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Arctic Yearbook 2013
Bounding Nature
in the Arctic, international cooperation is necessary to protect what is one of the world‘s biggest
continuous, largely intact ecosystems. At the height of the Cold War, Arctic states recognized the
need to jointly protect the region‘s environment. In 1973, Canada, Denmark, Norway, the USSR,
and the US signed the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, as they
recognized that due to the species‘ long-range, polar bears could only be adequately protected with a
circumpolar agreement. Still, the responsibility to uphold the spirit of the agreement remained with
the state, with ―protection to be achieved through co-ordinated national measures taken by the
States of the Arctic Region‖ (―Agreement,‖ 1973). Just before the collapse of the USSR, a renewed
envisioning of the Arctic as a commons meriting protection took hold. Soviet Premier Mikhail
Gorbachev declared in his seminal 1987 Murmansk Speech that the Arctic should become a ―zone
of peace,‖ calling for the joint measures protecting the Baltic‘s marine environment to be extended
to ―the entire oceanic and sea surface of the globe‘s North‖
(Gorbachev, 1987). Gorbachev‘s speech
fostered a circumpolar vision of the Arctic environment and a common understanding, at least
among the Arctic states, that it needed to be sustainably developed (c.f.
Scrivener, 1989). Young
(2009) draws attention to the post-Cold War proliferation of cooperative agreements in the Arctic.
The establishment of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) in 1991, which became
the Arctic Council in 1996, formalized the conceptualization of the Arctic ecosystem as more of a
shared, rather than divided, space. The AEPS‘ introduction explains, ―[t]he Arctic countries realize
that the pollution problems of today do not respect national boundaries and that no state alone will
be able to act effectively against environmental threats to the Arctic‖ (Arctic Council, 1991).
However, promotion of the Arctic as the common heritage of mankind and support for joint
management of the region has declined since the start of the twenty-first century, when rising
commodities prices and melting sea ice have made resources and shipping lanes all the more
valuable. At least in media depictions, the Russian expedition to plant a flag on the seabed
underneath the North Pole – though privately led – epitomizes the increasing de jure, if not yet de
facto, nationalization of Arctic maritime spaces. But as Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay
criticized in reaction to the stunt, ―This isn't the fifteenth century. You can't go around the world
and just plant flags and say, 'We're claiming this territory‘‖ (Graff, 2007). As such, in the twenty-first
century, the two countries have pursued methods more in line with international norms to
strengthen their Arctic sovereignty. Furthermore, in the past ten years, at the expense of
environmental multilateralism, countries have expanded their claims to territory – almost all at sea
(Hickman, 2010). Much of the expansion of maritime claims has been done in a legal manner in
accordance with UNCLOS procedures. As Suárez de Vivero et al. (2009: 624) write, ―A feature of
the transition from the 20th to the 21st century has been the emergence of a new generation of State
political action regarding the major maritime strategic objectives,‖ with maritime policies ―beginning
to shift and extend to the domain of internal State affairs, even developing into a territorial policy‖
(2009: 625). Canada and Russia champion international norms such as sustainable development and
environmentalism while privileging national, rather than international, management of
their
Arctic
areas. Thus, while political leaders today may repeat the rosy rhetoric of the 1990s at Arctic Council
meetings, talk of mutual environmental dependency seems somewhat hollow in the face of greater
efforts by Canada and Russia to create national parks in their Arctic waterways.