100
Arctic Yearbook 2013
Bounding Nature
Conclusion
An analysis of the Lancaster Sound NMCA and Wrangel Island
zapovednik
reveals the multiple ways
in which sovereignty and legitimacy are contested and reinforced at the domestic and international
levels in the two national parks. Canada and Russia use national parks as geo-political tools. In the
face of the increased international presence of vessels including liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers,
tourist boats, and naval ships seeking innocent passage, Russia and Canada feel a greater need to
demonstrate national presence. Rhetorically, they invoke ideas of sustainable development and
conservation. Legally, they enlist these ideas – grounded in international laws and organizations like
UNCLOS and UNESCO – to create national parks. Materially, they employ naval and coast guard
patrols, scientific vessels, and, in the case of Canada, indigenous use. While Canada includes
indigenous peoples in its attempt to affirm its claims to historical presence and sovereignty in the
NWP, Russia actively excludes them, suggesting two different kinds of biopolitical models. In both
cases, when aiming their discourse at international audiences, the governments promote
environmental conservation as their main motivation for establishing national parks. Since the
international status of Canada and Russia‘s political boundaries in the NWP and NSR, respectively,
is in dispute, the countries have erected less controversial environmental boundaries in their stead.
Russia and Canada make use of multilateral regimes and organizations in a counterintuitive manner,
using their support to actually bolster nationalist aims. This rhetoric veils ulterior motives more
openly expressed on the domestic front, such as sovereignty and economic interests.
In the Arctic, although states are setting aside areas for environmental protection, they are not doing
so for purely ecological reasons. Political and economic interests and ecological and societal interests
inform each other. National parks are drawn in areas that merit conservation, but also merit the
attention of defense and security agencies. If the Arctic ecosystem is to be conserved in a sensible
manner – difficult to do already because of the sheer size and cross-border nature of the
environment – then piecemeal attempts to conserve areas primarily for their geopolitical value rather
than their importance to the overall ecosystem will not suffice. Significantly, conservation decisions
based on non-environmental values may even extend beyond the Arctic‘s two arguably most
assertive states to countries normally lauded as environmental paragons. As a Norwegian living in
Longyearbyen remarked about Svalbard, ―[w]e Norwegians pretend to have real sovereignty here but
we know we don‘t. Instead we use the treaty to blanket the islands with nature reserves. That is the
only way we can keep people out and stop the Russians building more and more mines. It‘s a trick‖
(Anderson, 2009: 129). Though the Norwegians are engaging more in environmental stewardship,
which differs from the logic of sovereignty and security that Canada and Russia follow, international
concerns may still be informing their conservation practices. Thus, in the Arctic, conservation areas
are more than the reserves teeming with narwhals and polar bears that glossy park brochures make
them out to be. Instead, they are actively produced territories crucial to enacting sovereignty in the
contested spaces of the Arctic.