‘Burning the midnight oil’ could almost have been a motto of this year’s Arctic Circle Assembly (ACA), given the crowded and ambitious schedule of the conference, which was especially top-heavy with plenaries, along with side events and project announcements. Although there were many Arctic themes covered during the deliberations, two which stood out the most were the raising and promotion of Indigenous knowledge [video], and the growing number of non-Arctic voices, especially from the Asia-Pacific, seeking an expanded role in far north dialogues.
These points were aptly illustrated by the plenary presentations on climate change given by representatives of Maori organisations [video] in New Zealand, and of the Kabbaga Nation [video] in Colombia. Thus, a leitmotif being accentuated many times during the Assembly was that voices well outside of the Arctic have much to say about the Arctic.
When the ACA was founded a decade ago, it was with the purpose of ensuring that Arctic dialogues would not be restricted to the governmental level (or ‘Track I’), and solely to Arctic states. The government of Iceland, in backing the Assembly, was also reacting in many ways to the 2008 Ilulissat Declaration [pdf], which brought together the five littoral states of the Arctic Ocean (Canada, Denmark / Greenland, Norway, the Russian Federation, and the United States), to note the ‘unique position’ the quintet was in to address far northern affairs.
Although this level of cooperation has been hampered by deteriorated relations between Moscow and the West, concerns at the time about Iceland being marginalised in Arctic affairs prompted calls for a more inclusive Arctic dialogue. The Arctic Circle was therefore created to be an ‘open tent’ with space for non-Arctic governments and other actors (‘Track II’) to share knowledge, at a time when the region was undergoing evermore dramatic environmental change. This year’s conference was estimated to be the largest to date in term of attendance, with the number of participants over 2200.
This Assembly capped an unusually demanding year of Arctic Circle events, as the organisation sought to make up for lost time after the postponements caused by the pandemic. In January, the organisation held a special forum in Abu Dhabi, in tandem with the city’s Sustainability Week events which featured exhibitions and dialogues on climate change and net-zero initiatives. This event was hosted by the United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MoCCaE), which was also a partner in this year’s Assembly. This forum had as its central topic the emergence of expanded studies into the ‘Third Pole’, namely the Himalayas region in Central Asia, which is now facing some of the same stresses as the North and South Pole, including ice erosion and related human security concerns.
Third Pole dialogues have slowly been becoming part of wider ‘Asia-Arctic’ diplomacy, and the conference this year also saw the return of numerous dialogues about how Asian governments, including China and Japan, as well as India and Singapore, could contribute to polar cooperation.
A keynote speaker at both the Abu Dhabi forum and the main conference in Reykjavík this month was Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and the director and CEO of Abu Dhabi’s national oil firm, ADNOC, as well as the chair of Masdar, a green energy concern.
The announcement in January that Dr Al Jaber would also be chairing the COP28 global environmental conference later this month in Dubai, was met with much controversy, especially given the UAE’s prominence in the global petroleum sector, which has only grown as several countries have eschewed fossil fuel trade with Russia since early last year. The UAE, like other countries in the Gulf Region, adopted a policy of de facto neutrality towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and has continued to maintain high-level communications with the Vladimir Putin regime. This stance reflected the UAE’s views against geopolitical ‘polarisation’, a point also made in Dr Al Jaber’s speech at the Arctic Circle.
Speaking remotely [video], Dr Al Jaber praised the work of the ACA over the past ten years, especially regarding educating the global community about how the threat of climate change expands well beyond the Polar Regions, and called for international leader to move faster and farther in cutting greenhouse emissions. He also stressed that work to be undertaken at COP28 would be based on four distinct pillars: energy, finance, people, and inclusivity, and he called for a people-centric approach to combatting climate change.
Building on the UAE’s growing interest in Arctic affairs, Mariam Almheiri, the country’s Minister of Climate Change and Environment, noted [video] the work of the Masdar initiative and the need for an ‘intellectual transition’ to match the structural and technological changes required for more environmentally friendly energy policies.
From a political and security viewpoint, there was much discussion about the overlap between climate change in the Arctic and the more complicated security situation in the region. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), spoke [video] on how the United States was slowly but steadily easing into its role as an Arctic state after a long period of political turbulence. Canadian Minister of Northern Affairs, Dan Vandal, had the thorny task of explaining how his government would be addressing issues of development and education at a time when the region was reeling from an unprecedented long hot summer of wildfires across the country, especially in the Northwest Territories.
Despite the successful transfer of chairship of the Arctic Council from Russia to Norway in May this year, questions remained as to how the group could restore operations, and especially the activities of the Working Group, with political relations between Russia and the other seven members remaining severed, (as with 2022, there was no formal Russian representative at this year’s event).
Morten Høglund, the current Senior Arctic Officials chair of the Council, sought to address these queries in a keynote speech which outlined Oslo’s plans for the group under Norwegian leadership. Offering assurances that the Council was ‘very much alive’, Mr Høglund also confirmed [video] that all elements of the group, including the Permanent Participants, had expressed willingness to continue the Council’s duties, at a time when there remained the common challenges of environmental change in the far north.
After a contentious speech at the 2022 ACA about the nature of emerging military threats to the Arctic which culminated in a heated exchange with China’s Ambassador to Iceland, He Rulong, NATO Admiral Robert Bauer returned this year and gave a more nuanced assessment of the military situation in the far north. This year, he expressed concerns about the potential for greater Arctic partnerships between Beijing and Moscow, and also criticised the recent Russia decision to accelerate the pace of oil shipments to China using non-ice class vessels which pose a greater risk of accidents and environmental damage. He also referred to a Chinese firm, NewNew Shipping (XinXin Hangyun 新新航运) of Hong Kong, which this October successfully completed a test transit along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, another potential sign of closer maritime cooperation between the two powers.
The Chinese ship in question, the NewNew Polar Bear, (XinXin Beijixiong 新新北极熊) later became an object of Finnish government scrutiny after damage was discovered earlier this month to both data cables and a natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea connecting Finland with Estonia, which may have been caused by a dragged anchor. Both the Chinese vessel and a Russian cargo ship, Sevmorput (Севморпуть) were in the area when the damage was done. The Chinese Foreign Ministry later called for [in Chinese] the authorities investigating the incident to practice ‘objectivity and fairness’ in their inquiries, and it was subsequently reported that the Finnish and Chinese governments were in communication regarding Helsinki’s investigation of the incident.
Admiral Bauer’s speech this year did draw a distinction between Chinese and Russian interests in the Arctic, suggesting that while Moscow’s strategic aims were becoming more visible over time, ‘China’s intentions for the region remain opaque’. This statement reflected the view that although there have been several government statements from Beijing regarding its policies in the Arctic (the most prominent being its official governmental White Paper [in Chinese] on the region published in January 2018), there remained unease within NATO over the degree to which Beijing was being candid with its strategic aims in the Arctic, especially given the potential for further Sino-Russian joint projects in the far north. Meanwhile, NATO’s overall visibility in the Arctic has been enhanced in the past year, especially with Finland’s admission and Sweden also inching closer to membership in the alliance.
Beyond the political sphere, many research and educational projects were also featured at the event, with this year’s Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award being given [video] to Minik Thorleif Rosing, (Geobiology – University of Copenhagen) for his work on how glacial rock flour could potentially be used to reduce concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
As well, the ACA marked the conclusion of the first Arctic Academy for Social and Environmental Leadership (Arcade) graduate studies programme, hosted by the University of Iceland in cooperation with the University of Greenland and UiT – the Arctic University of Norway.* Arcade students from a variety of different disciplines presented their final project proposals on addressing specific regional climate change challenges. The programme will be launching its second course in January, starting in Tromsø. Other programmes which saw their debut at this year’s event included the launch of the Radio Arctic service, and the Wildland Fire Initiative, sponsored by Norway as part of its Arctic Council chairing duties.
The ACA is now seeking to keep up momentum, announcing the next forum which will be held in May 2024 in Berlin. However, the subtle shift in topic areas which has been seen over the past two years to include more security and geopolitics subjects, will mean that the organisation’s agenda will now need to balance politics and science more carefully. Moreover, with a priority of the organisation continuing to be expanding beyond the Arctic itself, the ACA is finding itself in the middle of debates over what an ‘internationalised’ Arctic will eventually look like.
*Author’s note: Marc Lanteigne is a representative of UiT to the Arcade programme.
Over the Circle 