 2017 literature is conducted. Fourth, and finally, findings and existing gaps in the literature are discussed.

Methodology A literature review is methodologically demanding, and many potential problems can arise. The first one is how to guarantee a satisfying level of rigor. In order to address this very basic but important issue, most search manipulations have been done at least twice. For example, the search for potential titles has been conducted in three different ways. Furthermore, feedback was deemed essential from the start of this project, and this external perspective has been helpful.

Pickering and Byrne (2014), and Pickering et al. (2015), who focus on systematic reviews, provided the structural framework for the research. Systematic reviews are best suited for reviews that look at the number of articles coded and the transparent retrieving method, which is this paper’s approach.

Inclusion Criteria The inclusion criterion is a crucial part of any review. It was essential to be very careful in its definition. After a few rounds of restricting and subsequently relaxing the criterion, it was relaxed to be as inclusive as possible, while remaining centered primarily on Arctic navigation. It then became easily definable: 1. The publications had to be peer-reviewed.

2. The papers had to be published in 2007 or later.

3. At least two of the chosen keywords had to appear either in the title or in the keywords.

4. The publications had to discuss Arctic navigation.

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The decision to use the broadest criterion possible, criterion 1, is related to the initial choice of focusing exclusively on peer-reviewed material, which is often more rigorous than non-peer reviewed publications. This considerably reduced the pool of resources available for the review. It eliminated institutional reports, such as the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (AMSA) or Arctic Council publications. This was later confirmed as a non-issue since almost all of the articles already quote them, and integrate them into their analysis.

Criterion 3, which was expected to be incredibly beneficial, was unfortunately not as useful as it initially appeared because many, if not most, of the articles did not have any keywords. In those instances, the title and the abstract were the replacements to assess whether the articles should be part of this research or not.

Criterion four was the most obvious for the research. It has been the most helpful because it excluded a lot of articles either on Arctic governance or on the changing Arctic environment, for example.

Coding Guide & Scope Regarding the actual coding process, it took some time to get to a clear and easily usable guide. At first, there were way too many elements (up to more than sixty). Therefore, after quite some time and with feedback, the decision was made to use the 2009 AMSA report as the coding framework.

AMSA has been a central publication for Arctic shipping and regional governance, and contains many findings and research recommendations that are unique to this report. This is incredibly helpful because the evolution of the Arctic shipping literature will clearly appear from the gaps that remain and new conclusions that have arisen since the publication of the AMSA. This resulted in a more solid coding guide and a considerable reduction in the number of coding elements.

Other elements were later added in the coding framework to account for specific subthemes. One of the major challenges in conducting this research has been limiting the scope of articles included.

As stated earlier, the aim was to be as inclusive as possible while remaining focused primarily on the core subject to this study, the development of Arctic navigation. Economic models and other papers discussing the costs and numerous factors influencing the viability of Arctic shipping were obviously in the scope of this paper. The inclusion criterion and its consequences for non-core articles were difficult because of the diversity and volume of papers. The most representative examples are articles on Arctic and marine governance. The volume of papers in these two fields is immense. This part of the literature could have easily overpowered the core articles identified during the first step of this research. For the case of marine governance, six coding elements were added to the original coding tree: three about UNCLOS; three surrounding the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and its conventions. The forty-two elements composing the guide give us extensive coverage without being so large that it becomes unusable, as shown in Annex C. To be as transparent and exhaustive as possible, the peripheral subjects given consideration are listed below: â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

The decline of sea-ice and the future navigating conditions in the circumpolar region.

The territorial claims and the CLCS. The actions and strategy of the two most prominent countries in the Arctic: Canada and Russia.

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The developments and actions related to Arctic populations, Indigenous or nonIndigenous.

The governance of navigation: UNCLOS and IMO. The governance of the Arctic: The Arctic Council.

The Arctic environment from the risk of oil pollution to noise pollution.

The reason these subthemes were included is because they all have a direct or indirect impact on Arctic navigation. Domestic developments and regulations or military actions could have been added, but these two examples were too far from the core interest of this paper. Still, others may disagree, and this might represent a limit to this research.

Bibliographic Search & Retrieval Before coding and analyzing the results, the first step was to retrieve bibliographical sources, and the focus was solely on peer-reviewed articles. The potential of personal bias was high since the field of Arctic navigation is a particular interest of mine. The preliminary list contained all resources already available at hand before conducting the bibliographical search. More than 400 articles were retrieved in the first attempt, and the list was later reduced to 98. Then, 20 articles were selected and coded line-by-line inductively.

After this initial step, a more sophisticated method to explore databases was introduced to produce replicable and transparent results. This process led to new search results with pertinent articles for the review. Table 1 below shows the five categories of keywords used during the bibliographical search.

Table 1. Guide for exploring databases Keywords A. Region: Arctic – NSR – NWP

Combinations

B. Economic: Economic – Potential – Investment – Insurance – Risks – Costs – Limits

A + C (2)

C. Navigation: Icebreakers – Ships – Maritime - Navigation

A + B (1)

A + B + C (3)

D. Climate: Thawing – Ice - Climate change

A + B + D (4)

E. Legal and national: UNCLOS - Polar Code – IMO – SOLAS and MARPOL - SAR Agreement - Arctic Council

A + E (5)

The categories were then combined for more precision. Therefore, a twenty-four item research index was created, presented in Annex A. Among these twenty-four queries, twenty included variations for each keyword of category A (e.g. Arctic, NSR, NWP). In the end, for each database explored, sixty-four queries were conducted.

Regarding database selection, a convenience sample was the best suited for this review, because of the lack of access to all existing databases. Although it was a limitation, because some published material could be inaccessible for many reasons, the choice of databases available guaranteed an extensive coverage. To facilitate the bibliographical search, when the hits were superior to 250, their volume was reduced by using abstract searches. This appears on the document in Annex A. After database searches and ‘snowballing’, 503 references were found. This number was reduced quite considerably to 305, with articles from 155 different journals. The ones with six articles or more appear in the table below.

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The full list of references is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12TzlcxBDmsWWvrhCd88E5kJFsC02TioyvVJrd8oSqL k/edit?usp=sharing.

Table 2. Journals with more than six articles Arctic Yearbook

Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce

Marine Policy

Ocean Development & International Law

16

14

11

9

Polar Geography

The Polar Journal

Journal of Transport Geography

Polar Record

7

7

6

6

With the exception of the years 2013-2014, the number of articles has increased continuously from 2007-2017. The final grouping by year of publication is represented in the table below.

Table 3. Bibliographic search results (per year) Year

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Number of articles (Proportion of all articles N=305)

6(.020)

11(.036)

22(.072)

20(.066)

28(.092)

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

41(.134)

38(.125)

30(.098)

52(.170)

48(.157)

9(.030 )

Preliminary Phase: Line by Line Coding The twenty articles were coded thematically and inductively using Nvivo, a qualitative data analysis software. Despite few adjustments during this process, the tree map, a visualization tool of the software, was quite helpful. It provided an indication of the most prominent themes. By extension, the result, presented in a weighted representation in Annex B, is a tree with 20 articles coded lineby-line, which gave preliminary indications on what to look for during the next stages of this review.

Coding Based on the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (AMSA) The inductive coding tree was supposed to provide an indication, or even the actual foundation, of the coding themes for the whole list of articles. In the end, it served as the base of comparison with the tree later created from the AMSAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research opportunities. The AMSA appears in 21.3%

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of articles, which is surprisingly low given its prominence in policy-making. The results are as they appear in the following table: Table 4. Coding results (Number of hits and percentage) Arctic Shipping Lanes Comparison to Distance traditional sea Reduction routes 98(32.13) 92(30.16) Prominent factors

Future Scenarios and Costs

AMSA

19(6.23)

65(21.31)

Reliability Problems

Energy

27(8.85)

137(44.92)

Northern Sea Route

Northwest Passage

153(50.16)

115(37.70)

Investment on ships and Winterization

Ice Classes

Speed and travel duration

Fuel Costs

62(20.33)

50(16.39)

69(22.62)

39(12.79)

Risks and Insurance

Security

Infrastructure and Hubs

Need for skilled seamen

75(24.59)

20(6.56)

Art. 234 UNCLOS

Art. 76 UNCLOS

UNCLOS (Other articles)

CLCS and Claims

Arctic Council

2011 SAR Agreement

60(19.67)

38(12.46)

115(37.70)

102(33.44)

91(29.84)

38(12.46)

IMO Guidelines

MARPOL and SOLAS

Polar Code

Canada' s Actions and Strategy

Russia' s Actions and Strategy

SAR Monitoring and National Capacities

46(15.08)

64(20.98)

69(22.62)

79(25.90)

85(27.87)

82(26.89)

Weather forecasting

History and INSROP

Arctic Populations

76(24.92) 18(5.90) Governance

Requirements (Fee, papers, pilot) 50(16.39)

65(21.31) Changing Arctic Environment

Sea Ice Decreasing 147(48.20)

Arctic change models

Future conditions remain uncertain

Hydrographics and Charts

19(6.23) 57(18.69) 33(10.82) 33(11.48) Risks for the Arctic Region and Environment

76(24.92)

Accidents

Arctic ecosystems

Noise Pollution

Atmospheric emissions

Invasive Species

Oil Pollution and Spills

33(10.82)

52(17.05)

16(5.25)

36(11.80)

17(5.57)

55(18.03)

The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is by far the most recurrent theme, with 153 hits, appearing in more than 50% of all articles. As a means of comparison, the Northwest Passage (NWP) produced 115 hits and is discussed in 37.7% of articles. Unsurprisingly, energy comes second with 137 hits (44.92%). This is a standard result because energy and shipping are the two sectors with the most potential in the Arctic.

Conversely, some elements with not so many hits are surprising. For example, most of the direct risks for the Arctic region and ecosystems range from 5.25% up to precisely 18.03%. Another Gauthier

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example is the need for skilled seamen, which appears in only 18 articles (5.90%). In the end, the differences between elements are for most of them rather small. This indicates that the literature does cover extensively the various themes that constitute Arctic shipping. Some missing and less talked about pieces still remain, however.

2016 and Early-2017 Literature In this section, the focus shifts to the study of titles and keywords from the most recent literature.

The goal for these examinations is to compare their results to the gaps identified within the literature of the last decade. Are there dissimilarities? Or is the recent literature still weighted the same way the literature of the past ten years was?

Of all retrieved articles, 107 have been published in either 2016 or 2017, and 57 of them are included in the final bibliography. To look for trends and possible new themes that would have appeared during the last few years, the initial plan was to deepen the analysis by examining keywords, but the fact that many articles do not have this feature made this proposal irrelevant.

Title Query In order to strike the right balance between coverage and purposefulness, parameters were identified. To that end, multiple queries were run, and the most fruitful had the following parameters. It sought synonyms (e.g. Sea: Ocean(s), Sea(s)) and produced the twenty most frequent words. When fewer words or more restrictive links between words were used (e.g. exact terms), the results were too broken up to be beneficial. When the parameters were relaxed, the richness in the results were lost. The one chosen, in the end, provided a good balance between the two. The word cloud immediately below is from this particular query. Unfortunately, the query provides only a minimal result on its own. Nevertheless, when compared to the same examination of the titles from the 2007 and 2008 literature, the exercise appeared much more fruitful. As Figure 2 below indicates, the focus has changed to some extent, from projections and hypothetical arguments to actual examinations of what can be done in the circumpolar region.

Figure 2. Word cloud from the 2016-17 title query

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Figure 2. Word cloud from the titles of the 2007-08 literature

Where are the Gaps?

After completing the coding process, and the rest of the search manipulations, the overall results were analyzed. The gaps identified either appear minimally in the literature, or do not seem to have yet been discussed significantly. To date, most of the literature is oriented towards what the future of Arctic shipping might be. The most practical implications of Arctic shipping have not been a significant feature of peer-reviewed papers. These constitute the first group of gaps: • • • • •

The role of the pilots, their expertise, and their qualifications.

The role of skilled mariners, their expertise, and their qualifications.

Analysis of actual SAR operations and capacities in the Arctic waters.

The administrators of Arctic routes, particularly for the NSR, and their relationship with ship owners.

An immersive case study of real navigation.

Another avenue for further research is Arctic governance. Institutions and legal regimes have been a major point of discussion during the past 10 years. However, the governance architecture changed tremendously during that same period. Thus, there is a constant need for new research and a deepening of the existing knowledge. This is the second group of gaps: • • •

The role of the Arctic Economic Council.

The role of the IMO in developing Arctic economic opportunities.

The role of sub-regional cooperation, forum, and institutions.

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On the economic side of shipping, some cost components have yet to be explored in-depth. This is the third group of gaps: • • •

The actual cost of building modern ships.

The insurance cost of Arctic shipping.

The technological evolution and the cost of fuel for Arctic navigation.

Finally, few articles discussed the environmental impacts of Arctic economic development.

Sustainability and ecological efforts, or the lack thereof, could be the subject of in-depth research.

While there is research on shipping and the environment, the literature remains thin to nonexistent on the types of efforts made by ship owners and other actors (i.e., sustainable shipping). This is the fourth and final group of gaps: • • •

Efforts, or lack thereof, for greener, more durable ships.

Efforts, or lack thereof, for greener, more durable fuel.

Efforts, or lack thereof, for greener, more durable navigation.

Discussion One of the main goals of this systematic review on Arctic navigation was to identify gaps in knowledge. Although an exhaustive coverage of a ten year period was the initial aim of this research, it has been rendered impossible because of the lack of access to some parts of the literature, which is the most significant limit to this review. There were some articles that could have been included in the search, but were not for various reasons: lack of access; error in judgment when the list of articles was compiled; or even the plain lack of knowledge that particular publications existed.

However, this does not mean that this research was unsuccessful. The goal was to identify gaps for future research, not offer advanced statistics on what the literature says. This review includes 305 peer-reviewed articles, which still represents an extensive coverage on the existing literature.

With so many articles read and coded, the gaps identified in this paper appear to have solid foundations.

Methodologically, this review was based on a strict and rigorous process. Transparency underlined every step taken during the bibliographical retrieval period and its analysis, and all manipulations have been explained. It was designed as a systematic review from its inception, and the methods employed stem directly from these types of reviews. The demanding methodology bore innovative results: the gaps. The ones identified in this review are telling for many reasons. At the top of the list is the richness of the Arctic literature. In a decade, 2007-2017, the terms and subjects have evolved considerably. This appears to be linked to the rapid evolution of the circumpolar region itself, from climate change, to shipping, to energy and governance.

Regarding practical Arctic shipping, there is still a lack of knowledge about many factors. A portion of the literature acknowledges the need for experienced mariners, but little is published about the actuals benefits of having an experienced crew and pilot. The literature is scarce on the resolution of actual shipping problems in the Arctic. The situation is similar regarding the actual costs of circumpolar shipping. Numerous models (e.g., Meng et al., 2016) have been published, but these surely do not account for all factors. Navigating in the Arctic is still risky and incredibly difficult.

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Technological innovations (e.g. The Baltika example) (RT, 2014; Schuler, 2016) and international governance (e.g., the creation of a permanent Secretariat for the Arctic Council and the creation of the Arctic Economic Council) is evolving rapidly. Overall, there is a clear need to keep researching Arctic shipping and to deepen the analysis on the subject.

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Annex A: Bibliographic databases search results Wiley Interscience

Science Direct

Érudit

JSTOR

Persée

38455

25718

382

12197

29

1633

902

42

394

10

5666[13](1)166[1](7)285[0](0)

3782[25](10)91(37)

89(1)-43(0)51(1)

1661[13](1)59(2)-61(3)

1(1)-0-0

1706[2](0)82(6)-63(3)

1117[6](3)141[2](1)133[1](0)

24(0)-15(0)14(0)

526[0](4)23(0)-18(0)

0-0-0

[7](1)-132(4)2933[1](1)

2428[20](8)210[3](2)242[0](0)

38(2)-16(0)17(0)

1038[2](1)39(1)-42(3)

0-0-0

5685[4](0)162(5)3477[0](0)

3675[19](5)323[1](1)400[2](1)

37(0)-16(0)27(0)

997[0]-28(1)32(1)

0-0-0

NSR/NWP potential

673[7](1)2142[43](1)

1711[38](4)1500[31](0)

60(0)-71(1)

149(11)140(15)

1(1)-1(1)

Arctic/NSR/ NWP maritime navigation

400[3](2)-9(6)20(3)

256[6](4)39(25)-21(12)

22(3)-12(2)10(2)

118(16)-2(2)7(3)

9(2)-0-1(1)

Arctic/NSR/ NWP icebreakers

354[14](1)11(6)-5(3)

456[18](4)29(23)-17(13)

5(1)-2(0)-2(0)

47(14)-2(1)2(2)

0-0-0

1823[4](2)58[1](1)65[0](2)

443[16](11)45(27)-28(15)

17(0)-7(0)7(0)

155(16)-3(2)7(3)

0-0-0

857[1](6)49(7)-29(4)

264[2](2)35(21)-29(14)

17(2)-10(0)6(0)

151(15)-17(7)40(8)

1(1)-0-1(1)

1041[1](1)53(6)-18(3)

449[5](4)47(19)-34(10)

8(0)-6(0)-1(0)

241(3)-6(3)40(3)

0-0-0

31(9)-10(7)3(3)

46(14)-16(15)10(9)

0-0-0

11(3)-3(2)4(1)

0-0-0

587[0](0)30(5)-11(2)

135[0](15)29(16)-14(9)

0-0-1(0)

120(2)-4(2)23(2)

0-0-0

16(8)-5(4)2(2)

28(18)-17(14)10(8)

0-0-0

2(1)-1(1)-1(1)

0-0-0

Searches

1

2

3

Arctic Arctic AND Navigation Arctic/NSR/ NWP economic potential Arctic/NSR/ NWP economic investment Arctic/NSR/ NWP economic risks Arctic/NSR/ NWP economic limits

Arctic/NSR/ NWP ships navigation Arctic/NSR/ NWP economic navigation potential Arctic/NSR/ NWP ships investment Arctic/NSR/ NWP icebreaker investment Arctic/NSR/ NWP insurance ships Arctic/NSR/ NWP

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363 insurance icebreakers

4

5

Arctic/NSR/ NWP navigation economic limits Arctic/NSR/ NWP thawing navigation potential Arctic/NSR/ NWP ice navigation potential Arctic/NSR/ NWP ice navigation risks Arctic/NSR/ NWP Climate Change Arctic/NSR/ NWP climate change economic potential Arctic/NSR/ NWP ice economic potential Arctic Polar Code/Arctic Council/IMO /SAR/ UNCLOS

551[1](0)30(8)-17(4)

259[2](2)33(17)-29(12)

9(2)-4(0)-3(0)

104(5)-12(4)25(5)

4(1)-0-1(1)

92[0](0)-5(2)2(1)

46(1)-3(0)1(0)

1(0)-1(0)-1(0)

15(5)-5(4)8(5)

0-0-0

706[2](0)23(7)-44(5)

388[0](0)60(24)-25(13)

18(3)-9(1)7(1)

154(10)-20(9)35(9)

4(2)-0-1(1)

460[2](0)22(6)-20(4)

244[75](27)61(24)-21(13)

9(2)-2(0)-2(0)

65(6)-11(5)15(6)

0-0-0

25566[1076]151[0](0)1867[9](0)

12535[869]224[3](3)764[15](0)

2(0)-32(1)31(1)

4691(15)37(10)101(14)

17(2)-0-1(1)

4202[7](1)62(8)191[0](0)

2268[13](6)101[2](2)209[0](0)

48(1)-16(0)15(0)

1067(15)24(9)-58(10)

1(1)-0-1(1)

2510[2](1)43(8)-95[0](0)

1604[12](8)63(25)497[0](0)

61(2)-23(0)19(0)

823(15)30(10)-76(14)

1(1)-0-1(1)

3495[2](0)10230[10](2)139[1](1)1086[15](1)87[1](1)

1532[3](1)5827[24](3)224[5](4)759[24](3)110[3](2)

18(0)-117(0)0-2(0)-1(1)

13(1)-120(9)79(5)-63(9)61(9)

This table represents the number of results for each database query.

The first number indicates the total number of results.

The number between brackets is the total number for abstract queries The number between parentheses is the number of articles retrieved from each particular query.

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Annex B: Core articles coding tree (line-by-line coding)

The tree indicates the occurrence of themes and subthemes by representing them proportionally.

The larger the space for a theme, the larger the number of occurrences in the literature. As it is already complex, only the first two coding levels are included in this representation.

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Annex C: Coding Guide B AMSA 2009

C DISTANCE REDUCTION

D COMPARISON TRADITIONAL ROUTES

E ENERGY

H SEA ICE DECREASING

I MODELS ARCTIC CHANGE

F NSR DEFINITION, USE AND REGULATIONS J FUTURE CONDITIONS REMAIN UNCERTAIN

G NWP DEFINITION, USE AND REGULATIONS K HISTORY AND INSROP

L TERRITORIAL CLAIMS AND CLCS

M UNCLOS (OTHER ARTICLES)

N ART. 234 UNCLOS

O ART. 76 UNCLOS

P CANADA’S ACTIONS AND STRATEGY

R ARCTIC POPULATIONS

S MARPOL AND SOLAS

T IMO’S POLAR CODE

V ARCTIC COUNCIL

W 2011 SAR AGREEMENT

Q RUSSIA’S ACTIONS AND STRATEGY U IMO 2009 GUIDELINES Y REQUIREMENTS (FEE, PAPERS, PILOT)

Z INFRASTRUCTURE AND HUBS AD SPEED AND TRAVEL DURATION AH ACCIDENTS AL RISKS TO ARCTIC ECOSYSTEMS AP RISK OF OIL POLLUTION

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AA INVESTMENT ON SHIPS AND WINTERIZATION AE NEED FOR SKILLED SEAMEN AI RISKS AND INSURANCE AM EMISSIONS AQ FUTURE SCENARIOS AND COSTS

X SAR MONITORING AND NATIONAL CAPACITIES AB ICE CLASSES

AC RELIABILITY PROBLEMS

AF FUEL COSTS

AG SECURITY

AJ HYDROGRAPHICS AND CHARTS

AK WEATHER FORECASTING

AN INVASIVE SPECIES

AO SOUND POLLUTION

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References The full list of articles reviewed is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12TzlcxBD msWWvrhCd88E5kJFsC02TioyvVJrd8oSqLk/edit?u sp=sharing.

Arctic Council. (2017[2015]). Observers. Retrieved from http://arcticcouncil.org/index.php/en/about-us/arctic-council/observers Arctic marine shipping assessment report (AMSA) (2009). Arctic Council. Retrieved from http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/documents/AMSA_2009_Report_2nd_print.pdf.

Ash, J. (2016). Cold Peace: Arctic conflict in an era of climate change. Journal of Intelligence and Terrorism Studies, 1, 1-13.

Baev, P.K. (2015). Russia’s Arctic Illusions. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/08/27/russias-arctic-illusions/ Brutschin, E., and Schubert, S.R. (2016). Icy waters, hot tempers, and high stakes: Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of the Arctic. Energy Research & Social Science, 16, 147-159.

Buixadé Farré, A., et al. (2014). Commercial Arctic shipping through the Northeast Passage: routes, resources, governance, technology, and infrastructure. Polar Geography, 37(4), 298– 324. doi:10.1080/1088937X.2014.965769.

Comba, D. (2011). The IPY Legacy: Better Awareness of International Cooperation as the Basis for Increasing Arctic Navigation. In W. Leal Filho (Ed.), The Economic, Social and Political Elements of Climate Change. Berlin: Springer.

Heininen, L. (2016). In L. Heininen (Ed.). Future Security of the Global Arctic: State Policy, Economic Security and Climate (pp. 1-11). Palgrave Macmillan.

Hilde, P.S. (2014). Armed forces and security challenges in the Arctic. In R. Tamnes and K. Offerdal (Eds.). Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic: Regional dynamics in a global world (pp. 147165). Routledge.

Howard, R. (2009). The Arctic Gold Rush: The New Race for Tomorrow’s Natural Resources. Continuum, Bloomsbury Publishing.

Knudsen, C. (2013[2003]). Pluralism, Scientific Progress, and the Structure of Organization Theory. In H. Tsoukas and C. Knudsen (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory: Meta-theoretical Perspectives (pp. 262-286). Oxford University Press.

Lasserre, F., and al. (2012). Is There an Arms Race in the Arctic? Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 14(pp. 3-4).

Mayer, A. (2013). Race to claim High Arctic’s oil resources may be a fool’s mission. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/race-to-claim-high-arctic-s-oil-resources-may-be-afool-s-mission-1.2461910 Meng, Q., and al. (2017). Viability of transarctic shipping routes: a literature review from the navigational and commercial perspectives. Maritime Policy & Management, 44(1), pp. 16-41.

Myers, S.L. (2013). Arctic Council Adds 6 Nations as Observer States, Including China. The New York Times, Europe. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/world/europe/arctic-council-adds-six-membersincluding-china.html

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Pickering, C., and al. (2015). Publishing not perishing: how research students transition from novice to knowledgeable using systematic quantitative literature reviews. Studies in Higher Education, 40(10), pp. 1756-1769.

Pickering, C., and Byrne, J. (2014). The benefits of publishing systematic quantitative literature reviews for Ph.D. candidates and other early-career researchers. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(3), pp. 534-548.

RT. (2014). Russia’s sideways sailing ‘oblique icebreaker’ has final trials. Retrieved from https://www.rt.com/news/oblique-hull-icebreaker-baltika-536/ Schuler, M. (2016). Video: World’s First ‘Oblique’ Icebreaker Breaks Ice Sideways. Retrieved from http://gcaptain.com/video-worlds-first-oblique-icebreaker-breaks-ice-sideways/ Sun, K. (2014). Beyond the Dragon and the Panda: Understanding China’s Engagement in the Arctic. Asia Policy, 18, pp. 46-51.

The Arctic Institute. (2017). China. Retrieved from https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/countries/china/ Unger, J.D. (2014). Regulating the Arctic Gold Rush: Recommended Regulatory Reforms to Protect Alaska’s Arctic Environment from Offshore Oil Drilling Pollution. Alaska Law Review, 31(2), pp. 263-294.

USGS. (2008). Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal: Estimates of Undiscovered Oil and Gas North of the Arctic Circle. Retrieved from http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3049/fs20083049.pdf.

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Briefing Note

Developing Hydrocarbon Resources in Arctic Russia: The Role of Sino-Russian Collaboration Anastasia Ufimtseva & Tahnee Prior

Introduction A decline in conventional hydrocarbon resources and increasing energy scarcity, along with geopolitical changes, shape today’s global energy governance; at times, pressuring corporations to seek resources in precarious regions like the Arctic. The Arctic is the presumed home of a vast amount of fossil fuels (Carmack et al., 2012). Ongoing research shows that rapid biophysical change continues to open the region to new extractive opportunities and risks. While drilling off the coast of Alaska is halted for the foreseeable future – due to low global oil prices, disappointing exploration outcomes, and vocal public opposition – the development of hydrocarbon resources off the coast of Norway and Russia continues. Russian corporations are particularly active in the Arctic with large hydrocarbon projects like Yamal liquefied natural gas (LNG) acting as testing grounds for both Russian institutions and corporations.

New extractive opportunities in the Arctic are open to actors both in- and outside the region; with the role of foreign investors increasing in the Russian Arctic. China, for instance, is gradually turning to the Arctic to support Beijing’s political ambitions and to sustain its economic model, dependent on foreign natural resources (Sun, 2014: 40). Concurrently, ongoing economic and political pressures on Russian oil and gas projects have shifted energy cooperation eastward. SinoRussian collaboration in the exploration of Arctic hydrocarbon resources, started expanding in 2013; when the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) bought a 20 percent stake in the Yamal LNG project.

With such developments in mind, important questions arise across multiple governance scales: globally, in terms of the global geopolitical climate; nationally, in terms of tax incentives in largescale extractive projects in the Russian Federation; and locally, in terms of environmental Anastasia Ufimtseva and Tahnee Prior are doctoral candidates at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Wilfrid Laurier and University of Waterloo.

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governance and human rights. Now, more than ever, is a crucial time for scholars to better understand how these relations play out on the ground, and how this might impact the environment and inhabitants of the Russian Arctic.

Situating Yamal LNG Project & its Key Players The Yamal LNG plant will produce, liquefy, and ship natural gas from the South-Tambey field, discovered in 1974. Situated beyond the Arctic Circle in the Yamal Peninsula (Northern Russia), the South Tambey natural gas field contains 1.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves (Kremlin, 2013). Yamal LNG is currently “the world’s most northerly project of its kind” (Soldatkin & Astakhova, 2016).

Construction of the Yamal LNG plant, which began in 2013, is projected to cost $27 billion USD and will be completed in three stages; the first part of the liquefaction train will be operational by the end of 2017 and the latter sections will be completed by 2018 and 2019, respectively. As a part of the project, contractors will drill 124 wells and 19 well pads into the South Tambey field. New infrastructure will be developed to support the LNG plant, including a seaport, an airport, roads, bridges, workshops, housing, as well as water treatment and waste management facilities.

Yamal LNG is a joint venture between Novatek, Total, CNPC, and the Silk Road Fund. A majority of the project’s shares (50.1 per cent) are owned by Novatek, an independent Russian oil and gas corporation. Novatek forged international partnerships with foreign oil enterprises to carry out the project: in 2010, French oil and gas corporation Total bought 20 per cent of Yamal’s shares; and in 2014, CNPC signed a framework agreement with Russian government officials and Novatek’s representatives to acquire 20 percent stake in the project. China’s participation in the project expanded in 2016 when the Silk Road Fund acquired 9.9 per cent of shares in Yamal LNG. The Silk Road Fund invested $5 billion USD in Yamal LNG and provided an additional $800 million USD for the implementation of the project (Gerden, 2016). Other shareholders invested $12.6 billion, of which CNPC provided $5 billion USD, Total $3.7 billion USD, and Novatek $3.9 billion USD (Kremlin, 2016a).

Chinese state owned banks played an active role in the Yamal LNG project, as well. The Chinese Export-Import (EXIM) bank and the China Development Bank both provided loans for the project on the basis of agreement signed between Yamal LNG and the banks. Under this agreement, Yamal LNG has access to two 15-year credit lines worth of 9.3 billion Euro (approximately $10.4 billion USD) and 9.8 billion RMB (approximately $1.4 billion USD) (Yamal LNG, 2016). By providing required financing for Yamal LNG, Chinese banks and enterprises opened the door for Russian LNG exports to China’s energy market (Filimonova, 2013: 10).

Moreover, these loans helped Yamal’s executives gain access to financial capital at a time when Russian oil and gas companies were cut off from international capital markets due to Russia’s involvement in Ukraine (Soldatkin & Astakhova, 2016).

With this distribution of project commitments in mind, it is particularly interesting to observe under which conditions Sino-Russian partnerships will continue to be forged. And so, Yamal LNG becomes a testing ground for future onshore LNG projects in the Arctic that allow foreign investors to participate.

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Brief Analysis & Potential Implications Sino-Russian collaboration in the development of hydrocarbon resources in the Russian Arctic can be unpacked into sub-categories like a matryoshka, or a nested doll. It is multi-scalar – with global, national, and local implications.

Global Chinese involvement in the Arctic, to date, is both scientifically- and economically-driven (Sun, 2014: 43). In Norway, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) partnered with Petoro, a Norwegian firm, to jointly explore the offshore Dreki region located between Iceland and Norway (Lanteigne, 2014; Kossa, 2016). In Iceland, the CNOOC partnered with Icelandic energy company Eykon to explore for oil in 2013. Meanwhile, Finland and China recently jointly declared their commitment to intensify economic and technological cooperation, taking into “full consideration the protection and sustainable use of its natural resources” in the Arctic (The President of the Republic of Finland, 2017). Joint-ventures with Russian oil and gas corporations provide another opportunity for China to engage in the development and governance of the Arctic.

Chinese investment in the Russian hydrocarbon sector, for instance, continues to facilitate a greater role for China as a global and a regional player; allowing it to shape Arctic narratives and realities as they relate to the global environment and politics (Bennett, 2015; Steinberg et al., 2015).

China is party to key legal frameworks and international organizations pertaining to Arctic governance, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) (to which Russia also adheres). It is also an Observer State at the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum where it has greater access to information and a better chance of having its voice heard (SAO, 2011: 50-51), but has limited influence and no voting rights. Developments therefore follow “the rules and regulations set by Arctic countries and international agreements…” and thus, “[f]or new and emerging rules governing international practices, China, along with other non-Arctic countries, is eager to weight its influence, but only through following the already established rules, and solely for the purpose of good Arctic governance” (Sun, 2014: 42).

While China has no official Arctic strategy, its current approach to hydrocarbon development in the Russian Arctic appears to fit within China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative. The OBOR initiative is designed to reshape global geopolitics through transportation corridors and is motivated by energy demand, security considerations, and market access (Fallon, 2015). Russian support for the initiative grows as its political relations with Western states deteriorate in light of Western-imposed sanctions. Meanwhile, China uses its growing partnership with Russia to circumvent its non-Arctic status. China also benefits from broader geopolitical changes in the region, by partnering with corporations domiciled in Arctic states to develop natural resources in the region. Sino-Russian collaboration thereby reflects a reformative shift in the policies of both actors, thus enabling China’s ambitions in the region.

A bilateral economic relationship with Russia helps secure and diversify China’s energy future, too.

Bilateral relations between Russia and China are built on the Treaty for Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, which includes a focus on energy and raw material trade (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 2009). Since this agreement was signed, Chinese FDI into the Russian hydrocarbon sector has increased exponentially. For example, Chinese FDI stock in the Russian oil and gas sector Ufimtseva & Prior

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expanded from $430 million USD in 2008 to $3.38 billion USD in 2014 (Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, based on the data from the Eurasian Development Bank, 2016). This exponential growth in Chinese FDI signals growing corporate relations between Russian and Chinese companies in the hydrocarbon sector.

National Russia’s Arctic strategy, put forward in 2009, identifies its Arctic zone as a core national interest and resource base for oil and gas development (President of the Russian Federation 2009). The strategy is motivated by Russia’s economic dependence on revenue from the oil and gas sector, which has been rising steadily from 2006. Currently, approximately 50 per cent of the federal budget is generated from energy exports (Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, 2015).

Hydrocarbon resources also account for 68 percent of Russia’s total exports (PwC, 2016). Given Russia’s dependence on hydrocarbon revenue, it appears that Russia will be unable to sustain its economic development without developing its hydrocarbon resources.

The depletion of oil and gas resources in western Siberia forces Russian corporations to shift extractive activities northward to the Yamal peninsula. Their efforts are supported by the Russian government, which assumed a leading role in the Yamal LNG project through a public-private partnership scheme. The government invested public funds to build infrastructure in the Yamal Peninsula to stimulate the development of hydrocarbon resources. Media covering the Yamal project estimate that the government contributed over 47.3 billion RUB (approximately $843 million USD) and provided 150 billion RUB (approximately $2.7 billion USD) in loans through the National Welfare Fund of Russia (Soldatkin & Astakhova, 2016). The money was used to construct the sea port and adjacent infrastructure. By investing in the seaport, the government opened the door for subsequent construction of the LNG plant in Yamal. In addition to the generous financial support, Russia effectively subsidized portions of the project by adjusting taxation rates for extractive companies operating in the Yamal Peninsula. Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved an economic strategy promising zero tax on mineral extraction from fields located in the Yamal peninsula – for a duration of 12 years, or until a specified output is achieved (Gerden, 2016).

Yamal LNG is also the first Arctic LNG project to enlist the help of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). It is important to remember, however, that significant national incentives for such investment exist as well. Chinese SOEs participate in the construction of the Yamal LNG plant; winning tenders for specific aspects of the project. According to a news report by Klimenko and Sørensen (2017), Chinese corporations will be responsible for the production of around 80 percent of the equipment for the project. For example, CNPC and Magang Group Holding Company, took over construction of steel structures for the plant and delivered complete parts of the project to the Yamal peninsula. CNPC is completing four engineering packages for Yamal, one of which was recently shipped from Shandong Province in China to Yamal (CNPC, 2016). China’s Sinotrans Shipping Ltd. gained a contract to build tankers which will be operated by Russia’s Sovcomflot around the Arctic along with other corporations from Greece, Russia, and South Korea (Gerden, 2016).

Local

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The project is situated in a precarious location. Firstly, the area’s environment – its shifting climate, endangered flora and fauna, and permafrost melt (Environ, 2014) – is increasingly vulnerable in the face of large-scale projects like Yamal LNG. An environmental study, conducted prior to the implementation of the Yamal LNG project, found that both the local environment, and Indigenous inhabitants, will be adversely affected by infrastructure and off-road vehicle trails developed to explore Yamal’s hydrocarbon fields (Walker et al., 2009). A change in salinity level in the Bay of Ob and heightened greenhouse gas emissions are but two consequences (Ametistova & Knizhnikov, 2016). Moreover, the advanced technology upon which this project relies may fail and potentially degrade local ecosystems (Young, Kim & Kim, 2012: 4).

Hydrocarbon developments have social implications, as well. As an example: resource extraction in resource-rich areas like the Yamal Peninsula presents a simultaneous challenge to the world’s largest area of reindeer herding and traditional land-use practices (Larsen et al., 2014). Some scholars like Gritsenko (2017) point to a potential rise of social tensions between locals and migrant workers as a result.

Another key problem is the lack of access to documents (due to long distances or disclosure) in mandatory participatory processes for non-state actors like Indigenous peoples. Local authorities and the public – both identified as key actors in Russia’s environmental impact assessment process – can request public ecological expertise – appearing to protect the rights of those contesting the project – at their own cost, which is often prohibitive. Still, the conclusion of this process bears little legal force in determining project implementation (Koivurova et al., 2016: 189). In Russia, the legal system does not provide equal protection to both Indigenous communities and corporations, placing pressure on corporate social responsibility to fill regulatory gaps (Новикова, n.d.). In the case of Yamal LNG, Novatek strives to consult with Indigenous peoples about the project through stakeholder engagement that meets best practices in the Russian Federation.

However, it still falls short of engaging Indigenous communities and accurately assessing the impact of this large-scale development on the local population (Мурашко, 2015).

At the same time, the project may stimulate economic and social development in the region. It is expected that the project will attract investment, create employment, develop infrastructure, and support existing economic activities (Gritsenko, 2017; Filimonova & Krivokhizh, 2014). The project has created direct and indirect economic linkages domestically and internationally. In the Yamal peninsula, 22,000 people are employed by Yamal LNG directly; with 14,000 people working in Yamal on rotation (Environ, 2014; Kremlin, 2016b).

Since 67 percent of the budget revenue of Yamalo-Nanets is generated from taxes paid by gas enterprises operating in the region, the development of new fields has become essential to sustaining the Okrugs’ economic development as is (Kharitonova & Vizhina, 2009: 120).

Unsurprisingly then, the development of the hydrocarbon sector – primary resources, improved infrastructure, and the attraction of extractive “megaprojects” (Ibid: 121) – is at the center of the Yamalo-Nanets Autonomous Okrugs’ Strategy (up to 2020) for socioeconomic development.

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Conclusion: A Way Forward Yamal LNG project is one site where we can trace aspects of new policies in hydrocarbon and financial sectors in Russia. Current policies are influenced by Chinese SOEs forging close ties with Russian corporations to be able to participate in Arctic projects located in Russia. These Russian companies, with minority Chinese investment, are obligated to undergo a national environmental impact assessment and ecological assessment prior to project implementation “for any economic activity that holds potential risks for the environment, an assessment of the possible negative impacts should be done.” (Koivurova et al., 2016: 185-186).1 However, Russian environmental impact assessment processes have not been updated in 17 years (since 2000), and therefore reflect the practices of that time. The likelihood that future updates will be influenced by the cultural norms and values of the private sector, and multinational corporations, is thus highly plausible (Koivurova et al., 2016: 199) – an interesting prospect when considering Chinese investment and Russian national incentives.

Cooperation on the Yamal Peninsula aside, Russian and Chinese companies are still seeking further mutual ground for energy cooperation in the Arctic. It is plausible that other big Asian players, such as Japan, may be interested in partnering with Russian hydrocarbon companies to develop new hydrocarbon projects (such as Arctic LNG-2) in the region. Further research is still required to trace the policies, goals, and investment commitments of new actors in the region. The investment flows will likely shape the future of extractive projects in the Arctic. They will thus require closer monitoring and oversight to ensure that human modification of the landscape does not harm local environment and security. Additional research and data can help provide better baselines.

Notes 1. It is important to note, however, that Russia has yet to ratify the Convention on

Environmental Impact Assessment in Transboundary Context.

References Ametistova, L.E., and A. Yu. Knizhnikov. (2016). Environmental Aspects of Arctic LNG Projects Development. WWF, 44. Retrieved from, http://www.wwf.ru/resources/publ/book/eng/1060.

Bennet, M. B. (July 03, 2015). How China Sees the Arctic: Reading Between Extraregional and Intraregional Narratives. Geopolitics, 20, 3, 645-668. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2015.1017757.

Carmack, E., McLaughlin, F., Whiteman, G., & Homer-Dixon, T. (January 01, 2012). Detecting and Coping with Disruptive Shocks in Arctic Marine Systems: A Resilience Approach to Place and People. Ambio, 41(1), 56-65.

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China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) (2016). CNPC Offshore Engineering Company completed the first engineering package of Yamal LNG Project. Retrieved from, http://www.cnpc.com.cn/en/nr2016/201602/d64e11d3ccb142d6b203477781c6b5f2.sh tml.

Environ. (2014) Yamal LNG Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. Retrieved from http://yamallng.ru/403/docs/ESIA%20ENG%20.pdf.

Fallon, T. (2015). The new silk road: Xi jinping’s grand strategy for eurasia. American Foreign Policy Interests, 37 (3), 140-147.

Filimonova and Krivokhizh. (2014) A Russian Perspective on China’s Arctic Role; Russia’s need for new partners in opening the door for China in the Arctic. The Diplomat. Retrieved from, http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/a-russian-perspective-on-chinas-arctic-role/.

Filimonova, N. (2013) Scramble for the Arctic Offshore Oil & Gas Resources in Russia. Arctic Yearbook 2013, 4-5. Retrieved from, http://arcticyearbook.com.

Gerden, E. (2016). China expands investments in Russia’s oil and gas sector. Boxscore Construction Analysis.

Gritsenko, D. (2017). A Local Perspective on Energy Development in the High North, Aleksanteri Insight. Retrieved from, http://www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/english/insight/AI_17_1.pdf. Новикова (Novikova), Н. И. (N. I.) (n.d) (Социальный диалог бизнеса и коренных малочисленных народов России. (Social dialogue between businesses and first nations in Russia) Институт этнологии и антропологии РАН, Москва.

Kremlin, (2016b). Meeting with NOVATEK CEO Leonid Mikhelson. Retrieved from http://en.kremlin.ru/catalog/keywords/83/events/53251.

Kremlin (2016a). Meeting with Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson. Retrieved from, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51180 Kharitonova, V. N., & Vizhina, I. A. (2011). Export risks of resource development projects in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Regional Research of Russia, 1(2), 120-127.

Klimenko, E. & C. Sørensen. (March, 2017) The status of Chinese–Russian energy cooperation in the Arctic. Modern Diplomacy. Retrieved from, http://moderndiplomacy.eu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2573:thestatus-of-chinese-russian-energy-cooperation-in-the-arctic&Itemid=208.

Koivurova, T., Lesser, P., Bickford, S., Kankaanpää, P., & Nenasheva, M., (2016). Environmental impact assessment in the arctic: A guide to best practice. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Kossa, M. (2016) The rise of China in the Arctic? Domestic motives, actors and international context. International Studies Association Conference, Hong Kong. Retrieved from, http://web.isanet.org/Web/Conferences/AP%20Hong%20Kong%202016/Archive/cb c09d1b-cf7b-4252-88f5-ca43776cbaa0.pdf.

Kremlin, 2013, Meeting on the Yamal LNG Project and Sabetta Port Construction, Retrieved from, http://en.kremlin.ru/catalog/keywords/83/events/19285.

Larsen, J. N., Anisimov, O. A., Constable, A., Hollowed, A. B., Maynard, N., Prestrud, P., Prowse, T. D. and Stone, J. M. R. (2014). Polar regions. In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Ufimtseva & Prior

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Climate Change. V. R. Barros, C. B. Field, D. J. Dokken, M. D. Mastrandrea, K. J. Mach, et al. (eds.). Cambridge University Press for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. 1567–1612.

Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. (Министерство кономического развития Российской Федерации), 2016. Key Conclusions for Investment Cooperation of Russia and China (Основные итоги инвестиционного сотрудничества России и Китая).

Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation (2015). Federal Budget (Федеральный бюджет).

Retrieved from, http://minfin.ru/ru/statistics/fedbud/. Мурашко, Ольга. (Murashko, Olga). (2015). Коренные народы Ямала в условиях промышленного освоения полуострова (Aboriginal People of Yamal in Conditions of the Industrial Development of the Peninsula). Retrieved from, http://www.csipn.ru/korennye-narody-i-promyshlennye-kompanii/1993.

President of the Russian Federation. (March 30, 2009) Russian Federation’s Policy for the Arctic to 2020. Retrieved from, http://www.arctissearch.com/Russian+Federation+Policy+for+the+Arctic+to+2020.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) (2016). China-Russia Business Seminar; New Opportunities & New Challenges.

Ping, S. and Marc, L. (2015). China`s Developing Arctic Policies: Myths and Misconceptions.

Journal of China and International Relations, 3(1).

President of the Republic of Finland. (2017, April). Joint Declaration between the Republic of Finland and the People's Republic of China on Establishing and Promoting the futureoriented new-type cooperative partnership. Retrieved from http://www.tpk.fi/public/default.aspx?contentid=360378&culture=en-US. Rossiyskaya Gazeta (March 20, 2009) Treaty on Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China (Договор о добрососедстве, дружбе и сотрудничестве между Российской Федерацией и Китайской Народной Республикой). Retrieved from https://rg.ru/2009/03/20/russia-kitai-dok.html.

SAO. (2011) Senior Arctic Officials Report to Ministers. Arctic Council SAO. Soldatkin, V. & Astakhova, O. (2016). UPDATE 2-Russia's Yamal LNG Gets Around Sanctions With $12 Bln Chinese Loan Deal. Reuters. Retrieved from, http://www.reuters.com/article/russia-china-yamal-idUSL5N17W2G8/.

Steinberg, P. (2015). Contesting the Arctic: Rethinking politics in the Circumpolar North. I B Tauris & Co Ltd. Strategy of socio-economic development of Yamalo-Nanets Autonomous Okrug up to 2020 (Стратегия социально-экономического развития Ямало-Ненецкого автономного округа до 2020 года) http://sp2014.lifttothefuture.ru/uploads/priority/files/2dc7d54199ba635b2e0bd153704 9242bd77a73d6.pdf.

Sun, K., & Centre for International Governance Innovation. (2013). China and the Arctic: China’s interests and participation in the region. East Asia-Arctic Relations Paper No. 2

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Walker, D. A., Leibman, M. O., Epstein, H. E., Forbes, B. C., Bhatt, U. S., Raynolds, M. K., ... & Kaarlejärvi, E. (2009). Spatial and temporal patterns of greenness on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia: interactions of ecological and social factors affecting the Arctic normalized difference vegetation index. Environmental Research Letters, 4(4), 045004.

Yamal LNG. (2016, April) Yamal LNG Signed Loan Agreements with the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank.

Young, O. R., Kim, J. D., & Kim, Y. H. (2012). The Arctic in world affairs: a North Pacific dialogue on Arctic marine issues: 2012 North Pacific Arctic conference proceedings. Seoul, Korea: Korea Maritime Institute.

Ufimtseva & Prior

Commentary

Missing the Obvious in Arctic Shipping Regulations: A Maritime Lawyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Observation from Svalbard Ilker K. Basaran

As a participant to the interdisciplinary Ph.D. and Post-Doc summer school organized by the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research (NVP), I visited Svalbard this August (2017) and spent 10 busy days attending more than 50 lectures and presentations, talking to experts from all over the world, and finally exploring the place.

Here is my observation as a maritime lawyer.

Svalbard As an IMO-International Maritime Law Institute Ph.D. candidate, I have long been dealing with research related to the Law of the Sea and Arctic Navigation, but unfortunately, I had never visited the Arctic region. Therefore, the invitation from the NVP was a big deal for me. This actually was, without a doubt, the most important occasion of the year. I was so excited to finally get to visit the High North. The destination was Longyearbyen, a town on the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago, Norway. The archipelago of Svalbard is critically located midway between the North Pole and the mainland of Norway.

Figure 1. Standing by the famous Svalbard sign, simply saying that beware of polar bears all over the Svalbard.

Ilker K. Basaran is a PhD Candidate at IMO-International Maritime Law Institute, Malta, and lecturer at Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey.

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I say critically because, considering the trend in sea ice retreat in the Arctic Ocean, this place is potentially a future hub for Arctic shipping. With the northernmost town of the world brand, the Longyearbyen is already a popular destination for Arctic cruise vessels.

When I arrived, the first thing that caught my eye in Longyearbyen was the lack of ice, not even sea ice. It was the summer period and, apparently, it wasn’t wise to expect ice around this time; but I had 24 hour daylight, and I have to say it requires some adjusting.

Figure 2. Here is a picture in front of the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), enjoying a perfect sunny summer day with the fellow Arctic researchers and lecturers.

The Local Perspective There were countless edifying lectures and classes during this one week period, but the discussion panel with the local representatives we had in our 4th summer school day was the most interesting and perhaps important one for me because it was a great opportunity to finally understand what the locals thought about the increased maritime activity and the Polar Code.

The topic of the panel was “The local perspective from Longyearbyen: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development as a Result of the Increased Activity in the Arctic.”

The local experts were: Merete Nordheim from Basecam Spitsbergen; Terje Aunevik from the Svalbard Business Council and Roony Brunvoll from Visit Svalbard.

The panelists reflected their experiences as they all represented different parts of the community in Longyearbyen. Issues such as difficulties to raise political awareness about Svalbard in the mainland, Norway; benefits of the increased shipping activity for the local businessmen; and the challenges and opportunities related to local tourism were discussed. This last topic regarding Arctic tourism received the highest attention because on that weekend, Longyearbyen, with 2,000 local residents, expected to have three cruise ships and potentially 5,000 visitors on its shores.

Having experienced similar situations before, the panelists expressed their concerns and frustration for not being prepared for this kind of “invasion.” They complained about the lack of capacity to host these people, and more importantly, even if they had the capacity, interestingly, these visitors Missing the Obvious in Arctic Shipping Regulations

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were not generating income for the local community because cruise vessels were providing allinclusive services. Additionally, according to the panelists, cruise vessels stay in the port for a few short hours, therefore they have very limited time to visit the place. This is actually one of the most damaging aspects of Arctic tourism for locals because tourists don’t get to stay long enough to actually see, experience and commit to the local economy. Lastly, the panelists complained about the tourists’ behaviours. They said, “tourists are not well informed, and they don’t have respect for the nature and the traditional way of life up here”.

After the panel, it was time for the Q & A session, and I asked two questions. First, I wondered if the locals were aware of the environmental protection and safety measures brought by the Polar Code.

And I asked, “If they knew that those cruise vessels traveling around Svalbard right now probably won’t be able to visit the place unless they meet the higher vessel standards required by the Polar Code in 2018.” The impression I got is that they did not know the content of the Polar Code, therefore, couldn’t relate, but, to my surprise, they knew that there were efforts to build new ice strengthened cruise vessels, and they actually gave me numbers for the vessels undergoing construction in the area.

Figure 3. Discussion Panel with the Locals in NVP.

My second question was about the coastal state navigational aid and charts. I asked if they “have any knowledge about the competency of their coastal state navigational aid, and additionally, if they have comprehensive and up to date bathymetry, hydrographic data for modern charts for the vessels calling for the port in Longyearbyen.” After this question, panelists immediately referred to an incident, the grounding of MS/Expedition back in 2012, (Spitzbergen/Svalbard) and said “we don’t have navigational aid competency, and our charts are not up to date, let alone comprehensive enough.” Moreover, they said, “this is actually one of our biggest concerns, and we keep asking ourselves what if the same thing happens again”.

Actually, they have all the reasons to worry because there have been 48 ship accidents in Svalbard over the past 15 years, which means there is a risk of having similar accidents in every six years, and most importantly, the passenger vessels have accounted for most of the ship accidents since 1998 and 14 of these cases involved grounding (Palm, 2014).

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This whole panel was eye opening for me because, for the first time, I realized how overwhelming increased shipping activity could be for the local people living in the coastal areas of Arctic shipping routes. After this panel, it was clear to me that we were missing the big picture in Polar Code. We were missing the obvious. And the obvious was the people on the shore. But before going down that road and criticizing the Polar Code for this, I, as a legal professional, would like to first set the stage by emphasizing the importance of the Code because we sometimes criticize without a second thought, and this does more harm than good.

Recognize Before Criticize I think we have to first recognize the importance of the Polar Code, and acknowledge the fact that it is a historical achievement in terms of international environmental cooperation and maritime safety for various reasons. First, prior to the adoption of the Polar Code in early 2017, the Arctic waters received far less international legal protection from shipping activities than the Baltic Sea, Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea (Chirchop, 2016). Second, the Polar Code is the first proactive solution that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has taken since its establishment in 1958. Historically, international maritime conventions were often created as a response to major maritime accidents and disasters. For example, the Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) was adopted in 1914 as a result of the loss of the Titanic liner in the Northwest Atlantic after striking an iceberg in 1912. Similarly, accidents such as the Amoco Cadiz, Andrea Doria, Torrey Canyon, Exxon Valdez, and Costa Concordia have all spurred changes in maritime regulatory measurements. Thankfully, however, we have managed to put the rules and regulations in place without such a major incident in the Arctic Ocean. Third, in addition to safety and security measures, the Polar Code has another function, which is to create a level playing field for the maritime industry. This is hugely important because all the key players, such as insurers, investors, ship owners and the shippers, rely on hard rules and take them as a reference point in their actions (Brigham, 2014).

And lastly, as Aldo Chircop observes, “the Polar Code is a first generation instrument whose scope and content will be subject to adaptive learning. It is the product of compromise through negotiation, therefore, it reflects what was commonly acceptable at the global level. It can be easily criticized for its shortcomings” (2016a, p.57).

The Missing Part is the People on the Shore According to the IMO’s own description, the Polar Code is intended to cover the full range of shipping-related matters relevant to the navigation in waters surrounding the two poles – ship design, construction and equipment; operational and training concerns; search and rescue; and equally important, the protection of the unique environment and eco-systems of the polar regions.

Thus, it is the ship, people on board, and the environment that are given emphasis in the Polar Code thus far.

The question is then, what about the people on the shore? Aren’t they the ones who are being directly affected by the increased shipping activity? Perhaps, they are the most affected and in need of protection. If we recall the BP oil spill incident, we would realize that coastal communities, such as local fishermen, hoteliers, and the restaurant owners were the most vulnerable and affected ones. Therefore, if something is left out in the Polar Code, it is the interests of the people on the shore, and this sends an unfortunate message.

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I have advocated for the creation of the Polar Code because it sets a great example to demonstrate how regional states can be instrumental in finding solutions to their collective maritime problems, and how they can actually lead the way for the IMO to set international maritime rules. The establishment of the Arctic Council with its numerous components relating to sustainable development and environmental protection, with the interests of Indigenous peoples at its core, is another novel idea and has proven its merits over the past 20 years.

Figure 4. Hiking in Longyearbyen.

However, it is ironic that these same local people are not considered vulnerable in the face of increasing Arctic shipping activity and provided with legal protection under the Polar Code.

As I described above, the immediate threat for locals is Arctic tourism. People are vulnerable to ever increasing Arctic tourism activities on their lands. However, in addition to Arctic tourism, these people are exposed to both tanker and container shipping related threats as well. And they need help with a number of major infrastructural problems, such as the system for emergency response, capacity or plan for immediate reaction to oil, sewage, or noxious substance pollution, access to the accident site, pre-placed cleanup materials and technologically advanced and Arctic ready equipment.

Locals have Responsibility Coastal communities in shipping routes need to raise their voice and collectively demand their own protection. They have to, of course, find their venues for that. And this still could be best achieved via the Arctic Council or their own governmental bodies.

However, we have to realize that the local institutions can also be instrumental in these efforts.

This brings me to another highlight of the summer school, which was the introductory lecture about the newly established UNIS Arctic Safety Centre, given by Ann Christin Auestad, the project manager and the director of the Centre. The Center has the mandate to share knowledge, experience and create awareness for the challenges related to increased human activity in Svalbard.

With support from the Norwegian government, this Centre has a very promising future. In a short period of time, the Centre can take the lead in identifying the problems and risks associated with the increased Arctic shipping. And it can represent local people in efforts to reach out to decision makers. In other words, it can be a bridge between law makers and the local community. Similarly,

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it can help industry to have a better understanding about local concerns. And lastly, the Centre could easily be an example for other Arctic and non-Arctic states as well.

Conclusion Overall, my stay in Svalbard was very productive. I have built potentially lifelong friendships and gained important knowledge. Unfortunately, however, I faced an inconvenient truth: That unless people on the shore are protected, the Polar Code will always appear as an industry driven legal instrument created to protect the industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s self-interests. Even the environmental protection measures in the Code will be framed as a prolongation of this motive.

References Brigham, Lawson W. (2014). The Developing International Maritime Organization. In Lassi Heininen, Heather Exner-Pirot & JoĂŤl Plouffe (Eds). Arctic Yearbook 2014 (pp. 496-499).

Chircop, Aldo (2016a). Sustainable Arctic Shipping: Are Current International Rules for Polar Shipping is Sufficient. The Journal of Ocean Technology. 11(3): 39-50.

Chircop, Aldo (2016b). Jurisdiction over ice-covered areas and the Polar Code: an emerging symbiotic relationship? The Journal of International Maritime Law. 22(4): 275-290.

McGwin, Kevin (2016, 30 December). As Polar Code takes effect, a mixture of confidence and concern. The Arctic Journal. Retrieved from https://www.arcticnow.com/business/shipping/2016/12/30/as-polar-code-takeseffect-a-mixture-of-confidence-and-concern/.

Palm, Erik (2014). Risk of an accident every six years. Svalbard Posten. Retrieved from http://svalbardposten.no/index.php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=5309.

Polar Code. Shipping in polar waters. International Maritime Organization (IMO). Retrieved from http://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/polar/pages/default.aspx.

Strange, Rolf (2012, 8 August) Grounding of MS Expedition. Spitsbergen - Svalbard. Retrieved from https://www.spitsbergen-svalbard.com/2012/08/08/grounding-of-msexpedition.html

Missing the Obvious in Arctic Shipping Regulations

Commentary

Evolutionary Innovation in Arctic Marine Transportation Lawson W. Brigham

Pioneering technological and operational innovations in the field of Arctic marine transportation have been the norm for the past six decades. Finnish ship designers and shipbuilders were longtime leaders providing the Soviet Union with innovative icebreaking ships such as shallow-draft river icebreakers, icebreaking commercial carriers (SA-15 or early Norilsk class ships), and shallowdraft nuclear icebreakers, all adapted to the unique Siberian coastal and river environments. The Soviet Union itself pioneered the use of nuclear-powered icebreakers since the 1959 launching of the icebreaker Lenin, the first nuclear-powered surface ship. Larger nuclear icebreakers were developed in the USSR and a polar ship design and development capacity continues in Russia with new nuclear icebreakers under construction. Past and current developments of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) have shown how marine access in ice-covered waters can be maintained and extended using a range of innovative polar ship technologies.

In 1969 the tanker M/V Manhattan sailed along the Northwest Passage (NWP) and in Arctic waters to test whether oil on the North Slope of Alaska (discovered in 1968) could be transported by icebreaking ship out of the Arctic. The 290-meter ship, a converted tanker with a new icebreaker bow and a reinforced hull, sailed from the U.S. East Coast west into the NWP and returned to New York. The project found it was technically feasible to use icebreaking tankers, but confirmed this was a seasonal, not year-round, operation because of the difficult ice conditions encountered in the Canadian Arctic. Large tanker voyages would likely be limited to seasonal voyages (Spring, Summer and Autumn) through the NWP with or without icebreaker support. The trans-Alaska pipeline was ultimately built and has effectively transported oil since 1977 from the North Slope to the port of Valdez, Alaska. However, the historic 1969 and 1970 voyages of the M/V Manhattan were perhaps ahead of their time since today we are witnessing large icebreaking ships sailing safely and effectively on Arctic marine routes.

Lawson W. Brigham is a distinguished fellow and faculty member at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a fellow at the U.S. Coast Guard Academyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Center for Arctic Study and Policy. Dr. Brigham is Chair of the Arctic Yearbookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Editorial Board.

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One of the most extraordinary innovations in Arctic marine operations in recent decades has been the development of advanced icebreaking carriers – essentially commercial cargo ships that are icebreakers in their own right. These ships have the propulsion power and hull strength of icebreakers and they are designed to operate without being tied to an icebreaker-led convoy. The central concept is to have icebreaking commercial ships sail independently in most Arctic marine regions, not just in summer, but during extended ice navigation seasons in Spring and Autumn.

In select areas such as the western NSR across the Kara Sea, year-round ice navigation can be maintained using these capable polar ships. Three examples illustrate this successful strategy of operating icebreaking commercial cargo ships: the M/V Arctic in the Canadian Arctic; the Norilsk class icebreaking ships servicing the industrial mining complex at Norilsk; and the recent operation of the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) icebreaking carrier, the M/V Christophe de Margerie, along the length of the NSR. In North America a modern, 221-meter (11 meter draft) polar ship, the M/V Arctic delivered in 1978, pioneered independent operations of large commercial ships in the Canadian Arctic. The ship serviced the Polaris and Nanisivik mines (at that time both operational in the high Canadian Arctic), and operates today within the Montreal-based fleet of Fednav, servicing mines in northern Quebec and Labrador. Fednav has in its fleet two additional icebreaking cargo carriers (each 189 meters in length), the M/V Umiak and the M/V Nunavik, both built in Japan and delivered in 2006 and 2014. These ships have extended marine access throughout the Canadian Arctic and lengthened navigation seasons due to their excellent icebreaking and ice navigation capabilities.

The metallurgical and mining complex at Norilsk in western Siberia ships its products out of the port of Dudinka on the Yenisey River. A regional railway connects Norilsk and Dudinka. The key component of this transportation system is a fleet of five icebreaking carriers of the Norilsk class that can carry nickel plates, palladium, copper and platinum to global markets. These German- and Finnish-built container and bulk ships can operate independent of icebreakers year-round on voyages between Dudinka and Murmansk (and beyond to Europe). The Norilsk class ships can sail without icebreaker escort eastward into the Pacific from Dudinka during a three-month summer season. The ships can carry 12-14,000 tons of bulk cargo and 700 standard containers, and continuously break 1.5 meter thick sea ice. They also make use of a ‘double-acting feature,’ developed by the Finnish firm Aker Arctic Technology Inc. The ships are designed to break ice moving forward in normal operations, but also can break more difficult ice by going astern; thus, both ends of the ship have icebreaking capability. Each ship has a single propulsion pod (gearless and electrical), developed by the Finnish company ABB Group that can rotate and provide thrust in any direction. The Norilsk class ships represent a highly successful merger of several leading edge polar ship technologies.

The construction of an LNG plant on the Yamal Peninsula along the Ob Bay is a major development in the Russian maritime Arctic. The new port of Sabetta will allow marine access to the plant by a future fleet of fifteen icebreaking LNG carriers. All of the new icebreaking ships, which can carry 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied gas and break 1.2 meters of ice, are being built in Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering shipyard. The first ship of the class, the M/V Christophe de Margerie, conducted extensive ice trials in the Russian Arctic in March 2017. The ship completed its maiden commercial voyage in August by carrying a load of LNG from Hammerfest, Norway to Boryeong, South Korea (22 days) sailing along the length of the NSR Evolutionary Innovation in Arctic Marine Transportation

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unassisted in a record 6.5 days. In the future, these large LNG icebreaking carriers will sail westbound year-round (without icebreaker support) out of Sabetta and along the NSR to Murmansk and European ports. During the Summer the same ships will sail along the eastern NSR into the Pacific and to Asian markets. Most of these voyages will be accomplished without icebreaker support, but Russian icebreakers could extend the navigation season in the east with the ships under escort.

The message is clear that icebreaking commercial ships are very capable of operating independently and safely without icebreaker support. After several decades of development and operational experience in Canada and Russia, the economic viability of these modern polar ships has been proven when linked to Arctic natural resource development.

Acknowledgments Funding for this research has been provided by U.S. National Science Foundation grant 1263678.

Brigham

Section VI: Arctic Governance & Institutions

The 2015 Oslo Declaration on Arctic High Seas Fisheries: The Starting Point towards Future Fisheries Management in the Central Arctic Ocean Dan Liu

The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) signed in July 2015 reflects the common interests of the Arctic coastal states (namely, the A5) to manage fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean beyond national jurisdictions. As a multilateral document with a soft-law nature, the Oslo Declaration was followed by the ‘A5 plus 5 (the EU, Iceland, China, Japan, and South Korea)’ negotiations towards a legally binding agreement. However, questions remain unsolved. For example, to what extent can the Oslo Declaration or other following-up instruments be used for the CAO high seas fishery management? Moreover, under international fisheries law, are there any loopholes of the current fishery management under the ‘A5 plus 5’ negotiation framework? This paper provides an overall examination on the legal aspects of the Oslo Declaration, especially the arguments regarding the future of fisheries management in the High Seas portion of the Central Arctic Ocean, such as a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) or Agreement (RFMA) as the interim measure, and the differences between the Declaration and international fisheries law.

Introduction There are no generally accepted geographical definitions for the terms “Arctic” or “Arctic Ocean.”

International fisheries law, typically the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 1995 Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (hereinafter referred to as the ‘the Fish Stock Agreement’), applies to the marine Arctic and the Arctic Ocean. Within 200 nautical miles from seashore, namely, maritime zones within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) or Exclusive Fishery Zone, jurisdiction to regulate fishing falls exclusively to the coastal state. For maritime zones beyond state jurisdiction, namely, the high seas and deep sea-bed, the UNCLOS confirms the right of all States to fish on the high seas. There are four high seas pockets in the marine Arctic, namely, the so-called ‘Banana Hole’ in the Norwegian Sea, the so-called ‘Loophole’ in the Barents Dan Liu is Associate Research Professor, Center for Pole and Deep Ocean Development, Koguan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.

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Sea, the so-called ‘Donut Hole’ in the central Bering Sea, and the so-called ‘Central Arctic Ocean’ (Molenaar, 2014: 104-105).1 For discussion purposes, the term “Central Arctic Ocean” (CAO) in this article denotes the single high seas portion of the Arctic Ocean that is entirely surrounded by waters under the fisheries jurisdiction of Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark in respect of Greenland, the Kingdom of Norway, the Russian Federation and the United States of America (NOAA, 2015).2 On 16 July 2015, in Oslo, the coastal states of the Arctic Ocean (hereinafter referred to as the ‘A5’) (Dodds & Valur, 2012: 21-37)3—Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Russian Federation and the United States—took a long-awaited step in the international regulation of Arctic Ocean fisheries by signing the “Declaration Concerning the Prevention of Unregulated High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean” (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Oslo Declaration’) (Molenaar, 2015: 426).4 In this Declaration, the five countries state that “they are aware that fish stocks in the Arctic Ocean may occur both within areas under the fisheries jurisdiction of the coastal States and in the high seas portion of the CAO, including straddling fish stocks,” and “they share the view that it is desirable to implement appropriate interim measures to deter unregulated fishing in the future in the high seas portion of the CAO” (The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean, 2015).5 On 5 December 2015, the A5 invited the likely five members that would be involved in the CAO

high seas fishery, countries or region that have a history of distant water fishing—the European Union, which negotiates fisheries as a block, Iceland, China, Japan, and South Korea—met in Washington for the first time to discuss the US proposal for an international fisheries agreement. In this meeting, the A5 showed their intention to authorize their vessels to conduct any future commercial fishing in this area only when one or more international mechanisms are in place to manage any such fishing in accordance with recognized international standards (Chairman’s Statement, 2015).6 The overall purpose of the non-legally binding Declaration is to prevent unregulated high seas fishing in the approximately 2.8 million square kilometers area that comprises the central part of the Arctic Ocean (Shephard et al., 2016).7 This paper begins with a general introduction on not only national laws and policies of the A5, but also international fishery laws, especially the 1982 UNCLOS and the 1995 United Nations Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea relating to the Fish Stock Agreement as applied in the high seas portion of the CAO. The second section examines legal issues of the Oslo Declaration, such as the interim measures regarding unregulated fishing in the high seas portion of the CAO, differences between the Declaration and international fisheries law, and the RFMO/As in the marine Arctic. The third section turns to discussion on the role of participants toward broader process during the previous negotiations, and the recent negotiation on the CAO high seas fisheries. As conclusion, this paper provides an overall evaluation of the Oslo Declaration and looks forward to the possibilities to establish a RFMO/A on fisheries management in high seas portion of the CAO.

Previous National Laws and Policies of the A5 on Arctic Fisheries and the International Fishery Laws as Applied in the High Seas Portion of the CAO Based on estimates produced by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, observations of sea ice thickness and volume from multiple sources have revealed the continued decline of the Arctic sea ice pack over the last decade (Kwok et al., 2009; Laxon et al., 2013; Kwok et al., 2015).8 The Arctic Liu

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sea ice cover reached a minimum annual extent of 4.41 million km2 on September 11, 2015 (Perovich et al., 2017).9 With the summer retreat of sea ice and warming of ocean waters, fish species are moving north, including in subarctic waters. The management of fisheries in the CAO, beyond national jurisdictions, has nonetheless become a pressing issue in Arctic marine governance (Pan & Huntington, 2016).10 Scientific awareness of the need for High Seas Fisheries Management in the CAO Arctic and sub-Arctic waters are the habitat of more than 150 species of fish. However, Arctic fish communities are dominated by a few species. The most abundant ones are Greenland halibut, polar cod, Atlantic and Pacific cod, Greenland cod, walleye pollock, capelin, long rough dab, yellow fin sole, Atlantic and Pacific herring, and redfish (AMAP, 1998).11 Although the CAO has been covered year-round in ice through most of human history, in recent summers up to 40% of it has melted into open water (Huntington et al., 2015).12 This newly emerging ocean is undergoing tremendous ecological change at the same time it is becoming potentially accessible to commercial fishing fleets, which have proved relentless in their pursuit of catch. The combination of open water and north-moving fish raises the prospect of Arctic fisheries, though it remains unclear which species might move into the waters of the CAO, in what numbers, and when (Hollowed et al., 2013).13 Therefore, it is highly possible that the waters of the CAO will have the potential to “open” for fishing unless closed or regulated by international agreement.

In 2012, an open letter was released by The Pew Charitable Trusts on the first day of the International Polar Year conference in Montreal. The major purpose of the letter which was signed by more than 2,000 scientists from 67 countries was to push Arctic leaders to develop an international fisheries agreement that would protect the waters of the CAO (The Pew Charitable Trust, 2012).14 The letter recommends that leaders of coastal Arctic countries pursue the following actions: (1) to take the lead in developing a precautionary international fisheries management agreement; (2) to start with a catch level of zero until sufficient scientific research can assess the impacts of fisheries on the CAO ecosystem; and (3) to set up a robust management, monitoring and enforcement system before fishing begins (The Pew Charitable Trust, 2012).15 National Arctic fisheries laws and policies of the A5 The Arctic Ocean is governed by national and international legal regimes, most notably the UNCLOS. Common interests in the region are coordinated by the Arctic Council, but its membership is limited to the coastal Arctic States (The Royal Society of UK, 2010).16 The A5 have played a crucial role for consultations or negotiations on the CAO fisheries. Before the 2015 Oslo Declaration, formal diplomatic discussions on the Arctic fishery issue had been limited within the A5. However, perspectives of the A5 towards their own fisheries laws and policies varied.

Among the A5, the United States has played a lead role in shaping the multilateral level negotiations on the CAO fishery issue. The US legislation therefore can be seen as representative of the fishery policy for the Arctic coastal states. The northward expansion of fish species in parts of the United States’ Arctic waters can be found in the Senate Joint Resolution No. 17 of 2007 (US Senate, 2007).17 This resolution was passed by Congress in 2008 as Public Law 110-243. It directs the United States “to initiate international discussions and take necessary steps with other Nations to negotiate an agreement for managing migratory and trans-boundary fish stocks in the Arctic Ocean” (US Congress, 2008).18 Following the same logic, in light of the uncertainty of additional

The 2015 Oslo Declaration on Arctic High Seas Fisheries

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information for commercial fishery, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted the 2009 Fishery Management Plan (2009 FMP) (North Pacific Fishery Management Council, 2009)19 to govern the US waters of the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea and to allow for scientific research on evaluating whether such activities can be done in a sustainable manner. This proactive and precautionary action by the United States is consistent with its Senate joint resolution No.17 of 2007 (Molenaar, 2014).20 In Canada, while there are aspects of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) policies that have particular relevance to the Arctic, there is no cohesive policy framework that addresses Arctic fisheries management.21 Two fisheries policies are particularly relevant to the Canadian Arctic fisheries management, i.e., the Policy for Managing the Impacts of Fishing on Sensitive Benthic Areas (2009) and the Emerging Fisheries Policy (2008). The 2009 Policy for Managing the Impacts of Fishing on Sensitive Benthic Areas provides guidance to DFO management in mitigating the impact of fishing on sensitive benthic areas, and avoiding impacts that are likely to cause serious or irreversible damage (DFO, 2009).22 Under the 2008 Emerging Fisheries Policy which was originally developed in 1996, if a species or stock can sustain a fishery (biologically and commercially), the commercial fishery stage is reached and an integrated fisheries management plan should be developed (DFO, 2008).23 The ban on fishing in US Arctic waters caused some controversy in Canada because it purported to include the 6250-squae-nautical-mile disputed zone in the Beaufort Sea (Byers, 2013: 180).24 With the development of the US-Canada bilateral talks, however, the 2010 Report of Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans recommends Canada “to adopt an approach for the Canadian part of the Beaufort Sea that is similar to the US Arctic FMP,” and “to engage on a bilateral discussion on the possibility of developing a complementary Canada-US approach to ecosystem-based management in the Beaufort Sea” (The Standing Senate Committee of Canadian Parliament, 2010).25 In 2014, Canada adopted a similar approach with the United States for its portion of the Beaufort Sea under the Beaufort Sea integrated Fisheries Management Framework, where new commercial fisheries will only be considered after research has shown surplus and sustainable stocks (Government of Canada, 2014).26 Similar to the US and Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark’s “Strategy for the Arctic 2011-2020” acknowledges that due to “relatively limited knowledge of fish stocks and fishery opportunities,” the precautionary principle should be applied to protect the environment and fishery resources, while explicitly mentions the CAO in this regard (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kingdom of Denmark, 2011).27 As to Norway, it’s worth noting that it established a Fisheries Protection Zone (FPZ) around Svalbard rather than an EEZ in 1977. Several states enjoy fisheries access to the FPZ and territorial waters of Svalbard as a result of the provisions of equal access laid down in the Spitsbergen Treaty (Molenaar, 2012).28 While Norway’s “The High North—Visions and Strategies” emphasizes the need for sustainable and science-based fisheries management and the application of precautionary approach in a broad sense, no special attention is devoted to new fisheries (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, 2011).29 Shortly after the signature of the Oslo Declaration, the Norwegian government expressed its concerns about the necessity to study how climate change is affecting the migration patterns of fish and other developments in the Arctic region, and emphasized the

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importance for the coastal states to invite other states to prevent unregulated fishing in the future (Government of Norway, 2015).30 Enforcement of Russian fisheries regulations in its EEZ and high seas portion of the Barents Sea has not been without controversy over the years. The Barents and White Sea Territorial Administration of the Federal Fishery Agency, which was established in 2006-2007, is responsible for quota control and carries out port and at-sea inspections in Russian territorial waters and outside the Russian EEZ in the Barents Sea Loophole and the Fishery Protection Zone around Svalbard (Glubokov, Hoel, Rolston, Turgeon & Vanderzwaag, 2014).31 Russia also showed its desire to protect the Arctic Ocean from unregulated exploitation by vessels chasing northwardmoving fish.32 In sum, fisheries management approaches of the US and Canada are both precautionary and proactive, even though in different ways. Whereas the US domestic regulations tend to be more unilaterally stringent and already constrain fisheries by its nationals, most of the policy statements by other A5 members advocate or envisage similar actions.

International fisheries law as applied in the high seas portion of the CAO The Arctic is host to a complex set of arrangements in fisheries that relate to a mix of national, bilateral, and international arrangements and jurisdiction (Loukacheva, 2015: 73).33 The intergovernmental bodies of most relevance are the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The 1982 UNCLOS as well as the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Convention oblige states to cooperate on resource management in the areas beyond the 200 mile zones.

Major global legally binding and non-legally binding fisheries instruments are as follows: (1) The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS, 1982);34 (2) The 1995 United Nations Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (hereinafter referred to as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fish Stocks Agreementâ&#x20AC;?) (The Fish Stocks Agreement, 1995);35 (3) The FAO fisheries instruments, such as the 1993 Compliance Agreement,36 the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries37 together with 29 Technical Guidelines and international plans of action to assist the international community in taking the necessary practical steps to implement the provisions foreseen in the Code (for example, the 2002 Implementation of the International Plan of Action to deter, prevent and eliminate, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, integration of fisheries into coastal area management, etc.) (FAO Technical Guidelines),38 and the 2009 Port State Measures Agreement (Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing, 2009).39 (4) The United Nations General Assembly Resolutions which have contributed to the phase-out of large-scale pelagic driftnet fishing and set up innovative restrictions on bottom-fisheries on the high seas (UN General Assembly).40

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The provisions on marine capture fisheries in the UNCLOS and the Fish Stocks Agreement have a so-called “framework” character with overall objectives and basic rights and obligations for member states. The UNCLOS employs the “zonal management approach”, namely, it distinguishes five categories of marine spaces: international waters, territorial seas, archipelagic waters, the EEZ, and the high seas (Yoshifumi, 2008: 5).41 However, fish do not recognize such artificial zones or boundaries stipulated in the UNCLOS. Under the UNCLOS, as regards straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks on the high seas, the obligation to cooperate is supplemented with the special obligations of relevant coastal states and the state fishing for these stocks in adjacent areas of the high seas to cooperate in the conservation of these stocks (UNCLOS, 1982, Article 63.2, Article 64.1),42 and the obligation shall be complied with either through direct cooperation or through sub-regional or regional fisheries organizations (UNCLOS, 1982, Article 63.1-2).43 As indicated in its full title, the Fish Stock Agreement only applies to straddling and highly migratory fish stocks. Article 3 (1) of the Fish Stock Agreement indicates that the applicable regions are those of the areas “beyond national jurisdiction”. In practical term, this refers to areas of high seas where all states enjoy the freedom of fishing. However, some of the provisions are also applicable to areas under national jurisdiction—the EEZs or Exclusive Fisheries Zones. The Fish Stock Agreement thus includes obligations both for coastal states and for states fishing on the high seas (Henriksen, Hoenneland & Sydnes, 2006: 13).44 Therefore, substantive fisheries standards are not set out by either the UNCLOS or the Fish Stock Agreement. Actual fisheries regulations are carried out by states individually or collectively, including through regional fisheries management organizations or arrangements (hereinafter referred to as the “RFMO/As”) (Molenaar, 2014: 108).45

The 2015 Oslo Declaration on High Seas Arctic Fisheries: Legal Issues and Beyond Any discussion about the CAO high seas fisheries cannot be isolated from Arctic fishery governance through international law. It’s necessary to examine legal issues of the Oslo Declaration by placing it within the framework of international fishery law. Meanwhile, participation by other states outside the A5 remains an important factor in the overall legitimacy and effectiveness of any outcome from the broader process. To this author, at least three major legal issues have been touched on by the Declaration as follows: the interim measures on commercial fishing, the RFMO/As on fisheries conservation and management on the high seas portion of the CAO, and the gaps between the Declaration and international fisheries law.

The interim measures Currently, the legal status of the Oslo Declaration is best understood as containing a number of non-legally binding commitments, amounting to so-called “soft law”, while expressing a preference (but not an obligation) that the states concerned should act, or should refrain from acting, in a specified manner (Ryder, 2015).46 Soft law is by its nature the articulation of a “norm” in a non-binding written form, and it can also be applied to non-treaty agreements between states or between states and other entities that lack capacity to conclude treaties (Birnie, Boyle, Alan & Redgwell., 2009: 35).47 The soft law nature of the Oslo Declaration is not only evidenced by the

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title of “Declaration” itself, but also by the use of the terms in the Declaration, such as “recognize”, “recall”, “acknowledge,” etcetera.

At the previous 2014 Nuuk meeting, political agreement was to reach “the desirability of developing appropriate interim measures to deter unregulated fishing in the future in the CAO” (Arctic Fisheries Nuuk Chairmans and ToR for 3rd Meeting, 2014, February 24-26).48 The Oslo Declaration goes beyond by expressing the A5’s intention to implement a number of interim measures “to deter unregulated fishing in the future in the high seas portion of the CAO” (The Oslo Declaration, 2015).49 However, the characterization of the Oslo Declaration as “ban” (Doyle, 2015)50 on fishing in the Arctic is misleading for several seasons. First, it’s important to recall the spatial focus of the Declaration and the interim measures it describes; the interim measures apply only to “the high seas portion of the CAO.” Second, it must also be recalled that both the Declaration and the interim measures are not legally binding upon the A5. Although the Declaration indicates the intent on behalf of the A5 to comply with the interim measures it describes, such measures are legally non-enforceable (Ryder, 2015).51 However, if the parties have strong determination to reach a legally binding agreement in the future, the interim measures that amount to a “moratorium” on fishing (Ryder, 2015)52 at the high seas portion of the CAO, will be legally enforceable amongst the parties.

According to the Oslo Declaration, interim measures “in the single high seas portion of the CAO” will be implemented as follows: (1) Only in accordance with one or more “regional or subregional fisheries management organizations or arrangements” to manage fishing based on “recognized international standards”, can commercial fishing in this high seas area be authorized; (2) Members of the Declaration will not only establish joint programs of scientific research with the aim of improving understanding of the ecosystems, but also promote cooperation with relevant scientific bodies, “including but not limited to,” the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)53 and the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES);54 (3) Members of the Declaration will promote compliance with these interim measures and with relevant international law, including by coordinating their monitoring, control and surveillance activities in this area; (4) Members of the Declaration will ensure that non-commercial fishing does not undermine purpose of the interim measures (The Oslo Declaration, 2015).55 The key components of the Oslo Declaration are the interim measures that will be adopted by the members. The “interim measure” referred to in the Oslo Declaration appear only to restrict “commercial fishing.” Thus, it appears clear that the restrictions or conditions imposed by the provision do not apply to subsistence, scientific, recreational, or other types of non-commercial fishing that may take place in the high seas portion of the CAO (Ryder, 2015).56 However, other legal phrases in the Declaration that have future implication and influence on the Arctic and the fishing nations remain unclear and subject to clarification. Although the interim measures appear to restrict commercial fishing in the high seas portion of the CAO, it is apparent that such restrictions do not amount to a prohibition of commercial fishing of any sorts, but instead, imposes two conditions that must be met before the A5 can authorize their vessels to engage in commercial fishing in the area: (1) pursuant to one or more regional or sub-regional fisheries management organizations or arrangements (RFMO/As); and (2) “are or may be established to manage such fishing in accordance with recognized international standards” (Molenaar, 2016: 429-463).57

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Reading the text of the Declaration, at least two loopholes can be observed as follows: First, the wording chosen is “established to manage” (The Oslo Declaration, 2015)58 RFMO/As rather than, for instance, “established and manage”. The literal interpretation of the chosen wording therefore implies the existing and future RFMO/As are “merely” required to have the mandate to manage fishing in accordance with “modern international standards” (Ryder, 2014)59 and in return also implies the merely requirement to establish a RFMO/A per se instead of its effective operation.

Second, in view of the particular characteristics of the Arctic Ocean, the phrase of “international standards” is too broad to provide guidance for the interim measures. A possible interpretation of this term is to focus specific attention on international standards relating to new and exploratory fisheries (directing attention to, inter alia, Article 6 (6) of the 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement that will be explained in the next section).

Disparities between the Oslo Declaration and international fisheries law The existing international legal framework and national regulation for Arctic fisheries contain the following main gaps: (1) Science-based and ecosystem-based fisheries management cannot be ensured due to lack of data; (2) Regulation by Arctic Ocean coastal states and other states and entities may not be adequate; (3) Gaps in Arctic Ocean coastal state fora and instruments; and (4) Gap in high seas coverage with the RFMOs (Molenaar, 2014: 117-118).60 The Oslo Declaration, taking the form of a multilateral agreement, may be seen as the first attempt to “fill in” the foregoing “gap” No.3 as an “instrument” reached by the A5 and the other five parties (the European Union, Iceland, Japan, South Korea and China). Efforts have been made by the Oslo Declaration, such as the decision to implement interim measures on commercial fishing, but disparities still remain between the Declaration and international fisheries law.

(1) “New and exploratory fisheries” and interim measures As per the foregoing analysis, a possible linkage between the use of the term “international standards” and “interim measures” is to focus specific attention on the standards regarding new and exploratory fisheries, which directs special attention to relevant provisions of the 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement (Molenaar, 2016).61 Unlike “straddling fish stocks” (UNCLOS, 1982, Article 63.2)62 or “highly migratory fish stocks” (UNCLOS, 1982, Article 64.1)63 that have been regulated or indirectly defined by the UNCLOS, “new fishery” and “exploratory fishery” were not defined either by the 1982 UNCLOS, or the 1995 Fish Stock Agreement. Such an omission in international fisheries law might be the latest awareness of the possibility for commercial fishing in the polar regions.

However, the Definition of “new fishery” and “exploratory fishery” provided by the 2016/17 CCAMLR (CCAMLR)64 Conservation Measure may shed some light. “New fishery”, for the purposes of conservation measures, is “a fishery on a species using a particular fishing method in a statistical subarea or division for which: (i) information on distribution, abundance, demography, potential yield and stock identity from comprehensive research/surveys or exploratory fishing have not been submitted to CCAMLR; or (ii) catch and effort data have never been submitted to CCAMLR; or (iii) catch and effort data from the two most recent seasons in which fishing occurred have not been submitted to CCAMLR (The Commission at the Thirty-fifth Meeting, 2016, October 17- 28).65 “Exploratory fisheries” are defined as either a fishery that “was previously classified as a ‘new fishery’”, or “continue to be classified as such until sufficient information is Liu

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available: (a) to evaluate the distribution, abundance and demography of the target species, leading to an estimate of the fishery’s potential yield; (b) to review the fishery’s potential impacts on dependent and related species; (c) to allow the Scientific Committee to formulate and provide advice to the Commission on appropriate harvest catch levels, as well as effort levels and fishing gear, where appropriate” (The Commission at the Thirty-fifth Meeting, 2016, October 17- 28).66 Under the CCAMLR, it can be concluded that data and impact on target fisheries are two major factors for the determination of conservation measures of “new and exploratory fisheries.”

According to Article 6 of the 1995 Fish Stock Agreement, “for new or exploratory fisheries”, state members of the Agreement have a responsibility to adopt “cautious conservation and management measures” as soon as possible (Fish Stock Agreement, 1995, Article 6.6).67 However, there is still a long way to go before current “interim measures” of the Declaration can be qualified and called “conservation and management measures” under international fisheries law for two reasons: First, data and information on new and exploratory fisheries are insufficient in the marine Arctic; Second, as a precondition for the implementation of the interim measures, an assessment on “the impact of the fisheries on the long-term sustainability of the stocks” (Fish Stock Agreement, 1995, Article 6.6)68 is still unrealistic, because it remains unclear which species might move into the waters of the CAO, in what numbers, and when.

(2) “Real interest” and the obligation to cooperate According to Article 118 of the UNCLOS, states “whose nationals exploit identical living resources, or different living resources” in the same area of the high seas shall cooperate in the conservation of these resources. As regards straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks on the high seas, this obligation is supplemented with the special obligation of the relevant coastal states and state fishing for these stocks in adjacent areas of the high seas to cooperate in the conservation of these stocks (Fish Stock Agreement, 1995, Article 63.2, Article 64.1).69 According to the Fish Stocks Agreement, there are two ways for cooperation, either through membership or by agreeing to apply the conservation management measures adopted by the RFMO/As. However, the latter method is not an alternative for most states with an interest in high seas fisheries (Henriksen, Hønneland & Sydnes, 2006: 18-19).70 Under international fisheries laws, the obligation to cooperate for coastal states and the states fishing for new and exploratory fisheries therefore shall apply to the high seas potions of the CAO. Subsequently, the right for those countries “having a real interest” to participate in cooperation through membership becomes highly relevant.

The Oslo Declaration addresses the interest of other states by not only “acknowledging their role in preventing unregulated high seas fisheries in the CAO,” but also looking forward “to work with them in a ‘broader process’ to develop measures consistent with this Declaration that would include commitments by all interested States.” The Declaration indicates a close linkage between those countries “having the interests” and the “broader process” (i.e., membership), but the criteria to determine the “interests” of new-comers is still subject to further interpretation. In this regard, the interpretation on relevant provisions of the Fish Stock Agreement may also shed some light.

It is stated that those “having a real interest in the fisheries concerned” may join an RFMO/As in Art 8(3) of the Fish Stock Agreement: Where a subregional or regional fisheries management organization or arrangement has the competence to establish conservation and management measures for particular straddling fish stocks or highly migratory fish stocks, States fishing for the stocks on the high seas and The 2015 Oslo Declaration on Arctic High Seas Fisheries

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relevant coastal States shall give effect to their duty to cooperate by becoming members of such organization or participants in such arrangement, or by agreeing to apply the conservation and management measures established by such organization or arrangement.

States having a real interest in the fisheries concerned may become members of such organization or participants in such arrangement. The terms of participation in such organization or arrangement shall not preclude such States from membership or participation; nor shall they be applied in a manner which discriminates against any State or group of States having a real interest in the fisheries concerned.

There are two approaches for the interpretation of Article 8(3): restrictive reading and broad reading on the term “real interest”. As regards the first approach, some suggest that the use of “real” in Article 8 (3) already indicated that states must demonstrate a factual or concrete interest.

It follows that the intention in adding this requirement must be to restrict access to membership, otherwise it would be unnecessary (Nandan, 2005).71 But some others argue that interests in “fisheries concerned” do not necessarily exclude such states from becoming members.72 As regards the second approach, a broad reading of “real interest” is to include states with fishing interest— including the relevant coastal states, states fishing for the stock on the high seas and states intending to fish for the stocks (Henriksen, Hoenneland & Sydnes, 2006: 20).73 However, the broad reading of Article 8(3) leaves room for discretion by RFMO/As member states, and there is an obvious danger of misuse, as it was argued by Freestone and Makuch (1996) that “the wording of the paragraph is ripe for litigation” (Freestone & Makuch, 1997).74 As it has shown in the negotiation process of the Declaration, the A5 has persuaded five members (EU, China, Japan, South Korea and Iceland) and will continue to persuade other countries to refrain from unregulated fishing in the CAO. A broad reading of states with “interests” in fishing and the membership of potential RFMO/As as applied in the CAO seems to fit in the object and purpose of the Declaration.

Three potential RFMO/As as applied in the CAO It was suggested that the regional or subregional fisheries management organizations or arrangements are given exclusive competence to regulate the high seas fisheries of straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks (Molenaar, 2000; Hayashi, 1999: 55-84).75 The two ways of organizing fisheries cooperation, namely, “arrangement” and “organization”, although appearing as equal mechanisms for cooperation, shall be distinguished from one and another. “Arrangement” is a relatively new concept in the Law of the Sea. “Arrangement” is understood as a “cooperative mechanism established in accordance with the UNCLOS and the Fish Stock Agreement by two or more States” (The Fish Stock Agreement, 1995, Article 1.1.d),76 while the existence of a formal treaty establishing these forums may be an indication but is not necessarily a requirement for an arrangement. “Organization” is a better-known concept used in the UNCLOS. When contrasted to Arrangements, an Organization appears as a firmer and more fixed structure, probably by having its own secretariat and headquarters and separate decision-making procedures. “Organization” also refers to the concept of intergovernmental organizations-bodies set by the states through a convention with separate organs and responsibilities (Henriksen, Hoenneland & Sydnes, 2006).77 Scholarly discussions about potential RFMO/As applied in the marine Arctic or high seas portion of the CAO have been a ceaseless topic (Churchill., 2001: 235-272; Molenaar, 2012; Glubokov et al., 2014; Molenaar, 2015: 84-85; Zou & Huang, 2016).78 Eric J. Molenaar’s study provides an explicit list of major regional, sub-regional and bilateral fisheries bodies and instruments that apply Liu

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to certain southerly waters of the marine Arctic but not explicitly to the Arctic Ocean as follows: (1) The Canada and US bilateral International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC), established by the IPHC Convention (1953); (2) The Canada and US Yukon River Panel of the bilateral Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC), established by the Pacific Salmon Treaty (1985); (3) The North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC), established by the NPAFC Convention (1992); (4) The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), established by the WCPFC Convention (2000); (5) The Conference of Parties (COP) to the Convention on the Conservation and Management of Pollock Resources in the Central Bering Sea (1994); (6) The North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (NASCO), established by the NASCO (1982); (7) The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), established by the ICCAT Convention (1966); (8) The North Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), established

by NAFO Convention (1978); (9) The North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC),79 established by the NEAFC Convention (1980); (10) The joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission (Joint Commission), established by the bilateral Framework Agreement (1975).

Among these nine fora and instruments, examples of fishery management “organizations” are the NEAFC and the NAFO. The annual Conference of Parties to the Convention on the Conservation and Management of Pollock Resources in the Central Bering Sea, on the other hand, is a typical “arrangement.” The instruments under the above Nos. 1-5 apply to certain southerly waters of the marine Arctic in the Pacific, and Nos. 6-8 apply to certain southerly waters of the marine Arctic in the Atlantic, therefore none of them apply to the CAO (Molenaar, 2014: 110-111; Molenaar, 2015: 84-85).80 Since the NEAFC and the Joint Commission have a clear mandate in the Arctic Ocean, and there have been discussions on the role of the OSPAR Convention as applied in the Arctic ocean, close attention needs to be paid on these three mechanisms.

The first mechanism, the NEAFC, is a RFMO with a regulatory area in the Arctic, as it covers the Arctic Ocean between longitudes 42° west and 51° east (The NEAFC Convention, 1980, Article 1.a),81 involving three areas of the high seas of the northeast Atlantic: the Reykjanes Ridge-Azores area, the ‘Doughnut Hole’ of the Norwegian Sea (also known as ‘Banana Hole’) and the Barents Sea ‘Loophole’ (Henriksen et al., 2006: 101).82 The NEAFC hence also manages a small part of the high seas that is located in the Arctic Ocean. The second mechanism, the OSPAR Convention (OSPAR)83 (named after the original Oslo and Paris Conventions) also covers parts of Arctic Ocean, since the “Contracting Parties”—fifteen Arctic and non-Arctic states—hold the key to legal protection of the Arctic. Neither NEAFC nor OSPAR have thus far displayed an active interest in addressing management issues of the high seas portion of the CAO, nor have the A5 themselves individually or collectively promoted this possibility (Wegge, 2015).84 As far as the third mechanism, where the Joint Commission is concerned, the constitutive instruments of the Commission does not specify its spatial mandate (The Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission).85 Therefore, fisheries for species whose distributional range extends into the CAO fall within the Joint Commission’s mandate. However, the Joint Commission’s competence over the CAO was also challenged because of its previous working methods: “if the Joint Commission would actually exercise competence over the CAO in a similar manner as with regard to the Loophole, this would not be acceptable to the other Arctic Ocean coastal states and other members of NEAFC” (Molenaar, 2014: 111).86

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The gap in RFMO coverage of the high seas between the international legal framework and national regulation for Arctic fisheries (Molenaar, 2014: 118)87 has undoubtedly generated the most debate. Taking the negotiation process of the fisheries management in the CAO into consideration, the application of any of the said three RFMO/As on the high seas portion of the CAO will be problematic, not to mention difficulties to reach consensus among the A5 in this regard. A fullfledged RFMO does not seem the most likely option either, due to considerations of costeffectiveness in light of the fact that significant commercially viable fisheries are not expected in the short term. An Arrangement—whether legally binding or non-legally binding—is therefore a more likely option (Molenaar, 2014: 118).88 Although the 2015 Oslo Declaration states that based on the available scientific information, commercial fishing in the high seas portion of the CAO is unlikely to occur in the near future, “there is no need at present to establish any additional regional fisheries management organization for the CAO.” Reading the provision regarding interim measures, the Oslo Declaration still leaves the door open for the RFMO/As “that are or may be established.”

The Broader Process of the Oslo Declaration and the Follow-up Development of the CAO High Seas Fisheries Arrangement Governance of the CAO high seas fisheries is not just about fishing, it also has many other aspects, such as cooperative governance of the Arctic, relations among Arctic states, and relations between Arctic and non-Arctic states. Some authors take the position that “such an agreement is thus a question of policy, science, and international relations” (Pan & Huntington, 2016).89 In its context, the Oslo Declaration envisions a broader process. Not surprisingly, the follow-up negotiations will continue to proceed the broader process, and the choice of invitees may be informed based on the concept of “real interest”, which is a necessary prerequisite for membership and participation in RFMO/As under the UN Fish Stock Agreement.

Role of participants in the “A5 plus 5” broader process The signing of the Oslo Declaration by the A5 in July 2015 received applause (Iceland blasts Arctic Five for exclusion from fishing agreement, 2015, July 30),90 but the previous negotiation process was criticized as an inter se A5 approach because of the ignorance of other Arctic fisheries stakeholders (Nielsson & Magnusson, 2015)91 or states having potential interests in Arctic fishing.

Participation by other states outside the A5 remains an important factor in the overall legitimacy and effectiveness of any outcome from the broader process, and especially could be helpful in addressing potential inconsistencies with the freedom of high seas fishing (UNCLOS, 1982)92 embodied in the UNCLOS, and the concept of “real interest” in the Fish Stocks Agreement (The Fish Stocks Agreement, 1995, Articles 8.3, Article 9.2).93 The roles of other participants can be traced back to the 2014 Nuuk meeting. In this meeting, the A5 agreed “that it is appropriate for the States whose exclusive economic zones border the high seas area in question to take the initiative on this matter,” they also continued to “recognize the interests of Arctic residents, particularly the Arctic [I]ndigenous peoples, in these matters and to engage with them as appropriate” and to “reaffirm that other States may have an interest in this topic and looked forward to a broader process involving additional States beginning before the end of 2014” (Chairman’s Statement, Meeting on Arctic Fisheries, 2014, February 24-26).94 Although the 2015 Oslo Declaration was signed among the members of the A5, the A5 also Liu

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acknowledged “the interest of other States in preventing unregulated high seas fisheries in the CAO and look forward to working with them in a broader process to develop measures consistent with this Declaration that would include commitments by all interested States” (The Oslo Declaration, 2015).95 Therefore, setting political issues aside, it is necessary to consider a broader process involving actors other than the A5, which would include other non-Arctic Ocean states and non-state actors in future consultations and preparations. That’s why the calls for participation of the fourth meeting of scientific experts from the five cooperating nations (China, Korea, Japan, Iceland and the European Union) in September of 2016 (NOAA, 2016)96 have been publicly acknowledged, and it seems to support the above position. As regards non-state actors, the Arctic Ocean coastal state process has so far involved considerable participation by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), notably, Pew Charitable Trust, which has been exceptionally active, and Arctic Indigenous peoples (Wegge, 2015).97 As articulated above, after the signature of the Oslo Declaration in December 2015, the A5 met with representatives from five cooperating nations. Interested bodies, including the Arctic Council (PAME/CAFF), PICES, ICES, and the Pacific Arctic Group (PAG) were also involved in this conference. The December 2015 meeting considered that, “it is unlikely that there will be a stock or stocks of fish in the high seas area of the CAO sufficient to support a sustainable commercial fishery in that area in the near future,” therefore, “a number of these approaches could be combined in a step-by-step or evolutionary fashion” (Meeting on High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean. 2015, December 1-3).98 Additional meetings of these ten governments occurred in April 2016 in Washington, D.C., July 2016 in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, and November-December 2016 in Torshaven,99 Faroe Islands, Denmark (Fourth Meeting of Scientific Experts on Fish Stocks in the Central Arctic Ocean, 2017, January).100 The follow-up development in Reykjavik At the time of this writing, a recent meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland in March 2017 followed previous talks that took place in Washington from 1-3 December 2015 and from 19-21 April 2016, in Iqaluit, Canada from 6-8 July 2016, and in Tórshavn, The Faroe Islands, from 29 November to 1 December 2016 (US Department of State, 2017).101 At the meeting, the A5 met with representatives from the governments of China, the EU, Iceland, Japan, and Korea continued to discuss on a binding international accord to the high seas portion of the CAO from unregulated fishing (Highleyman, 2016).102 Before this meeting, delegations had worked on the basis of a Chairman’s Text circulated in October 2016 that was in the format of a legally binding agreement.

The foregoing Chairman’s Draft Text for the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean (hereafter referred to as “Chairman’s Draft Text”) was composed of a preamble and ten articles. Compared with the Oslo Declaration which focused on the interim measures, more provisions were added in the Chairman’s Draft Text. The Major content can be classified into several categories: (1) Regular provisions, including “use of terms”, “objective” of the agreement, and “the applied area”; (2) Interim measures and relevant measures, including “interim measures”, “joint program of scientific research and monitoring”, “review and further implementation”; (3) Legal effect of the agreement, such as the provisions regarding “accession”, “non-parties”, “signature”, “depositary”, “entry into force and withdrawal” of the agreement, and “relation to other agreements”; (4) Joint Program of Scientific Research and

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Monitoring, taking Indigenous knowledge into consideration; and (5) Separate provisions for “dispute settlement” and “decision making” (The Chairman’s Draft Text, 2016, July 8).103 Compared with the previous meeting in Tórshavn that had failed to find consensus on the terms of the said agreement (McGwin, 2016),104 delegations meeting in Reykjavik made progress in resolving differences of view on many issues under discussion, with a small number of key provisions remaining to be agreed upon. The Chairman’s Statement released after the Reykjavik meeting outlined the remaining work with “a general commitment to conclude the negotiations in the near future”, including: (1) a description or definition of the Agreement Area; (2) the conditions under which a decision might be made to commence negotiations on an agreement to establish one or more additional regional or subregional fisheries management organizations or arrangements for the high seas portion of the central Arctic Ocean; (3) the possibility to adopt other conservation and management measures that could apply after such negotiations have commenced; and (4) decision-making procedures (US Department of State, 2017).

Conclusion Recent scientific publications tend to be level-headed in their expectations of new commercial fish stocks in the high seas of the CAO. Even with a continued reduction in ice cover in the Central Arctic Ocean fish migration northwards, scientific findings suggest that the vast majority of such migrating stocks are likely to be found within the EEZs of the A5 before reaching the high seas (Wegge, 2015; Hoel, 2014).105 The A5 are all major fishing nations and have extensive domestic fisheries management regimes. Multilateral fisheries fora and instruments, such as the NEAFC and the OSPAR Convention, have clear mandates in the Arctic Ocean. Where fish stocks are shared between two countries, bilateral arrangements exist for cooperation on management, such as the Joint Commission between Norway and Russia. The A5 have considered the issue of the CAO high seas fisheries for years, taking the existing international legal framework for the oceans as their point of departure. The UNCLOS and the Fish Stocks Convention oblige states to cooperate on resource management in the areas beyond the 200-nautical-mile zones. Moreover, as part of the “broader process”, the importance of other countries having real interest in fishing in the area has been taken into consideration, when China, the EU, Iceland, Japan, and Korea were invited to discuss a binding international agreement in the near future.

The 2015 Oslo Declaration, taking the form of “soft law” by the A5 to regulate high seas fishing in the CAO, will be noted as an important step for fisheries management of the marine Arctic.

Based on “the obligation to apply the precautionary approach,” the Oslo Declaration calls upon the implementation of appropriate interim measures to deter unregulated fishing in the future in the high seas portion of the CAO. The implication of applying the precautionary principle in the Oslo Declaration reflects the significant lack of science and data, and seeks to remedy this knowledge gap before actual fisheries become feasible. This also demonstrates commitment to fundamental principles of international fisheries management, and, in particular, international standards for the management of “new and exploratory fisheries.”

Moreover, in the Declaration, the A5 agreed that commercial fishing in the high seas portion of the central Arctic Ocean is unlikely to occur in the near future and that there is “no need at present to establish any RFMO/As for this area.” Some suggest that the likelihood of establishing a new RFMO for the CAO is slim in the near future (Wegge, 2015).106 However, to this author, since the

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existing RFMO/As regarding marine Arctic already provide useful experience on fishery management and the Oslo Declaration leaves the door open for the RFMO/As “that are or may be established,” it is not unrealistic “to discuss the likelihood of establishing a new RFMO for the CAO” (Wegge, 2015).107 Instead, there may be a step-to-step process for the RFMO/As for the CAO, which includes: step one, to reach a legally binding agreement at the initial stage; step two, to establishment an arrangement based on the “funding agreement”; and step three, to establish a RFMO when conditions are ripe.

Acknowledgments The author is grateful for suggestions or comments on earlier drafts received by Director & Professor Níels Einarsson at the Stefansson Arctic Institute of Iceland, Professor Aldo Chircop at Schulich School of Law of Dalhousie University, and Associate Professor Jian Ye TANG at National Engineering Research Center for Oceanic Fisheries of Shanghai Ocean University. The viewpoints expressed herein are those of the author, not necessarily construed as others.

This research was supported by the 2015 CNARC Fellowship Programme and the 2016 academic programme of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (BV-COLP2016011)

Notes 1. Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth (Eds.), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (pp. 104-105). New York: Springer.

2. At the most recent scientific experts meeting on the fish stock in the central Arctic Ocean, it is however worth noting that the term central Arctic Ocean was also been referred to the extraterritorial waters of the Arctic. See Third Meeting of Scientific Experts on Fish Stocks in the Central Arctic Ocean. (2015, April 14-16). NOAA. (2015).

Final Report of the Third Meeting of Scientific Experts on Fish Stocks in the Central Arctic Ocean.

Retrieved from https://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Arctic_fish_stocks_third_meeting/meeting_reports/3rd_Ar ctic_Fish_Final_Report_10_July_2015_final.pdf.

3. It’s worth noting that Klaus Dodds and Valur Ingimundarson used Iceland as a case study and explored cultural and political significance for Iceland to be acknowledged and recognized as an “Arctic coastal state”. See Dodds, Klaus., Ingimundarson,,Valur. (2012).

Territorial Nationalism and Arctic Geopolitics: Iceland as an Arctic Coastal State. The Polar Journal, 2 (1), 21-37.

4. Molenaar, Erik J. (2015). The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. In L. Heininen, H. Exner-Pirot & J. Plouffe (Eds). Arctic Yearbook 2015 (pp. 427-431). Akureyri, Iceland: Northern Research Forum. Retrieved from https://arcticyearbook.com/images/Articles_2015/briefing-notes/3.BN_Molenaar.pdf.

5. The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. (2015, July 16).

Retrieved from https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/departementene/ud/vedlegg/folkerett/declara tion-on-arctic-fisheries-16-july-2015.pdf

The 2015 Oslo Declaration on Arctic High Seas Fisheries

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6. Meeting on High Seas Fishery in the Central Arctic Ocean: Chairmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Statement. (2015, Dec 5), the US Department of State, Press Release. Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/e/oes/ocns/opa/rls/269126.htm 7. Shephard, Grace Elizabeth. et al. (2016). Assessing the added value of the recent declaration on unregulated fishing for sustainable governance of the central Arctic Ocean, Marine Policy, 66, 51.

8. See Kwok, R., Rothrock, D. A. (2009). Decline in Arctic Sea Ice Thickness from Submarine and ICES at Records: 1958-2008. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36; Laxon, S.W. et al.

(2013). CryoSat Estimates of Arctic Sea Ice. Geophys. Res. Lett., 40; Kwok, R., and Cunningham, G. F. (2015). Variability of Arctic sea ice thickness and volume from CryoSat-2. Philosophical Transactions, 373.

9. D. Perovich., et al. (2017). Sea Ice, Arctic Report Card: Update for 2015. Retrieved from http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/sea_ice.html 10. Pan, Min., Huntington, Henry P. (2016). A Precautionary Approach to Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean: Policy, Science, and China. Marine Policy, 66, 153.

11. AMAP. (1998, June 1). AMAP Assessment Report: Arctic Pollution Issues, Oslo, Norway, 132.

12. Huntington, Henry P. et al. (2015). A New Perspective on Changing Arctic Marine Ecosystems: Panarchy Adaptive Cycles in Pan-Arctic Spatial and Temporal Scales. In Salvatore Aricò. (Ed.), Ocean Sustainability in the 21st Century. UK: Cambridge University Press, 109-126.

13. Hollowed, A. B., Planque B., Loeng, H. (2013). Potential Movement of Fish and Shellfish Stocks from the Subarctic to the Arctic, Fisheries Oceanography, 22, 355-370.

14. The Pew Charitable Trust. (2012, April 12). An Open Letter from International Scientists. Retrieved from http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/oceans_north_legacy/page_attachments/in ternational-arctic-scientist-letter-with-sigs-522012.pdf?la=en 15. The Pew Charitable Trust. (2012, September). More than 2,000 scientists Worldwide urge protection of central arctic ocean fisheries. Retrieved from http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/projects/arctic-ocean-international/solutions/2000scientists-urge-protection 16. The Royal Society of UK. (2010, January). New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy Contents, 24. Retrieved from https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4 294969468.pdf 17. Joint Resolution (110th Congress), S.J.Res.17 2007.

18. Public Law 110-243, 122 STAT. 1569-1571 (2008, June 3). Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/110/plaws/publ243/PLAW-110publ243.pdf 19. North Pacific Fishery Management Council. (2009, Aug). Fishery Management Plan for Fish Resources of the Arctic Management Area. Retrieved from http://www.npfmc.org/wp-content/PDFdocuments/fmp/Arctic/ArcticFMP.pdf

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20. Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth (Eds.), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (p. 115). New York: Springer.

21. Warner, L., Vanderzwaag, D.L., Engler, C. (2014). Canada and the Governance of Arctic Marine Fisheries: Tending a Fragmented Net. Ocean Yearbook, 28 (1), 406.

22. DFO. (2009). Policy for Managing the Impact of Fishing on Sensitive Benthic Areas.

Retrieved from http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/peches-fisheries/fish-ren-peche/sffcpd/benthi-eng.htm 23. DFO. (2008). New Emerging Fisheries Policy. Retrieved from http://www.dfompo.gc.ca/fm-gp/policies-politiques/efp-pnp-eng.htm 24. Byers, Michael. (2013). International Law and the Arctic. UK: Cambridge University Press, p. 180.

25. The Standing Senate Committee of Canadian Parliament. (2010). The Management of Fisheries and Oceans in Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Western Arctic. Retrieved from http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/403/fish/subsitemay10/recommend ations-e.htm 26. Government of Canada. (2014, October 17). Archivedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Minister Aglukkaq Announces the Signature of the Beaufort Sea Integrated Fisheries Management Framework.

Retrieved from http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=894639 27. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kingdom of Denmark. (2011, August). Strategy for the Arctic 2011-2020, 31. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/eip-rawmaterials/en/system/files/ged/41%20mss-denmark_en.pdf 28. See Molenaar, Erik J. (2012). Fisheries Regulation in the Maritime Zones of Svalbard.

International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 27 (3), 50-52.

29. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway. (2011). High North-Visions and Strategies.

Retrieved from https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/ud/vedlegg/nordomradene/ud_nordo mrodene_en_web.pdf 30. Government of Norway. (2015, July 20). How to Stop Unregulated Fishing in the Arctic Ocean. Retrieved from http://www.norwaypost.no/news-politics/3096531. Glubokov, A.L., Hoel, A.H., Rolston, S. J., Turgeon, S., Vanderzwaag, D. L. (2014).

Governance of Russian Arctic Fisheries in the Barents Sea: Surveying National and Cooperative Currents. Ocean Yearbook, 28 (1), 340-341.

32. Rosen, Yereth. (2015, September 1). US-Russia United Desire to Protect Arctic Ocean Unregulated Fishing. Retrieved from http://www.adn.com/arctic/article/us-russiaunited-desire-protect-arctic-ocean-unregulated-fishing/2015/09/02/ 33. Loukacheva, Natalia. (Ed.). (2015). Polar Law Textbook. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, p. 73.

34. Till May 2017, 168 countries or entities made ratification, accession and succession to the UNCLOS.UNCLOS. (1982). Retrieved from http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_overview_conventi on.htm

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35. The Fish Stock Agreement came into force as from 11 December 2001. Till March, 2017, there are 86 parties of the Agreement. The Fish Stock Agreement. (1995). Retrieved from https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXI7&chapter=21&lang=en.

36. The Compliance Agreement. (1993). Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/docrep/MEETING/003/X3130m/x3130m00.HTM 37. To strengthen the international legal framework for more effective conservation, management and sustainable exploitation and production of living aquatic resources, the 1995 FAO Conference adopted the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

38. See FAO Technical Guidelines. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/fishery/topic/166351/en 39. Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/3/a-i1644t.pdf 40. Oceans and the Law of the Sea in the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Retrieved from http://www.un.org/Depts/los/general_assembly/general_assembly.htm 41. Yoshifumi, Tanaka. (2008). A Dual Approach to Ocean Governance: The Cases of Zonal and Integrated Management in the International Law of the Sea. Ashgate, p. 5.

42. Article 63 (2), 64 (1) of the UNCLOS. 43. Article 63 (1)&(2), Art 64, Art 118, and Art 119 of the UNCLOS. 44.

Henriksen, T., Hoenneland, G., Sydnes. A. (2006). Law and Politics in Ocean Governance: the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and Regional Fisheries Management Regimes, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, p. 13.

45.

Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth (Eds.), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (p. 108). New York: Springer.

46.

Ryder, Seamus.(2015, August 11). The Declaration Concerning the Prevention of Unregulated High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. Retrieved from http://site.uit.no/jclos/2015/08/11/the-declaration-concerning-the-prevention-ofunregulated-high-seas-fishing-in-the-central-arctic-ocean/

47. Birnie, Patricia., Boyle, Alan., Redgwell, Catherine. (2009). International Law and the Environment (3rd Edition). Oxford University Press, p. 35.

48.

Arctic Fisheries Nuuk Chairmans and ToR for 3rd Meeting. Chairmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Statement, Meeting on Arctic Fisheries. (2014, February 24-26). Nuuk, Greenland. Retrieved from https://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Arctic_fish_stocks_third_meeting/Arctic%20Fisheries%20 Nuuk%20Chairmans%20and%20ToR%20for%203rd%20Meeting.pdf

49. The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. 2015, July 16.

50.

Doyle, Alister. (2015, July 15). Fish Ban in the Arctic. Toronto Sun. Retrieved from http://www.torontosun.com/2015/07/16/fishing-ban-in-arctic

51. Ryder, Seamus. (2015, August 11). The Declaration Concerning the Prevention of Unregulated High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. Retrieved from http://site.uit.no/jclos/2015/08/11/the-declaration-concerning-the-prevention-ofunregulated-high-seas-fishing-in-the-central-arctic-ocean/ Liu

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52. Ryder, Seamus. (2015, August 11). The Declaration Concerning the Prevention of Unregulated High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. Retrieved from http://site.uit.no/jclos/2015/08/11/the-declaration-concerning-the-prevention-ofunregulated-high-seas-fishing-in-the-central-arctic-ocean/ 53. International Council for the Exploration of the Sea: It was established on July 22, 1902 in Copenhagen. It is a leading multidisciplinary scientific forum for the exchange of information and ideas on all aspects of marine sciences pertaining to the North Atlantic, including the adjacent Baltic Sea and North Sea, and for the promotion and coordination of marine research by scientists within its member nations. See ICES. Retrieved from http://www.ices.dk/Pages/default.aspx 54. The North Pacific Marine Science Organization: it is an intergovernmental scientific organization, which was established in 1992 to promote and coordinate marine research in the northern North Pacific and adjacent seas. Its present members are Canada, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America. See North Pacific Marine Science Organization. Retrieved from http://www.pices.int/ 55. The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. 2015, July 16.

56.

Ryder, Seamus. (2015, August 11). The Declaration Concerning the Prevention of Unregulated High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. Retrieved from http://site.uit.no/jclos/2015/08/11/the-declaration-concerning-the-prevention-ofunregulated-high-seas-fishing-in-the-central-arctic-ocean/

57. See Molenaar, E.J. (2016). International Regulation of Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries. In Myron Nordquist. (Eds). Challenges of the Changing Arctic. Continental Shelf, Navigation, and Fisheries, Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 429-463.

58. The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. 2015, July 16.

59.

Ryder, Seamus. (2014, October 15). The Nuuk Meeting on Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries.

Retrieved from http://site.uit.no/jclos/2014/10/15/the-nuuk-meeting-on-centralarctic-ocean-fisheries/

60. Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth. (Eds.), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (pp.117-118). New York: Springer.

61. Molenaar, E.J. (2016). International Regulation of Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries. In Myron Nordquist. (Eds). Challenges of the Changing Arctic. Continental Shelf, Navigation, and Fisheries, Brill Academic Publishers.

62. Art 63 (2) of the UNCLOS: “where the same stock or stocks of associated species occur both within the exclusive economic zone and in an area beyond and adjacent to the zone, the coastal State and the States fishing for such stocks in the adjacent area shall seek, either directly or through appropriate subregional or regional organizations, to agree upon the measures necessary for the conservation of these stocks in the adjacent area.”

63. Art 64 (1) of the UNCLOS: “the coastal State and other States whose nationals fish in the region for the highly migratory species listed in Annex I shall cooperate directly or through appropriate international organizations with a view to ensuring conservation and promoting the objective of optimum utilization of such species throughout the region, both within and beyond the exclusive economic zone. In regions for which no appropriate international organization exists, the coastal State and other States whose The 2015 Oslo Declaration on Arctic High Seas Fisheries

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nationals harvest these species in the region shall cooperate to establish such an organization and participate in its work.â&#x20AC;?

64. CCAMLR: the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, also Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, and CCAMLR, is part of the Antarctic Treaty System. The Convention was opened for signature on 1 August 1980 and entered into force on 7 April 1982 by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, headquartered in Tasmania, Australia. See CCAMLR. About CCAMALR. Retrieved from https://www.ccamlr.org/en/organisation/about-ccamlr 65.

The Commission at the Thirty-fifth Meeting. 2016, October 17-28. Schedule of Conservation Measures in Force 2016/17. Retrieved from https://www.ccamlr.org/en/document/publications/schedule-conservation-measuresforce-2016/17

66. The Commission at the Thirty-fifth Meeting. 2016, October 17-28. Schedule of Conservation Measures in Force 2016/17. Retrieved from https://www.ccamlr.org/en/document/publications/schedule-conservation-measuresforce-2016/17 67. Art. 6 (6), the Fish Stock Agreement.

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68.

Art. 6 (6), the Fish Stock Agreement.

69.

Article 63 (2) and 64(1), the Fish Stock Agreement.

70.

Henriksen, T., Hønneland, G. , Sydnes, A. (2006). Law and Politics in Ocean Governance: the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and Regional Fisheries Management Regimes., Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, pp.18-19.

71.

Nandan, S.N., 2005. Current Fisheries Governance. Conference on the Governance of High Seas Fisheries and the United Nation Fish Agreement: Moving from Words to Action.

Canada.

72.

Molenaar, E.J. (2000). The Concept of Real Interest and Other Aspects of Cooperation Through Regional Fisheries Management Organizations. International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 18 (4), 486.

73.

Henriksen, T., Hoenneland, G., Sydnes. A. (2006). Law and Politics in Ocean Governance: the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and Regional Fisheries Management Regimes, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, p.20.

74.

Freestone, David., Makuch, Zen.(1997). The New International Law of Fisheries: the 1995 UN Straddling & Stocks Convention. Yearbook of International Environmental Law, 7 (1), 29-30.

75.

This is the conclusion reached by Molenaar (2000) and Hayashi (1999). See Molenaar, Erik J. (2000). The Concept of Real Interest and Other Aspects of Cooperation through Regional Fisheries Management Mechanisms, International Journal of Marine and Coastal law, 15(4), 475-532; Hayashi, M. (1999). The Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks Agreement. In Hey, Ellen. (Ed). Developments in International Fisheries law (pp.

55-84). The Hague: Kluwer Law International.

76.

See Article 1(1) (d), the Fish Stock Agreement.

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Henriksen, T. Hoenneland, G., Sydnes. A. (2006). Law and Politics in Ocean Governance: the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and Regional Fisheries Management Regimes, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, p.17.

78. For literature on this topic, see inter alia, Robin, Churchill. (2001). Managing Straddling Fish Stocks in the North-East Atlantic: A Multiplicity of Instruments and Regime Linkage–But How Effective a Management? In Stokke, O. S. (Ed). Governing High Seas Fisheries: The Interplay of Global and Regional Regimes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.

235-272; Molenaar, Eric J. (2012). Fisheries Regulation in the Maritime Zones of Svalbard. International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 27(3), 26-27; Glubokov, A.L., Hoel, A.H. Rolston, S. J., Turgeon, S., Vanderzwaag, D. L. (2014). Governance of Russian Arctic Fisheries in the Barents Sea: Surveying National and Cooperative Currents. Ocean Yearbook, 28 (1), 328-347; Molenaar, Eric J. (2015) International Law on Arctic Fisheries. In Loukacheva, Natalia. (Ed). Polar Law Textbook. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, pp. 84-85; Zou, Leilei., Huang, Shuolin. (2016). Analysis on A5’s Stewardship in the High Seas Fisheries Management (in Chinese). Journal of Ocean University of China (Social Science), 3, 6-13.

79. NEAFC: The North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission is made up of delegations from Contracting Parties who have agreed to abide by the rules of the Convention on Future Multilateral Cooperation in North East Atlantic Fisheries, which entered into force in its current form in November 1982. The NEAFC composes of 5 parties, namely, Denmark (in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland), the European Union, Iceland, Norway and the Russian Federation. NEAFC. FAQs about NEAFC. Retrieved from http://www.neafc.org/neafcguide 80. See Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth., et al. (Eds), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (pp.110-111). New York: Springer; Molenaar, Eric J. (2015). International Law on Arctic Fisheries, in Natalia Loukacheva ed., Polar Law Textbook. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, pp. 84-85.

81. Art 1 (a), the Convention on Future Multilateral Cooperation in North-East Atlantic Fisheries (the “NEAFC Convention”, adopted on 18 November 1980 and entered into force in 1982).

82.

Henriksen, T., Hoenneland, G., Sydnes. A. (2006). Law and Politics in Ocean Governance: the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and Regional Fisheries Management Regimes, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, p.101.

83. The OSPAR: OSPAR started in 1972 with the Oslo Convention against dumping and was broadened to cover land-based sources and the offshore industry by the Paris Convention of 1974. The word “OSPAR” comes from combining bits of the words “Oslo” and “Paris”, the places where agreements making up the OSPAR Convention were signed. These two conventions were unified, up-dated and extended by the 1992 OSPAR Convention. The new annex on biodiversity and ecosystems was adopted in 1998 to cover non-polluting human activities that can adversely affect the sea. The fifteen Governments of OSPAR are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. See OSPAR. About the OSPAR. Retrieved from http://www.ospar.org/about 84.

Wegge, Njord. (2015). The Emerging Politics of the Arctic Ocean: Future Management of the Living Marine Resources. Marine Policy, 51, 331-338.

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85. The Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission provides efficient joint management of the most important fish stocks of both countries, in the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea. The decision to establish the Commission was made in 1974, and the Commission held its very first session in 1976. See The Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission. The Fisheries Commission. Retrieved from http://www.jointfish.com/index.php/eng/THE-FISHERIES-COMMISSION 86. See Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth. (Eds.), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (p.111). New York: Springer.

87.

Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth. (Eds.), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (p.118). New York: Springer.

88.

Molenaar, Erik J. (2014). Status and Reform of International Arctic Fisheries Law. In Tedsen, Elizabeth. (Eds.), Arctic Marine Governance: Opportunities for Transatlantic Cooperation (p.118). New York: Springer.

89.

Pan, Min., Huntington, Henry P. (2016). A Precautionary Approach to Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean: Policy, Science, and China. Marine Policy, 66, 153.

90. For example, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, have been strong advocates for a moratorium on commercial fishing in the central Arctic Ocean until a sustainable management plan is in place and were involved in discussions with the five coastal states on the issue. See Iceland blasts Arctic Five for exclusion from fishing agreement.

(2015, July 30). Retrieved from http://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-thearctic/2015/07/30/iceland-blasts-arctic-five-for-exclusion-from-fishing-agreement/ 91. Nielsson, Egill Thor., Magnusson, Bjarni Mar. (2015, August 5). The Arctic Five Strike Again.

Retrieved from http://arcticjournal.com/opinion/1732/arctic-five-strike-again 92. Article 116 of UNCLOS states that: “All States have the right for their nationals to engage in fishing on the high seas subject to:

93.

(a) their treaty obligations; (b) the rights and duties as well as the interests of coastal States provided for, inter alia, in article 63, paragraph 2, and articles 64 to 67…”

Articles 8(3) &Article 9(2), the Fish Stocks Agreement.

94. See Chairman’s Statement, Meeting on Arctic Fisheries. (2014, February 24-26), Nuuk: Greenland.

95. The Oslo Declaration on High Seas Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. 2015, July 16.

96.

See NOAA. (2016). Fourth Meeting of Scientific Experts on Fish Stocks in the Central Arctic Ocean. Retrieved from http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Arctic_fish_stocks_fourth_meeting/

97. See Wegge, Njord. (2015). The Emerging Politics of the Arctic Ocean: Future Management of the Living Marine Resources. Marine Policy, 51, 334.

98. See Meeting on High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean. (2015, December 1-3).

Chairman’s Statement. Washington, D.C. 99. The meeting in Torshaven occurred after the scientific meeting in Troms.

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100. See Fourth Meeting of Scientific Experts on Fish Stocks in the Central Arctic Ocean.

(2017, January). Final Report of the Fourth Meeting of Scientific Experts on Fish Stocks in the Central Arctic Ocean., pp.8-9, Retrieved from http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Arctic_fish_stocks_fourth_meeting/pdfs/FourthFiSCAOre portfinalJan26_2017.pdf 101. See US Department of State. (2017, March 27). Meeting on High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean: Chairman's Statement. Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/e/oes/ocns/opa/rls/269126.htm 102. See Highleyman, Scott. (2016, December 15). Negotiations for a Central Arctic Fisheries Accord Advance. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-andanalysis/analysis/2016/12/15/negotiations-for-a-central-arctic-fisheries-accordadvance 103.

The Chairman’s Draft Text (2016, July 8). On file with the author.

104.

See McGwin, Kevin. (2016, December 1). No agreement on Arctic fisheries moratorium. The Arctic Journal. Retrieved from http://arcticjournal.com/business/2734/no-agreement-arctic-fisheries-moratorium

105. See US Department of State. (2017, March 27). Meeting on High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean: Chairman's Statement. Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/e/oes/ocns/opa/rls/269126.htm 106. See Wegge, Njord. (2015). The Emerging Politics of the Arctic Ocean: Future Management of the Living Marine Resources. Marine Policy, 51, 337; Hoel, Alf Håkon.

(2014, March 11). Fish, fisheries and fisheries management in the Arctic Ocean.

Retrieved from http://barentsobserver.com/en/opinion/2014/03/fish-fisheries-andfisheries-management-arctic-ocean-11-03 107. Wegge, Njord. (2015). The Emerging Politics of the Arctic Ocean: Future Management of the Living Marine Resources. Marine Policy, 51, 337.

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Legal ‘Arctopia’?

How Arctic Governance Expresses a Better World Nikolas Sellheim, Leilei Zou & Osamu Inagaki

Over the last 20+ years the Arctic has seen a significant increase in legal regimes that directly or indirectly affect its peoples, livelihoods, environment(s) and resources. Especially under the auspices of the soft-law Arctic Council, nonbinding agreements reflect a trend which point towards the creation of a ‘legal Arctic’ that encompasses understandings of a world rooted in environmental awareness, cultural respect, collaboration and cooperation. At the same time, non-Arctic players have generated their own understanding of the Arctic in either their national Arctic strategies or policies or legal regimes that reflect onto the Arctic in which their own views on the Arctic are politically or legally embedded. Two of these, Japan and China, are presented in this paper. In literary studies, the somewhat utopian creation of the Arctic has been labelled ‘Arctopia’, which explores a fictitious vision of global societies that often holds an environmental message. The ‘Arctopian’ literature therefore makes use of characteristics of the innovated Arctic that is rooted in a diagnosis of the ills of the present with potential pathways for its positive transformation.

This paper argues that also in binding and non-binding legal regimes dealing with or relevant for the Arctic a vision of a ‘better world’ is embedded — leading away from a utopia towards real-world policy-implications, going beyond problem-solving, but holding also an exclusively expressive function which narrates and shapes the Arctic as a region where the ills of the present are eradicated through long-term cooperation.

Introduction We don’t look ‘East’ without looking into a direction filled with expectations, images or even stereotypes (e.g., Said, 1978). We don’t look ‘West’ without engaging in a mental battle between different economic systems. We don’t look ‘South’ without thinking about poverty or draught.

And we don’t look ‘North’ without thinking of the cold, the dark and the mystical. “Wherever we look, we look into “cardinal directions [that] are the cultural artefacts that underpin our perception of the world, imbued with symbolic, ideological, and political connotations” (Barraclough, Cudmore & Donecker, 2016: xi).

Especially throughout the 19th century the European ‘North’ has been constructed as a cultural space within which certain seemingly scientifically-proven circumstances exist (Geisinger, 2005).

The construction of the ‘North’ inevitably leads to the construction of the ‘Arctic’, a mental space filled with different connotations and expectations. With the return of the British Arctic Expedition of 1875-1876 which failed to locate the North Pole, the imagined Arctic was confronted with the harsh geophysical realities of the Arctic Ocean. It seemed the perception of Nikolas Sellheim, Leilei Zou and Osamu Inagaki are researchers at the Polar Cooperation Research Centre, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University, Japan.

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the Arctic was bound towards a non-imagined, empirical region. Instead, new narratives were created: The Arctic of nothingness, of distance, untouched nature and harsh conditions.

Additionally, this connoted Arctic has served as the stage for stories of manhood, suspense and, inevitably, ideology – an understanding of the Arctic which has found countless repetitions in different forms (e.g., Hansson, 2015).

Towards the end of the 20th century, the Arctic had become a different kind of imaginary space: A region of peace, cooperation and consent. This is particularly visible in the emergence of Arcticspecific legal instruments and the foundation of Arctic cooperative structures, such as the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC) and the Arctic Council (AC) (Hasanat, 2012). This article examines some Arctic-specific hard and soft legal instruments and determines the degree to which the Arctic legal space serves as a stage for the construction of a ‘better world.’

The Emergence of an ‘Arctopia’ It is not surprising that the Arctic has been seen through different socio-cultural, political and economic lenses over the centuries. These lenses shaped the views on the Arctic and the imaginations, expectations, and fears that came with them. In light of the many lives the Arctic has claimed, the harsh and unwelcoming environment, the cold and darkness, and more recently, the dramatic impacts of climate change, the Arctic has become an Arctic of disasters – either past, present, or possibly future (Craciun, 2016). It is thus often perceived as the antithesis to stability and amicability. But there is also a different Arctic. An Arctic that rather corresponds to Sir Thomas More’s notion of ‘utopia,’ more a perfect world of peace and equality than that of an Arctic of disasters. As Hansson shows, the interpretation of ‘utopia’ has shifted from the original meaning of ‘no place’ to a meaning “conflated with utopia, ‘good place’” (Hansson, 2015: 70). Out of this conflation emerges the concept of ‘Arctopia,’ the Arctic as a good place that combines the geographical Arctic with an “imaginary, alternative world” (Ibid.).

An ‘Arctopia’ denotes a ‘good Arctic’ contrary to the ‘Arctic of disasters’ – an Arctic where despite the challenges at hand the prevailing state of being is characterized by the striving towards a better end. We can argue therefore that there is an intrinsic value of Arctic cooperation, a teleology of sorts, that frames the Arctic as indeed an ‘Arctopia’ with real-life impacts on its environments, its peoples and cultures.

But how did this legal-political Arctopia emerge? Inevitably, Arctic cooperation would not have emerged into its current state without (1) the disastrous degradation of the Arctic environment; (2) the collapse of the Soviet Union; and (3) the interest in natural resources. The combination of these three elements which has affected all Arctic states has led to increased cooperation in the North and laid the groundwork for a peaceful Arctic.

However, the path for the emergence of the Arctopia was not rooted in one specific event, nor is it necessarily confined to the Arctic: As stipulated in the Antarctic Treaty System, the Antarctic continent is a continent of peace and science. Cooperative initiatives in the Arctic had emerged for many centuries – for example the Þing, an annual gathering of chieftains in medieval Iceland, or the Pomor Trade in the Barents Region – pointing towards a democratic and equal mode of Arctic cooperation. A rejuvenation of cooperative thinking occurred during the 1970s. The European Arctic – Norway, Finland, Sweden and northwestern Russia – was a forerunner in this regard. The North Calotte Committee was established in 1967 and made permanent in 1977. The Sellheim, Zou & Inagaki

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Committee was a means of cooperation between the Nordic regions as well as Russian and Nordic towns above the Arctic Circle, to foster cultural and education initiatives, and the free movement of people (Pettersen, 2002: 16). The Arctopian vision of a unified European Arctic thus took shape at the height of the Cold War. Arctic states served as venues for the conclusion of seminal cooperative instruments. In Stockholm and Helsinki, the first international environmental agreement (Stockholm Declaration), and a major policy of détente (Helsinki Declaration) were concluded in 1972 and 1975 respectively while the Reykjavík Summit of 1986 resulted in a key nuclear disarmament treaty in 1987 (INF Treaty).

Looking at these agreements, a utopian understanding rises to the surface since they appear to abandon nationalism or even geostrategic aspirations, and emphasize the wellbeing of humankind as a whole, envisioning a world of peace and a healthy environment: The Stockholm Declaration is “for the benefit of all the people and for their posterity” (Stockholm Declaration, 1972: Recital 7); the Helsinki Declaration “make[s] its contribution to the strengthening of world peace and security and to the promotion of fundamental rights, economic and social progress and well-being for all peoples” (Helsinki Declaration, 1975: Preamble); and the INF Treaty is “conscious that nuclear war would have devastating consequences for all mankind” while the treaty was to “reduce the risk of outbreak of war and strengthen international peace and security” (INF Treaty, 1987: Preamble).

Mikhail Gorbachev’s Murmansk Speech of 1987 marks the beginning of the modern Arctopian vision of the North and its implementation. Gorbachev put in place the foundation for prevailing narratives. His six proposals for a North Pole to be a “Pole of peace” read to some extent like a roadmap to Arctic cooperation and the framing of many of the legal expressions to come: (1) Northern Europe as a nuclear-free zone; (2) The restriction of military activity and scaling down of naval and air force activities in the Baltic, Northern, Norwegian and Greenland Seas; (3) peaceful cooperation in exploitation of Arctic resources; (4) Advancement of science and scientific exchange; (5) Joint programs for Arctic environmental protection; and (6) peaceful development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) (Gorbachev, 1987). Finland then took the initiative to put the roadmap into action: In the summer of 1991, Rovaniemi saw the adoption of the Arctic Environment Protection Strategy (AEPS) as a result of the first ministerial meeting of the Arctic states’ environment ministers.

The spirit of a peaceful, stable and equal Arctic is reflected in the text of the AEPS. In the Declaration which accompanies the AEPS, major concepts of the Arctopian vision are laid out.

First and foremost, the notion of ‘togetherness’ is emphasized. A common identity is thereby created, both as Arctic nations and as peoples of the world, which creates a feeling of equality between the different actors. Secondly, the relationship of Indigenous and local populations “to the Arctic and their unique contribution to the protection of the Arctic Environment” (AEPS, 1991: 3) is recognized. Consequently, the Arctic governments “invite their organizations to future meetings as observers” (Ibid.). Moreover, the AEPS was drafted with the help of Indigenous peoples (IPs), incorporating their cultures, worldviews and traditional knowledge. By doing so, the AEPS breaks with the common understanding of IPs as “poor children of the North” (Lane, 1890, cited in Hansson, 2015: 73). Instead, the discourse highlights the wealth of knowledge and wisdom they hold. Inevitably, the understanding of the Arctic, and with it the challenges at hand, cannot exclude the Indigenous and local residents, their practices and their knowledge – a development

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which opens the discourse on the recognition of IPs as ‘peoples’ with the right to selfdetermination under international law, which up to this point was considered the sole privilege of nation states. The function of the AEPS, whether implicit or explicit, is not only to tackle Arctic environmental problems, but also to express the need for joint efforts to overcome challenges.

The AEPS may thus serve as a voice for a paradigmatic shift in international policy-making: A shift from state-centered governance to an integrated and multifaceted governance structure that moves beyond the nation state.

In 1993, the Arctic saw the emergence of yet another regional forum for cooperation: The Barents Euro-Arctic Region (BEAR), consisting of the intergovernmental BEAC between Norway, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and the European Commission; and the Barents Regional Council (BRC), consisting of the northernmost counties of the Barents Region. The Kirkenes Declaration as the founding document of the BEAR is clear in its statement of purpose: “[E]xpanded co-operation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region will contribute substantially to stability and progress in the area and in Europe as a whole” (Kirkenes Declaration, 1993: Introduction). By focusing on the environment, economic cooperation, cultural exchange and IPs, the BEAR envisions a stable and sustainable Barents Region that takes into consideration the human and environmental interrelations beyond national borders.

Much has been written on the establishment of the AC in 1996 and its founding history, structure and functioning which shall not be reexamined here (see e.g. Keskitalo, 2004; Nord, 2016). The Ottawa Declaration, however, outlines the overall purposes of the AC, and frames its vision and overall objective: Committing to the well-being of Arctic peoples; sustainable development of the region, including socio-economic, cultural, and health; and protection of the Arctic environment.

Moreover, the Arctic states desire to “ensure full consultation with and the full involvement of indigenous people [sic] and their communities and other inhabitants of the Arctic” (Ottawa Declaration, 1996, Preamble). A progressive governance structure is thus proposed that envisions governance beyond the nation state, taking full account of the well-being of northern peoples.

Legally-binding Regimes in the Arctic On May 12, 2011, at the 7th Ministerial Meeting in Nuuk, Greenland, the Arctic saw the adoption of the first legally-binding agreement drafted and designed under the auspices of the AC: The Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic (SAR Agreement). The SAR Agreement responds to a need for more cooperation on the SAR level in light of increasing traffic in the Arctic, the “challenges posed by harsh Arctic conditions on search and rescue operations and the vital importance of providing rapid assistance to persons in distress in such conditions” (SAR Agreement, 2011: Preamble). The raison d’être of this agreement is therefore the prevention of a potential Arctic disaster – a scenario that necessitates close cooperation between the Arctic states.

At the time of conclusion of the SAR Agreement, scholarly and public discourse on the Arctic often highlighted the conflict/cooperation dichotomy, reflected in the vast body of literature that emerged on this issue after the infamous planting of the Russian flag on the seabed under the North Pole in 2007. Rather little regard was paid to the fact that pursuant to article 8 of the SAR Agreement, Coast Guard vessels (and planes) are entitled to enter the territorial sea and airspace above for the conduct of search and rescue activities – a provision which runs quite contrary to

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the wide-spun narrative of confrontation in the North. While this may be the case, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) according to article 98 makes the promotion of the “establishment, operation and maintenance” of search and rescue services mandatory (‘shall’), also by means of regional arrangements where “circumstances so require” (UNCLOS, 1982: article 98.2). While in many instances the Arctic was discursively perceived as standing on the brink of war, the Arctic states countered this narrative by adopting a regional agreement which does not exclude the entering of the territorial sea by armed vessels or other vehicles of another state necessary for SAR operations (SAR Agreement, 2011: article 8), The provisions of the SAR Agreement were put to the test when in December 2014 a South Korean fishing trawler was brought in distress by a wave, causing it to sink in Russian waters in the Bering Sea. As a result, the Russian Coast Guard informed the Alaskan Coast Guard which immediately dispatched two C-130 Hercules airplanes, followed by two cutters and two helicopters, also entering Russian waters (Coast Guard of Alaska, 2014). While ultimately unsuccessful in saving 53 of the 60 crew, this shows the efficacy, and necessity, of the provisions of the SAR Agreement. One might argue that the Arctopian vision of cooperation and peaceful interaction under the AC has thus found real-life application.

In 2013, the AC states adopted a second legally-binding agreement at the 8th Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna: The Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic (PPR Agreement). Once again, it is the cooperative vision which is emphasized and the PPR Agreement mirrors important aspects of mutual assistance between the Arctic states. In article 9, the agreement thus enables cross-border passing of vessels to tackle potential oil spills.

Mutual exercises as well as information exchange constitute the backbone of the PPR Agreement.

This is best exemplified by article 12 (“Cooperation and Exchange of Information”) and article 13 (“Joint Exercises and Training”). Moreover, in order to further ensure the efficacy of the agreement, a reimbursement mechanisms has been put in place (article 10) which can be invoked after requests of assistance have been uttered pursuant to article 8.

Both the SAR and PPR Agreements are inherently Arctic-specific and put the Arctopian vision of mutual cooperation into practice. The agreements go even further and serve as a means to strengthen the LOS Convention in the Arctic. Notably, the United States is not a party to UNCLOS but party to both the SAR and PPR Agreement. The normative role UNCLOS provisions play, in this context specifically as regards SAR (UNCLOS, 1982: article 98), rises to the surface within Arctic contexts. Moreover, on a somewhat broader level, the PPR Agreement in its Preamble takes into account “the relevant provisions of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” once again pointing towards the normative role of UNCLOS. An Arctopian vision thus translates into larger contexts of strengthening the law of the sea also in spite of the United States not having ratified UNCLOS (see Rottem, 2015).

It was at the 2013 Ministerial Meeting that the ideals of integration, togetherness and transparency were further advanced. The Senior Arctic Officials (SAOs) updated the Rules of Procedure (RoP) of the Council by producing an Observer Manual. They thereby enhanced the accessibility of observers to the subsidiary bodies of the AC, namely Working Groups, Task Forces and Expert Groups (Arctic Council, 2013). While observers were from the outset able, at the discretion of the chair, to produce statements on a given issue, a 2015 Addendum to the Observer Manual was to ensure their “relevant and meaningful contributions to the work of the AC” (Arctic Council, 2015: Legal ‘Arctopia’?

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11). Observers, as non-Arctic outsiders, were to become active partners in the work of the Council, going beyond their inchoate role of merely “passive audience sitting at the periphery” (Knecht, 2016: 603).

The most recent agreement is the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation (SC Agreement) which was signed at the Fairbanks Ministerial meeting, May 11, 2017, in Alaska. Already the first preambular recital of the agreement recognizes “the importance of maintaining peace, stability, and constructive cooperation in the Arctic” (SC Agreement, 2010: Preamble). The agreement thus aims to foster enhanced and more efficient scientific cooperation in the Arctic. In order to do so, access to specific areas in the territories of the parties, which are more clearly defined in Annex 1, is to be granted to reach the agreement’s objective. The spirit of cooperation and mutual access is consequently an underlying feature of the agreement and corresponds to the Arctic as a zone of peace and science, similar to the framing of Antarctic cooperation (Madrid Protocol, 1991: article 2). The agreement goes further, however. This is best reflected in the global approach it takes by extending its scope beyond AC members. This occurred, firstly, by actively involving observers into the drafting process of the agreement as based on the above-mentioned Addendum to the Observer Manual (see also Arctic Council, 2016).

Secondly, as part of the strategy to reach its objective, other actors are to be involved. For instance, the notion of ‘participant’ in Arctic scientific activities is outlined in article 1, which reads: “‘Participant’ means the Parties’ scientific and technological departments and agencies, research centers, universities and colleges, and contractors, grantees and other partners acting with or on behalf of any Party or Parties, involved in Scientific Activities under this Agreement” (own emphasis). This means that, for instance, non-Arctic states or organizations are eligible to fall under the scope of the agreement when they act on behalf of a party. They therefore do not need to be based in an AC Member State.

While the cooperative spirit is an underlying feature of international law and law-making, in the case of the Arctic it has undergone an evolution towards integrative law-making and legal instruments. This is best shown by the inclusion of observers in the drafting processes of the Arctic legal agreements presented here and provisions that aim to be inclusive beyond the reaches of the AC Member States. In the context of the Antarctic Treaty, for example, only three observers – the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research; the Scientific Committee for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources; and the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programmes – are entitled to participate in the meetings of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) and the meetings of Committee for Environmental Protection (Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, 2016). Although other international institutions, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in article XI or the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) in article IX include and consult observers, this rather occurs on a provisional basis while the amended observer rules in the AC manifest integrative governance on a normative basis.

Arctopia in Practice The purpose of international regimes goes beyond the cause-and-effect relationship between the biophysical/socio-economic environment and the respective legal regime. Breitmeier argues that international regimes contribute to “concern about cause-effect relationship, improve the contractual environment and thereby foster the establishment of negotiation processes or reduce transaction costs in issue areas, or enhance capacity-building in developing countries” (original emphasis; Sellheim, Zou & Inagaki

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Breitmeier, 2008: 12). In the Arctic context, the ills of the present as reflected in the regimes presented include environmental degradation, non-inclusive policy-making (excluding Indigenous and local populations) and non-sustainable resource extraction. The vision that Arctic legal regimes thus expose is an Arctic world without these ills.

From the very outset of Arctic cooperation as it emerged during the 1990s, non-inclusiveness has been addressed. Both in the BEAR and the AC, IPs have played an influential role in the decisionmaking processes. Although merely nation states are the prime decision-makers, the Kirkenes Declaration refers to the safeguarding of the region’s IPs. The Ottawa Declaration goes further and requires “full consultation” of the Arctic’s IPs (Ottawa Declaration, 1996: 2 (b)). The Kirkenes II Declaration, which was adopted at the 20th anniversary of the Barents cooperation in 2013, the BEAC Prime Ministers further acknowledge the Barents IPs as key actors and stress that they are to play an “active role in the development of the region” (Kirkenes II Declaration, 2013: 6).

Capacity-building for and support of IPs in both the BEAR and the AC has led to an increasingly influential role for them in Arctic governance (Gamble, 2016). Moreover, the inclusion of Arctic IPs into the AC as Permanent Participants has led these to consider the AC as a forum “where issues could be resolved that were problematic with the home state” (Coote, 2016: 51).

Apart from the three legally-binding instruments introduced above, the Arctic-specific legal environment is first and foremost of a soft-law, non-legally-binding character. It can be argued that empirical improvements are but one of the objectives of these instruments. In the context of the Barents cooperation, for instance, it is the cooperative dimension in a geopolitically sensitive area which is a prime objective of the BEAR. The measurable improvement of the socio-economic and biophysical environment is one element therein: Through concerted and hortatory cooperative efforts can a long-term improvement of the biophysical environment be achieved. BEAR’s declarations and agreements envision an outcome and serve as a roadmap to achieve this in a cooperative manner, but themselves do not necessarily result in any direct improvements (Sellheim, 2012a). This stands in contrast to multilateral regimes such as the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol, 1987) or the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (Stockholm Convention, 2001) that not only envision an improvement of the biophysical conditions as part of a larger narrative, but themselves are active stakeholders in it (see Breitmeier et al., 2006).

The ills of the present are multifaceted and diverse. The repercussions of the ‘non-Arctic’ on Arctic governance structures are significant and the vision of cooperation for the good of all is the main source of the Arctopian realities in the North. Despite the Arctic being politically connected to the rest of the world, it has nevertheless developed its own dynamics (Wegge, 2011). As a consequence, and in the spirit of the Arctopian vision, the interest in cooperating in the Far North has even outweighed the east-west tensions resulting from the Ukraine crisis. Arctic cooperation has thus not been subjected to conflict spill-over (Rahbek-Clemmensen, 2017).

Indeed, while the Arctic states follow their own national interests, best exemplified by the national Arctic strategies, Arctic governance initiatives bring these interests under one umbrella. In the Barents Region, for example, despite Russia’s long non-ratification of the Stockholm Convention (until 2011) or the protocols under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP, 1979), the BEAR has found ways and means to tackle this absence and to incorporate environmental provisions into its work, including that of Russia (Sellheim, 2012b: 239–242). The other Barents states do not explicitly exert pressure on Russia to ratify these agreements, but Legal ‘Arctopia’?

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instead use the channels of the Barents cooperation to implement them in the Barents Region (Ibid.). Hortatory cooperation, once again, stands at the forefront of the Arctopian realities in the region.

Asian Arctopias: Japan’s and China’s View on Arctic Governance Japan Japan’s involvement in the polar regions dates back to 1933 when the Nippon Polar Research Institute was established (Anonymous, 1940). Japan’s vision of Arctic involvement has first and foremost been rooted in fostering scientific research and scientific cooperation.

Japan’s Arctic aspirations as regards research activities are dominated by research on climatic and environmental changes. To this end, Japan has promoted the exchange and availability of scientific findings as its own Arctopian vision. Japan’s Arctic understanding thus follows the narratives of the international agreements that were introduced above by which the good for humankind constitutes an elementary part of its Arctic involvement. Of course, it cannot be denied that national interests are pursued at the same time. While Japan’s maritime policies have been driven by the doctrine of ‘open and stable seas’ and the rule of law as a guiding principle for international stability and security, the pursuit of national economic growth is to be part of this narrative (Government of Japan, 2013).

With this in mind it does not come as a surprise that Japan applied for observership to the AC, which was granted in 2013, albeit the country’s presence already at the inaugural meeting of the Council in 1996. In 2015, Japan released its official Arctic policy (Government of Japan, 2015).

Here, Japan’s contribution as a technologically and scientifically advanced state is highlighted and its role for the tackling of global problems emphasized. Key terms for Japan are thus science and technology and the country will “[m]ake full use of Japan’s strength in science and technology from a global viewpoint” (Ibid., 2). While the opening of the NSR and the increased accessibility to Arctic natural resources are naturally addressed in the document, it is dominated by scientific cooperation and the solving of environmental issues in the North. In this sense, Japan’s Arctopia merges with the country’s overall promotion of peace and cooperation. The Arctic is therefore not necessarily a unique region for Japan. Japan’s vision of a ‘better world’ in an Arctic context includes the making available of scientific findings for the global community. The most crucial element in shaping the Arctopian vision is thus: “Japan always intends to make Datasets in ADS [Arctic Data archive System] available for free for research use, and it represents Japan’s absolute commitment to strengthening scientific cooperation on the Arctic” (Own emphasis; Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2016, 2).

China Thus far China has not released its Arctic policy. However, Chinese officials have presented the country’s Arctic priorities on various occasions: Sustainability; recognition of Arctic states’ unique identity and legitimate rights; and the trans-regional and global nature of Arctic issues (Liu, 2017; Zou et al, 2014; Zou, 2016). Moreover, China’s involvement in the Arctic has long been driven by scientific interest (Lasserre & Huang, 2015). Given China’s increasing role as a political, economic, scientific and technological power, China’s Arctic aspirations are under close scrutiny by the Arctic community. This has led to suspicions towards China’s interests in the High North (Moe, 2017).

The release of the Chinese Arctic policy can be expected to take place in the near future, which Sellheim, Zou & Inagaki

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can be interpreted as an official attempt to counter exaggerations and suspicions (see also Lasserre & Huang, 2015).

Although China keeps a rather low profile in the Arctic, its presence is commonly interpreted as the country striving to become a strong Arctic player. As a non-Arctic state, however, China’s Arctic presence is guided by international law rather than politics (Peng & Wegge, 2014).

Moreover, bilateral cooperation with Arctic nations is an efficient strategy to enhance China’s Arctic involvement. To this end, partnerships with Russia on the NSR as part of the Belt and Road Initiative; the 2013 Free Trade Agreement with Iceland; or advancements in the ambitious fibreoptic cable project along the NSR with Finland can be interpreted as substantiating China’s Arctic ambitions. Moreover, China is cautious of its involvement in Arctic resource development and by and large seeks partners in compliance with the rules of the market (Moe, 2017; Lasserre & Huang, 2015).

China’s Arctic ambitions shows the country’s view on the North as a zone of peace and cooperation providing a sound reason to get involved in Arctic governance. On May 25, 2017, the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with polar research institutions from 6 countries including Norway, Russia and USA. The MoUs highlight international cooperation in scientific research, value mutual understanding for Arctic sustainability, and confirm joint efforts for environmental protection in the North (Zhao, 2017).

The doctrine of a ‘community of shared destiny’ as frequently proclaimed by Chinese President Xi Jinping thus also finds reflection in the Arctic.

With the rise of China as a global power, China takes more responsibilities in fostering peace, sovereignty, cooperation and equality. The Arctic, it thus appears, is an implementation of these aspirations and has moved from ‘no place’ to ‘good place’ in the Chinese policy agenda. Arctopian principles have moved from an illusion to concrete objectives for international cooperation, peace and sustainability. Although China’s official Arctic policy has not yet been released, it can be predicted that Arctopian elements will play a key role in line with the country’s principles for global governance.

Conclusion Although principles of good governance such as integration, effective cooperation or transparency can be found in other areas of global governance, the Arctic plays a special role in moving beyond purely nation-state based decision-making to an inclusive and open forum of cooperation. The Arctic as a region of peace as a reflection of an Arctopian vision has consequently been put into practice and has been advanced steadily. While patriotic interests inevitably play a role in Arctic governance, these are paired with the long-term aspirations of transboundary environmental protection and peaceful, inclusive cooperation and trust-building for the benefit of the region’s inhabitants, stipulated already in the second preambular recital of the Ottawa Declaration (Ottawa Declaration, 1996: Preamble). The approaches from outside actors, such as Japan or China, in Arctic affairs in combination with the strengthening of international law, as exemplified by UNCLOS, serve as examples for the Arctopian vision having global repercussions.

Even though neither the BEAR nor the AC are full-fledged international organizations, a normimplementation process has begun since the 1990s (cf. Betts & Orchard, 2014: 3). Throughout this paper we have referred to this norm as Arctopia – a vision of the Arctic shaped by peace and Legal ‘Arctopia’?

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prosperity, and environmental integrity. Only in recent years has this Arctopia resulted also in an institutionalization process, yielding three legally-binding agreements which were drafted under the task forces of the AC. Whether or not further hard-law instruments will be concluded remains to be seen. Arctic governance, however, appears to be manifestly rooted in the cooperative, Arctopian spirit of a better world.

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Briefing Note

Optimizing EU Influence on Arctic Affairs Morgane Fert-Malka & Alexandra Kekkonen

The policy of the European Union (EU) is analyzed in accordance with its general goals as stated in the Global Strategy, the Joint Communication of April 2016 and other documents defining the EU’s approach towards the Arctic. Four intertwined areas in which the EU can have a greater impact have been identified: (1) International relations and geopolitics, (2) Economic and social policies, (3) Legal footprint and legislative processes, and (4) Scientific and business diplomacy. For each area, an analysis of the current situation and the potential scenario has been undertaken, taking into account the pitfalls and obstacles. As a result of this analysis, recommendations towards a more effective and efficient impact of the EU in the Arctic are proposed.

The Arctic is a region undergoing critical changes, with a variety of actors involved in designing the emerging structures of formal and informal governance there. Climate change in the Arctic will have an environmental, economic and diplomatic impact on the world at large. As the world order is under mutation and the Arctic is emerging as a crucial theatre for international relations, the European Union (EU) could play a key role in Arctic governance.1 The European External Action Service (EEAS) has already noted the growing importance of the Arctic and perceived that the EU has a role to play (Joint Communication, 2016),2 and a number of instruments have already been implemented in this regard. However, the Arctic is not a region in immediate crisis and it remains at the bottom of the EU priority list in Brussels, beyond a small circle of informed practitioners. There is a lack of political attention and knowledge about Arctic issues and some uncertainties regarding which strategies and instruments to put in place without antagonizing the Arctic states. There is also a lack of understanding that Arctic issues are interconnected with others and that the Arctic should not be an isolated item on the EU’s agenda.3 Finally, Arctic issues tend to be addressed topically, independently from each other, without a unified framework, by various departments and executive agencies.4 Altogether, the Arctic remains somewhat of a ‘blind spot’5 in the EU’s overall strategic outlook, even as the EU is in fact an Arctic actor, at least by virtue of its geography.6

Morgane Fert-Malka is an independent political analyst and Alexandra Kekkonen is Senior Researcher at the Budget Monitoring Center, Petrozavodsk State University.

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Specialized documents such as the Joint Communication prepared by the EEAS and others7 denote a sharp understanding of Arctic issues, with their domestic and international dimensions.

They demonstrate that the EU is already engaged in the Arctic and laudably identify areas where its presence is wanting. However, their focus is rather narrow7 and the stated ambitions are modest, denoting a timid approach. Few substantial additions have been made to the EU Arctic policy since 2008, and in some regards ambitions have been lowered.8 The EU does not yet dare to define itself as an Arctic actor.9 In accordance with its general goals as stated in the Global Strategy, the Joint Communication of April 2016 and other documents defining the EU’s approach towards the Arctic, we identified four dimensions in which the EU may have the ambition and the means to impact on Arctic developments, focusing on opportunities and pitfalls.

Geopolitics and International Relations The EU purports to project itself as a central and credible geopolitical actor on the global stage.

It claims to master the widest range of tools to do so.10 It claims to be an actor that shapes international relations rather than passively enduring them.11 In this regard the current EU Arctic stance is completely out of line with the general goals, especially considering the geopolitical importance of the Arctic. There are, however, some avenues and concrete instruments for the EU to be a full-fledged geopolitical actor in the Arctic - consistent with its global status and the ‘winwin’ approach stated in the Global Strategy.12 International relations in the Arctic in the post-Cold War era can be characterized as both cooperative and competitive, but overwhelmingly peaceful – an equilibrium most recently tainted by the resurgence of geopolitical interpretations of the regional balance. The peaceful character of Arctic relations has densified over the past three decades13 - a process in which the EU has had a discrete if not minor role.14 The geopolitical or “militarization” discourse, informed by the Ukraine and subsequent crises, comes in superimpression to this dense framework of cooperation, and many informed experts see it as irrelevant. Because international relations in the Arctic are so actively institutionalized on ‘soft security’ bases, ‘hard security’ issues can certainly impact them exogenously and ex-post, but they have little impact on the foundations of the regional governance structure.

It is rather ironic that the EU, which projects itself as the ‘soft power’ incarnation of the EuroAtlantic community15 and whose strength resides in its normative power – more specifically its ability to impose a liberal reading of international relations – still fails to participate in ‘soft security’ institutionalization processes in the Arctic and instead comes across negatively, as an actor whose participation risks bringing into the Arctic equation geopolitical tensions from other regions of the world.

In order, then, for the EU to play a more constructive and visible role in structuring interstate relations and governance in the Arctic, EU policy-makers should focus on institutionalization processes, drawing parallels with EU integration processes and proposing an exchange of knowledge and best practices in this regard – downplaying the ‘geopolitical’ in favour of the ‘institutional’. They should claim a seat in Arctic governance fora, construing ‘the Arctic’ not as an issue of foreign policy but as the intersection between the domestic and foreign policy spheres.

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This, however, would require that the EU, which is a hybrid entity with elements of statehood and of international organization16, clarify its position in Arctic governance relative to its own member and associated states: the EU should not promote some disconnected interests or visions from Brussels, but be an Arctic player by virtue of its ‘Arcticness’17. Brussels is not an Arctic capital, but Sweden’s and Finland’s Arctic regions are European regions, the Kingdom of Denmark is an Arctic state18 and many other European states are legitimate Arctic actors by virtue of their scientific activity in the region.19 It is unacceptable that EU activity in the Arctic should antagonize the EU’s own member and associated states.20 It should, on the contrary, federate them and promote their interests better than individual countries can do. This is, of course, a delicate exercise. The way in which the EU participates in United Nations (UN) work – and the debates about giving away France’s permanent seat in the Security Council (UNSC) to the EU – provide an example of how these questions are being tackled elsewhere.

Economic and Social Dimension The Global Strategy stresses commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and sustainable socio-economic development of the Arctic is outlined as a priority in the Joint Communication. Consistent with its soft power and transformative power aspirations, the EU should define measurable objectives and identify applicable instruments for the EU to contribute, substantially and visibly, to these sustainable development goals in the Arctic.

The socio-economic situation and development perspectives in the Arctic have a paradoxical character. While the circumpolar Arctic – and the European Arctic in particular – are perceived as very attractive in terms of natural resources and extractive industries,21 they are also among the most vulnerable regions on the planet in terms of human development, ecological fragility and sustainability of local socio-economic structures. Another paradox lies in the discrepancy between indicators at the national and regional/local levels: almost all Arctic states (except Russia) rank on top of global economic22 and development indexes (UNDP Human Development Report, 2016), yet Arctic populations in these prosperous states, as sub-groups, follow extremely different patterns which call for specific policy approaches.

The EU needs to address these paradoxes and avoid misplacing its efforts and resources, in order to contribute positively to socio-economic and human development in the Arctic – i.e., in the European Arctic, in the cross-border macro-regions and in the circumpolar Arctic as an interconnected socio-economic system. It should focus on fostering endogenous growth; financing technological innovation that meets Arctic requirements but can eventually be integrated into global production chains and foster technological progress beyond the Arctic; and participate in building a circumpolar network of sustainable, efficient, community-centered and connected infrastructure on which economic systems on various scales can thrive (Stępien & Koivurova, 2017). Comparatively less efforts need to be spent on support to exogenous growth brought by large-scale extractive industries (including fishing) and long-distance shipping, whose benefits rarely spillover onto local communities and regional or cross-regional socio-economic systems – and which even tend to capture resources and disrupt local dynamics.

The EU has noted that measures should take into account the challenges – notably technological – posed by the harsh climatic and geographic conditions of high latitudes. It supports, through various financial instruments, innovation and development of appropriate infrastructure for

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populations and businesses. Space programs and targeted research projects of the EU contribute to the provision of maritime security by monitoring and monitoring the movement of ships and the state of ice, and providing navigation services. During the years 2007 - 2013 the EU spent €1.14 billion on the development of the economic, social and environmental potential of its Arctic regions, and taking into account the financing of individual countries, €1.98 billion (The Future Of The Arctic Region, 2014).

Despite past measures, serious demographic problems are noted in the region, e.g. the outflow of young people in southern directions, primarily to large cities against the backdrop of aging populations. The EU Arctic policy does not address directly the question of demographic challenges (Stępien & Koivurova, 2017) but there is a common understanding that there is a need to create comfortable conditions for living, education and work to attract residents. This dictates the need to create new innovative educational and workplaces that promote cross-border mobility of workforce and students.

Importantly, greater emphasis should be placed on traditional knowledge – including at the stage of policy-design - and on the variety of forms of traditional livelihoods (such as reindeer herding, fishing, and hunting) mixed with existing elements of modernity, connectivity and globalized economic structures in Arctic communities and community networks. Combined with the specifics of Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland’s national economies – innovative, globalized, to a great extent service-based, and with high levels of human development indicators – these approaches highlight a potential for unique forms of “glocalized” development with an emphasis on “smart specialization strategies” (Stępien & Koivurova, 2017).

Legal and Legislative Footprint EU laws but also law-making processes inform the EU’s position in the Arctic, its legitimacy as perceived by other actors and, in the end, its potential as an actor of Arctic governance. EU legislation already affects the Arctic, sometimes in highly controversial ways.23 The EU’s legislative footprint in the Arctic – considering both soft and hard law – can be measured in terms of, first, its participation in fora and organizations that directly produce rules in the Arctic; second, its participation in international treaties and conventions that apply to the Arctic; and third, its domestic and sectoral policies.

Although the Arctic Council (AC) does not have a legal character itself, it has increasingly had a legislative impact on Arctic affairs, at least as the forum for negotiation of three legally binding multilateral agreements,24 for iterating customary international law25 and arguably for producing soft law as well as indirectly impacting national legislations and regulations through the activity of its Working Groups. The EU has sat as an ad hoc observer at the AC’s Senior Arctic Officials (SAO) meetings since 2009, but its application to become a full, permanent observer in the AC is still pending. EU-AC relations have been difficult, due to a lack of sensitivity on the EU’s part towards the specificities of Arctic governance and the needs of Arctic communities which alienated several Arctic states (Depledge, 2017).26 While Canada, who most vehemently opposed deeper EU involvement in the AC following the row over the controversial EU ban on seal products imports in 2009, has become more accommodating in recent years, there is still no impetus for the EU to be accepted as a permanent observer, and Russia has opposed it with renewed energy since the adoption of EU sanctions after the Ukraine crisis. In short, the EU retains a reputation of outsider,

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if not even of troublemaker, in relation to the AC. If the AC is to evolve further into an institution with lawmaking competence, it will be in the EU’s interest to readjust this position and make greater efforts to showcase its understanding of Arctic affairs and its sensitivity, both to Arctic states’ concerns about sovereignty and to the needs of Arctic populations.

Outside of the strictly Arctic framework, the EU is involved in nearly all the treaties and conventions that inform or impact the international legal regime in the Arctic, including international (e.g., UNCLOS, arguably the Paris Agreement) and multilateral (e.g. OSPAR) agreements. As an ‘enhanced observer’ in the UN since 2011 (Phillips, 2017), (simple observer since 1974)27 it has impacted and meaningfully participated in UN processes. EU participation in the UN institutions and bodies, including the General Assembly (UNGA) and International Maritime Organization (IMO), is constantly evolving.29 In those contexts, the EU has demonstrated an outstanding ability to converge with its member states and to streamline international legislation and implementation processes both in relation to its member states and to other states (Paasivirta, 2015).

Reflecting the centrality of fishery management, conservation and custom issues in the very genesis of the Union, the European Economic Community (EEC) and later the EU have been tightly involved in the birth, further development and implementation of the United Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the most central piece of international law in Arctic relations (Paasivirta, 2015). But reflecting the fact that shipping, maritime safety, prevention of pollution and a fortiori delimitation of continental shelves, do not fall within exclusive Union competence, the EU has dedicated much less attention to these issues than to provisions concerning fisheries management. Having demonstrated its legitimacy as a right holder and an arbitrator within the UNCLOS framework about fisheries (Paasivirta, 2015), the EU could consider extending this constructive role to other contentious or pressing issues covered by UNCLOS. The most problematic point, thus, remains EU internal legislation, regulations and sectoral policies, which now and then continue to antagonize both member states, associate states and third parties.

These contentious cases, as rare as they may be, tend to undermine EU legitimacy and prevent its further political involvement in Arctic governance. While it is true that attention may naturally tend to focus on contentious issues and fail to give the EU credit for ‘what goes well,’ it does not make it less important for the EU to minimize these contentious occurrences and develop a comprehensive and coherent legal framework, taking into the specificities of Arctic political, economic and ecological systems.

Scientific and Business Diplomacy The EU is strongly connected to Arctic through history, culture, economy, and science. The Joint Communication stresses the EU’s role in scientific research in the Arctic, with large sums invested30 or earmarked under various collaborative structures.31 As part of promoting sustainable management of Arctic natural resources, the EU emphasizes the utilization of new technology and the creation of a knowledge base so that opportunities do not come at the expense of observing the highest environmental standards; in other words, any activity to be initiated must be based upon the best scientific findings available (Hossain, 2015).

Recently an important new coordination action was established - EU-PolarNet. This consortium is the world’s largest in expertise and infrastructure for polar research has been called upon to Opptomizing EU Influence on Arctic Affairs

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assist the EC in giving advice in polar related questions, coordinating polar research and infrastructures in Europe and in identifying the highest priority research topics. Science-informed decision making is considered to be a key to safeguarding the fragile ecosystems of the north (Ibid.), to limit risks and to enable adaptation of local communities (The EU and the Arctic, 2006).

The EU already supports transnational access to research infrastructure in the Arctic (research stations and ships, satellite observations) and open access to information resources. It also has ambitions to engage more substantially with stakeholders from the business, scientific and academic spheres.

Over the past decade, the European Union has become one of the largest funders of Arctic research through numerous collaborative projects, coordination activities and support to infrastructures. This has established a rewarding interplay between the scientific community and European policy makers. A lot of instruments appeared and scientific interactions, unlike business ones, continue despite political contradictions. Scientists are free to demonstrate the actual status of research results in all priority spheres. The abovementioned shows the high scientific and stakeholder-engagement footprint of the EU in the Arctic, but the sums and efforts and results of all investments in terms of scientific and business diplomacy, if they are to manifest themselves, should appear in the near future.

Conclusions These four dimensions are artificial categories, separated for analytical purposes but obviously interconnected in reality. The first, and primordial recommendation, is that the EU should prioritize Arctic issues not only at the bureaucratic but also at the political level, and have a structured, comprehensive and coordinated approach to the region, in a domestic-to-foreign policy continuum.

While the EU is strong in terms of stakeholder engagement and scientific diplomacy, it still needs to define its role as an actor in the institutionalization of international relations in the Arctic. In this regard, it needs to address its own tendency to antagonize other Arctic states, whose legitimacy in Arctic affairs is more solidly established. This tendency may not be accidental and bears witness to deeper, structural problems in the EU approach to Arctic affairs.

The EU has an unfulfilled potential to become a ‘soft power’ not nominally but because it has a great advantage in the field of science and socio-economic development – e.g., human capital development in EU Arctic countries. The idea of implementing a science-informed decision making process would work towards everyone’s benefit, because Arctic is a specific region in all manners. The EU should use its strengths, such as good scientific cooperation within the community and established contacts, and spread good practices to other fields ‘from the bottom to the top.’

Notes 1. In this limited space and for reasons of clarity, we limit ourselves to an analysis at the Union level, leaving out the agency of individual member states and European regions.

2. Joint Communication 27/04/2016, op. cit. p. 2; see also Council conclusions on the Arctic, Foreign Affairs Council, 20 June 2016, retrieved from, Fert-Malka & Kekkonen

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http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10400-2016-INIT/en/pdf; and “EU Arctic policy in regional context”, European Parliament, Directorate-General for External Policies, Policy, Department, July 2016, retrieved from, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/578017/EXPO_STU(20 16)578017_EN.pdf.

3. Almost all of the Principles and Priorities outlined in the Global Strategy directly apply to the Arctic, yet the Arctic is treated in a separate and rather disconnected section Global Strategy pp. 38-39.

4. This has advantages in terms of efficiency in limited, topically delimited areas, but also drawbacks in terms of coordination as well as overall tracability and visibility. One practitioner noted that “the coordination of the EU’s Arctic policy is the responsibility of the [EEAS], and rightly so. However ... the EU does have an equally important role to play through its domestic instruments – notably through sectoral policies and the regional development instruments.” Schurich-Rey, Amelie (10/11/2016) “The EU and the Arctic: take responsibility; seize opportunities?”, WeBuildEurope.eu, retrieved from, http://webuildeurope.eu/the-eu-and-the-arctic-take-responsibility-seize-opportunities.

We note that the EEAS’ work is greatly complicated by the need to ‘satisfy everyone’ and not to impose Arctic issues to political decision-makers who do not deem it important.

The question of how internal and institutional processes in the EU hamper its capacity to project influence in the Arctic is a very interesting one in itself.

5. We are indebted to Nikolas Sellheim for this pertinent expression, which he made the title of his dissertation (2016, “Legislating the Blind Spot: the EU seal regime and the Newfoundland seal hunt”, Acta Universitatis Lapponiensis 326) 6. For the EU, the Arctic is at the intersection of the domestic and the international dimensions for the EU - there a ‘European Arctic’ and the Arctic as a meta-region - as acknowledged in the Joint Communication, 27/04/2016 op. cit.

7. “EU Arctic policy in regional context” EU Policy Department, Directorate-General for External Policies, op. cit.

8. This is especially true for the Joint Communication.

9. COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL, “The European Union and the Arctic Region”, Brussels, 20.11.2008 COM(2008) 763 final, retrieved from, http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0763:FIN:EN:PDF. The 2012 progress report (JOINT COMMUNICATION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL, “Developing a European Union Policy towards the Arctic Region: progress since 2008 and next steps”, Brussels, 26.6.2012 JOIN(2012) 19 final, retrieved from, http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=JOIN:2012:0019:FIN:EN:PDF. 10. Surely it is not encouraged to do so by the Arctic states, some of which have expressly opposed greater EU participation in Arctic governance. About general view of EU bilateral relations with Arctic, see: Stang Gerald (2016) “EU Arctic policy in regional context” EU Policy Department, Directorate-General for External Policies, retrieved from, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/578017/EXPO_STU(20 16)578017_EN.pdf. See also: Depledge, Duncan (2015) “The EU and the Arctic Council”, ECFR's Wider Europe Forum, retrieved from, http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_the_eu_and_the_arctic_council3005. About EU-Norway relations regarding the Arctic, see: Orava, Heidi and Felixson, Tryggvi Opptomizing EU Influence on Arctic Affairs

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(2016) “Nordic Council calls on the EU to ratify the Paris Agreement”, Nordic Cooperation, retrieved from, http://www.norden.org/en/news-and-events/news/nordiccouncil-calls-on-the-eu-to-ratify-the-paris-agreement. About EU-Russia relations regarding the Arctic, see: Depledge, Duncanc and Tulupov, Dimitri, (2016): “ EU-Russia relations in the Arctic on ice”, ECFR's Wider Europe Forum, retrieved from, http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_eu_russia_relations_in_the_arctic_on_ice.

About EU-Russia, see also: Aalto, Pami (2013) “Explaining the ‘Arctic Exception’ in European Union–Russia Relations: What is Missing?” The Northern Review, Vol.37, pp.

101-125. About EU-Canada relations regarding the Arctic, see: Pelaudeix, Cécile (2011): “EU, Canada and the Arctic: towards a new step?”, Arctic Forum Foundation, retrieved from, http://eu-arctic-forum.org/allgemein/eu-canada-and-the-arctic-towards-a-newstep/. This issue will be developed in a subsequent part of this study.

11. The Global strategy states that “‘Global’ is not just intended in a geographical sense: it also refers to the wide array of policies and instruments the Strategy promotes”; that “The European Union has always prided itself on its soft power – and it will keep doing so, because we are the best in this field”; and that “soft and hard power go hand in hand.” op. cit. p.4, in line with the tradition initiated with the Helsinki Accords of 2015 and continued with the ESS 2003.

12. This idea already featured prominently in the 2003 European Security Strategy, which identified a broad range of tools to empower the EU on the global stage (“A Secure Europe in a Better World, European Security Strategy”, Brussels, 12/12/2003, hereafter ‘ESS 2003’). The 2008 ESS review acknowledged that the EU “must do more to shape events” (“Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy - Providing Security in a Changing World”, Brussels, 11/12/2008, retrieved from, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/EN/reports/104 630.pdf, p. 12.

13. Idem. p. 4.

14. Among other milestones, we can mention Gorbatchev’s 1987 Murmansk speech, the ratification of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) but all Arctic states but the US between 1985 and 2004, the creation of the Arctic Council (AC) in 1996 and its progressive institutional development to this day, a host of multilateral declarations and the myriad of Arctic-related conferences at top and lower levels that happen each year, involving policy makers, scientists across disciplines, commercial stakeholders, indigenous representatives, environmental activists, artists and so on. The language used in these speeches, declarations, normative acts and gatherings is very persistent, as illustrated by the most recent international forum in Arkhangelsk – “The Arctic, Territory of Dialogue” (2017, http://forumarctica.ru/en/). For an interesting historical perspective on the development of this narrative and the institutional framework that derived, see Dawn A. & Berry, N. (2016) (Eds.) Governing the North American Arctic: Sovereignty, Security, and Institutions. Palgrave MacMillan, especially chapter 10 by John English, “The Emergence of an Arctic Council”, (pp. 217-230).

15. The Barents Euro-Arctic Council and the Northern Dimension are the two main institutional vectors of EU activity in the Arctic.

16. By contrast with NATO, which is supposed to be its ‘hard power’ incarnation – cf.

Flockhart, Trine, “’Me Tarzan You Jane’, The EU and NATO and the reversal of roles”, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Vol 12, Issue 3, 2011, 263-282.

17. Whether this situation is transitional (a stage on the path towards a truly supranational and ever-expanding EU, or on the contrary back towards an association of sovereign Fert-Malka & Kekkonen

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states) or stable, does not affect the present argument.

18. See Braune, Gerd, “Countries Seek Piece of Pie”, Spiegel Online, 23/03/2009 for an interesting discussion.

19. By virtue of Greenland, even if Greenland is not in the European Union.

20. Notably France, Germany, Italy, the Netherland, Poland and Spain, whose status of observers at the Arctic Council is a sign of recognition. We could also mention the integrated character of the North Calotte region covering the North of Norway, Sweden and Finland, which ”can be described as “Arctic Europe”, an integral and indispensable part of the socio-economic landscape of the European Union and the European Economic Area” (Stępień Adam & Koivurova Timo (2017). Arctic Europe: Bringing together the EU Arctic Policy and Nordic cooperation. Publication series of the Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities 15/2017, retrieved from, http://tietokayttoon.fi/documents/10616/3866814/15_Arctic+Europe_Bringing+toget her+the+EU+Arctic+Policy.pdf/761dc7e8-ad2d-4d9a-a2f2f0436efd5063?version=1.0=.

21. For a most recent example, see “EU-Norway crab row could fuel oil tensions in Arctic”, Agence France Presse, 09/07/2017.

22. This issue is mostly addressed in popular media and generalist research in terms of extractive industry, and the most cited document in this context is the US Geological Survey Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal of 2008, retrieved from, https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3049/fs2008-3049.pdf.

23. EU Arctic countries are ranking top-30 for GDP based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) per capita and top-45 for Gross domestic product, nominal (except Iceland that takes 109th place).

24. E.g., Sellheim 2016, op. cit.

25. The Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic, signed in Nuuk in 2011, the Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic, signed in Kiruna in 2013, and the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation, signed in Fairbanks in 2017.

For details, see http://www.arctic-council.org/index.php/en/our-work/agreements.

26. Notably by means of joint statements.

27. See also Lasserre, Frédéric, La géopolitique de l’Arctique: sous le signe de la coopération, CERISCOPE Environnement, 2014, http://www.ceriscope.sciencespo.fr/environnement/content/part5/la-geopolitique-de-l-arctique-sous-le-signe-de-lacooperation.

28.

29.

“How the European Union and the United Nations cooperate”, United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC), 2007, http://www.unric.org/html/english/pdf/Leporello_EU-VN_e.pdf.

E.g., Pape, Marketa, ”The IMO – for ‘safe, secure and efficient shipping on clean oceans’”, European Parliament Briefing, European Parliamentary Research Service, February 2016, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/577964/EPRS_BRI%282 016%29577964_EN.pdf.

30. In 2014 - 2020 years program “Kolarctic ENPI (Instrument of European Neighborhood, Partnerships and Cross Border Cooperation)” “Northern Periphery”, Opptomizing EU Influence on Arctic Affairs

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“INTERREG NORD”, Northern Dimension, EU Framework Program for Scientific, Technological and Innovation Development “Horizon 2020” give significant funding donors for Projects implemented in high-latitude territories. E.g. a maintenance of the current level of research funding in the region within the framework of the Horizon2020 Program will be allocated an average of 20 million euros per year. About 40 million euros for 2016 - 2017 years are designed for projects to monitor weather conditions, climate change in the northern hemisphere, permafrost and their social and economic consequences. In addition, European Structural and Investment Funds programs also provide funding for research and innovation in climate change and the environment in the Arctic. Their contribution to research and innovation, support of small business and clean energy will be about 1 billion euros for 2014-2020.

31. In recent decades, a number of Arctic-specific cooperation forums have been set up (e.g. Arctic Council (AC), Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC), Northern Dimension (ND) policy framework etc.). Furthermore, a number of international forums address wider issues which impact on the Arctic but are not Arctic-specific per se. A key example of this is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

References Communication From The Commission To The European Parliament And The Council (2008), “The European Union and the Arctic Region”, Brussels, 20.11.2008 COM(2008) 763 final. Retrieved from, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0763:FIN:EN:PDF (on 10/11/2016).

Depledge, Duncan (2017). The EU and the Arctic Council, European Council on Foreign Relations.

Retrieved from, http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_the_eu_and_the_arctic_council3005. (on 14/07/2017).

“EU Arctic policy in regional context” (2016) EU Policy Department, Directorate-General for External Policies. 6/06/2016 doi: 10.2861/371516.

Hossain, K. (2015). EU Engagement in the Arctic: Do the Policy Responses from the Arctic States Recognize the EU as a Legitimate Stakeholder? Arctic Review on Law and Politics. 6(2): 89110.

Joint Communication To The European Parliament And The Council (2017, 27 April) .An integrated European Union policy for the Arctic. Retrieved from, http://www.eeas.europa.eu/archives/docs/arctic_region/docs/160427_jointcommunication-an-integrated-european-union-policy-for-the-arctic_en.pdf (on 10/06/2017).

Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council (2012, 26 June). Developing a European Union Policy towards the Arctic Region: Progress Since 2008 and Next Steps. Retrieved from, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=JOIN:2012:0019:FIN:EN:PDF (on 10/11/2016).

Paasivirta, Esa (2015). The European Union and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Fordham International Law Journal. 38(4): 1044-1071.

Phillips, Leigh (2017, 3 May). EU wins new powers at UN, transforming global body”, EUobserver. Retrieved from, https://euobserver.com/foreign/32262. (on 14/07/2017).

Stępień Adam & Timo Koivurova (2017). Arctic Europe: Bringing together the EU Arctic Policy and Nordic Cooperation. Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities (Finland). Retrieved from, http://tietokayttoon.fi/documents/10616/3866814/15_Arctic+Europe_Bringing+together+ Fert-Malka & Kekkonen

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the+EU+Arctic+Policy.pdf/761dc7e8-ad2d-4d9a-a2f2-f0436efd5063?version=1.0 (on 10/06/2017) The EU and the Arctic (2006). The Circle (WWF Magazine). No 1. Retrieved from, http://library.arcticportal.org/1925/1/thecircle0116_web.pdf. (on 23/07/2017).

The Future Of The Arctic Region: Cooperation Or Confrontation? (2014) Advisory letter by the Advisory Council on International Affairs, No. 90, Retrieved from, http://aivadvies.nl/download/1025edd3-bb95-4885-bdd0-5c77daa1cd8f.pdf (on 10/06/2017).

UNDP Human development report (2016). Retrieved from, http://report.hdr.undp.org/(on 10/06/2017).

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Briefing Note

The Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation: From Paper to Practice Malgorzata Smieszek For a long time, science has been one of the major platforms for collaboration in the Arctic – both during the Cold War and increasingly after its end. Organizations like the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and initiatives such as the International Polar Year 2007/2008 have been essential in bringing together scientists working on the Arctic from all over the world, enabling them coordination of international polar research activity on a large scale. That cooperation consequently contributed to the advancement in scientific understandings of the effects of climate change and transformations occurring in the region.

Recognizing the importance of cooperation in scientific research across the circumpolar Arctic to its own work, the Arctic Council (AC) decided at the Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna in 2013 to establish a Task Force to work towards an arrangement on improved scientific research cooperation among the eight Arctic States (the Scientific Cooperation Task Force, or SCTF). While the Arctic states initially considered adopting a Memorandum of Understanding, it soon became clear that to effectively address issues such as access to research areas and movement of people and equipment across borders, a legally binding agreement might be needed. The negotiations of such a text were successfully completed in July 2016 and in May 2017 at the tenth Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council in Fairbanks, Alaska foreign affairs ministers of the eight Arctic states signed the “Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation.” This briefing note reflects on the process leading to and the provisions of the Agreement as well as on the implications it might have for the cooperative international research in the Arctic.

Moreover, as the third legally binding instrument negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council, the Agreement is worth consideration from the broader perspective of Arctic governance and its meaning to the Council itself.

Introduction On 11 May 2017, the ministers of foreign affairs of the eight Arctic states signed the “Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation” at the tenth Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council in Fairbanks, Alaska. The text negotiated within the Arctic Council’s (AC) Task Force for Enhancing Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic (SCTF) is the third legally-binding Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek is a Researcher at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland and a Co-Chair of the International Arctic Science Committee’s Action Group on Communicating Arctic Science to PolicyMakers.

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instrument brought about under the auspices of the AC. It is also a primary example of science diplomacy, where delegations from Arctic countries comprised both of diplomats and scientists from various national agencies and institutions involved in Arctic research, to jointly negotiate conditions to facilitate the conduct of international scientific research in the region. While at present the document awaits ratification by the Arctic states, it is the right time to reflect on the rationale of this new legally binding instrument, the process that led to its fruitful completion and implications it might have for Arctic scientific cooperation and governance.

From the IPY 2007-2008 to the Arctic Council Task Force for Enhancing Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic For a long time, science has been one of the major platforms for collaboration in the Arctic - both during the Cold War and increasingly after its end. Science is critical to understanding drivers and consequences of the rapidly advancing climate change in the region. It is also a source of key insights to sustainable development of the Arctic as well as of the rest of the planet. We know today that the Arctic plays a critical role in the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s climate system and serves as an indicator of global changes. However, our comprehension of complex processes that unfold in the region and how they are interconnected with global weather, ocean circulation and carbon cycle remains still limited. Filling those gaps in our knowledge is essential and even more urgent considering the pace of changes that the Arctic is undergoing.

Yet, gaining scientific knowledge about the polar regions presents great challenges and the scale of operations in the demanding, remote conditions oftentimes exceeds capacity of any single nation, making international collaboration of paramount importance. Initiatives like the International Polar Years (IPYs) serve the purpose of facilitating such cooperation and the fourth IPY (2007-2009) was the largest, most comprehensive coordinated campaign ever mounted to explore the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s polar regions. Right upon its completion, the discussions began in international fora on means of ensuring a coordinated follow-up of the long-term observations and research launched during the initiative. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) put forward the idea of the International Polar Decade (IPD), later renamed to the International Polar Initiative (IPI). The concept of the IPI supported the necessity of a systematic coordinated approach to polar research activities that would help address issues such as lack of resources for continuous polar observations, lack of adequate information systems in the region and much needed transition from research to action. It was during the first meeting of the SCTF in Stockholm in December 2013 that Russia argued that the Arctic Council should play an active role in the development of the International Polar Initiative and that this work should become one of the main objectives of the AC Scientific Cooperation Task Force.

It was, however, not the first time that the AC was engaged in discussions of international Arctic scientific cooperation. The International Polar Year 2007-2009 coincided with the Norwegian chairmanship of the AC (2006-2009) and the IPY was an important element among common objectives presented by Norway, Denmark and Sweden for their consecutive AC chairmanships (2006-2012). In their joint program three Nordic states provided political support for the efforts of the IPY and for ensuring that its results would be taken into account in policy-making. They also committed themselves to work to enhance relations between the Council and the international Arctic science community. The rationale for the ACâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s engagement in that regard was the importance of science to the Arctic region in general, to the work of the Council itself as well as Smieszek

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the role of science in decision-making on most of the issues before the AC and its members (Arctic Council, 2009).

While the IPY had great value to the work of the AC, it was also recognized that the Council through its members provides significant contributions to development of science in the region and can also play an active role in fostering sustained legacy of the fourth International Polar Year.

The issue was actively undertaken during the Norwegian term at the helm of the AC and at the meeting in Svolvær in April 2008, where the Senior Arctic Officials (SAO) discussed the idea of an IPY legacy initiative. The project “Maximizing the Legacy of the IPY” was endorsed by the SAOs a few months later, and the final report delivered before the AC Ministerial meeting in Tromsø, Norway in April 2009 identified several areas where the AC could contribute to converting IPY results into societal benefit and sustaining scientific cooperation in the region – among others, by encouraging enhanced international access and coordination of the member states’ infrastructural and research facilities in the Arctic (Arctic Council, 2009).

It was against this background, the follow-up of the IPY and the development of the International Polar Initiative actively promoted by Russia, that the Arctic Council decided at the Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna, Sweden in May 2013 to set up the Task Force for Enhancing Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic (SCTF) co-chaired by the United States, Russia and initially Sweden.

The objective of the task force was to work towards an arrangement on improved scientific research cooperation among the eight Arctic States and to deliver its results to Arctic Ministers in 2015 (Arctic Council, 2013b).

Toward a Legally-binding Agreement The SCTF held nine meetings from May 2013 through July 2016. Its work could be divided into two phases covering two consecutive AC chairmanships: of Canada (2013-2015) and of the United States (2015-2017). Following the initial discussions about already existing mechanisms for coordination of Arctic research priorities, members of the Task Force quickly decided to focus on removing existing obstacles to scientific collaboration in the region and to support efficiency of collaborative Arctic research. They identified several key areas calling for improvement in the conduct of international science projects in the North such as facilitating the movement of people, samples and equipment across borders for research purposes; facilitating access to research sites and infrastructure; and sharing of data and metadata. While the task force initially considered a high-level agreement, and discussed a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the above issues, it soon came to conclusion that in order to effectively address them, a legally binding instrument might be needed. The SCTF members recognized that to facilitate obtaining visas and clearances for scientists, entry and exit of persons and materials, and access to research facilities, a wide range of ministries and government agencies within Arctic states would need to be involved and to make them conform to the policy, it should be preferably of binding character. At the same time, the binding nature of the agreement was sought for domestic reasons by some Arctic states, including Russia which argued that such a document would have the weight needed to provide the opportunity to improve coordination among relevant Russian ministries and government units (Shibata & Raita, 2016). Toward that end, Arctic ministers extended the mandate of the SCTF at their meeting in Iqaluit, Canada in 2015 to include work towards a legally-binding agreement on scientific cooperation to be completed during the US Chairmanship of the Council (Arctic Council, 2015).

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During the next meetings members of the task force negotiated the text of the agreement, moving through multiple rounds of revisions to find compromise and agree on issues such as geographic scope of the accord, inclusion of traditional and local knowledge, access to data and intellectual property rights, and the definition of “participants.” Since the agreement was now to become a legally binding agreement under international law, the issue arose regarding its relationship to nonparties, so non-Artic states, many of which are observers to the Arctic Council. Recognizing their importance and input to Arctic research as well as already existing partnerships between Arctic and non-Arctic states and research organizations, the AC Observers were invited to present comments on proposed drafts and they were actively involved throughout the negotiation process.

The final text of the Agreement was approved at the last meeting of the SCTF in Ottawa in July 2016 and signed by foreign ministers of eight Arctic states at the AC Ministerial Meeting in Fairbanks in May 2017.

The newly adopted Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation aims to enhance cooperation in scientific activities to increase effectiveness and efficiency in the way the scientific knowledge about the Arctic is developed (Article 1). Toward that goal, the Agreement facilitates access by scientists of eight Arctic states to Arctic areas that each state has identified for purposes of the Agreement and which are described in its Annex 1. The facilitation includes entry and exit of persons, equipment, material, data and samples (Article 4); access to national civilian research infrastructure, facilities and logistical services (Article 5); and access to terrestrial, coastal, atmospheric and marine research areas. The parties shall also facilitate access to scientific information; open access, distribution and sharing of data and metadata, and encourage publishing results with minimum time delays (Article 7). Furthermore, the Agreement promotes education and training opportunities to build capacity and expertise of future generations of Arctic researchers (Article 8) and it encourages utilization, as appropriate, of traditional and local knowledge in the planning and conduct of scientific activities (Article 9). It also obliges its parties to designate their competent national authority or authorities as the responsible points of contact for the Agreement – all listed in the Annex 2 (Article 13). Importantly, regarding co-operation with non-Parties, or non-Arctic states, the Agreement provides that if scientists coming from those countries are partnering in a project with an Arctic state, they would effectively benefit from the provisions of the Agreement (Article 17). The Agreement will enter into force for the period of five years 30 days after the date Denmark receives the last written notification from Arctic states that they have completed their internal procedures required for the Agreement’s entry into force (Article 19). No later than within one year from that moment, eight Arctic states shall convene a meeting to review the implementation of the Agreement – possibly in conjunction with the meetings of the Arctic Council including inviting the AC Permanent Participants and Observers and from then on as decided by the parties (Article 12) (“Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation,” 2017).

Implications of the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation So, what are the implications of the Agreement? Arguably, they could be divided into two categories – one regarding those for the scientific community, another for the Arctic Council itself.

Regarding the former, the Agreement presents indeed an improvement in the legal environment for conducting scientific activities in the Arctic and goes, in that respect, beyond what is provided by general international law, including the law of the sea as to marine scientific research, and other Smieszek

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relevant regional and bilateral agreements. For example, it grants facilitated access to land research areas of Arctic states (as listed in Annex 1), which is normally not included in the bilateral science and technology cooperation agreements (Shibata & Raita, 2016). It is also the first agreement on scientific collaboration on the Arctic including all eight Arctic states, where most of the joint research activities have been based so far on the two-side arrangements.

Regarding the latter, the Agreement signed in May 2017 is the third legally-binding instrument negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council. As Evan Bloom, the co-chair of the SCTF, explains, it will “take the Council another step in the direction of (…) establishment of legal norms and activities of regulatory character” (Bloom, 2016: 223). Conceivably, though, the Agreement on scientific cooperation stands apart in two respects from the two prior legally-binding instruments – the Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic (2011) (SAR) and the Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic (2013) (MOSPA). First, it creates a new set of obligations for the Arctic states, which were not codified in the previously existing international agreements on scientific cooperation – as it was the case both for SAR and MOSPA in their respective subject areas. What it means is that no formerly tested arrangements are in place to ensure the implementation of the Agreement, but they all must be built upon the provisions of the new legally binding instrument signed in May 2017 in Fairbanks, and the appropriate social practices need to be established and developed to put the Agreement in practice (once it enters into force). Second, when it comes to the institutional aspect, both SAR and MOSPA found their ‘home’ in the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR) Working Group. The EPPR has been tasked with the follow-up to the two agreements, undertaking projects in their support, coordinating SAR and Oil Spill Response international exercises and addressing relevant findings from them. However, when it comes to the scientific cooperation agreement, no such ‘home’ exists within the current structure of the Arctic Council and while the purpose of the Agreement is relevant to work of many of the AC working groups, none of them appears to be well suited to oversee or coordinate its actual implementation. The Scientific Cooperation Task Force that was mandated with developing the agreement completed its work with the successful conclusion of the negotiations and, in accordance with the AC rules of procedure, was disbanded upon fulfilling its mandate. At present, as described, the Agreement provides for meetings of the parties that might be convened in conjunction with meetings of the Arctic Council. There is, however, no mechanism linking the agreement with the AC nor is it evident at the moment whether parties would report on the status of the implementation to the Council and if so, in which manner. Strictly speaking, there is no such obligation, seeing that the agreement is not the ‘Arctic Council agreement,’ but the one adopted by the governments of eight Arctic states and merely negotiated under the auspices of the AC. So too are the SAR and MOSPA agreements, yet their connection with the EPPR has provided for a clear overview of their follow-up. The lack of it in the case of the scientific cooperation agreement means there is a certain risk that the next steps in its implementation might not be sufficiently exposed to all the interested parties.

Conclusions Scientific activities, including Arctic science, do not occur in a legal vacuum. Instead, they are carried out within established legal frameworks that regulate their conduct (Shibata, 2016). The

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Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation certainly presents a significant step toward improving of such a legal environment. The successful completion of its negotiations is also a very good example of science diplomacy, where the effort was orchestrated hand in hand by Russia and the United States despite their otherwise tense relationships following the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014. Yet, to make a real difference and increase the effectiveness and efficiency with which we generate scientific knowledge on the Arctic, provisions of the new Agreement must be put in practice and followed. One coming opportunity to facilitate the conduct of Arctic research could be possibly the MOSAiC (the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) project, which will be the first year-round expedition into the central Arctic over the winter 2019-2020. With a total budget exceeding 60 million Euro, MOSAiC is the major international initiative exploring the Arctic climate system that presents not only great research potential, but also a huge logistical challenge that could be alleviated by the implementation of the Agreement. At the same time, one might well argue that such grand initiatives, which enjoy both political and financial support from ministries of science and education of many Arctic and non-Arctic countries, might well move forward even without the Agreement in place. The question that arises are the implications of the Agreement for much smaller in scale, international research projects, which do not have the leverage to influence different governmental and local authorities tasked with issuing required permits and clearances, and which are yet critical to gaining scientific knowledge on the changing circumpolar North.

Should the Agreement make a difference in facilitating their conduct, its success would be undisputable along with a confirmed role of the Arctic Council as a forum for negotiating and setting legally-binding norms for the Arctic states and Arctic cooperation.

References Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation. (2017). Retrieved from, https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/271057.pdf.

Arctic Council. (2009). Maximizing the Legacy of IPY in the Arctic. A scoping study for the Arctic Council.

Arctic Council. Arctic Council Rules of Procedure. Revised by the Arctic Council at the Eight Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting, Kiruna, Sweden, May 15, 2013 (2013). Arctic Council.

Arctic Council. (2013b). Kiruna Declaration.

Arctic Council. (2015). Iqaluit Declaration 2015 on the occasion of the Ninth Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council. Iqaluit, Canada, April 24, 2015.

Bloom, E. T. (2016). The Arctic Council Produces a New Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement. Arctic Yearbook 2016, 222–224. Retrieved from, https://www.arcticyearbook.com/images/Articles_2016/commentaries/8-AY2016Bloom.pdf.

Kao, S. M., Pearre, N. S., & Firestone, J. (2012). Adoption of the arctic search and rescue agreement: A shift of the arctic regime toward a hard law basis? Marine Policy, 36(3), 832– 838. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2011.12.001.

Shibata, A. (2016). Legal Framework for Arctic Scientific Cooperation: Bilateralism, ‘AC-ism’, or Universalism? Presentation delivered at the Japan-Norway Arctic Science and Innovation Week (ASIW), June 2016.

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Shibata, A., & Raita, M. (2016). An Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation: Only for the Eight Arctic States and Their Scientists? The Yearbook of Polar Law, 8, 129â&#x20AC;&#x201C;162.

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Commentary

Canada & the Arctic Andrea Charron

Making sense of the world these days is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose; overwhelming doesn’t begin to describe the result. Questions about what are the options for Canada with respect to the Trump Presidency are often framed using victim-like language: Canada is at the mercy of its much bigger neighbour. However, Trump’s presidency poses potential opportunities for Canada and one such area is with regards to joint issues of concerning facing the Arctic.

The good news is that the latest U.S. Department of Defense Arctic strategy starts with the statement “The Department of Defense (DoD) remains committed to working collaboratively with allies and partners to promote a balanced approach to improving security in the Arctic region”.1 While written under the Obama Administration, there is no indication that this sentiment won’t continue under the Trump Administration primarily because it is focused on other issues (such as North Korea and football protests) and because the Arctic is not a priority for the President. Many of the eight Arctic states are allies of the U.S. and the biggest Arctic power, Russia, commands notice by Trump. Ultimately, the U.S. wants the Arctic to remain a secure and stable region where U.S. national interests are safeguarded, the U.S. homeland is defended, and states work cooperatively to address challenges.

And Trump, in line with his “grand” strategy, wants to achieve this by spending more on the military. This is to the benefit of Canada in so far as it might encourage the U.S. to contribute financially and via research and development to a replacement/upgrade of NORAD’s North Warning System – one of the main sources of air and aerospace warning information for both states. Furthermore, U.S. military objectives support national interests which encompass a wide range of activities, including economic activities such as resource extraction, fishing and trade, as well as scientific research, aid to community resupply, search and rescue as well as national defence.

Indeed, the NORAD exercise “Vigilant Shield” in 2016, focused on Canadian and U.S. forces working together with the assistance of refueling services in Thule, Greenland in joint surveillance roles in Arctic waters to improve Arctic maritime domain awareness. U.S. military involvement in Andrea Charron is Deputy Director at the Centre for Defense and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.

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the Arctic does not mean armed-to-the-teeth military vessels steaming down the Northwest Passage.

Sadly, it is the US Coast Guard that is in desperate need of money to replace its aging “fleet” of icebreakers but is unlikely to receive that support.It has only 2 operating icebreakers: the USCGC Healy and the Polar Star2 which share duties in the Antarctic and Arctic. In October 2016, the US Coast Guard released a notional schedule for the heavy polar acquisition program showing delivery of the first of three heavy polar icebreakers in fiscal year 2023 but this now seems to be all for naught.

What is an adjustment for Canada-U.S. relations in the Arctic is a shift away from uniting on issues of climate change promoted by Primer Minister Trudeau and former President Obama to the issue of responsible tourismin the Arctic. Trump is keen to allow oil and gas exploration to proceed in Alaska. Exploration in Canada’s Arctic, however, is now banned. Royal Dutch Shell has relinquished its drilling leases in Canada’s Lancaster Sound transferring them to Nature Conservancy Canada,3 oil prices are still depressed (hovering currently at about $50/barrel), Canada hasfewer gas and oil deposits than elsewhere in the Arctic, coupled with the government’s pledge to protect more marine spaces means there is little room for dialogue between Canada and the US on fossil fuel extraction. Nevertheless, responsible resource development is a key issue for the Arctic Council and all indications are that the U.S. will continue to participate in this forum, even if less enthusiastically than was the case under the Obama Administration.

This leaves Arctic tourism as the area of convergence on which the US and Canada may concentrate. Tourism is on the rise. The very successful, but government resource intensive and expensive transit of the luxury cruise liner the Crystal Serenity from Anchorage, Alaska, through the Northwest Passage to Thule and then New York was repeated this summer at an average cost per passenger of over US$22,000.4 This requires very close coordination with coastguards, customs and border personnel and the militaries (for aerial search and rescue scenarios) of all three states.

A military confrontation is not the concern. Rather, it is more mundane issues that demand larger government resources. Demands such as: ensuring there are adequate navigational aids, designating a route that limits disruption to migrating marine species, enforcing the now mandatory Polar Code and even coordinating penalties for marine pollution and dumping between the U.S., Canada and Greenland to ensure that the less professional, fly-by-night companies aren’t encouraged to dump in jurisdictions with softer penalties. Working with the U.S. and Greenland to coordinate future voyages will continue to be an important point of convergence given this very popular transit route.

For Canadians, however, nothing grabs the headlines like perceived concern for Russia’s (presumed nefarious) designs on the Arctic. Despite demonstrating time and again that it has adhered to international law with respect to Arctic issues (e.g., the Ilulissat Declaration of the five Arctic coastal states,5 the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea - UNCLOS, which the U.S. has yet to adopt formally - and the process for delimiting extended continental shelves), Russia’s activities in Syria and Ukraine are presented as evidence of its intent to threaten the Arctic with military confrontation as well. We need to unpack this flawed, slippery slope connection.

First, the activities of Russia in Syria and Ukraine are reprehensible. Full stop. Yes, Russia has the potential to hit major North American centres with an arsenal of missiles. They are not, however, de facto evidence of designs around the globe or for the Arctic. Russia is opportunistic, seizing on Charron

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frozen conflicts from the Cold War, its near abroad and especially states with pro-Russian, usually authoritarian leadership, to exploit and undermine fractured populations along national lines. The Arctic does not fit this profile. Indeed, similar to how we frame Canada’s Arctic (devoid of English/French differences and unique from the rest of Canada), Russia mythologizes its Arctic to posit a singular history of pride overcoming adversity that glosses over growing ethnic divides among its minority groups and tense relationships with its Indigenous peoples.

Second, Russia has high hopes that the Arctic will be a potential fix for what is looking like economic collapse. With three rivers the size of the Mississippi draining into the Arctic basin and a Northern Sea Route that links Russia to China and Europe, Russia is hoping that its port cities, like Murmansk, and the Northern Sea Route are the economic engines that will save the Russian economy.

Third, the Arctic is a region that Russia dominates because of the size of its Arctic territory, its large Arctic population6 and its 41+ icebreakers (6 of which are heavy polar, nuclear powered vessels). The Arctic is the one issue area in which it is a peer to the U.S. – indeed, Russia is the Arctic power.7 Its expansion/refurbishment of its northern bases is not unlike Canadian and U.S. spending on military equipment and bases as an economic stimulus. More to the point, Russia’s general military buildup is a convenient way to whip up nationalism and divert its public’s attention away from the lack of services, increasingly closed government and poor results in nearly all measures of health and economic status. The expansion and buildup must be tracked, of course.

Refusing to work with Russia on Arctic issues, however, would be counterproductive. Not only is Russia essential to tackling some of the common issues in the Arctic, like improving health indicators, telecommunication and important scientific research, but it represents a safe topic on which other geopolitical issues could be broached.

So where does this leave Canada?

Neither Canada nor the U.S. can operate self-sufficiently in the Arctic should there be a major search and rescue or oil spill scenario. They need to work collaboratively via NORAD and many hundreds of bilateral agreements with many different departments. They also need the help of allies and partners which, in the Arctic, means Russia. Canada may need to remind the U.S. its Arctic issues extend beyond resource exploration. And all three states need to continue to focus on the important issues of environmental protection and sustainable development as Finland assumes the position of Chair of the Arctic Council from the U.S. for 2017 – 2019. Most importantly, the U.S., Canada and Russia must try to seek opportunities for dialogue on areas in the world that are facing military confrontation by building on the cooperation that exists in the Arctic.

Notes 1. U.S. Department of Defense (December, 2016). Report to Congress on Strategy to Protect United States National Security Interests in the Arctic Region. OUSD (Policy).

Retrieved from, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2016-ArcticStrategy-UNCLAS-cleared-for-release.pdf.

2. The Healy is a medium polar icebreaker and the Polar Star is a heavy polar icebreaker.The US’s second heavy polar icebreaker, Polar Sea, suffered an engine casualty in June 2010 Canada & the Arctic

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and remains non-operational. See Roland O’Rourke, “Coast Guard Polar Icebreaker Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress” (14 September 2017).

3. See Mike De Souza (8 June, 2016). Shell Relinquishes Canadian Arctic Drilling Rights.

National Observer. Retrieved from, http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/06/08/news/shell-relinquishes-canadianarctic-drilling-rights.

4. Crystal Cruise. Northwest Passage Explorer. Retrieved from, http://www.crystalcruises.com/voyage/details/northwest-passage-explorer-7320 5. See The Ilulissat Declaration (28 May, 2008). Retrieved from, http://www.oceanlaw.org/downloads/arctic/Ilulissat_Declaration.pdf. In a nutshell, the five Arctic Coast states noted the many areas of policy convergence and agreed the current legal framework outlined by UNCLOS served as the best guide for conflict avoidance.

6. Russia has approximately half of the 4 million people who live in the Arctic but Russia has seen a 10% decline in its population since 2010, whereas the U.S. and Canada have seen a 15 and 10% increase respectively. Note Nunavut is the fastest growing Arctic region seeing a 20% increase in population since 2010. See Arctic Human Development Report: Human Processes and Global Linkages (2015). Joan Nymand Larsen & Gail Fondahl (Eds.) Nordic Council Meeting of Ministers (Chapter 2). http://www.sdwg.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/02/AHDRIIFINALREPORT2015-02-24.pdf.

7. See Andrea Charron, Joël Plouffe & Stéphane Roussel. (2017). Russian National Interests

and the Arctic: Foreign Policy Implications for Canada. In C. Kirkey & M. Hawes (Eds.).

Canadian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World (pp. 55-75). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Charron

Commentary

Finnish Chairmanship of the Arctic Council Aleksi Härkönen

Last May, Finland started its two-year chairmanship of the Arctic Council, conscious of the fact that Arctic cooperation is facing great challenges.

The Arctic will not remain what it is now. Climate change will have a fundamental impact on the Arctic. Global warming will bring drastic changes to the Arctic environment. Human activity in the region will increase.

Globalization will reach the Arctic with full strength. The region may soon become a hub for commercial activities. Arctic resources may attract worldwide interest and globally significant transport routes may be created.

For several years, international tensions have been running high. So far they have not affected Arctic cooperation. As the Chair, Finland will certainly work to keep it that way and emphasize the common interests of the Arctic countries in further developing their cooperation. The Arctic Council can be seen as an important confidence-building measure in an otherwise turbulent international situation.

It is time for the Arctic countries to decide what kind of Arctic we want in the future. We should make sure that all activity introduced to the region is sustainable. Increasing opportunities should benefit the people who already live in the Arctic, including Indigenous peoples and their communities.

We should develop appropriate stewardship, based on international law, to govern activities in the Arctic.

When preparing for the Arctic Council chairmanship, Finland benefitted from the viewpoints expressed by other Arctic states and the Permanent Participants representing Indigenous peoples in the Arctic. All agreed that Arctic cooperation should concentrate on goals that will make a difference also in a longer perspective.

Aleksi Härkönen is the Finnish Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials, 2017-2019.

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Arctic cooperation should aim at results that will be achieved together. To underline this Finland chose the motto Exploring Common Solutions for its chairmanship program.

We identified two broad frameworks that should be taken into account in all Arctic Council activities. They are climate change, especially the Paris Climate Agreement; and the Sustainable Development Goals, or Agenda 2030, adopted two years ago by the United Nations.

Finland chose four priority areas of Arctic cooperation that we believe deserve particular attention.

They are environmental protection, connectivity, meteorological cooperation and education.

Environmental protection includes many environment- and climate-related activities. Finland would like to take forward work to implement the Paris Climate Agreement, to safeguard biodiversity, slow down the acidification of oceans, to curb the emissions of black carbon and methane, to reduce marine waste and to strengthen the resilience of Arctic communities.

Improved connectivity is a lifeline for all activities in the changing Arctic. Groundbreaking technological innovations are made, and we should speed up work identifying solutions that are best suited for the Arctic. It will be useful to work together with the Arctic Economic Council in this and other areas to make sure that the region will develop an infrastructure that meets modern requirements.

Meteorological cooperation is a new theme for the Arctic Council. It is vital for improved research of the changing climatic conditions. We also need a strong network of stakeholders providing weather, climate, ice and sea monitoring and related services in the region. The Arctic Council and its working groups will benefit from close cooperation with the World Meteorological Organization and national meteorological institutes.

The fourth priority is cooperation in education. The goal is to provide good basic education to all children in the Arctic, and Finland regards it as part and parcel of sustainable development in the region. We already have the technical means to cope with the challenges posed by long distances and minority languages. Here, the Arctic Council cooperates closely with the University of the Arctic and its network of teachers and educators.

When thinking of the future, we should be prepared to strengthen Arctic cooperation and ensure its political support in our countries. Finland is ready to host an Arctic Summit, provided that the international situation is favourable, and that we can agree on an agenda, which is appropriate for a Summit.

As the global significance of the Arctic is growing, Finland recognizes the important role that the observer states and organizations play in the activities of the Arctic Council. Several new observers were invited in the recent ministerial meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska. We look forward to close cooperation with all observers and appreciate their increasing interest in Arctic affairs.

Harkonen

Commentary

The Paris Agreement & the Arctic Region Lotta Manninen

Climate change is occurring at a faster rate and with more severe impacts in the Arctic than in the rest of the world. According to the Arctic Council’s Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost (SWIPA) report, the Arctic region is being forced to shift into a new state.

Changes in the Arctic are also global: they affect weather in mid-latitudes, influence the Southeast Asian monsoon, cause acidification of oceans and increase the rate of global sea-level rise, just to mention a few examples. What happens in the Arctic is critical for the rest of the world.

A recent paper for the Arctic Science Ministerial (A 5°C Arctic in a 2 C° World, 2017) suggests that if the Paris Agreement on climate change is fully implemented and succeeds in limiting the increase in average global temperatures to 2 C° above pre-industrial levels, or preferably 1.5 C°, it would translate into an average temperature increase from 3.75 C° to even 5 C° in the Arctic. This means that the Arctic will continue to experience remarkable warming and substantial ice loss for at least the next 20-30 years, and the Arctic Ocean could be free of summer sea ice already by the late 2030s.

A study published by Nature Climate Change (An observation-based constraint on permafrost loss as a function of global warming) suggests that the Arctic permafrost is more sensitive to global warming than previously estimated. When permafrost thaws, it releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which in turn increase global temperatures. A worrying finding of the study is that thawing permafrost releases more methane than previously predicted. Methane traps heat about twenty times as efficiently as carbon dioxide. It will very likely worsen a climate feedback loop in the Arctic: increased greenhouse gas emissions cause greater warming and greater warming causes faster thawing of the Arctic permafrost, which again releases more emissions.

The study also suggests that nearly 4 million km2 of permafrost could be lost for every additional degree of global warming. This means that the stabilization at 1.5 C° above pre-industrial levels instead of 2 C° would ideally save approximately 2 million km2 of the total area of permafrost. In case the 2 C° target is missed, even more permafrost will be lost.

Lotta Manninen is the Arctic Conservation Officer at WWF-Finland.

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The melting of the Arctic – or its progress over the years – can very much be affected by the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Climate change in the Arctic is a global problem, which requires a global solution. We have only a few years to take action to turn the trajectory around.

The Arctic environment can be stabilized by the mid-century, but only if more ambitious climate targets met.

The world must take urgent and increasingly ambitious steps to implement the Paris Agreement and seek to limit global warming to 1.5 C°.

Abdelrahim & Clement

Calotte Academy 2017

Perceptions of the Arctic: Rich or Scarce, Mass-scale or Traditional, Conflict or Cooperation?

Jussi Huotari & Salla Kalliojärvi

The 26th Calotte Academy took place in early June 2017. The travelling symposium had its sessions in familiar places: in Inari, Finland, in Kirkenes, Norway and in Apatity, Russia. This year, part of the caravan continued their way to Umeå, Sweden where final sessions of the Calotte Academy 2017 were organized back-to-back with the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS).

This year’s academy consisted of twelve full working days, eleven sessions, more than 30 presentations, two excursions, five border crossings and plenty of questions, comments and discussions during and outside the sessions. This would not have been possible without the committed participants, who were ready to allocate their time, were open-minded and willing to share their expertise. More than 30 participants representing thirteen different nationalities formed the group, with approximately half of the group participating for the first time. The multi-national and multidisciplinary background of the group, as well as different levels of experience in Arctic studies, fit very well with the main theme of this year’s academy.

After travelling north from Rovaniemi, and entering Sami land and the Sami capital of Finland, Inari, the first working day of Calotte Academy 2017 began on June 1st. Even though June is considered to be one of the summer months in Finland, the weather was not very summery, as it was snowing and temperatures were around 2oC. However, the atmosphere and discussions were warm, while participants debated on the themes of the first two sessions. The sessions were held in a modernized Sami hut, ‘Lassin kota’ (see image below) owned by the Sami Education Institute, that for many of the participants offered a unique and exotic experience. In the first session, the main theme of the Academy, “Perceptions of the Arctic,” was approached by how people living outside the region perceive the Arctic, while the second session, “The Sami and diversity of energy,” focused on Indigenous peoples and energy issues.

After the sessions, the group had a chance to relax in the traditional Finnish way: by having a sauna and dip in the ice-cold lake, which was still partly covered with ice. Part of the group also defied Jussi Huotari is PhD Candidate at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, and Salla Kalliojärvi is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland, Finland.

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the harsh weather conditions to attend a local demonstration against new fishing regulations, which came into force this summer. The new regulations limit the right of local people to fish free in the rivers of northern Lapland.

Lassin Kota, Inari.

Photo credit: Salla Kalliojärvi

On the morning of June 2nd, Calotte Academy continued its way northwest to Kirkenes, Norway, which hosted the next three sessions. Compared to the last year (see Zojer & Olsén, 2016: 210), this time the border crossing between Finland and Norway went without any inconveniences. The sessions in Kirkenes continued to explore perceptions of the Arctic from different angles. The vivid discussions were debated around the themes of “Energy,” “Security” and “Arctic urbanism and tourism.” The first session in Kirkenes raised many important questions concerning the production, utilization and future developments of oil and gas in the Arctic region. The presenters highlighted the crucial role hydrocarbons, and especially oil, play in societies living in and out of the Arctic region, and addressed some of the problems governments are faced with as the Arctic climate is getting warmer. The effects of changing climate and oil-dependency were also discussed in the second session that took place on Saturday morning under the topic of “security.”

The presentations approached security from theoretical and practical perspectives and covered both traditional and non-traditional security issues from the obstacles of military control posed by the ocean to the potential shifts in the meaning of security itself.

The afternoon session of June 3rd greatly elucidated the value of multi-disciplinarity and provided a visual and illustrative outlook to the current and future Arctic landscape(s). Discussions during

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the session introduced many valuable perspectives and questions of the linkages between identity and Arctic development and reflected the nature of Arctic urbanization.

After one and half days, the symposium continued its way northeast toward Murmansk, Russia, in the early evening of June 3rd. If the border crossing between Finland and Norway was easy, entering from Norway to the Russian Federation was the opposite. The control at the border was stricter than previous years – even a year before, when the border restrictions between Finland and the Russian Federation were in force. Nevertheless, the whole group managed to enter Russia and continue its way according to the travel plan. After an overnight in Murmansk, it was time to have the first excursion.

On the way to Apatity, about 150 km south of Murmansk, the Calotte Academy visited Lovozero, the town of local Sami community. The first stop in Lovozero was in a Sami museum where the group had an extensive guided tour around the museum. The second visit in Lovozero was in a Sami Centre, where the president of the Sami Council of the Kola Peninsula hosted the group. In the discussion between the Calotte Academy group and the local Sami representatives, the focus was on the rights of Indigenous peoples and how Sami people are presented in the decision-making process in the Kola Peninsula region.

The next sessions took place in cold and rainy Apatity, where the Academy attracted local media to the venue. The intense work, discussion and debates continued, despite the long travelling and hard work already accomplished. The first session held in Russia introduced topics under the theme of “science diplomacy,” discussing how issues such as global warming, paradiplomacy and scientific relationships are influencing Arctic politics. The presentations highlighted the diversity of actors impacting the policies of the Arctic region, and raised discussions about their mutual imbrication. The afternoon session on June 5th discussed the perceptions of the Arctic from an environmental point of view, and further contributed to the session on the diversity of actors. The focus of the presentations ranged from case studies to theory-developing approaches, and introduced insights to the ways in which environment has been affecting Arctic politics and vice versa. In the follow-up discussion, the group keenly debated the premises behind the presented linkages between environment and politics, as well as how the introduced connections could impact the future of the Arctic region. Introduced by professor Lassi Heininen – who argued that Arctic cooperation is strongly built on the Nordic peace and model of cooperation – the group also discussed the idea of further utilizing the Nordic model in finding common solutions to the environmental problems the region is faced with.

The theme of environment was very much present in the last session held on Tuesday morning, June 6th, under the heading of “sustainability and communities.” The first two presentations introduced case studies giving insights about the developments that have been occurring within Arctic communities and discussed how global effects, such as tourism, popular perceptions and international agreements, are impacting on local level. The following two presentations shifted the focus on more general issues behind policy decisions. In her presentation, Anastasia Gasnikova argued that the sustainable development plans of particular districts in the Russian Arctic are primarily dependent on the stage of industrial development of the district and of the availability and type of energy resources the district has. The presentation by Professor Rasmuss Bertelsen introduced ideas about how political psychology plays a role in both Arctic affairs and in the perceptions of the Arctic. The presentation formed an argument against the Calotte Academy 2017

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“rational agent” model and raised discussions about the role of psychology in understanding political decision-making. The thought-provoking session – the final one of this year’s academy – provided a perfect platform to brainstorm for Calotte Academy 2018. The brainstorming session took place right after the last session and offered several inspiring ideas for the following years.

The sunny afternoon in Arctic Russia provided perfect weather conditions for a second excursion that this time took the group into a small mining-town, Kirovsk, located at the spurs of the Khibiny Mountains, 17 km northeast from Apatity. In Kirovsk, the group was welcomed at the Khibiny research station of Lomonosov Moscow State University, and visited a mining museum, which offered an outlook to the history of the town and to the development of a mining sector more broadly within the Murmansk region. Aligned with the theme of Calotte Academy 2017, the excursion raised discussions about the meaning of excursions to perceptions, and raised manifold questions about the relationship between ethics, economy and governance.

View of Khibiny Mountains from Kirovsk, Murmansk Oblast. Photo credit: Salla Kalliojärvi

The travelling symposium then departed from Apatity, Russia to Finland on the sunny morning of June 7th. This year the group crossed the border between the Russian Federation and Finland, at Salla. However, the actual border crossing between these two states was time consuming, although the distance is short. Before showing our travelling documents to the Finnish border guards, they were checked three times by their Russian colleagues. First, when we entered to the extended border zone. Second, when we entered to the actual border zone. And finally, when we entered to the state border. The border guards were extremely interested in our passports, since presumably they do not often face such an international group crossing the border at this northern border crossing point. Overall, the border control was stricter when entering but also when exiting the Russian Federation.

In previous years, the final destination has been Rovaniemi, but this time part of the group continued their travels to the ICASS conference in Umeå, Sweden, where three sessions of the IX Huotari & Kalliojärvi

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International Conference of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS) were convened under the umbrella of the Calotte Academy 2017.

Altogether, Calotte Academy 2017 was comprised of eleven sessions and thirty-eight presentations held in the Northern parts of four different Euro-Arctic countries, five border crossings (including entrance to SĂĄpmi) and more than 2000 km of driving, as well as innumerable questions, comments, debates and perceptions.

Details about next yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Calotte Academy 2018, as well as previous editions, are available here: https://calotte-academy.com .

Calotte Academy 2017

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