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Global Conventions and Regional Cooperation: The Multifaceted Dynamics of Arctic Governance

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Abstract

The Arctic “is a ‘globally embedded space’, interlinked politically, economically, environmentally and socially with global structures and processes” (Keil & Knecht, 2017, p. 4). As such, there are “global impacts within” and “worldwide implications of the Arctic” (Finger & Heininen, 2019, p. 2). At least since the seventeenth century, multifaceted dynamics in the Arctic result from the interplay of global and regional level (cf. Sale, 2009). The incremental expansion of regional cooperation and governance institutions that started after the Cold War with the Arctic Environmental Strategy (AEPS, 1991), and in 1996 saw the founding of the Arctic Council (AC), the “pre-eminent regional forum” (Arctic Council, 2013a, b), is no exception to this observation. Rather, the significance of the global-regional interplay for Arctic governance only seems to have grown since the end of the first decade of the 2000s. In a short period of time, a series of events put the Arctic into the global spotlight: the planting of the Russian flag on the seafloor at the geographic North Pole in 2007, the US Geological Service’s publication in 2008 of estimates of abundant undiscovered oil and gas reserves in the region’s subsoil and seabed, and record low ice-covers that made visible the dramatic consequences of climate change in the region in the same years. These events created global attention as well as interest and initiatives from non-Arctic actors. Providing powerful imaginaries of geopolitical grandstanding, of an Arctic gold rush, and of the opening of a new ocean, the above-mentioned events certainly worked as drivers of change in Arctic governance. However, these events do not determine how the respective institutional dynamics unfold. We want to explore these dynamics by focusing on how the nexus between regional cooperation and global conventions developed; that is, on the institutional interplay that makes the Arctic a “globally embedded space” in governance terms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a similar overview endeavor in which we build, see also Stokke (2009).

  2. 2.

    Despite administrations from at least Bill Clinton via George Bush to Barack Obama calling for ratification.

  3. 3.

    Article 234 is the so-called ice-paragraph, which allows a coastal state to set stricter rules for shipping in its Exclusive Economic Zone in ice-infested waters.

  4. 4.

    Norway, Denmark/Greenland, Canada, US, Russia.

  5. 5.

    For a respective history of the Ilulissat Declaration, see Rahbek-Clemmensen and Thomasen (2018).

  6. 6.

    As asserted, for instance, by China in its Arctic policy white paper (2018).

  7. 7.

    See also Zou (2016, p. 460).

  8. 8.

    Until the time of writing this chapter the other Arctic states have not ratified ILO 169.

  9. 9.

    For how ILO 169 mattered in initial deliberations on the Nordic Saami Convention see Åhrén (2007).

  10. 10.

    There are also doubts about the effectiveness of the convention for meeting the problem (VanderZwaag, 2015).

  11. 11.

    The US is still not a party to the CBD.

  12. 12.

    For MOSPA see Byers and Stoller (2013); for SAR see Kao et al. (2012), and Rottem (2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sciences Po Grenoble, Grenoble, France

    Cécile Pelaudeix

  2. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Christoph Humrich

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  1. Cécile Pelaudeix
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  2. Christoph Humrich
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Correspondence to Cécile Pelaudeix .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Northern Arctic Federal University (NArFU), Arkhangelsk, Russia

    Matthias Finger

  2. UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

    Gunnar Rekvig

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Pelaudeix, C., Humrich, C. (2022). Global Conventions and Regional Cooperation: The Multifaceted Dynamics of Arctic Governance. In: Finger, M., Rekvig, G. (eds) Global Arctic. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81253-9_23

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