Fragmented International Governance of Arctic Offshore Oil: Governance Challenges and Institutional Improvement

Abstract

The governance architecture in the Arctic region is subject to broad public and academic debate. Existing governance arrangements are not considered sufficient to minimize risks and impacts from Arctic offshore oil activities. These governance arrangements are fragmented between law of the sea norms, numerous regulatory conventions, and non-legally binding guidelines produced by the Arctic Council, an informal body of the eight Arctic states. While the benign form of cooperative fragmentation seems to prevail, specific governance challenges exist. The nature of these governance challenges and political feasibility considerations suggest an enabling joint management approach for the architecture of Arctic governance.

Arctic geopoetics: Russian politics at the North Pole

“…Yet, it is a well-known problem that predictions are difficult to make, especially when they concern the future. For the time being, retrospective analyses and the current state of the art highlight the amicable cooperation in the Arctic Council and its achievements in fostering scientific cooperation, for instance, on the extent and effect of climate change in the area (Bloom, 1999;Humrich, 2013;Knecht, 2016;Koivurova, 2010;Koivurova, Keskitalo & Bankes, 2009;Larsen & Fondahl, 2014;Pedersen, 2012). From the perspective of international law, there is very little to worry about as state action takes place in the confines of the nomos set by the Law of the Sea (Byers, 2013;Wood-Donnelly, 2013).…”

“…In consequence, the frontier is no longer unmanaged, and changes in the cryosphere have produced various forms of state activities, which do not, however, seem to follow a distinct and unified pattern. On the one hand, the current state of the art in Arctic scholarship highlights the amicable cooperation in the Arctic Council, and its achievements in fostering scientific cooperation, for instance, on the extent and effect of climate change in the area (Bloom, 1999; Humrich, 2013; Knecht, 2017; Koivurova, 2010; Koivurova et al, 2009; Larsen and Fondahl, 2014; Nord, 2016; Pedersen, 2012). Individually, but also in cooperation, Arctic countries 1 have invested hundreds of billions of US-dollars in infrastructure projects that include roads, railway lines, ports, ice-breaker capacity, energy as well as faster internet connections (Conley, 2013; Staalesen, 2016).…”

‘Frame Conflicts’ in Natural Resource Use: Exploring Framings Around Arctic Offshore Petroleum Using Q‐Methodology

“…The Arctic is commonly cited as representing a complex socio-ecological system facing an array of unique challenges (Roberts et al, 2010). The Arctic has received considerable attention in recent years, usually attributed to pronounced sea-ice loss from rapid climate change and the subsequent increased accessibility to the region's abundant natural resources, especially offshore petroleum (Humrich, 2013). The issue is complex, comprising myriad, interrelated elements at various scales: climate change's relationship with fossil-fuel use and the Arctic in particular; a warming, ice-free Arctic's role in various global and climatic processes and feedback mechanisms (Kelmelis, 2011); the risk of a large oil spill, where the socio-ecological impacts are often predicted as devastating (Huntington, 2009), with what constitute adequate safety measures and appropriate liability fiercely debated; the tensions of negotiating economic security for Arctic communities and nations with concerns of environmental protection under the spotlight of global NGO campaigns; and globalization and its implications for traditional livelihoods (Exner-Pirot, 2012).…”

Ecosystem stewardship: A resilience framework for arctic conservation

“…Currently, Law-of-theSea norms, numerous regulatory conventions, and non-legally binding guidelines produced by the Arctic Council are considered insufficient to minimize risks and manage impacts (Humrich, 2013). Similarly, arctic countries could potentially collaborate multilaterally to enable the designation of Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas at the International Maritime Organization to protect ecological and cultural resources from international shipping-a sector of industrial development that is rapidly increasing in the Arctic and for which the Arctic Council has undertaken a thorough assessment (AMSA, 2009) with detailed, yet non-legally binding, guidelines (Hillmer-Pegram and Robards, 2015).…”