Читать книгу The Arctic and World Order - Группа авторов - Страница 19

What can we infer from this analysis about the future of the Arctic? There is no basis for expecting one or another of the four interpretive frameworks considered here to (re)emerge as a consensual narrative to guide the thinking of practitioners and analysts concerned with issues of Arctic policy. Because key elements of these narratives are non-falsifiable, we cannot accumulate and deploy evidence that would demonstrate that one or another of these narratives is superior to the others and ought to be chosen as a guide to thinking about Arctic policy going forward. At this stage, the influence of two or more of the narratives is very much in evidence even in individual diplomatic events or policy-relevant conferences. It is common, for example, to proceed from one session to another within a single conference in which the first session highlights the critical importance of the Arctic in the dynamics of the Earth’s climate system, while the next session drills down on the ins and outs of extracting fossil fuels under Arctic conditions and on ways to address the challenges facing the operations of ships used to transport oil and natural gas from the Arctic to markets located in industrialized societies in Asia, Europe, and North America.³⁰

Nevertheless, some observations emerge from this account of policy narratives that are distinctly relevant to thinking about the fate of the Arctic in the coming decades. There is no prospect of returning to the conditions of the 1990s when the Arctic seemed peripheral to the main arenas of international relations and non-Arctic states did not protest vigorously in response to actions on the part of the Arctic states to assert their primacy regarding matters of circumpolar regional policy and to claim for themselves dominant roles in the design and operation of mechanisms like the Arctic Council.³¹

Both the biophysical and the geopolitical links between the Arctic and the overarching Earth system are destined to become tighter and stronger during the foreseeable future. While there are lively debates about such matters as the potential impacts of specific developments (e.g. the release of methane and carbon dioxide from melting permafrost) on the climate system, there is no doubt about the importance of what happens in the Arctic for the future of the Earth’s climate system. Similarly, the reemergence of great-power politics in the Arctic, this time including China as a major player, is a reality today rather than a future prospect. It is alarmist to expect this will lead to armed clashes in the Arctic. The exercise of influence in this arena is much more likely to feature economic initiatives or even scientific competition than the use of military force. But the inclusion of the Arctic in global strategies, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, will make irrelevant any idea of dealing with the Arctic as a self-contained region to be set aside from the impact of global forces.

Several newly emerging developments reinforce these observations. De-globalization, attributable to non-Arctic forces like the sharp rise in the level of Sino-American friction, will affect the course of Arctic affairs by reducing the attractions of Arctic shipping routes and calling into question visions of largescale infrastructure projects in the Arctic. Even more dramatic are the current and prospective impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which knowledgeable observers are now treating as the most disruptive global event since the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. Quite apart from the dangers associated with the pandemic in terms of public health in the Arctic, there is growing evidence to suggest that the crisis will lead to profound changes in the global economic system. The Arctic’s natural resources, always expensive to produce and deliver, may seem significantly less competitive in the global markets of the future than they have been in recent years.

Still, this does not mean that there are not and will not continue to be a range of policy issues that are Arctic-specific and that can and should be addressed by the Arctic states either individually or in cooperation with one another. The impacts of climate change on Arctic communities in the form of coastal erosion and melting permafrost, for example, are generating urgent needs for adaptation that cannot be relegated to the domain of challenges to be addressed at some future time. The need to respond vigorously to issues of public health affecting the Arctic’s human residents, including the extraordinary incidence of substance abuse and suicide in some communities, is undeniable. Rapid increases in the incidence of massive fires and extreme flooding in the far North are posing enormous challenges not only to social systems but also to ecosystems. The consequences of habitat loss or disruption for Arctic species, such as polar bears, walrus and caribou, are worrisome, to put it mildly. In short, there is no shortage of pressing concerns that will require responses first and foremost on the part of the Arctic states and their Arctic communities.

Some of these issues lend themselves to action on the part of individual states or even individual communities. Relocating a community overwhelmed by coastal erosion, for instance, is to a large extent a local affair, despite the thorny problem of finding ways to finance such moves. But other issues will call for concerted responses, and there is considerable room for sharing experience and expertise even in those cases where individual responses are required. To take a prominent example, while the details of concerns relating to public health differ from country to country and sometimes even from community to community within the same country, there is much to be said for pooling knowledge and sharing evidence regarding the effectiveness of specific response strategies even in such cases. The implications of these observations for the appeal of the Arctic zone of peace narrative and for the continuing need for cooperative mechanisms like the Arctic Council are worthy of consideration.

The Council is not in a position to take actions to control the drivers of climate change, to make authoritative decisions about the trajectory of large-scale natural resource extraction in the Arctic, or to exercise significant influence on the trajectory of great-power politics in the Arctic. Any effort to do so would risk a debilitating demonstration of weakness and a loss of credibility regarding the capacity of the council to operate effectively in other areas. Nevertheless, the Arctic Council, with its Working Groups taking responsibility for major initiatives, may well be the right body to address the sorts of issues identified in the preceding paragraph. This suggests that it is time for a reset regarding Arctic governance, directing the efforts of the Arctic Council toward issues that it is in a position to tackle effectively and turning to other bodies to address issues in which coming to terms with the linkages between the Arctic and the global system constitutes a critical feature of any effort to make progress.³²

This may seem disappointing to some, especially to believers in the idea that the Arctic can be set aside as a zone of peace and that mechanisms like the Arctic Council may even be able to play a role in fostering cooperative activities designed to defuse conflicts occurring in other regions. But the best advice at this juncture may be to think about disaggregating the Arctic agenda, steering individual issues toward those policy arenas most likely to have the capacity to address them effectively. The alternative is to risk an outcome in which the very real achievements of the last 30 years dissolve into a free-for-all in which there is little hope of arriving at constructive results regarding any Arctic issues. Interestingly, developments along these lines may lead to a situation featuring the deployment of distinctive policy narratives in different settings, with the Arctic zone of peace narrative providing a framework for efforts to address a range of Arctic-specific issues in settings like the Arctic Council and one or more of the other narratives offering ways to organize thinking about links between the Arctic and the overarching global order.