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As the Far North melts, calls grow for Arctic Treaty

By Ed Struzik - posted Thursday, 1 July 2010


For this reason, WWF and other advocates of the hard-law approach say that a comprehensive international treaty is needed to protect the Arctic Ocean. WWF’s proposed Arctic convention would apply only to the marine environment of the Arctic. Building on the Arctic Council and the Law of the Sea Convention, WWF calls for a legally-binding framework that would seek to establish “ecosystem-based ocean management” both in territorial and international waters. It would create protocols for shipping and resource development, create a network of marine protected areas throughout the Arctic Ocean, ensure that commercial activity followed approved environmental practices, and require polluters to pay for cleanup efforts.

“This is a region that is undergoing dramatic change,” said Timo Koivurova, director of the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, who co-wrote the WWF reports. “We know that economic activities are going to enter the region. There is no evidence to suggest that the soft-law approach that we have now will be effective in regulating these activities in the future. What is required is the establishment of regional institutions with legal powers to regulate.”

Rob Huebert, associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary in Canada, thinks soft-law proponents are underestimating the scope of the problems bearing down on the Arctic. “The soft approach, which relies largely on voluntary co-operation, is insufficient to deal with the challenges that climate change, energy development, and increased shipping will bring to the Arctic,” he said in an interview. “Without a stronger framework for cooperative management, the living resources of the Arctic are likely to suffer, essential habitat will be degraded, and the traditional subsistence way of life of many Arctic communities will be endangered.”

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Yet as rich as the Arctic’s resources are, not everyone agrees that there is a race to exploit them. Nor do they see crises looming.

Oran Young, for example, is perhaps the leading scholar on the subject of Arctic governance. Based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he is also director of the Institute of Arctic Studies at the University of Tromsø in Norway. No one has been on top of this subject longer than he has been.

Young believes that fears of an Arctic resource rush, expressed in media reports in recent years, are substantially exaggerated. He and others see no need for an overarching treaty when the future is so uncertain.

“While it is important to consider the possibility of worst-case scenarios unfolding in the Arctic, I think this idea of a Wild West-like land rush is far-fetched,” he said in an interview. “The development of oil and gas reserves located beneath the continental shelves of the Arctic, beyond the limits of the existing exclusive economic zones, is highly unlikely during the foreseeable future.”

Young believes that issues pertaining to territorial claims and future shipping practices can be dealt with adequately by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the Obama administration recently pledged to sign.

Nevertheless, Young says there is good reason to reassess current governance arrangements in the Arctic in light of what is going on. The solution is not a treaty, he adds, but what he describes as a “somewhat messy patchwork made up of disparate pieces” - a soft-law approach that can be quickly adapted to rapidly changing circumstances. Arctic nations could agree, for example, to manage walrus, beluga, and cod or halibut fishing in mutually beneficial ways.

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Such soft laws could be administered by the Arctic Council, which currently promotes co-operation among Arctic governments on a number of key issues, such as trans-boundary pollution, overfishing, and oil and gas development. Although member states - which include Canada, Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the United States - make the final decisions, the council provides a forum in which indigenous people living in the North have a say in the decision-making process, which they would not be able to exercise in more formal treaty negotiations.

“Even if it were feasible, would we want to have a formal, legally binding treaty for the Arctic?” Young wonders. “There is a tendency to think of formal arrangements like the Antarctic Treaty system, but there are also advantages to having a soft approach in addressing Arctic issues. Unlike treaties that are rigid and take tremendous time and effort, informal agreements can be made more quickly. They can have more substance and they can provide for greater adaptability.”

Canada and Greenland, for example, recently signed an agreement to deal with the increasingly unsustainable hunting of polar bears in Baffin Bay. The two countries are collaborating to determine how many bears can be hunted on each side of the maritime border. It will be left to each country, not a legally binding treaty, to honour the agreement.

In recent months, the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Canada have distanced themselves from the idea of an overarching treaty. And so far, the Arctic Council has shown no appetite for such a treaty.

Critics see this as a sign that the council believes it is currently doing a good job. Koivurova, co-author of the WWF reports, says that one possible first step is to forge a framework treaty that formalises the current membership of the Arctic Council and adds certain guiding principles related to environmental protection.

“The Arctic Council may not like it,” he concedes. “But if it continues without a legal mandate, there is great danger of it becoming a façade under which unilateral and unco-ordinated development-oriented parties of the Arctic states can proceed.”

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First published in Yale Environment 360 on June 14, 2010.



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About the Author

Canadian author and photographer Ed Struzik has been writing on the Arctic for the past 27 years. He is the 2007 recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy and was a finalist for this year's Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. His latest book is The Big Thaw, published this year by John Wiley and Sons.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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