Arctic News and Analysis
by Marc Lanteigne In November of last year, Mr Urmas Reinsalu, Foreign Minister of Estonia (Eesti), announced his government would seek to join the Arctic Council as a formal observer, early next year, when the next ministerial meeting of the organisation takes place in Reykjavík. Currently Estonia is the only country to have officially announced… Continue reading Estonia’s Arctic Thinking
by Mingming Shi 1) Morgunblaðið, or mbl.is, an Icelandic news agency, commented on the country's employment situation involving foreign laborers. Generally, the employment rate of foreign nationals is high in Iceland, and have contributed to the country's high economic performance in recent years. However, in recent months, the unemployment rate of foreign laborers has risen… Continue reading Arctic News Roundup: 10-16 February
by Mingming Shi 1) The Sámi National Day was celebrated during this week, on February 6th. The Sámi people are one of the Indigenous groups living in the Arctic regions, primarily in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Even though the first such observance took place in 1993, the origin of the date can be traced… Continue reading Arctic News Roundup: 3-9 February
by Marc Lanteigne During last month’s Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, one of the more controversial ideas to appear out of the first plenary session, a discussion on regional policy directions entitled ‘The State of the Arctic’, was the potential for an Arctic Treaty to reflect the changed political and strategic milieu of the… Continue reading So You Want to Write an Arctic Treaty?
by Marc Lanteigne Svalbard, a remote Arctic archipelago, has been back in the news of late, and not only because of the islands being the subject of a nine-day, ‘slow TV’ documentary featured this month by the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK. Norway, which administers Svalbard under the terms of the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) Treaty, (a document… Continue reading Norway, Russia, and a Changing Svalbard
