Canadian Leadership in the Circumpolar World: An Agenda for the Arctic Council Chairmanship 2013-2015
Abstract: The Arctic is a region of increasing global interest. Canadian interests in the region-economic, political, social, and environmental-would benefit from the development of an effective governance framework for the Arctic in terms of providing for stable, predictable, and sustainable use of the area's resources in a manner that benefits northern inhabitants. Canada has an opportunity to influence the Arctic policy agenda and promote Canada's interests as in 2013 it assumes the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, the high-level intergovernmental forum that discusses common circumpolar policy. This article outlines the issue areas most likely to benefit from regional co-operation, and which Canada should promote in the lead up to and during its chairmanship: Search and rescue, fisheries management, shipping regulations, and a regional seas agreement. The article argues that Canada should lead governance reform in the Arctic both because it is in Canada's interests to do so, and because Canada is uniquely placed to do so within the Circumpolar World.
International Region-Building
The Arctic has emerged as a region in international cooperation during the past 20—30 years, as manifest in the creation of the Arctic Council and its predecessor, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, and in the incidence of a host of scientific and political cooperation projects. The region now includes eight states over the circumpolar area; namely, the United States, Russia, Canada and the Nordic countries. How this international region has developed over time is investigated with reference to the conception of regions as understood in region-building discourse. Accordingly, the Arctic as a region that is not natural or given but as constructed by and for particular actors and interests is studied. It is concluded that the regional superstructure includes conceptions of the North that draw on images developed in historical exploration and research, shaped by a discourse of the Arctic representing North American more than Nordic understandings.
Arctic Security: The Murmansk Initiative and its Impact
What has come to be known as the ‘Murmansk Initiative’ — launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in a speech in that city on 1 October 1987— is but one in a series of wide-ranging proposals for regional security in areas neighbouring the Soviet Union that have been made by Gorbachev since assuming power, and that have become a hallmark of his foreign policy. Thus, the Murmansk speech was preceded by a similar one dealing with the Asia—Pacific region made in Vladivostok the previous year; and followed by one in early 1988 in Belgrade, dealing with problems of Mediterranean security. The three ‘initiatives’ share certain elements of similarity, in particular the emphasis on measures of naval arms control, which is receiving increasing prominence in Soviet arms control diplomacy more generally. The Murmansk initiative seems a particularly appropriate subject for discussion by a Canadian commentator, given the continuing intense Canadian interest in all things Arctic, including: arms control; the magnitude of the Soviet Union’s own stake in Arctic affairs; and the fact that this review falls precisely on the first anniversary of Gorbachev’s call for an ‘Arctic Peace Zone’.