Nevertheless, the Arctic zone of peace narrative proved appealing to many and quickly gained traction in diplomatic circles.8 The result was the signing on June 14, 1991 of the Rovaniemi Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment on the part of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia (then still formally the Soviet Union), Sweden, and the United States.9 Although not a legally binding instrument, this ministerial declaration solidified the role of the A8, launched the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, and provided mandates for four Working Groups to get started on addressing a set of issues ranging from the impacts of pollutants to the conservation of Arctic flora and fauna and the protection of the Arctic marine environment. Because most others regarded the Arctic as a peripheral region of relatively limited importance to those located elsewhere, they let this process evolve without making any concerted effort to influence the course of events, at least during the early years.
Based largely on the efforts of the Working Groups and drawing on the enthusiastic engagement of government officials located in agencies beyond the foreign ministries of the member states, the machinery of Arctic cooperation made the transition from paper to practice fairly smoothly, building a community of dedicated participants along the way.10 Taking advantage of the resultant momentum and responding to the leadership of Canada in advocating the addition of sustainable development to the scope of the Arctic policy agenda, the A8 acted to broaden and deepen international cooperation in the Arctic by adopting the September 19, 1996 Ottawa Declaration on the Establishment of the Arctic Council.11 Though the council, too, is not rooted in a legally binding instrument, this step cemented the dominant role of the A8, expanded the scope of the vision embedded in the Arctic zone of peace narrative, and recognized formally the role of the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic as Permanent Participants in the pursuit of international cooperation in the region. As others have documented in some detail, this set the stage for a flow of significant initiatives during the succeeding years, all underpinned by the influence of a common interpretive framework.12
The Rise of Competing Narratives
The fact that it is impossible to falsify the principal tenets of policy narratives does not make them immune to shifts in the political landscape or to competition from alternative narratives that appeal to analysts and practitioners responsive to different sets of concerns. What is the significance of this observation with regard to developments involving the Arctic? Many observers have begun in recent years to speak of a “new” Arctic and to think about the requirements of navigating this new Arctic.13 But the critical development in the context of this discussion is that several forces, acting together, have made it abundantly clear that the Arctic region is tightly coupled to the outside world and even to the overarching global order, thereby calling into question the premise that the Arctic is a distinctive, region with a policy agenda of its own.14 As these links with the outside world have tightened over time, a growing collection of analysts and practitioners have begun to question the persuasiveness of the principal tenets of the Arctic zone of peace narrative.
First, and in some ways foremost, a set of biophysical links, notably involving the Earth’s climate system but extending to other major systems (e.g. the global ocean circulation system) as well, connect the Arctic to the Earth system as a whole. Crucially, the impacts of climate change are advancing more rapidly and more dramatically in the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet:15 surface temperatures are rising more than twice as fast in the Arctic; polar sea ice is receding and thinning at an unprecedented rate; acidification is particularly pronounced in cold water; permafrost is decaying and collapsing; melting on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet is adding freshwater to the North Atlantic.
Needless to say, these developments attributable largely to outside drivers are giving rise to extraordinary challenges to human communities in the Arctic that must cope with the impacts of dramatic changes involving coastal erosion, the melting of permafrost, shifts in the distribution of fish and marine mammals, and more.
What happens in the Arctic as a result of climate change is also generating profound global consequences.16 This is a function in part of feedback processes in which the loss of sea ice, reductions in snow cover, and the growth of terrestrial melt water ponds lead to increased absorption of solar radiation. It is also a function of system dynamics in which the impacts of climate change in the Arctic are affecting weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere through shifts in the Polar Jet Stream and the operation of the global ocean circulation system resulting from the flooding of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic.17 As a result, any belief that it is realistic to treat the Arctic as a distinct region in biophysical terms is no longer tenable.
With respect to policy, an increasingly common response to these observations is to fold the Arctic into an emerging global climate emergency narrative. This narrative starts from the proposition that we now face not just a climate problem but a full-fledged climate emergency developing on a global scale. In fact, we need to recognize that coming to terms with this emergency is or should be an overriding concern for policymakers at all levels. With regard to the Arctic, this environmental narrative has consequences both for mitigation and for adaptation. There is, to begin with, a need to minimize or even terminate initiatives aimed at producing the massive reserves of hydrocarbons located in high northern latitudes. There is a pressing need as well to make a concerted effort to address the disruptive impacts of climate change on the well-being of the Arctic’s human residents and to take all appropriate steps to minimize the damage to Arctic ecosystems. Overall, the adoption of a global climate emergency narrative suggests that it does not make sense to think of the Arctic as a distinctive region with a policy agenda of its own. Rather, we need to integrate the Arctic into global perspectives, evaluating both developments in the region and the impacts of these developments on global systems from an Earth system perspective.
Paradoxically, though not surprisingly, some analysts and practitioners prefer a lens that focuses on the extent to which these biophysical forces have increased the accessibility of the Arctic, opening up new opportunities for industries interested in extracting the region’s natural resources and moving them to southern markets. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia have chosen to ground the economic reconstruction of their country squarely on the extraction of natural resources in the Arctic and, more specifically, on the exploitation of massive reserves of oil and especially natural gas located within the country’s jurisdiction. The extraction of natural gas from the Yamal Peninsula and adjacent areas along with the development of the Northern Sea Route as a corridor for shipments of liquid natural gas both westward to Europe and eastward to Asia provides a dramatic example.18 Responding to opportunities that seem attractive politically as well as economically, China has made substantial investments in the development of Russia’s Arctic gas, taken steps to develop its capacity to engage in commercial shipping along the Northern Sea Route, and articulated a vision of the Arctic Silk Road as an element of its overarching Belt and Road Initiative.19
Nor are initiatives involving the extraction of Arctic natural resources limited to the Russian North. As a petro-state, Norway is taking steps to expand the production of both oil and gas in the Barents Sea. Alaska, dependent on revenues derived from the production of hydrocarbons to cover the lion’s share of the state’s budget, is desperate to stimulate its own development of new oil reserves and especially to find ways to move the North Slope’s large proven reserves of natural gas to markets in Asia. Those who favor an early transition to full-fledged independence for Greenland are aware that such a move would make little sense in the absence of the revenues to be derived from the development of hydrocarbons or from mining operations, including the exploitation of major deposits of rare earths.20
Embedded in the thinking of those who promote the exploitation of natural resources or who are engaged in carrying out such activities is what I call the energy from the North narrative. The central themes of this narrative are that industrialized societies cannot thrive in the absence of plentiful supplies of energy and various raw materials and that modern technology is now adequate