The Bar-tailed Godwit breeds in the Arctic and migrates down to West Africa. It is one of the 255 migratory waterbird species covered by AEWA. Credit: Andreas Trepte/ cc by 2.5

By Jacques Trouvilliez
BONN, Dec 4 2014 (IPS)

So great are the contrasts between the frozen empty expanses of the far north and Africa’s baking deserts, steamy rain forests and savannahs that any direct connections between the two seem far-fetched – if they indeed exist at all.

In fact, migratory birds provide an environmental tie linking the Arctic and Africa and are the reason why the U.N. Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) and the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council, have entered a commitment to cooperate.

Courtesy of AEWA

The Arctic Council is holding its first Arctic Biodiversity Congress in Trondheim, Norway and far from being of marginal interest to AEWA, its deliberations over the fauna inhabiting the regions around the North Pole could hardly be more relevant.

Following publication of the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment in May 2013, progress is being made in elaborating a strategy under the Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative (AMBI): a concrete example of where we can collaborate with practical work on the ground.

The habitats could hardly be more different and the distances between them are large, but the waterfowl, shorebird and seabird species – the predominant birds of the Arctic – find the conditions they require at different times of the year in the various habitats of the world.

The birds have adapted to develop the capacity to make their often arduous journeys from their Arctic breeding grounds to wintering sites and back. These wintering sites can be in Europe – but in some cases they even lie as far as in Southern Africa, as is the case for the Red Knot.

Approximately 200 bird species spend time every year in the Arctic, but for many the Arctic provides their only principal breeding site. Of the 255 species and populations covered by AEWA, a large proportion breeds in the far north but heads south in search of more plentiful food or milder weather.

Two of the most seriously threatened species listed under AEWA – the Lesser White-fronted Goose and the Red-breasted Goose – breed in the Arctic.The habitats could hardly be more different and the distances between them are large, but the waterfowl, shorebird and seabird species - the predominant birds of the Arctic - find the conditions they require at different times of the year in the various habitats of the world.

The conditions ideal for breeding waterfowl are too hostile for all but the hardiest of people. This has been a blessing for the animals concerned, as limited human interference has left their habitats relatively unscathed by the encroachments witnessed in other regions, with higher – and growing – numbers of people, converting land to agriculture, building towns and exploiting natural resources.

The Arctic’s human inhabitants have always had a deep respect for nature – its bounty, beauty, and balance. One problem the Arctic does not face is the indifference of its indigenous peoples. Newcomers, however, can be a different matter.

Warmer temperatures have opened the region to oil and gas exploration and sea channels are becoming navigable. This increases not only the risks of pollution, but also human presence, affecting the delicate balance that has persisted for centuries.

The unique and harsh climate of the Arctic makes it difficult for exotic species to gain a foothold, although the range of some is creeping northwards as temperatures rise. For example, the Red Fox is displacing its Arctic cousin by outcompeting it as a predator, which might yet prove to have serious consequences for its prey.

This is just one of the effects of climate change, but this, combined with the rate and extent of thawing tundra, melting sea-ice and phenological changes are leading to unpredictable consequences in the region. It is folly to imagine that climatic disruptions on other continents have no repercussions closer to home.

Despite the apparent lack of geographic connection, the AEWA African Initiative endorsed at the last Meeting of the Parties in La Rochelle in 2012 and AMBI are in fact ideal partners, acting as a bridge spanning the geographic divide and facilitating the international cooperation so fundamental to the conservation of migratory species.

Nature conservation and the sustainable use of wildlife are areas of policy that need the support and commitment of local communities if viable solutions are to be found and implemented effectively.

Lessons learned in one region can be adapted for application in others, and the way local communities in the Arctic manage and sustainably use their wildlife resources provides examples that could prove to be models that others might wish to follow. Migratory birds are often called the ambassadors of biodiversity, because they provide the link between sites that, on first glance, have little in common but on closer examination share so much.

When the great navigators of old sailed into uncharted waters, they began to realise how large the world was. It has taken the age of satellite communication and jet airliners to make us realise just how small it is; something the birds have known for millennia.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A five-soldier team from 1st Platoon, 176th Signal Company pull a fully-loaded AKIO sled three-quarters of a mile during the Arctic Forge II competition Mar. 21, 2013 at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Credit: U.S. Army photo

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 26 2013 (IPS)

The United States is calling for greater cooperation in the Arctic, even as it warns that it will defend its sovereignty in the face of strengthening international interest in newly opening shipping lanes and natural resource extraction opportunities as the region’s ice disappears.

For the first time, the United States has come out with an overarching strategy aimed at guiding its military response in the Arctic. Openly prompted by concerns over climate change, officials say the U.S. vision aims at balancing “human and environmental security” in the region.“Melting sea ice in the Arctic is a symbol of the destruction of the planet, not an incentive to get there and take everything that until very recently wasn’t possible to take.” -- Gustavo Ampugnani

“This new strategy is hugely important in that it recognises the growing influence of the Arctic both to the United States and as an area of potential military operations,” Seth Myers, a research associate with the Arctic Institute, a Washington think tank, told IPS. “But the biggest question it raises is how any new capability will be paid for” in an era of intense budget-cutting in Washington.

The strategy depicts the Arctic as at an “inflection point”, both in terms of the reduction in ice cover and increase in human activity. Last year, as scientists recorded the lowest levels of Arctic ice on record, nearly 500 ships were able to ply the waters between Alaska and Russia.

That constituted a 50 percent rise since the mid-2000s. U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel says experts now expect a tenfold increase over those numbers along what is known as the Northern Sea Route.

“With Arctic sea routes starting to see more activities like tourism and commercial shipping, the risk of accidents increases. Migrating fish stocks will draw fishermen to new areas, challenging existing management plans,” Hagel told a security conference in Canada on Friday, where he announced the new strategy.

“And while there will be more potential for tapping what may be as much as a quarter of the planet’s undiscovered oil and gas, a flood of interest in energy exploration has the potential to heighten tensions over other issues.”

Scientists are currently suggesting that Arctic waters could be almost completely ice-free for a month at a time by the middle of the coming decade, with longer periods forecasted by 2030. Some now worry that such conditions could result in a global free-for-all – what Hagel called “unprecedented challenges”.

“Throughout human history, mankind has raced to discover the next frontier. And time after time, discovery was swiftly followed by conflict,” Hagel said.

“We must wisely manage these 21st century possibilities. In order to realise the full potential of the Arctic, nations must collaborate and build trust and confidence through transparency, cooperation and engagement.”

New leadership?

The new strategy is being unveiled as the United States begins preparations to take over the rotating chairmanship of a key regional governance forum known as the Arctic Council.

This position, slated to begin in 2015, will offer Washington a unique new leadership role on Arctic issues. Indeed, many are pointing to the new military strategy as an important step in crystallising nascent U.S. policy on the issue more generally, though for the moment that vision remains relatively – perhaps strategically – vague.

The Pentagon says it will seek to expand both its understanding of the Arctic environment and its presence in the region, while also promoting collaboration on a range of issues. Currently, the United States stations around 27,000 military personnel in Alaska, and Hagel says the U.S. Navy will offer a new plan for its operations by the end of the year.

Despite this number, in some ways Washington is starting from a relatively weak position. Other Arctic countries have already moved far more aggressively in staking out a position in the region.

Meanwhile, due to across-the-board federal budget cuts known as sequestration, the U.S. military is currently struggling under its first significant funding contraction in decades. Those cuts are slated to continue on an annual basis for the next decade.

“It’s far from certain that the United States is leading [on Arctic issues] at this point. According to quantifiable indicators, Russia has far and away the most interests and capabilities,” the Arctic Institute’s Myers says.

“For instance, the United States has just two icebreakers in the region, both owned by the Coast Guard. Right now, the extent to which the U.S. is going to be actively present in the near to medium term remains unclear, largely because sequestration is still happening. That’s why the strategy places so much emphasis on partnerships.”

Northern military race

Others are worried about the form such partnerships could take, and the ultimate mix of their goals.

The new military strategy builds upon a shorter vision document released earlier this year by the White House, which was criticised for focusing too much on the potential for fossil fuel extraction. Similar criticisms have been made about the policy orientation of the Arctic Council itself.

“We are glad that the Defence Department’s Arctic Strategy acknowledges the diminishing of the ice caps in the Arctic. But the approach shouldn’t be seen as an opportunity for business, nor to create better conditions to do business exploiting its resources,” Gustavo Ampugnani, Arctic team leader for Greenpeace, an advocacy group that has been critical of oil speculation in the Arctic, told IPS.

“Melting sea ice in the Arctic is a symbol of the destruction of the planet, not an incentive to get there and take everything that until very recently wasn’t possible to take.”

According to U.S. estimates, the Arctic seabed holds a significant proportion of the Earth’s remaining untapped petroleum reserves, including around 15 percent of remaining oil and up to 30 percent of gas deposits. Already the Russian state-backed oil company Gazprom has begun drilling for oil (where several dozen Greenpeace activists were recently arrested), while Shell has made repeated attempts to start doing so in U.S. waters.

“If countries grant leases to open more space for the oil corporations, this will speed up not just the industrialisation of the Arctic but also investments in military presence, [leading to] a military race in the Far North,” Ampugnani says.

“From our perspective, the best way to keep the region peaceful, stable and free of conflict … is to prioritise the scientific work, in a cooperative spirit, to understand more how the Arctic ecosystem is key to regulating the global climate.”

U.S. officials have downplayed the potential for natural resource-related tension in the immediate future, pointing out that most oil and gas reserves are relatively near shore and hence within clearly defined territorial waters.

Hubbard glacier in Seward, Alaska. Credit: Bigstock

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 16 2013 (IPS)

Many eyes are turning north to the Arctic, some in horror at the rapid decline of a key component of our life support system, others in eager anticipation at the untapped resources beneath the vanishing snow and ice.

“I’ve worked in the north for 21 years and the scale and speed of change up there is astonishing,” said Douglas Clark of the University of Saskatchewan."This has and will have spectacular consequences for the rest of the world." -- Sarah Cornell of the Stockholm Resilience Center

“These changes, taken as whole, and reflected in our report, keep me awake at night,” Clark told IPS.

Rapid and even abrupt changes are occurring on multiple fronts across the Arctic, according to the Arctic Resilience Report (ARR).

And what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.

“It’s the first international report to tell the world to buckle up, we’re on a wild roller coaster ride and we don’t know what’s coming,” he said.

The ARR report is a two-year collaboration between experts in the Nordic countries, Russia, Canada and the United States, and includes indigenous perspectives. It is a cutting edge assessment of how changes in climate, ecosystems, economics, and society interact.

The report was prepared for and released at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna, Sweden on Wednesday.

“What is happening in the Arctic has profound implications for every part of the world,” said Sarah Cornell, lead author of the study.

Global warming is not only melting snow and ice, it is warming the Arctic ocean and the surrounding lands. Seasons are changing, permafrost is thawing, new species are invading, Arctic species are struggling, lakes are vanishing, and rivers are being redirected by the melting landscape, the report documents.

Some Arctic ecosystems are undergoing catastrophic changes, and some of these are large-scale and irreversible, Cornell, a scientist at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told IPS.

While the Arctic is as remote as the moon for many people, it is intimately interconnected with the rest of the world. Weather is driven largely by the cold Arctic and Antarctic regions balanced by the hot tropics. But the Arctic is rapidly defrosting – last summer the sea ice shrunk to half of what it was less than 30 years ago. The ice decline and the heating up of the Arctic have been accelerating in recent years.

“This has and will have spectacular consequences for the rest of the world. We don’t know what they’ll all be,” Cornell said.

The Arctic is home to cultures and species found nowhere else and they can’t go any further north to escape the rising temperatures. It is a real struggle to survive, said Tero Mustonen, president of Snowchange Cooperative, a network of local and indigenous cultures around the world.

“The Arctic is undergoing fundamental changes. Moose are showing up in the tundra for the first time along with new insects, plants and even trees,” Mustonen told IPS from his home in eastern Finland.

Mustonen, a co-author of the ARR, works with Chukchi reindeer herding communities from northeastern Siberia who have roamed those remote lands for hundreds of the years. Like many indigenous communities living on the land, they have a deep ecological, cultural and spiritual connection to their landscape. And that landscape is changing so much they sometimes don’t recognise their own home, he said.

“The Chukchi don’t easily share their thoughts. But the elders have a clear and powerful message to convey to the world: ‘Nature doesn’t trust humans any more’.”

However, the focus of the eight-nation Arctic Council was primarily on future shipping opportunities, access to oil, gas and mineral resources, and geopolitics, with China, Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore and Italy granted observer status on the Council while Canada blocked the European Union’s application.

The Council is the world’s main international forum on northern issues and will be led by Canada for the next two years. Canada said it will focus on economic development. Estimates show that the region may have 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30 percent of undiscovered gas deposits, and vast quantities of mineral resources.

The Council’s much-lauded scientific research will now be focused on how to develop northern resources for the benefit of northerners. Canada recently drew criticism for re-directing its own scientific research to supporting business and industry.

Secretary of State John Kerry represented the U.S. at the Arctic Council, demonstrating Washington’s renewed interest in the Arctic. The White House also released its new National Strategy for the Arctic Region. While acknowledging the profound impacts of global warming on the region and indigenous people, the U.S. strategy says the region will help to supply U.S. energy needs well into the future.

At the meeting, members adopted an agreement on marine oil pollution preparedness. Some indigenous and environmental groups urged the Council to place a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Arctic given the dangerous conditions and difficulties of clean up.

Greenpeace International said the oil pollution agreement offered no specific practical minimum standards and had no provisions to hold companies liable for the full costs and damages.

“There were two conferences going on here — one that warned of the dangers of climate change and rapid industrialisation in this fragile region, and another, attended by foreign ministers, that took almost no concrete steps to address them,” said Ruth Davis, Greenpeace International senior policy advisor.

Arctic peoples aren’t necessarily opposed to economic development but they do want to be in control of what happens. However, Arctic nations and local communities are at very different stages. In Finland and Russia, indigenous people have no official land or water rights, unlike Canada or Alaska, said Mustonen.

“The rights and cultures of indigenous peoples in these regions have to be taken seriously in order to integrate their needs into any form of development,” he said.

Scientists with ICESCAPE, a multi-year NASA shipborne project, investigate Arctic sea ice and melt ponds in the Chukchi Sea in July 2010. Credit: NASA/Kathryn Hansen

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

With climate change rapidly opening up new opportunities for shipping and resource extraction across the once permanently frozen Arctic, the United States and other northern countries are being compelled to re-examine their policies, both national and collective, towards this region of growing geostrategic importance.

Last week, the president of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, was in Washington to announce the launch of a new group called the Arctic Circle, which would include all counties and entities interested in greater involvement in Arctic-related decision-making.“We have steadily seen what we considered ‘our Arctic’ becoming the ‘global Arctic’.” -- Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson

On Monday, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, proposed a series of reforms to U.S. Arctic policy.

“U.S. Arctic policy must respond to the economic, environmental, security, and geopolitical concerns that confront the region,” the report states.

“It is now time for the Obama administration to enhance U.S. Arctic policy by updating and prioritizing national security … improving interagency cooperation, enhancing U.S. international and public diplomacy related to the Arctic, and increasing the focus of senior U.S. officials.”

The report warns that these activities must begin immediately “if the U.S. is to prepare for and fully maximize its chairmanship of the Arctic Council beginning in 2015.” It also suggests appointing an “Arctic envoy” with the rank of an ambassador.

Currently, Arctic-related international policymaking is made through a consensus organisation called the Arctic Council. Made up of countries with territory in the region, this includes the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, as well as observer nations.

However, turning new U.S. policy – or that of any other country – toward the Arctic will be complex. Here in Washington, for instance, as many as six White House groups are currently involved in Arctic issues, with calls for streamlining of this process already being made.

“I believe there are three issues that should be guiding U.S. policy towards the Arctic,” Peter Troedsson, a captain in the U.S. Coast Guard and a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“First, is an enduring presence and an awareness of Arctic activity. Second, we need to promote the safe use of the Arctic. And lastly, we need to be able to work with other institutions and nations toward developing governance and best practices for the area.”

But beyond the Arctic Council, “We also have the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the United States has signed but has yet to ratify,” Troedsson said.

“In two years the U.S. is going to take over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, so we’re going to be in a position where we are chairing this eight-nation group and we’re going to be the only ones who haven’t signed on to the Law of the Sea. This will seriously damage our credibility.”

Although numerous U.S. political and military officials have urged the country to ratify the Law of the Sea – including, most recently, late last year – conservative members of the U.S. Congress have continually stymied the effort, suggesting that doing so would be akin to ceding U.S. sovereignty.

The “outsiders”

The melting of the Arctic Sea ice, and the opening of new shipping routes linking Asia to America and Europe, will bring along with it geopolitical considerations that have rarely existed. Already, China is preparing for a world in which it would be the world’s most important trading country, and the Arctic could be a key component of its evolving vision.

“We have steadily seen what we considered ‘our Arctic’, becoming the ‘global Arctic’,” President Grimsson said last week. “Now, countries from faraway places want to have a seat at the Arctic table … They want to discuss not if but when they would acquire a seat on the Arctic Council. This serves as a wake-up call for all the countries located [near] the Arctic.”

During the most recent Arctic Council discussions, in 2012, several Asian states that have no Arctic territory expressed their interest in the organisation.

“If they can send their ships through the Arctic Sea routes, they can shorten this distance by more that 40 percent,” President Grimsson said. “In fact, China is already building ships for this purpose, and Singapore is exploring the potential for an Arctic harbour.”

China has already conducted five Arctic expeditions since 2000, and has established a research station. India followed with the establishment of its own Arctic research station in 2007, while the South Korean government is becoming increasingly active in looking at possible Arctic ventures.

Currently there are two primary sea routes across the Arctic. The first runs north of Canada, while the second, known as the Northern Sea Route, runs from the Bering Strait to the Barents Sea.

This second one, which is currently open only in the summer, condenses the traditional route by about 2,500 nautical miles, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel costs. The opening of this route would radically alter the transport of goods from Asian industrial hubs to Western consumer markets.

One fear relates to the future role these “newcomers” might have on the region as it is brought within their strategic spheres of interest, and whether this could result in a greater military presence. While the driving forces of these new interests is economic, geopolitical jostling of has already forced the Arctic Council countries to begin debating the “correct” role for these new entrants.

Iceland has welcomed China’s application to join the council, for instance, but it has expressed concerns that the European Union would try to impose a ban on whale hunting, which Iceland has long defended as a cultural tradition. Russia, meanwhile, has welcomed the E.U.’s attempt to become part of the council, but remains suspicious of letting in China.

Environmental responsibility remains another major concern. Increased economic development – including natural resource extraction– could bring with it, for instance, increased possibility of an oil spill that could devastate the pristine Arctic environment for decades.

International and United States Geographical Survey (USGS) research has indicated that the Arctic seabed holds up to 160 billion barrels of petroleum, located at a relatively shallow depth of 500 feet. Less conclusive projects based on preliminary soil samples have also speculated that the Arctic seabed holds substantial mineral and metal deposits.

“There’s already a lot of industrial infrastructure built up there, but there is very little oil-spill response planning,” CFR’s Troedsson says.

“You can imagine it’s going to take a long time to get that kind of response equipment [needed] anywhere in the Arctic, so that challenge can be added to the challenge of how you clean up oil in water that’s close to zero degrees or frozen. No matter how good a response plan is, if any significant incident takes place, the damage would be immense and the public will not be happy.”

Rising temperatures mean the vast Arctic Ocean, which used to be frozen over for much of the year, is now an open shipping line for more than half the year. Credit: public domain

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

Environmentalists are warning that a meeting of environment ministers that took place Monday in Sweden has agreed on a weak and inadequate response plan in case of an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean.

According to Greenpeace, an environment watchdog, a leaked copy of the document suggests that the eight member states that make up a group dubbed the Arctic Council have failed to agree on the technical details necessary for dealing with a large-scale disaster, even while it opens the way for increased drilling and oil exploration in the Arctic.

“We are unimpressed by what we’ve seen from this totally inadequate document,” Ben Ayliffe, a Greenpeace campaigner based in Washington, told IPS. “It does nothing to prepare governments for dealing with disasters or for protecting the Arctic from disasters.”

According to the United Nations’ global climate office, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level on record in 2012. That process, which overwhelming scientific data attributes to human-induced climate change, has created a virtual gold rush to the Arctic.

Rising temperatures mean the vast Arctic Ocean, which used to be frozen over for much of the year, is now an open shipping lane for more than half the year, on average. This has resulted in a scramble to lay claim to Arctic territory, which is estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to contain 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered energy resources.

However, environmentalists are concerned that no mechanisms are in place to prevent or respond to an environmental disaster.

According to Richard Steiner, a biologist and expert on oil spills based in Alaska, this past summer, a record 46 merchant ships transited through what is known as the Northern Sea Route, a 10-fold increase from just two years ago. “There has been an extraordinary increase in shipping across the Arctic Ocean, mainly with very hazardous petroleum products on board,” Steiner told IPS.

He also warns that an increase in offshore oil and gas drilling potential in the Arctic demands robust laws. Yet, he says, the Arctic Council agreement has no technical performance standards, enforcement mechanisms or operational guidelines.

“They are charging forward with this Arctic offshore oil drilling development and shipping without the proper safeguards in place, and it’s really tragic,” Steiner said. “I’m afraid they are going to wait for a big spill disaster before putting the right systems in place.”

He added that this is what happened with the Exxon Valdez case, when an oil tanker ran aground in Alaska in 1989.

“I’m afraid this is what’s going to happen in the Arctic, too,” he continues. “Despite the lessons learned … very little has changed as far as prevention policy is concerned.”

No proven capacity

The Arctic Council, established in 1996, is made up of states with territory in the Arctic, and comprises Canada, Denmark (including Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. The new oil spill treaty will be formally voted upon by members in May, and would become the second binding agreement reached by the Arctic Council since a search-and-rescue agreement was signed in 2011.

Yet Ayliffe says the document doesn’t adequately deal with the complex issues involved with a potential spill.

“It’s a nightmare scenario,” Ayliffe says. “The technical difficulties of responding to a disaster a mile beneath the ice make the kind of operation that BP had to do in the Gulf impossible in the Arctic.”

Despite earlier assurances by the Arctic Council that any agreement would include specific environmental protections, including oil spill recovery and prevention strategies, Ayliffe says the agreement “fails to outline any essential response equipment, methods for capping wells, or cleaning up oil-affected habitat and wildlife, relying instead on vague statements of steps Arctic nations should take within available resources.”

The document contains ambiguous language regarding oil spills, only asking countries to take “appropriate steps” to deal with a spill, without specifying clear demands or requirements. It also lacks guidelines relating to the liability of oil companies in case of a disaster or guidelines on how to adequately deal with a spill.

“No oil company has ever proven it can respond to an oil spill in ice, and the agreement offers nothing in regard to how a company would stop or clean up a Deepwater Horizon-style disaster,” Ayliffe said, referring to the massive 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, when nearly five million barrels of oil spewed from a blown oil well in the sea floor for nearly three months.

“We are hoping that, because of the outrage that has been caused by this document, before the May vote there will be time to fill some of the holes.”

There is a growing realisation that governments often put economic interests first and management of the fragile region should be more widely shared. Credit: NOAA/public domain

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 4 2012 (IPS)

The best way to protect the Arctic is for all nations with an interest in the region to participate in its governance – including non-Arctic nations like China, Brazil, and Singapore – suggests a new report.

As global warming creates new opportunities for shipping and resource extraction in the vast Arctic region, non-Arctic nations should be considered for membership as observers on the influential inter-governmental Arctic Council.

However, there is a growing realisation that governments too often put economic interests first and management of the fragile region should be more widely shared.

Granting observer status should be conditional on a public declaration of their “respect for the sovereignty of Arctic states and the rights of Arctic indigenous peoples”, recommends the report “Canada as an Arctic Power”.

The report derives from a special two-day summit convened by the Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, one of Canada’s foremost initiatives on Arctic issues.

The Arctic Council is the only international body that gives indigenous people a seat at the table, noted Tony Penikett, former premier of the Yukon, one of Canada’s three Arctic territories, and a contributor to the report.

“Indigenous peoples have a strong voice and it is very important this continues to be recognised,” Penikett told IPS.

As observers, indigenous peoples have a voice but they don’t have a vote, nor do they have funding to participate in the various activities of the Council, he said. “We are also recommending that the Arctic indigenous people receive more funding so they can participate more fully.”

Singapore is a major shipping nation and has an interest in the opening up of the shipping lanes through the Arctic, while Brazil is interested in the natural resources of the region, he said. Other countries are looking at the fisheries opportunities as the sea ice melts.

However, at a recent International Polar Year conference, 2,000 scientists called for an international moratorium on Arctic high seas fishing.

“We’re also recommending a moratorium on commercial fishing. Scientists say we need to study the marine ecology of the Arctic Ocean before any large-scale fishing
happens,” Penikett said.

“Canada will chair the Council in 2013 and we would like Canada to push these recommendations forward, particularly the recognition of the rights of indigenous people in the region,” he said.

The rapid warming of the Arctic and its resource potential has led to widespread concern about how development in the region will be managed. That’s why a group of 14 young people, aged 17-24, from Canada, Norway and Hong Kong are going to the Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio this month.

“There is already some oil and gas extraction going on in the Arctic. Canada has begun to auction off oil leases in its Arctic area,” says 20-year-old Andrew Wong, executive director of the Students on Ice Alumni Delegation.

“We shouldn’t be waiting for governments to decide these issues. They matter to us and to our generation,” Wong told IPS. All of the students in the delegation have been to either the Arctic or Antarctic.

“Some of us live in the north. We’ve seen the effects that rapid climate change is having on these regions, and we’ve learned about what effect those changes will have on our ability to develop sustainably in the future,” said Jenna Gall, co-director of communications for the delegation.

“The polar regions are where the climate change is happening first and fastest. This is creating new resource development opportunities,” said Wong.

The students intend to put their policy recommendations for the sustainable management of both polar regions before the governments of the world at Rio. Those recommendations include recognition the rights of indigenous peoples to have a say in future development, protection of polar oceans, and striving for carbon neutrality in Antarctica.

“Our recommendations are science-based, peer-reviewed and well researched,” said Wong. “There is nothing extreme here. It is the way forward for our future.”

Surprisingly, the polar regions are not on the agenda at this year’s summit in Rio, but the student delegation hopes to change this, hosting their own meeting on the sidelines of the main summit while formally submitting their policy recommendations to government delegates.

“We want to see a global agreement that fairly and effectively addresses the sustainable development challenges of our time… You can’t do that without factoring in the incredible changes taking place at both poles,” Wong said.