The presence of Former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Al Gore at the conference and at the Ministerial meeting ensured that attention would be paid to Minister Støre’s aim of highlighting the serious problem of climate change and melting ice not just for Arctic residents, but for all humanity. The challenge is aimed at world leaders and policy-makers, and also populations worldwide and most importantly, the populations of the industrialized world to mobilize to mitigate climate change in the form of global warming.
Presentations and active participation from Mr Gore also placed the Arctic Council and its work on a higher political playing field internationally. While reiterated time and again by Minister Støre that international regimes such as the Arctic Council are not decision-making, but rather decision-shaping bodies, it is clear that his ambitions for the depth and breadth of its influence are grand. For Minister Støre, it is with these grand ambitions that the Arctic Council has the possibility of actively giving guidelines, presenting best practices, and reliable science to other international decision-making fora. It is with these big goals and the formal signing of the Tromsø Declaration on 29th April 2009 that Foreign Minister Støre hands off the Chair’s gavel to the Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller.
The Challenge
Foreign Minister Møller has been thrown the gauntlet by the outgoing Chair, Minister Støre, to further the aims outlined in the Melting Ice and Arctic Ministers Conferences of the last few days. In his first address to the Ministers of the Arctic 8, its permanent participants, and observers, he emphasized the centrality of climate change and melting ice in his agenda from now until 2011. He also argued that the approach to the diversity of concerns in the Arctic must be approached holistically addressing environmental protection, human health, sustainable use of resources and ongoing economic development. Minister Møller also pledged to continue the research and scientific work of the working groups as the pillars of the work of the Arctic Council monitoring, observing, analyzing, and making recommendations on issues of biodiversity in the Arctic, including its human populations. With Denmark at the helm of the Chair of the Arctic Council, it is poised to bring forth to the CoP 15 Copenhagen-United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2009 the results from the task force created by Mr Gore and Minister Støre on the reduction of black carbon (soot), methane, and ozone emissions – short-lived, but harmful drivers of climate change.
Co-operation and co-ordination
Not only is Minister Møller charged with continuing the high-level dialogue regarding climate change and melting ice, he also continues the co-operation and co-ordination efforts begun under the Norwegian Chairship. Most notable of these is the agreement among the Arctic 8 to establish a task force and to co-operate actively within the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to establish guidelines on operating in ice-covered waters to ensure safety and environmental protection.
In an interview with the outgoing Chair Foreign Minister Støre, he asserted that co-ordination among the international regimes is of key concern. He termed these regional institutions [Arctic Council, Barents Euro-Arctic Council, Council of Baltic Sea States, etc.] that have international interests ‘interlocking institutions’ “with the Arctic linking up with the Barents linking up with the Baltic,” making paramount the co-ordination and co-operation on activities such as search and rescue, and oil-spill management strategies. When challenged that often there is a doubling-up of efforts on these very fronts, Minister Støre revealed that there will be an effort to inventory and to co-ordinate these activities throughout the Arctic and other interlocking institutions.
The theme of cooperation was repeated in a press conference by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who fielded several geopolitical questions on the possible arming of the Arctic by his country. Minister Lavrov unequivocally stated that Russia has no plans to arm its Arctic territories more than current necessary levels, but rather the strengthening of the coast guards which is necessary for search and rescue.
With these grand challenges for the Arctic Council, those of us who live in the Arctic wait with great expectations for these challenges to be met and indeed surpassed.
For BarentsObserver,
by Aileen Espiritu, the Barents Institute
