What Future for the Arctic Council? Facilitating International Cooperation in Troubled Times
The Arctic Council has suffered serious setbacks arising from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and, more generally, the increasing intensity of great-power politics affecting the Arctic. Whatever the realities, many observers have taken to thinking of the Arctic as a zone of conflict characterized by efforts of powerful states to achieve dominance. On this account, it is difficult to see a constructive role for the Arctic Council going forward. Yet there is still room for cooperation regarding a range of Arctic issues. Highlighting the facilitative activities of its Working Groups, this essay identifies opportunities for the Arctic Council to make constructive contributions to addressing these issues through agenda formation, monitoring and assessment, and scorekeeping.
The Issue
In the years following its creation in 1996 as a forum for addressing issues of common concern in the circumpolar North, the Arctic Council seemed to be moving steadily toward the status of an intergovernmental organization capable of engaging in policymaking rather than simply policy shaping. But recently, the Council has suffered serious setbacks. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 disrupted most diplomatic-level Council activities (e.g., face-to-face Ministerial Meetings and meetings of Senior Arctic Officials). Since then, increasing securitization of the discourse on Arctic affairs and aggressive actions like President Donald Trump’s effort to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark have imposed further constraints on the Council’s activities. These developments have undermined the proposition expressed in the 2013 Vision for the Arctic asserting that the activities of the Council have “made this region into an area of unique international cooperation.”
Still, practitioners who deal with Arctic issues in foreign ministries and analysts who follow Arctic affairs closely continue to take the view that there is a place for the Arctic Council, even in these troubled times. What should we make of this proposition? As the Council passes its 30th anniversary, what roles can it play under the conditions likely to prevail in the coming years? This essay addresses these questions by identifying modest but significant roles the Council can play as a facilitator of international cooperation. These roles hark back to the original vision articulated in the 1996 Ottawa Declaration, a ministerial declaration that established the Arctic Council as a high-level forum dedicated to exploring opportunities for cooperation on Arctic issues.
The Evolution of the Arctic Council
The Arctic Council is a product of the thinking that prevailed in the 1990s, a period that featured the winding down of the Cold War and the emerging idea that the Arctic could provide an environment for resetting relations between Russia and the West on a more peaceful basis. The eight signatories (Canada, Russia, the United States, and the five Nordic states) to the Ottawa Declaration—a non-binding international agreement—established the Council in 1996 as a forum for exploring common interests. The Council could address a wide range of issues but would lack the authority to make binding decisions or control significant resources. A footnote to the declaration states explicitly that the Council should not address issues of military security, focusing instead on environmental protection and sustainable development. An innovative feature of the Council was its recognition of Indigenous Peoples Organizations as Permanent Participants. The Council’s Working Groups—inherited from the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, together with a new Sustainable Development Working Group—operated under the guidance of the member states and the Permanent Participants and took the lead in carrying out the day-to-day activities of the Council.
Since its founding, the work of the Arctic Council has reflected the idea of Arctic exceptionalism, a narrative suggesting that it is possible to pursue cooperation regarding Arctic issues regardless of more conflictual conditions in the world at large. Based on this perspective, the Council has launched several major assessments, including the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, that have shaped the course of international negotiations on important issues. The Council has also provided a venue for negotiating the provisions of binding agreements on search and rescue, oil spill preparedness and response, and scientific cooperation. It has acquired a permanent secretariat located in Tromsø, Norway. The Council has granted numerous non-Arctic states, intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations the status of Observers. Over time, ministerial meetings of the Arctic Council and meetings of the Senior Arctic Officials became settings for productive interactions among members of a sizable and growing community of actors interested in Arctic affairs.
Despite growing concerns about Russian aggression stimulated by the 2008 invasion of Georgia and the first Ukraine crisis in 2014, the mood among Council participants remained generally upbeat. As recently as 2021, members adopted a “Strategic Vision for the Arctic and the Arctic Council in 2030” in which they asserted that “[t]he Arctic Council will remain the leading intergovernmental forum for Arctic cooperation …” and “will have further developed its working methods and structures … to respond to new realities, opportunities and increased international attention to its work.” In the eyes of its proponents, the Council seemed on track toward becoming a fully-fledged intergovernmental organization potentially on a par with older bodies like the Organization of American States (OAS) or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Just five years later, this vision has collapsed. Taken together, the impacts of the Russo-Ukrainian war and the aggressive behavior of the Trump Administration have paralyzed the diplomatic operations of the Arctic Council. The Senior Arctic Officials, for example, have not met in person since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Crucially, the narrative of Arctic exceptionalism no longer provides an organizing framework for the specific activities of the Council. Increasingly, practitioners and analysts alike are articulating geopolitical narratives regarding Arctic affairs emphasizing the central role of great-power politics and the growing prominence of military activities in the region. While there are good reasons to question the persuasiveness of this framing, proponents of geopolitical narratives have even taken to describing the Arctic as the critical arena for great-power struggles that will shape the overall global political order in coming years.
The Arctic Council in Troubled Times
What roles can the Arctic Council play in the years to come? Contrary to the securitized expectations arising from geopolitical perspectives, the Arctic remains a region featuring international cooperation on a variety of issues. The arrangements dealing with fish and fishing in the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and the Central Arctic Ocean remain in place. The Polar Code, which addresses safety and environmental protection in the operation of commercial ships in Arctic waters, remains in force; efforts to strengthen the code to address black carbon and noise pollution are ongoing. The international regime for whales and whaling continues to govern aboriginal subsistence whaling in the Arctic. Scientific cooperation under the auspices of the International Arctic Science Committee continues, though the barriers arising from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine impede progress in some areas.
There is no need for the Council to engage in policymaking regarding these matters. The Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement has its own mechanism for addressing policy matters; the International Maritime Organization is responsible for making decisions about the terms of the Polar Code, and the International Arctic Science Committee leads major initiatives including planning for the next International Polar Year scheduled for 2032-2033.
Nevertheless, the Arctic Council can play several important supportive roles that facilitate both the initiation and the conduct of international cooperation regarding a range of Arctic issues, largely through the activities of its Working Groups. The performance of these roles does not require the authority to make decisions about matters of policy. Arising during distinct phases in the policy cycle, they involve activities that highlight the emergence of policy issues, suggest constructive ways to think about them, and help to track the implementation of decisions made in other venues. Among the most prominent of these facilitative roles are activities best described as agenda formation, monitoring and assessment, and scorekeeping.
Agenda formation is a matter of providing early warning regarding the emergence of new issues that have important policy implications and exploring ways to frame them for consideration on policy agendas. The role of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, spearheaded by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, in providing clear-cut evidence of the impacts of climate change on social and biophysical systems and drawing attention to the importance of climate adaptation is a case in point. Processes arising from the tighter coupling of the Arctic and the encompassing global climate system make it increasingly important to alert policymakers to the emergence of new issues arising from the dynamics of complex systems playing out in the Arctic.
By contrast, monitoring and assessment are matters of establishing baselines and tracking trends over time in the condition of important systems in a well-documented fashion to provide a basis for informed decision-making. The ongoing work of the Working Group on the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna in tracking key indicators of biodiversity in the Arctic exemplifies this role. The growing capacity to merge land-based, sea-based, and space-based observations has made it possible to provide increasingly sophisticated and more timely assessments of developments in the Arctic of interest to decision-makers.
Then, scorekeeping is a matter of documenting the extent to which goals articulated in formal international agreements have been achieved and, as a result, evaluating whether additional steps are required to fulfill these goals. Efforts to evaluate whether the 1973 Agreement on Conservation of Polar Bears has been effective in achieving the goal of sustaining the population of polar bears—both overall and in various subregions—are illustrative of this role. Given the recent and anticipated growth in commercial shipping in the Arctic, the role of the Working Group on the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment in determining compliance with the provisions of the Polar Code, evaluating the effectiveness of the Code under current conditions, and considering possible ways to strengthen the Code has emerged as a prominent activity in the realm of scorekeeping.
Preparing For the Next Phase
Despite the growing influence of securitized perspectives on the Arctic, the Working Groups of the Arctic Council are currently playing these roles with considerable success. But there is a good deal that can and should be done to strengthen the capacity of the Working Groups to play these roles going forward. First, and perhaps foremost, is the need to overcome the political barriers to in-person interactions among Working Group personnel and impediments to the free flow of data across national boundaries arising from the diplomatic rupture caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Norwegian Chairship of the Arctic Council (2023-2025) worked hard to support the efforts of the Working Groups to conduct their work on a virtual basis; the Danish Chairship (2025-2027) has continued Norway’s efforts in this realm. Yet there is no substitute for in-person engagement and the free flow of data in the conduct of the activities of the Working Groups. In addition, more needs to be done to secure the material resources required for the Working Groups to operate effectively on a circumpolar basis. In the grand scheme of things, the material support needed is modest. But that does not mean the necessary resources are easy to mobilize.
For those interested in ensuring that the Arctic Council can continue to play constructive roles following the 30th anniversary of its establishment, the recommendations arising from this analysis are clear. We should clarify the roles of the Working Groups, remove barriers to in-person engagement in their work, and improve the flow of data across national boundaries. Public and private sources should step up to provide the material support needed for the groups to perform these roles, without requiring them to divert attention to the constant effort of scraping together the modest resources needed to cover operating expenses.
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Oran R. Young is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has dedicated his career to analyzing international governance systems with particular reference to regimes for the atmosphere, the oceans, and the polar regions. He has been involved in the work of the Arctic Council since its establishment in 1996.
Image Credit: “COP25_AC_OA_side_event_01” by arctic_council, CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr