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Arctic Yearbook 2013
The Arctic Ocean Review
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological
Diversity and the Convention for the International Trade in Endangered Species, to name a few (see
AOR Phase I report, 2011).
In 2010, the Arctic Governance Project, an independent research project where preeminent
researchers, indigenous leaders, and members of the policy community joined to frame critical
questions and issues of governance in the Arctic, identified the necessity of amplifying Arctic voices
by enhancing the ability of institutions to connect between governance levels. This was also
recognized in the latest Arctic Council Kiruna Declaration (Kiruna Declaration, 2013).
Acknowledge
that the work of the Arctic Council continues to evolve to respond to new challenges
and opportunities in the Arctic, request Senior Arctic Officials to recommend ways and means to
strengthen how the work of the Arctic Council is carried out, including identifying opportunities for
Arctic States to use the Council‘s work to influence and shape action in other regional and
international fora as well as identifying approaches to support the active participation of Permanent
Participants, and to present a report on their work at the next Ministerial meeting in 2015 (Kiruna
Declaration, 2013).
The implementation of the AOR recommendations implies consideration of the 2009 Arctic Marine
Shipping Assessment and the context provided by the Kiruna outcome documents. From WWF‘s
perspective, the implementation of the AOR recommendations requires Arctic states to coordinate
their approach in dealings with other international institutions. The state-of-the-art scientific
assessments‘ findings and recommendations for policy-makers developed by the Arctic Council
working groups must influence both national policies and regulations of the Arctic states and the
global processes in order to remain policy relevant and to deliver conservation results. What
happens in the Arctic has global implications, with the opposite also true since human induced
climate change has affected the Arctic faster and harder than most other parts of the world.
Historically, the work of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) with regards
to Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the Arctic did influence a global level outcome, the
Stockholm Convention on POPs delivering results on the Arctic ground by diminishing the
presence of contaminants covered by the Convention. Other examples of successful Arctic
coordination such as the Arctic states‘ leadership in the UNEP Mercury negotiation process where
the Government of Sweden‘s interventions on behalf of the Arctic Council showcased the AMAP
Mercury Assessment report (Kiruna Senior Arctic Officials Report to Ministers, 2013).
These successes in inserting Arctic Council outputs into international policy results could arguably
be attributed to pre-existing common domestic policies among the Arctic states before the
translation of that policy to international fora. In other words, it was not a common policy forged
through the Arctic Council, but domestic policies that were already sufficiently similar to allow a
common approach. The notorious failure of the Arctic states to coalesce around the
recommendations of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and work together at the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations undermined