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CHAPTER 1 - THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL ARCTIC COOPERATION: A NEW ERA AND A CANADIAN AGENDA

The Arctic has emerged over the last decade as a prominent region in international society with a distinctive political agenda and a constituency of its own. As prospects of cultural, economic, environmental, and political benefits and losses have risen in the high latitudes, so too have the incentives of all Arctic stakeholders to devise ways to cooperate with one another . . . Increasingly, moreover, Arctic problems transcend jurisdictional boundaries, so that they cannot be addressed effectively in the absence of sustained international cooperation.
We stand today at the threshold of a new era in Arctic international relations.
Dr. Oran Young11

Despite this optimistic forecast in Oran Young's stimulating essay for the parliamentarians assembled in March 1996, as he put it soberly to the Committee in October: "We're still in the first grade in terms of learning to cooperate in the Arctic" [40:8]. In his longer monograph sketching out the complex scenarios which lie ahead for the Arctic Council, Dr. Young also observes that the current momentum for formal multilateral cooperation on a circumpolar basis may be undermined by the numerous existing arrangements and result in inefficiencies, incoherence and incongruent interests.12 Learning to cooperate on Arctic policies is becoming more important precisely because there are more actors involved with deeper concerns about what happens to this globally sensitive region.

True, the Arctic has long been the object of scientific curiosity, daring exploration and romantic legend. And for too long, in the southern imagination, it was a remote, forbidding place - portrayed as virtually unknown and unpeopled, though held to be a sovereign asset and perhaps a storehouse for future wealth extraction. Little notice was taken of the fact that the Arctic was a homeland that had sustained ingenious human civilizations and marvellously adapted native species for tens of thousands of years. In the postwar period, the Arctic became a strategic "theatre" of the Cold War, and policymakers' attention tended to wax or wane in accordance with national security calculations. Gradually, however, the emergence of an international environmental movement and of politically articulate leaders among Arctic indigenous peoples began to draw attention to the higher and longer-term stakes in the high latitudes.

Today, with the geopolitical constraints of the Cold War lifted, there is indeed a heightened consciousness of these rising stakes and the potential for mutual losses as well as gains, both regionally and globally, from Arctic developments and those affecting the Arctic. Among the diverse "stakeholders" are - in addition to the national governments, which will continue to retain primary political responsibility - increasingly assertive aboriginal peoples' organizations; territorial governments and local authorities; promoters of commercially viable Arctic research and development; investors seeking to exploit vast mineral and hydrocarbon resources; communities, troubled by threats to social health, seeking to become more self-sufficient and in control of such development; militaries possessing still potent polar capabilities (for example, nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines); environmental and other nongovernmental advocacy organizations; scientists deeply worried by the Arctic evidence of global environmental change; and southern citizens and consumers finally waking up to the realization that "what goes on in the Far North may well have far-reaching consequences for the welfare of large numbers of people living elsewhere."13

In short, the Arctic has become a crucial arena, in which multiple interests may converge or conflict, for confronting the challenges of "sustainable development" and human and environmental "security." A further complication is that the tremendous impact of external forces on this northern "hinterland" contrasts with the growing political resistance there to "colonial" control by more southern metropolitan centres. At the same time, Arctic problems are multiplying thorny transboundary questions which can adequately be resolved only at an international level and, accordingly, through foreign policy channels. Determining the appropriate scale and scope of the policy responses to these issues raises some truly daunting issues of global and domestic "governance."

The awareness of interconnected and long-term global environmental issues with serious consequences for human habitation has spawned lively debates over the redefinition of security, the meaning of concepts such as "environmental security" and "sustainable development," the ability of existing governments to cope with the effects of "internationalization" on their domestic publics and policy processes, and the desirability, therefore, of creating normative transnational or even supranational regimes, with the capacity to manage common problems through collective action.14 Foreign ministries everywhere are having to engage in such rethinking and to wrestle with the implications for achieving expanded international policy objectives.15

Applied to the polar regions, the challenge that lies ahead cannot be overstated.16 In this regard, it is important to differentiate between the uninhabited Antarctic region - which for some time has had a reasonably successful international governance regime under the terms of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty System (ATS)17 - and the circumpolar North, the subject of this report, a region divided among a number of sovereign nation-states, and until recently a prime sphere of "bipolar" superpower confrontation. The choices in moving from conflict-driven to cooperative scenarios have only begun to present themselves across the Arctic as a whole. It is here that, as Sanjay Chaturvedi observes: "A new geopolitical order is in the making as the Arctic nations strive to establish agreements to regulate their joint efforts in science, economic development and environmental protection."18

This is not to say that international Arctic cooperation is a new phenomenon of the 1990s. Indeed, while the Cold War constrained the development of a pan-Arctic internationalism, it also provided an incentive, especially for those caught in the bipolar middle - aboriginal peoples, and "middle powers" such as Canada and "like-minded" European Nordic countries - to look to functional ways of cooperating among themselves in keeping with their own northern region interests. As early as 1952, the five Nordic states and three associated Arctic territories formed a Nordic Council, which also included as observers the indigenous Saami peoples of Fenno-Scandinavia.19 Certain limited bilateral exchanges and intergovernmental agreements that included the Soviet Union, were also possible: for example, the agreement in the early 1970s between Canada and the U.S.S.R. on scientific research and involving northern regions with similar interests;20 and the 1973 agreement among five states (Canada, Denmark, Norway, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.) for the conservation of polar bears. Beyond the level of national governments, there was also significant international activity. An important event in the late 1970s was formation by the Inuit of their own internationalist movement, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), eventually spanning the polar rim across North America to Siberia (Russian Inuit were not able to participate until 1989), which presaged the emerging and increasingly important foreign policy roles of northern native peoples.21

It is only since the Gorbachev era, however, that a truly circumpolar diplomacy has come into its own. The Soviet Union's last leader's famous speech at Murmansk in October 1987 calling for an "Arctic zone of peace" (though still excluding the nuclear naval bases there) is often considered a watershed.22 Symbolically at least, it broke the ice and opened the way to multilateral initiatives, culminating in the creation of the Arctic Council almost a decade later. In 1989, the same year that Prime Minister Mulroney proposed such a council in an address in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), a conference held in Rovaniemi in neighbouring Finland was attended by representatives from the eight Arctic states and produced a process leading to the major 1991 agreement on an Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy. Although a Nordic initiative, the AEPS also "strongly reflects Canadian thinking"23 and is to be incorporated within the work of the Arctic Council during 1997. We will consider the future of the AEPS commitments in detail in Chapter Five.

During this decade, other important multilateral bodies and processes, both governmental and nongovernmental, have been established to deal with common concerns; for example, the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the Arctic Aboriginal Leaders Conference, the Standing Committee of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region (SCPAR), the Northern Forum, the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO), and within northern Europe, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAR), as well as other regional initiatives.24 We will be commenting further in subsequent chapters on the Canadian interest in some of these channels for promoting Arctic cooperation, and returning to the overall theme of multilateral cooperation in our last chapter on Arctic international relations.

It is important to recognize that the powerful international dynamics for change and innovation in the Arctic during the 1990s have been matched by equally compelling domestic transitions within countries. As recently summarized by Canadian Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs Mary Simon:

Here in Canada, the northern map is changing too. The process of political devolution has been accelerating, with territorial governments taking a growing role in all manner of northern affairs. The establishment of Nunavut in three years time will take this trend further still. At the same time, improved communications have brought the North more into the mainstream of Canadian life. Southern Canadians are much more aware than in the past of threats to the Arctic environment, of the social and health problems facing northern aboriginal peoples, and of the enormous riches and beauty of the North. Meantime, northerners are more engaged than ever before in the public affairs of their region and of their country.25
The evolving international and domestic consciousness of Arctic challenges and initiatives for controlling pollution, sustaining viable communities, sharing knowledge, and supporting democratic transformation in Russia enabled the establishment of an Arctic Council to promote such aims. The overarching question for the Canadian and other Arctic governments is what should be the next stage in developing circumpolar cooperation. To come back to Oran Young's comment to the Committee cited at the beginning of this chapter, we are still very early on in an uncertain process. (Indeed, the continued commitment of the United States, the last reluctant party to the Arctic Council negotiations, to a substantive program of cooperation remains open to question, in the view of some analysts.26) There are a great many gaps to be filled. Moreover, to progress towards the ultimate goal of a comprehensive regime for circumpolar cooperation, it is important to be clear about what is at stake, to examine closely the policy options for addressing the most pressing issues, and to consider the instruments needed to handle these issues within a coherent and efficient international Arctic framework.27

For Canadian foreign policy, this means there is a lot of work to be done. Through the rest of the report, the Committee will be reflecting on what it has heard and learned, and contributing ideas towards accomplishing the task. The next chapter examines strengthening Canada's foreign policy capacities as a necessary foundation for exerting credible, effective leadership within an Arctic Council process that works to our benefit domestically and internationally. At the outset, however, we think it is important that there be a firm public commitment to constructing an explicit policy framework setting out a comprehensive Canadian agenda for circumpolar cooperation into the new millenium. If Canada is ever to realize its aspirations as a major Arctic power, we owe ourselves and future generations no less; an accretion of ad hoc and uncoordinated measures will not suffice.

In light of the above:

11
Oran Young, "Arctic Governance: Meeting Challenges of Cooperation in the High Latitudes," Background Paper for the Second Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, Yellowknife, 13-14 March 1996, p. 1.

12
Oran Young, The Arctic Council: Marking a New Era in International Relations (1996), p. 14 and passim.

13
Ibid., p. 12.

14
Within the vast and growing international literature on these subjects cf. Oran Young, George Demko, and Kilaparti Ramakrishna, eds., Global Environmental Change and International Governance, University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1996; Lamont Hempel, Environmental Governance: The Global Challenge, Island Press, Washington, D.C. 1996; Geoffrey Dabelko and David Dabelko, "Environmental Security: Issues of Conflict and Redefinitions," Environment and Security, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1996, p. 23-49; and from a political economy perspective, Robert Keohane and Helen Milner, eds. Internationalization and Domestic Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.

15
For an example in Canadian terms, see "Proceedings of the Seminar on Environmental Security," Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Global Issues Bureau, Ottawa, 29 February 1996.

16
An outstanding contribution to the required "new thinking in geopolitics" is Sanjay Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions (1996), John Wiley & Sons in association with the Scott Polar Research Institute, Chichester, England, 1996.

17
Canada is one of 42 countries to have ratified the Treaty, though only in 1988, and it is not among the26 Consultative Parties to the ATS. However, in 1994, Canada joined the nongovernmental Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. For details of the Antarctic Treaty, its genesis and contribution to the debate over multilateral governance regimes, see Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions (1996), Chapters 5 and 8. Canada's role is usefully analyzed in Olav Loken, Toward a Canadian Antarctic Research Program, study prepared for the Canadian Polar Commission, Ottawa, April 1996.

18
Sanjay Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions (1996), p. xii.

19
For more details see Chapter Ten.

20
See Robert Doherty, "Social, Economic and Technical Links Between Northern Regions of Canada and Russia," in L. Lyck and V.I. Boyko, eds., Management, Technology and Human Resources Policy in the Arctic (the North), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 1996, p. 19-30.

21
Minority Rights Group, eds., Polar Peoples: Self-Determination and Development, Minority Rights Publications, London, 1994, p. 144.

22
Robert Huebert, "The Arctic Council: Global and Domestic Governance" (1996), p. 2.

23
Robert Huebert, "The Canadian Arctic and the Development of an International Environmental Regime," Paper for the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, June 1995, p. 11. Professor Huebert points out that "the entire AEPS process could not have occurred had the U.S.S.R. not collapsed. The individual state programs such as Canada's Northern Contaminants Programme would have continued on its own, but there would have been little international cooperation." (p. 21)

24
A useful introductory survey is Young, The Arctic Council (1996), p. 6-9. On European perspectives, see the excellent comprehensive study by Lassi Heininen et al., Expanding the Northern Dimension, Research ReportNo. 61, Tampere Peace Research Institute, University of Tampere, Finland, 1995.

25
Mary Simon, "Building Partnerships: Perspectives From the Arctic," Address to the Canadian Club, Toronto,4 November 1996, p. 2.

26
See Robert Huebert, "The Arctic Council: Global and Domestic Governance" (1996), p. 21.

27
See Oran Young, The Arctic Council: Marking a New Era in International Relations (1996), p. 5.

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