In keeping with this weblog’s two most recent posts, which provide brief updates on recent arctic developments in Canada and the United States, readers are referred to the September 15, 2010, broadcast and transcript of Alaska News Nightly (produced by the Alaska Public Radio Network) for an Alaska (mostly arctic) update. Yesterday’s broadcast is a particularly fine edition of this consistently reliable news program and highlights how Alaska faces in microcosm many of the issues facing the Arctic as a whole.
Reports include excellent interviews, both worth hearing in their entirety, about:
-- the Arctic Sea Ice Minimum for 2010, reached September 10, which is the third lowest since satellite data collection began in 1979 (for details visit the National Snow and Ice Data Center )
-- Tlingit contributions to mapping “Russian America” in the 19th century, providing many of the place names and cartographic features, e.g. from the Lind Canal to Yukon River, that cartographer George Davidson used in his maps for the US Coast Survey. NOAA historian John Cloud was in Klukwan earlier this month to present scanned images of the maps to descendants of the original mappers, the Tlingit leader Kohklux and his wives. The maps are in the public domain, and will soon be posted on this NOAA site; NOAA asks to be credited as the source.
Other stories relate to:
-- Alaska lawyers heading to the Gulf, to bring post-Exxon Valdez experience to litigation resulting from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill.
-- a barge running aground about 40 miles west of Prudhoe Bay, although this time equipment failure rather than outdated charts caused the grounding.
-- the proposed All-Alaska Gas Pipeline, as discussed by candidates for governor (see also two different angles on the pipeline here and here).
-- an award-winning commercial seafood processing cooperative plant in Sitka that sends between 50 and 60% of its product overseas.
-- the future of broadband in Alaska, with a focus on public libraries.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Canada Arctic Update August 2010
August 2010 was an active month for Canadian policy developments in the Arctic. In keeping with this blog’s July 2010 report on numerous U.S.-related arctic news items for that month, here is a short form update on significant Canadian announcements, projects and decisions in August affecting the Canadian Arctic.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper used his five day visit to the Arctic, from August 23-27, and the run-up to that visit, to unveil several Canadian initiatives, including the Canadian national policy on the Arctic.
August 20, Ottawa: Canada releases its Arctic Policy, formally titled “Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy,” which elaborates on the international component of Canada’s Northern Strategy announced in 2009.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper used his five day visit to the Arctic, from August 23-27, and the run-up to that visit, to unveil several Canadian initiatives, including the Canadian national policy on the Arctic.
August 20, Ottawa: Canada releases its Arctic Policy, formally titled “Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy,” which elaborates on the international component of Canada’s Northern Strategy announced in 2009.
August 26: Harper announces that his government will establish the Tarium Niryutait Marine Protected Area in the Beaufort Sea, as part of an effort to conserve Beluga whales. For background on the Tarium Niryutait MPA and on the Beaufort Sea Large Ocean Management Area visit the Beaufort Sea Partnership.
PM Harper’s visit also coincided with:
The August 26th completion of a Canadian Coast Guard training exercise on environmental emergency (oil spill) response in Resolute Bay, Nunavut.
The exercise was part of Canada’s larger annual military training exercise in the North, “Operation NANOOK”. Danish and US forces participated in the operation for the first time this year.
Other relevant August 2010 developments for the Canadian Arctic:
August 8; Nunavut judge issues an injunction stopping a science expedition’s seismic operations from the R/V Polarstern in Lancaster Sound.
August 25: Canadian Air Force shadows Russian bombers in international airspace north of Inuvik.
August 29: Parks Canada announces completion of the 2010 Arctic Survey.
August 30: The Bahamanian-flagged Clipper Adventurer cruise ship runs aground on uncharted* rocks in the Northwest Passage; Canadian Coast Guard evacuates passengers to Kugluktuk (Update Sept. 8: *subsequent reports indicate that the hazard was known and that the the Canadian Hydrographic Survey had informed the shipping industry of the rock's location in 2007). Outdated charts appear to have contributed to the August 8 grounding of the fuel resupply vessel the Mokami near Pangnirtung and the September 2 grounding of the fuel tanker Nanny (Canadian flagged) on a sandbar in Simpson Strait; neither vessel suffered any reported loss of its cargo (the latter ship carried 9.5 million liters of diesel fuel).
Thanks to the Institute of the North and its Top of the World Telegraph , and to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission Arctic Update for reporting earlier on many of the sources drawn on here.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
U.S. Arctic and Oceans Update July 2010
July was a busy month in the United States for Arctic and oceans related matters. Herewith, a tweet-like survey of some highlights, from back to front:
July 26: Final preparations are underway for this year’s continuation of US mapping efforts on the Arctic extended continental shelf (ECS). The 2010 ECS Project mapping cruise, for which the US Geological Survey is the science lead, is scheduled from August 2 - September 6, 2010, on the USCGC Healy. The Healy will travel in tandem again this year with the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker the Louis S. St.-Laurent for part of the cruise, as reported in the USGS press release
July 22: US and Canadian officials met quietly in Ottawa to discuss resolving the maritime boundary dispute in the Beaufort Sea. For background and a map, see this earlier post.
July 22: President Obama assigned responsibility for Arctic research to the White House National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), which will coordinate activities assigned to the Interagency Arctic Research and Policy Committee (IARPC). IARPC and the US Arctic Research Commission (USARC) were created by the 1984 Arctic Research and Policy Act and consult on arctic policy and planning. The press release is on the USARC website, where the USARC biennial "Report on Goals and Objectives for Arctic Research is also available.
July 19: President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing a National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Coasts, and Great Lakes. The Order largely adopts the Final Recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force. Among the many steps the order announces, it “provides for the development of coastal and marine spatial plans that build upon and improve existing Federal, State, tribal, local, and regional decisionmaking and planning processes." A related posting is available here.
July 16: Eighty-six days after the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig at the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, oil flowing from the well was, at last, temporarily halted by a capping stack system. The cap continues to hold while efforts continue to close the well permanently. More information is at the official site of the government oil spill response effort.
July 15: The Interagency and Science Advisory Committees of the Submarine Arctic Science Cruises Program (the SCience ICe EXerices (SCICEX) Program) published a new science plan for the Arctic Ocean, drawing on the potential of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines for data collection. The plan under “Part 1: Technical Guidance for Planning Science Accommodations Missions,” is available under publications at the USARC website.
July 14: The House passed HR 2864, a bill that, if approved by the Senate and signed into law, would require NOAA to increase its mapping efforts in the Arctic. See the NOAA Office of Legislative Affairs. The bill was introduced by Rep. Don Young of Alaska. The Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment approved by the Ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in 2009 provides a good overview of the need for improved mapping of the Arctic Ocean for navigational and other purposes.
Friday, July 9, 2010
From Eurasian Heartland to Arctic Coastal State: Antrim on the Russian Arctic in the Twenty-first Century
“The increased accessibility of the Arctic, with its energy and mineral resources, new fisheries, shortened sea routes, and access to rivers flowing north to the Arctic, is pushing Russia to become a maritime state. As it progresses, Russia will no longer be susceptible to geographic isolation or encirclement. At the same time, these changes will require Russia to become more closely integrated into global commercial and financial networks, to welcome international business involvement, and to participate in international bodies that harmonize international shipping, safety, security, and environmental regulations.”
Caitlyn L. Antrim, The Next Geographical Pivot: The Russian Arctic in the Twenty-first Century, Naval War College Review, Summer 2010, Vol. 63, No. 3, p. 15
With these words, Caitlyn Antrim introduces the basic premises of her comprehensive, concise and engaging article in the Summer 2010 volume of the Naval War College Review. She derives the first part of the piece’s title from a 1904 presentation by Halford Mackinder to the Royal Geographic Society in London. A century ago Mackinder identified control of the steppes and plains of the southwest Russian empire, rich in agriculture and raw materials, as the geographical “pivot around which the conflict between the [Eurasian] heartland and the crescent of maritime states revolved.”* Mackinder’s “crescent” referred to the outer edges of the Eurasian continents, traced “from the coasts of China and South Asia westward through the Balkans and up to the English Channel.”
Antrim proceeds to discuss the resultant and enduring European and US geostrategy of the 19th and 20th centuries that attempted to contain Russia as a land power on all sides and depended on the frozen Arctic Ocean to serve as the Fourth Wall of containment. She identifies four factors that were key to maintaining this Fourth Wall - technology, economics, climate, and law - and then lays out how changes to them have led to Russia’s “shift from Eurasian heartland to Arctic coastal state,” a shift she convincingly documents.
Antrim views the political and geophysical changes underway in the Arctic as “turning the Arctic from an afterthought to a central front in the new geopolitical view of the world. In this new geostrategy, Russia assumes a role as one of the maritime powers of the “rimland,” and the Russian Arctic becomes a new geographical pivot among the great powers.”
The article does much more, including cataloguing the challenges facing the Russian Coastal Border Guard, analyzing two Russian statements relevant to Arctic policy - the Foundations of State Policy of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2020 and Beyond and the Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2030 (available at doc.rzd.ru/) and suggesting elements for a regional adaptation of the Global Maritime Partnership initiative, “extended to include Arctic science, Arctic domain awareness, and ocean resource management.”
Anyone interested in Arctic Mapping and the Law of the Sea will find much to value in Antrim’s article, and in her July 2, 2010, Council on Foreign Relations interview regarding "Law of Sea Implications for Gulf Spill." To her excellent CFR discussion of LOS issues related to the spill should be added the existence of, and renewed interest in, the ARCTIC COUNCIL ARCTIC OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS GUIDELINES, endorsed by the Arctic Council in April 2009.
*All quotations are from Antrim’s article. Caitlyn L. Antrim is the executive director of the Rule of Law Committee for the Oceans.
Caitlyn L. Antrim, The Next Geographical Pivot: The Russian Arctic in the Twenty-first Century, Naval War College Review, Summer 2010, Vol. 63, No. 3, p. 15
With these words, Caitlyn Antrim introduces the basic premises of her comprehensive, concise and engaging article in the Summer 2010 volume of the Naval War College Review. She derives the first part of the piece’s title from a 1904 presentation by Halford Mackinder to the Royal Geographic Society in London. A century ago Mackinder identified control of the steppes and plains of the southwest Russian empire, rich in agriculture and raw materials, as the geographical “pivot around which the conflict between the [Eurasian] heartland and the crescent of maritime states revolved.”* Mackinder’s “crescent” referred to the outer edges of the Eurasian continents, traced “from the coasts of China and South Asia westward through the Balkans and up to the English Channel.”
Antrim proceeds to discuss the resultant and enduring European and US geostrategy of the 19th and 20th centuries that attempted to contain Russia as a land power on all sides and depended on the frozen Arctic Ocean to serve as the Fourth Wall of containment. She identifies four factors that were key to maintaining this Fourth Wall - technology, economics, climate, and law - and then lays out how changes to them have led to Russia’s “shift from Eurasian heartland to Arctic coastal state,” a shift she convincingly documents.
Antrim views the political and geophysical changes underway in the Arctic as “turning the Arctic from an afterthought to a central front in the new geopolitical view of the world. In this new geostrategy, Russia assumes a role as one of the maritime powers of the “rimland,” and the Russian Arctic becomes a new geographical pivot among the great powers.”
The article does much more, including cataloguing the challenges facing the Russian Coastal Border Guard, analyzing two Russian statements relevant to Arctic policy - the Foundations of State Policy of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2020 and Beyond and the Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2030 (available at doc.rzd.ru/) and suggesting elements for a regional adaptation of the Global Maritime Partnership initiative, “extended to include Arctic science, Arctic domain awareness, and ocean resource management.”
Anyone interested in Arctic Mapping and the Law of the Sea will find much to value in Antrim’s article, and in her July 2, 2010, Council on Foreign Relations interview regarding "Law of Sea Implications for Gulf Spill." To her excellent CFR discussion of LOS issues related to the spill should be added the existence of, and renewed interest in, the ARCTIC COUNCIL ARCTIC OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS GUIDELINES, endorsed by the Arctic Council in April 2009.
*All quotations are from Antrim’s article. Caitlyn L. Antrim is the executive director of the Rule of Law Committee for the Oceans.
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