Climate Change and International Cooperation

The changes in the climate and its consequences will have or already have different effects on international, regional and local cooperation in the Arctic. It very much depends on the field of cooperation climate change affects.

Scientific Cooperation – For researchers, climate change means an extraordinary challenge to assess and analyze all ongoing or possible effects on the whole climatic systems as well as for all economic and social processes. In order to gain a picture which becomes more and more complete (if it ever becomes complete remains questionable), international cooperation is of utter importance. Therefore, institutions like the University of the Arctic or the Northern Research Forum will most likely intensify their cooperation in order to ensure vital knowledge exchange.

Indigenous Peoples – Apart from being indigenous peoples, the cooperation between different indigenous groups worldwide will probably intensify, because of indigenous peoples being not only environmentally affected by climate change, but also culturally. In order to make decision-makers aware of the human rights issue involved in cultural loss related to climate change, international indigenous cooperation is likely to become stronger. Indigenous knowledge of their environment, which is included in i.e. the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Report 2004 will also foster the cooperation between western scientific knowledge systems and indigenous traditional knowledge.

Regional and Local Cooperation – Climate change is likely to increase cooperation on a regional or local basis. As changes in the environment influence northern livelihoods, individuals as well as municipalities or regions facing the same problems are likely to merge and form movements and organizations and therefore gain political influence in order to mitigate the problems.

Intergovernmental Cooperation – The intergovernmental cooperation is likely to be stressed by the changes in the climate and the new possibilities connected to resource extraction in the Circumpolar North. Although there is cooperation between all Arctic states, resources and economic growth pose a threat to i.e. the principle of consensus within the Arctic Council and the sharing of common interests. A good example is the censoring of the new AMAP Report about the consequences of oil drilling in the Arctic (Seidler 2008[7]) or the planting of a Russian flag underneath the geographic North Pole to exacerbate Russian claims for the North Pole being Russian territory(BBC News 2007[8]). Therefore, national interests seem to dominate the cooperative concepts, which have been established especially after 1990. It is likely that rivalries concerning natural resources such as oil and gas will increasingly drive cooperating states away from each other and that the potential of the fairly young international bodies such as the Arctic Council becomes weaker due to internal interest discordances. In how far scientific knowledge will contribute to settling state-interest disputes and in how far other cooperation is able to be maintained remains to be seen, but I assume that economic growth will most likely dominate all other cooperative measures.