Phyllis Creighton <phyllis.creighton@...>: Mar 19 06:15PM -0400
With thanks to Adele Buckley
*Biden and Trudeau need to talk about the Arctic*
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3906613-biden-and-trudeau-need-to-talk-about-the-arctic/
BY FRAN ULMER AND JOHN HOLDREN, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 03/18/23
Associated Press/John McConnico
In 2016, then-President Barak Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau <https://thehill.com/people/justin-trudeau/>of Canada jointly
charted a new course for collaborative leadership in the Arctic. With the
motivation provided by our shared borders, close economic ties and the
common challenges faced by the Indigenous peoples in both countries whose
culture and way of life has flourished in this remote part of the world for
thousands of years, Canada and the United States have played a pivotal role
in promoting solutions to shared challenges in the Arctic. Now is the time
for the two nations to reaffirm their commitment to work together to meet
the growing climate-linked challenges in their far North, from intensifying
wildfires and thawing permafrost, to plant and animal impacts imperiling
Indigenous subsistence and cultures, to a changing Arctic Ocean and all
that this entails for the region and the globe.
Fortunately, when President Biden visits Trudeau for two days next week
<https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/biden-visit-canada-this-month-white-house-2023-03-09/>,
there should be time for them to discuss not only the currently compelling
geopolitical challenges around relations with Russia and China but also
what more the United States and Canada can do together to address the
slower growing but increasingly critical problems being imposed by climate
change on the North American Arctic. A good initial focus for this
discussion would be the Central Artic Ocean (CAO), given its high relevance
to the interests of both countries and the immense role it plays in impacts
of climate change both regionally and globally.
The Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) is more than 1 million square miles of
international waters surrounding the North Pole. Its border is formed by
the 200 nautical-mile line drawn from the shores of the five Arctic coastal
states: Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark (on behalf of Greenland), Norway,
Russia and the United States. For nearly all of the tenure of human beings
on this planet, the CAO has been covered with a multi-meter layer of
floating sea ice. That has made it the least-studied ocean area on Earth
but also one of the most consequential in its influence on the global
climate. That influence comes in large part from the sea ice’s high
reflectivity, which sends most incoming sunlight back to space, cooling the
region and the planet below what temperature would be if the area covered
by ice were open water or land instead (which is far less reflective than
ice).
The enhancement, by the ice, of the temperature difference between the CAO
and the equator also plays a major role in atmospheric circulation and
ocean currents in the Northern Hemisphere, further influencing climate in
the regions where most of the world’s people live.
The human-caused changes in global climate have hit the Arctic particularly
hard, warming it three to four times faster than the global average. Summer
sea ice melting has accelerated, refreezing takes place later each year,
and sea ice thickness is greatly diminished. This warming has accelerated a
cascade of changes and stressors for ocean life in the Arctic, including
crashes in fish, marine mammal and seabird populations in some northern
seas, as well as in-migration of new species into the Arctic. Indigenous
and other coastal communities that have relied on the productivity of the
Arctic Ocean are faced with accelerating challenges to food security,
increased dangers while pursuing cultural practice, and catastrophic
coastal erosion exacerbated by the retreat of the sea ice. As the existing
fabric of life in the Arctic frays, there is still inadequate scientific
understanding of how the ecosystem will evolve in an increasingly warm and
ice-free sea.
Despite this lack of scientific understanding of all that is happening and
likely to happen in the future in the CAO, there is much interest by global
actors in how the most visible changes can be exploited economically. China
is extolling a shipping route
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-arctic/china-unveils-vision-for-polar-silk-road-across-arctic-idUSKBN1FF0J8>
across
the CAO as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a sprawling plan to rework
global trading patterns. The five nations bordering the CAO are laying
claim to the seabed all the way to the North Pole in the hopes of finding
mineral wealth in the CAO sea bed in the future. But the risks to the CAO
from these schemes have neither been studied adequately nor accounted for
in national planning: air pollution (including black carbon emissions that
amplify melting of sea ice), noise and water pollution from ships and ice
breakers, as well as the risk of catastrophic fuel and oil spills in case
of accidents. The effects on whales, seals, fish, seabirds, plankton and
other components of the Arctic food web are unknown and, at present,
unknowable. But even relatively small-scale industrial operations much
closer to shore in the Arctic have resulted in habitat loss, avoidance
behavior by species and changes to migration patterns.
In response to one piece of these challenges, the United States and Canada
led a successful effort to craft an international agreement to prevent the
start of commercial fishing in the CAO while scientific studies are
undertaken to learn about life in this ocean. It was a unique, but simple
solution: Do the science first, then think about fishing later when the
information exists to do it right. The resulting International Arctic
Fisheries Agreement, negotiated during the Obama administration and signed
by the Trump administration, gave the world hope that some of the mistakes
made in other ocean areas might be avoided in the Arctic. Biden
<https://thehill.com/people/biden/>should take the opportunity of his visit
to Canada to keep this hope alive by working with Trudeau to describe a
new, more comprehensive management vision for the Central Arctic Ocean.
As we noted above, the challenges in the CAO are only a part of the array
of Arctic issues that could be addressed more successfully by continued
joint effort between our two countries. But we are hopeful that next week’s
Ottawa meeting will at least use a focus on the CAO to make a start on what
will become a North American Arctic Agenda for the 21st century.
*Fran Ulmer is senior fellow in the Arctic Initiative at the Harvard
Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
former chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, as well as former
lieutenant governor of Alaska.*
*John Holdren is research professor at the Kennedy School, co-chair of the
Arctic Initiativ, and President Obama’s science adviser from 2009 until
2017.* |
