Future of Arctic Council in doubt after end of Russian chairship

Russia’s two-year term as chairman of the Arctic Council ended Thursday, leaving the future of the council’s role as a forum for international collaboration in doubt.

In a low-key virtual ceremony attended by senior bureaucrats, Russia handed over the seat to Norway, which will lead the council for the next two years.

The style of the ceremony marks a change for the council. The move was an opportunity for big declarations and photo ops, as foreign ministers from eight Arctic nations joined Indigenous representatives and observers of powerhouses like China and Japan.

It is clear what has changed – a year into the presidency, Russia became a problematic partner to the international pariah with the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“The idea of ​​sitting down with the Russians and talking about economic development while they’re bombing Kyiv — it just doesn’t work,” said Evan Bloom, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Wilson Center Polar Institute and a former diplomat who helped. established the Arctic Council in 1996.

As of March 2022, seven other Arctic countries – Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Canada and the United States – have suspended cooperation with Russiaan abrupt halt to the majority of the work of the Arctic Council.

Although some projects are starting to go ahead without Russia, the future of the council’s work is in doubt. How can the Arctic Council continue when, in the words of entrance chaircooperation with Moscow “politically impossible”?

“Right now, the concept is a bit broken,” Bloom said. “Russia makes up about half of the Arctic. You can’t have an Arctic Council without Russia.”

Political top council

The Arctic Council was formed amid a climate of optimism following the end of the Cold War.

Established in 1996, the Council brings together eight Arctic countries with six Indigenous groups and dozens of observers to work in the spirit of consensus on the issues facing the Arctic.

Despite the role of the Arctic as a theater of the Cold War, from the beginning, the council’s guiding document prohibit discussion military security, which risked driving among the Arctic nations.

“It’s understood that if a body like this touches on security issues … it’s not going to work well,” Bloom said.

This allows the council to focus on other more important Arctic issues, such as climate change, fisheries, sustainable development and Indigenous representation.

For the next twenty years, it helped to promote the idea of ​​”Arctic exceptionalism” – that this region is an arena for good cooperation, immune to the geopolitical struggles that are happening around the world.

But as soon as Russia invades Ukraine in February 2022, “any dreams of a full Arctic expedition … are over,” according to Whitney Lackenbauer, Canada Research chair in Northern Canada studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont.

“In essence, what we are seeing now is that the Arctic, as a circumpolar region, is not isolated from geopolitics.”

a new alliance

It has been pushed back by Sweden and Finland to join NATO, which would bring all seven Arctic countries except Russia into the Western security alliance.

“This is a real change of reality,” says Timo Koivurova, a research professor at the University of Lapland’s Arctic Center and a frequent contributor to the Arctic Council’s working groups.

Finland, he said, has been working on Arctic issues with its neighbors since World War II.

“Many of these projects now seem … very friendly to Russia,” he said.

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The vigilance was expressed on both sides of the border.

“How can we … even if the Arctic Council continues its work … build long-term cooperation?” Nikolay Korchunov, Russia’s Arctic ambassador, told Russian news agency TASS.

“The most important element is missing – trust is missing.”

That lack of trust has fueled fears that the Arctic Council could turn into the “Arctic 7,” an alliance of Western nations similar to Russia that once broke with Russia — and split the Arctic region, literally, in half.

Talk about ‘Arctic 7’

Russia claims 53 percent of the Arctic coastline, and is home to two million of the estimated four million Arctic residents.

“I avoid the word Arctic 7, because I don’t want to make it,” Lackenbauer said. “It’s a fundamentally different model, which means the Arctic Council is dead.”

“If Russia will be excluded, or withdraw from the Arctic Council in the coming years, then there will be no Arctic Council as such,” said Svein Vigeland Rottem, senior researcher and Arctic expert at Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute.

But keeping Russia in the council may prove difficult. After the rest of the members rested, Russia had bolstered its reach to countries like China that try gain access to northern shipping routes and legitimacy as an Arctic player.

Russia” offer[s] what we can do now, and one thing we can offer is access to the Arctic slice,” Bloom said.

That has been asked to worry that Russia can create a rival body, and one that can increase the presence of non-Arctic nations in the region.

“You can experience the deepening of these different camps,” said Elana Wilson Rowe, a research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo.

But a complete break with the board may not be possible. Even before the Ukraine war, Wilson Rowe said, Russia was sometimes “concerned about being too dependent on China,” which caused it increasing economic influence in the country. The Arctic Council and the collaboration that can take place there often provide a balance to Chinese influence, he said.

Appetite for Arctic 7 appears to be low, at present.

“The value of Arctic cooperation will not be meaningless, but it will be worth less if not all Arctic countries participate,” said Morten Høglund, the senior Arctic official representing Norway at this week’s submission.

“This is not what we want, and we certainly will not do it.”

Zombie council

That leaves, for the time being at least, only a middle way: the council continues in its current form, somehow, without official diplomatic relations with Russia.

“The big question is, how long can the door be opened for Russia?” Vigeland Rottem said.

Already, the pause in work in Russia has had a “dramatic effect” on cross-border projects like the collection of environmental data, according to Lars-Otto Riersen, who led monitoring efforts at the Arctic Council for 25 years. He said most Russian monitoring projects were funded by transfers from the West.

“It’s very important that the science continues, because you can’t rebuild what you’ve done,” he said.

The hiatus is also a major challenge for Indigenous participants like the Saami Council, which members are divided over support for the war.

The Arctic Council is one of the few international bodies where Indigenous groups participate on the same level as countries. The loss of the forum was a huge blow.

“The Arctic Council … is still very important for the Saami Council, for the Arctic Indigenous people and for the environmental work on which we all depend,” said Aslaak Holmberg, president of the Saami Council. “This mandate is still important, perhaps now more than ever.”

Continue the work

Most analysts are optimistic the Arctic Council can continue its role in some form, even without Russian diplomatic participation.

“Instead of giving a lot of emphasis on the Arctic Council … producing more binding treaties … I think we will see a return to the origin of the Arctic Council, focusing on science, on less politics,” said Lackenbauer.

That means fewer ministerial meetings and unanimous declarations, and more done at the working group level, which Wilson Rowe says may be given more latitude to work with or without Russia.

For scientists, Riersen said, the Arctic Council can help coordinate the exchange of information between individual researchers, at a time when working directly with Russian scientific institutions remains unpalatable.

In that way, Lackenbauer said, “the council can become a clearinghouse for international science,” helping institutions provide global data sources without official collaboration across adversary lines.

Analysts agree that Norway is well-positioned to manage a difficult period in the council’s history.

Norway has a long history of bilateral and pragmatic relations with Russia, despite being a founding member of NATO. It has managed to maintain a fishing agreement with Russia and a line of communication to the northern fleet despite the war.

Høglund, Norway’s senior Arctic official, is more modest about his country’s prospects.

“I don’t think Norway has a magic formula,” he said.

But he knew it though long list of prioritiesfrom the sea to Indigenous development, Norway’s most important task is to find ways to continue working with Russia “at some level.”

“We will propose alternatives that can take us far, even without political participation,” he said.

“Our responsibility as council chairman is to ensure the council survives.”