‘The ice edge is lost … nature moved it’: mapping ice as state practice in the Canadian and Norwegian North

Abstract

This paper explores how 'ice' is woven into the spaces and practices of the state in Norway and Canada and, specifically, how representations of the sea ice edge become political agents in that process. We focus in particular on how these states have used science to 'map' sea ice -both graphically and legally -over the past decades. This culminated with two maps produced in 2015, a Norwegian map that moved the Arctic sea-ice edge 70 km northward and a Canadian map that moved it 200 km southward. Using the maps and their genealogies to explore how designations of sea ice are entangled with political objectives (oil drilling in Norway, sovereignty claims in Canada), we place the maps within the more general tendency of states to assign fixed categories to portions of the earth's surface and define distinct lines between them. We propose that the production of static ontologies through cartographic representations becomes particularly problematic in an icy environment of extraordinary temporal and spatial dynamism, where complex ocean-atmospheric processes and their biogeographic impacts are reduced to lines on a map.

Mapping ice in the Norwegian Arctic – on the edge between science and policy

“…Many oceanographic phenomena, including the ice edge, are not static in time and space; rather, they appear, move and disappear within a relatively short space of time. Because of its dynamic character, the ice edge simply cannot become ontologically stable (Steinberg & Kristoffersen, 2017). Defining scientific uncertainties associated with knowledge acquisition-data sources, measuring instruments-is therefore highly volatile and relative.…”

“…Critical cartography on the other hand-a clear parallel to STS-has demonstrated how maps are contingent, relational and context-dependent (Kitchin et al, 2013), and are constituted in and through diverse discursive and material processes. In this literature, the power of maps is not only associated with their being representational objects, because maps also shape, perform and enact the world (Del Casino & Hanna, 2006;Perkins, 2017;Steinberg & Kristoffersen, 2017). The production of counter-mappings was made visible, including how maps were shaped by diverse interests to provide alternative viewpoints to state-sanctioned and commercial cartography (Hongslo, 2017;Kitchin & Dodge, 2007;Harley, 1989).…”

“…Numerous examples exist of how in Norway heated debates on environmental policies are translated into scientific and methodological matters (Bay-Larsen, 2014;Bjørgo & Bay-Larsen, 2017;Dannevig & Dale, 2018). Methodological trade-offs are subject to explicit political deliberation until the phenomenon reaches an ontologically stable state (Steinberg & Kristoffersen, 2017); that is, until the definition of the ice edge becomes legitimate and agreed upon. Such proxy debates may therefore hinder transparent and inclusive public discussions over actual policy decisions at play.…”

“…same ice edge debate, in which they also compared the Norwegian debate with a parallel Canadian debate, Steinberg and Kristoffersen (2017) provide a thorough genealogy of the multiple maps that come into play, and how these are entangled in petroleum policies and legal or bureaucratic categories, though in very different ways in Norway compared to Canada. They also describe how static ontologies fall short when connected to an environment of extreme spatio-temporal dynamic like the ice edge zone.…”

Relationality and island studies in the Anthropocene

“…From Hayward's (2012) 'aquapelago', to DeLoughrey's (2007 Routes and Roots, such debates now consistently bring to the fore how oceans are not a simple medium of transport between islands, or from A to B, but rather material, social, political and affective spaces themselves that play into island relationalities (DeLoughrey, 2007;Hayward, 2012a;Pugh, 2016;Steinberg & Peters, 2015). These kinds of connections are perhaps most obviously drawn out in contemporary research on shifting ice-sheets (Riquet, 2016;Steinberg & Kristoffersen, 2017), but are also powerfully brought into play in all sorts of other innovative ways in island studies today. For example, in Roberts and Stephens (2017, p. 1) seminal idea of the 'archipelagic Americas', the Americas "are clearly not confined to the islands and waters that have been appropriated by the United States" but span through multifaceted colonial, material, affective and political relations into the Caribbean, Indonesia, and many other island and ocean regions of the world that disrupt neat boundaries of island/sea.…”