Вопросы истории и культуры

северных стран и территорий

-------------------------------------

Historical and cultural problems

of northern countries and regions

 

Международное сотрудничество
в регионе Мирового Севера

 

Ben Wohlaurer

former Consul for Political and Economic Affairs,
Consulate General of the United States,
(Saint-Petersburg, Russia)

 

The United States in the Arctic Region:
A Focus on Multilateral and
Socially Oriented Programs

 

The United States has been an Arctic nation with important interests in the region since the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.  At that time, national security and economic development were the key U.S. interests.  While those issues remain of great importance, significant changes in the international political arena since the end of the Cold War, scientific and technological developments, and increasing global interdependence have created new challenges and opportunities for the State of Alaska, the United States, and all other Arctic nations.

Our contemporary Arctic policy has many facets, ranging from traditional security issues to energy security to sustainable economic development in the remotest regions.  We pursue all of our policy aims in the course of our bilateral relationships with the various Arctic nations.  However, the Arctic region's geography and the borderless nature of many of the most important issues make our work in multilateral organizations and through international cooperative ventures perhaps even more vital.  Two of the most important, and in some cases inter-related, vehicles for achieving our multilateral Arctic policy goals are the Arctic Council and the International Polar Year initiative.

The United States has been a leading participant in the Arctic Council since it was formed back in 1996.  Prior to the Council’s creation, the United States joined the seven other Arctic countries (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden) in establishing the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS).  The AEPS was a Finnish initiative to address a variety of environmental protection issues in the Arctic.  The AEPS founders set up four working groups that focused on environmental monitoring and assessment, conservation of flora and fauna, emergency preparedness, and marine protection.  These initial working groups remain active today, with two additional groups added later.

After several years of working on pan-Arctic environmental issues within the AEPS, member states, at Canada's initiative, decided to expand the focus of the AEPS to deal with issues of sustainable development in the Arctic.  To this end a new entity was formed with the signing of the "Declaration on the Establishment of the Arctic Council" in Ottawa on September 19, 1996.

As it is now organized, the Arctic Council provides a high-level intergovernmental forum to address environmental protection and sustainable development issues in the Arctic region.  The eight founding nations of the AEPS comprise the member states of the Council.  Arctic indigenous representatives hold permanent participant status, and several other nations and international organizations are observers.  The revolving chair of the Council hosts a ministerial summit every two years (the next meeting to be held in the spring of 2009) to coordinate Council activities and oversee the work of its six working groups and as well as other projects.  Senior Arctic officials from each member state meet more frequently.

For those interested in a more thorough description of the Council and its working groups' activities across the region I recommend a visit to its website at http://arctic-council.org.  For the purposes of this article, however, I'd like to focus on U.S. participation in the "human dimension" of the Council's work.  There are social dimensions to the projects of all of the Council's working groups aimed at improving the quality of life for the residents of the Far North – be it through promoting sustainable economic development, improving emergency preparedness, or cleaning up their often heavily polluted environments.  Though the United States (the federal government, the State of Alaska, and Alaskan indigenous communities) plays an active role in all of the Council's working groups, it has taken a particular leadership role on matters of human health and improving transportation infrastructure that are largely addressed in the Sustainable Development Working Group. 

One U.S.-led initiative under the rubric of human health monitoring and protection is the so-called International Circumpolar Surveillance (ICS) program.  The purpose of this project, launched in 2000 and carried out in partnership with the other seven Council members, is to set up an integrated network of hospital and public health laboratories throughout the Arctic that can act as a regional surveillance system for infectious diseases.  The network would allow collection and sharing of uniform laboratory and epidemiologic data between Arctic countries that will describe the prevalence of infectious diseases of concern to Arctic residents – such as tuberculosis, meningitis, influenza, and hepatitis – and assist in the formulation of prevention and control strategies.  Aside from the benefits it offers from improved public health, the ICS program is also being developed to deal with the increased threat to these remote communities – previously isolated from many infectious diseases – caused by expanding transportation links with the rest of the world.  The ICS program also has a capacity-building aspect, which aims to develop modern medical and medical testing facilities in remote Arctic communities.

Another, more narrowly focused, U.S.-led Arctic Council initiative in this area is the telemedicine project.  The project's ultimate goal is to improve the quality and availability of medical services in remote communities by using telemedicine technologies to link small public health facilities with larger hospitals in distant population centers.  Though limited to some degree by funding and communications constraints, a pilot project run by partners in the State of Alaska and villages in the Russian Republic of Sakha and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug is nearing successful completion.

To better coordinate these and all other health-related projects conducted by various Arctic Council bodies, the Council asked the United States Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health in 2005 to work with the International Union of Circumpolar Health to oversee the so-called Arctic Human Health Initiative (AHHI).  The Initiative is operating within the still broader context of the International Polar Year (more on this later).  Though the Initiative is still in its early stages, it is now working to develop an organizational infrastructure for the coordination and prioritization of Arctic health research within the working groups of the Arctic Council and the International Union for Circumpolar Health and on strategic planning for health research activities beyond 2009.  The AHHI has established a website (www.arctichealth.org) to serve as a clearinghouse for information on various Initiative-related projects and also for the latest research on Arctic medical issues.

Another important social project area in which the United States is taking the lead within the Arctic Council is improving access to safe aviation transport services.  Responding to the reality that remote communities all across the Arctic region rely primarily on aircraft for their transportation needs, the project regularly brings together regional experts to think of ways to improve airport and aircraft safety.  An important component of this project is increasing economically sensible air transport connections for Arctic communities – both between remote settlements and between villages and the closest major cities.  Improved linkages are a boon to the economic development of these remote communities as well as an essential element of their improving access to healthcare.  Tangible achievements of the project thus far include the creation of an Arctic Aviation Database (with details of more than 600 airports above 55 degrees latitude) as well as improvements in air navigation due to completion of a pilot project of enhanced weather monitoring.

These are just three examples of socially inclined projects in which federal and state agencies and indigenous communities from the United States are taking the lead alongside their Arctic Council partners.  There are many others.  For instance, U.S. scientists are working with their regional colleagues to study the impact on native populations of climate change.  In northeastern Siberia, Alaskan indigenous communities are sharing lessons-learned with their Russian neighbors on how to clean up hazardous waste long stored in their communities.  The Arctic Council’s Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP), chaired by the United States, is leading this effort.  Russia will assume the ACAP chairmanship in 2008 and will continue with this important decontamination work.

As mentioned earlier, some of the health and environmental programs on which the United States has taken a lead in the Arctic Council are being carried out in the broader context of the International Polar Year (IPY).  The IPY is a UN-cosponsored event aimed at raising global awareness of the environmentally unique Arctic and Antarctic regions and encouraging an intensive period of interdisciplinary and multilateral scientific programs dedicated to better understanding the polar regions.  This IPY, the third since 1882, started in March 2007 and will last through March 2009.  With funding from various national and international sources, thousands of scientists, academics, and students from more than 60 countries are carrying out hundreds of projects in the Arctic nations and in Antarctica.  Such an outburst of coordinated exploration and study provides an extraordinary opportunity to explore new frontiers in polar science, improve our understanding of the critical influence of the polar regions on transnational issues such as the environment and health, and educate the public about these important but poorly understood parts of our world.  Much of the research carried out during this period is focused on developing new technologies and also the next generation of polar scientists.  Thus, benefits from the IPY activities should be enduring both to science in general and those living in the Arctic region in particular.

To ensure the most efficient and effective outcomes for the IPY scientific research programs, researchers of various nations should be able to freely collaborate and approach the polar regions as transnational areas of scientific interest rather than as bits of many different nations.  Thus, we are stressing the importance of existing international cooperative frameworks (ranging from bilateral science and technology agreements to multilateral organizations like the Arctic Council) to ensure that, for example, U.S. entities can conduct IPY-related research in non-U.S. Arctic waters and foreign entities can conduct research in U.S. Arctic territorial waters.

Though IPY projects funded by the U.S. government (either directly or through the Arctic Council) cover the spectrum of scientific activity, many are dedicated to developing Arctic communities.  Goals of some of the socially focused projects recently funded directly by the United States are: helping Arctic communities adjust to the economic challenges and opportunities from climate change; thorough documentation of ten endangered languages in the Arctic regions of United States, Canada, and Russia; and, monitoring changes to the ecosystem in the Bering Sea and their impact on the socio-economic well-being of indigenous villages in Alaska and far northeastern Siberia.  Though these projects are funded by the United States and research is being led by U.S. institutions, most of them involve researchers and facilities from across the Arctic region.

Another high priority of the U.S. government's IPY activities is energy security.  In October 2007, the U.S. and Canadian governments sponsored an Arctic Council-initiated Arctic Energy Summit, which focused on the Arctic as an emerging area for energy exploration and research.  At the Conference, energy experts from across the Arctic, along with those from outside the Arctic region, discussed three main topics: enhanced extraction of energy resources, expanded use of renewable energy, and better delivery of affordable and environmentally sound energy to rural Arctic communities.  As a follow up to the Summit, experts will choose a particular challenge from within each of these three areas and prepare concrete "action plans" for presentation to the Arctic Council in early 2009.

The Summit also kicked off the educational component of the energy project, with a bilingual English/Russian Arctic energy website already set up.  There are plans to seek funding for further educational activities such as undergraduate and graduate research work in the areas of Arctic energy and power, and a graduate-level Arctic energy course.  The development of a web-based and interactive Arctic energy atlas is planned that will include traditional extractable energy resources, as well as non-traditional renewable energy sources.

The United States is an Arctic nation, and takes its unique responsibilities as such quite seriously.  Our Arctic priorities blend foreign and domestic policy and require the dedicated and coordinated work of federal and state officials from an array of agencies, private and public academic institutions, and Alaska's indigenous communities.  Our Arctic policy and policy priorities have evolved constantly since 1867, and they will likely continue to do so – adjusting to shifting geopolitical, economic, and environmental realities.  However, two things most definitely will not change: the emphasis placed on multilateral cooperation, and the importance of addressing ever-changing socio-economic challenges faced by Arctic communities.

 

 

© Ben Wohlaurer

 

 

 

Журнал создан в сотрудничестве с Министерством регионального развития Российской Федерации

 

 

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