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2017 | Book

Introduction: The Arctic as a Globally Embedded Space Read chapter Read first chapter

Governing Arctic Change

Global Perspectives

Editors: Kathrin Keil, Sebastian Knecht

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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About this book

This volume explores the governance of the transforming Arctic from an international perspective. Leading and emerging scholars in Arctic research investigate the international causes and consequences of contemporary Arctic developments, and assess how both state and non-state actors respond to crucial problems for the global community. Long treated as a remote and isolated region, climate change and economic prospects have put the Arctic at the forefront of political agendas from the local to the global level, and this book tackles the variety of involved actors, institutional politics, relevant policy issues, as well as political imaginaries related to a globalizing Arctic. It covers new institutional forms of various stakeholder engagement on multiple levels, governance strategies to combat climate change that affect the Arctic region sooner and more strongly than other regions, the pros and cons of Arctic resource development for the region and beyond, and local and trans-boundary pollution concerns. Given the growing relevance of the Arctic to international environmental, energy and security politics, the volume helps to explain how the region is governed in times of global nexuses, multi-level politics and multi-stakeholderism.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Arctic as a Globally Embedded Space
Abstract
This introductory chapter sets the stage for the edited volume and formulates a framework for analysing the governance of Arctic change in a global perspective. The chapter puts forward the argument that the Arctic, long treated as a pristine, peripheral and exceptional region, is a globally embedded space: it is subject to global impacts as well as Arctic regional processes have global ramifications. To better understand the complexity of contemporary Arctic governance, research has to analyse the dynamic interactions between four I’s: imaginaries on, interests in, institutions for and issues of the global Arctic.
Kathrin Keil, Sebastian Knecht

Imaginaries: How to Envision the Arctic in a Global Context?

Frontmatter
Chapter 2. Sustainable Development as a Global-Arctic Matter: Imaginaries and Controversies
Abstract
This chapter investigates Arctic imaginaries embedded in the sustainable development discourse and discusses various potential conceptual and political meanings of the concept in an Arctic context. The chapter thereby identifies and assesses complementarities and inconsistencies between three prevailing imaginaries of the Arctic as a ‘resource frontier’, a ‘nature reserve’ and a ‘homeland’ to indigenous communities. The authors place these imaginaries between the local and the global dimensions of Arctic change and discuss the implications of a global approach to sustainable development for the Arctic as a region (‘the Global in the Arctic’) and, in turn, the specific challenges for sustainable development seen from the Arctic (‘the Arctic in the Global’).
Berit Kristoffersen, Oluf Langhelle
Chapter 3. Reimagining Political Space: The Limits of Arctic Indigenous Self-Determination in International Governance?
Abstract
This chapter places indigenous agency in the widely Western-dominated narrative about global politics understood in terms of Westphalian interstate politics. While indigenous peoples have been increasingly empowered in the context of the Arctic Council and the United Nations, there remain great challenges for indigenous self-determination that this chapter will address. Two specific issues will be central to the analysis: (1) the implications of a shifting international discourse from sustainable development to climate change and (2) the legal status of indigenous Permanent Participants at the Arctic Council.
Jessica M. Shadian
Chapter 4. Globalising the Arctic Climate: Geoengineering and the Emerging Global Polity
Abstract
International Relations has traditionally been subject-centric, ignoring how the targets or objects of governance emerge or transform with different structuring effects. This chapter uses an object-oriented approach to explore how the Arctic is being constituted as a global governance-object within an emerging ‘global polity’, partly through geoengineering imaginaries. It suggests that governance-objects—the socially constructed targets of political operations and contestations—are not simple ‘issues’ or ‘problems’ exogenously given to actors to deal with. Governance-objects emerge and are constructed and rather than slot neatly into existing structures, but with their own structuring effects on world politics. The emergence of the Arctic climate as a potential target of governance with the help of geoengineering techniques provides a case in point.
Olaf Corry

Institutional Politics: How to Organise a Global Arctic?

Frontmatter
Chapter 5. Coping with Institutional Challenges for Arctic Environmental Governance
Abstract
This chapter explores new avenues for the analysis of the Arctic Council as a pre-eminent forum in a globally embedded and embedding regional space. The author focuses on the fragmentation of Arctic environmental governance and asks which functions the Arctic Council would need to perform in order to actively and effectively manage institutional interplay. These tasks comprise commitment, collaboration, coordination, cooperation, compliance, and controlling. Based on these functional tasks, the chapter zooms in on the institutional challenges for the Arctic Council with regard to the inclusion of actors, integration of issue areas, and information provision about policy implementation and impact.
Christoph Humrich
Chapter 6. Global Environmental Governance and Treaty-Making: The Arctic’s Fragmented Voice
Abstract
Analysts and policy-makers point to the importance of the Arctic as the metaphorical canary in the coalmine of global climate change and other environmental trends. Arctic countries and non-state groups therefore seek to promote an Arctic agenda in international forums. However, the success of these external efforts has been mixed at best. The variation in Arctic influence across international issue areas—and its consequences for the ability to address Arctic environmental problems—warrants more attention. This chapter examines the role of Arctic issues and actors in two global treaties on dangerous chemicals and heavy metals—the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury—and the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its related agreements.
Henrik Selin
Chapter 7. Preparing for the Global Rush: The Arctic Council, Institutional Norms, and Socialisation of Observer Behaviour
Abstract
In the past years, the Arctic states have developed a normative framework that outside actors have to adopt in order to be accepted as observers to the Arctic Council. This chapter scrutinises inasmuch three non-Arctic actors—the European Union, Poland, and China—as observers to the Arctic Council have been socialised into Arctic ways of thinking through the norms and rules promoted by Arctic Council member states and Permanent Participants. Using a socialisation concept, the authors compare to which degree the three observers have internalised the mechanisms of conditionality contained in the observer rules with a special focus on the requirements of observers to respect the rights, values, and traditions of Arctic indigenous peoples and their willingness to contribute to the work of Permanent Participants.
Piotr Graczyk, Małgorzata Śmieszek, Timo Koivurova, Adam Stępień
Chapter 8. Bazaar Governance: Situating the Arctic Circle
Abstract
In April 2013, Iceland launched a new international assembly for the Arctic, to be known as the ‘Arctic Circle’. This chapter traces the emergence of the Arctic Circle assembly, and introduces the idea that less institutionalised forums such as these serve an important function in the Arctic governance system as a ‘bazaar’ for the exchange of global and marginalised knowledge, ideas and interests that could influence the Arctic governance regime from within. To underline their arguments, the authors draw on rich empirical material from the Arctic Circle meeting in October 2014.
Duncan Depledge, Klaus Dodds

Involvement: Who Participates in Global Arctic Governance?

Frontmatter
Chapter 9. Exploring Different Levels of Stakeholder Activity in International Institutions: Late Bloomers, Regular Visitors, and Overachievers in Arctic Council Working Groups
Abstract
This chapter illustrates different ‘worlds of commitment’ with regard to how accredited observers participate in Arctic Council Working Groups, and the weight this carries for the institutional effectiveness of the body. Drawing on a dataset that covers the attendance records of Arctic Council member states, Permanent Participants, and observers for the period from 1998 until 2015, the author shows large variation in how stakeholders make use of their right to participate in Working Group meetings. The chapter further seeks to explain the reasons for this variation by comparing the cases of three state observers, namely Germany (the late bloomer), the Netherlands (the regular visitor), and South Korea (the overachiever).
Sebastian Knecht
Chapter 10. Non-State Actors in Arctic Council Governance
Abstract
Assessments of the influence of non-governmental organisations on the work of the Arctic Council (AC) have remained very much a blind spot in research on contemporary Arctic politics. To address this gap, this chapter compares the roles and impact of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Circumpolar Conservation Union in the work of two of the AC’s subsidiary bodies: the Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response Working Group and the related Task Force on Arctic Marine Oil Pollution Prevention. The study finds that non-state actors have been able to influence problem formulation, agenda-setting and policy formulation processes in these bodies, but that their impact may vary according to their internal structure, their different standing in the negotiations and their general willingness and capacity to participate.
Dorothea Wehrmann
Chapter 11. Non-Arctic States and Their Stake in Arctic Sustainability
Abstract
Non-Arctic countries, previously largely sidelined in Arctic debates, more and more indicate their desire to be involved in deliberations about the region’s future as has become evident in the accession of China, India, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea as observers to the Arctic Council in 2013. However, not all nations approach the Arctic in comparable ways. This examination of the Arctic strategies and policies of non-Arctic countries demonstrates the complex interactions that are redefining the international role of the Arctic. The non-Arctic nations, with widely varying cultural connections to the region and evolving levels of scientific, commercial and political participation, are diverse in their approaches, Arctic capacities, and levels of engagement.
Ken Coates, Carin Holroyd

Issues: What Is the Global Arctic All About?

Frontmatter
Chapter 12. Clean Air and White Ice: Governing Black Carbon Emissions Affecting the Arctic
Abstract
This chapter is a joint effort by natural and legal scientists to make the case for the dramatic consequences black carbon (BC) emissions mainly from outside the Arctic region have on the Arctic ecosystem, and how BC has recently become the specific focus of a regime complex. The authors provide scientific knowledge about the sources, pathways, and climate impacts of BC emissions, and stress the special relevance of possible near-immediate climate benefits from BC emission reduction in the Arctic. Further consideration is given to the crucial importance of the governance responses to these opportunities and challenges. Thus, the second part of the chapter critically discusses the status and prospects of current multilateral BC emission reduction efforts in the context of the Arctic Council, the International Maritime Organization, and the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution.
Carolina Cavazos-Guerra, Axel Lauer, Erika Rosenthal
Chapter 13. Voyage Through the North: Domestic and International Challenges to Arctic Shipping
Abstract
This contribution combines international factors like trade patterns with inner-Arctic factors such as Russian politics and investments to assess the viability of Arctic shipping along the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The chapter first traces the historical development of the NSR. The author then analyses prevailing imaginaries inside Russia and outside the Arctic with regard to future usage of the NSR, and shows how these imaginaries have different implications for how the sea route will be or should be developed. After all, both imaginaries have in common that they overestimate the current potential of the route.
Arild Moe
Chapter 14. The Arctic in a Global Energy Picture: International Determinants of Arctic Oil and Gas Development
Abstract
The chapter assesses the prospects for Arctic oil and gas development by taking a closer look at international determinants, which have been largely overlooked so far. These international factors include global market developments, geopolitical tensions from outside the Arctic, competition with conventional and unconventional resources elsewhere and thus far neglected forms of governance including the role and bargaining power of international energy companies. With this analysis, this chapter shows the bigger picture of the Arctic’s (actual and potential) significance in global energy supply and security, and the role of global political and economic trends for Arctic energy development.
Kathrin Keil
Chapter 15. Conclusion: Governing the Arctic as a Globally Embedded Space
Abstract
The chapter provides concluding thoughts on the governance of the Arctic as a globally embedded space as put forward in the Introduction and exemplified in the manifold contributions to this volume. In due consideration of the insights gained from the volume, the chapter specifically re-assesses three broader governance models that have been proposed recently to manage Arctic change: empowering the Arctic Council, solidifying a multi-level regime complex consisting of Arctic-specific and Arctic-relevant institutions, and negotiating an overarching regional agreement. The authors close by reflecting upon the imaginaries that each of these models entail for governing the ‘global Arctic’.
Sebastian Knecht, Kathrin Keil
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Governing Arctic Change
Editors
Kathrin Keil
Sebastian Knecht
Copyright Year
2017
Electronic ISBN
978-1-137-50884-3
Print ISBN
978-1-137-50883-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50884-3