Climate Change and the Great Power Rivalry in the Arctic.

• Author: Heininen, Lassi
• Position: COMMENTARY

Since the early 21st century, the Modern Project has been replaced by the Global Age, where the present is 'reality in flux,' as globalization, including the globalized Arctic, "offers both economic competition and cosmopolitanism as an alternative to the historical construction of the American hyphenated identity."(1) As a part of that reality, the main message of the 2021 UN Climate Change Report,(2) as an awakening call, reflects the crossing of several 'planetary boundaries' A global ecological catastrophe--pollution, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and related impacts combined--puts the existence of human life in danger. Buzan and Hansen foresaw and warned that global warming and the possibility of a rampant and virulent epidemic are "the two most likely environmental wild cards."(3) Indeed, in addition to an ecological catastrophe, the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic as an invisible enemy causing terror among citizens and threatening our modern societies. The pandemic is far from over, as there are still infections with new waves and mutations, deaths, as well as slowness in distributing vaccinations globally.

Despite this, and that there is scientific evidence and advanced technology to demonstrate environmental degradation, states, in particular, great powers--i.e., their leaders, elites, and governments--(in G7 Summits), on the one hand, concentrate on huge infrastructure investments (e.g., the U.S. Global Infra Plan "Build Back Better World," the EU's investment package for economic recovering, infrastructure and new environmental technology) as a part of the COVID-19 exit strategy. On the other hand, they are involved in great power rivalry, trade wars, bloc building (e.g., NATO enlargement, AUKUS), as well as creating new conflicts and wars (e.g., the Ukrainian war) instead of trying to prevent them.

The world politics of the 2020s seems to consist of two realities: People are concerned about an ecological catastrophe--pollution killing millions annually and climate change threatening societies--in contrast, states and their elites concentrate on other issues as substitutes for environmental protection and climate change mitigation. They both are global by nature and affect the Arctic region, too. When talking about their interrelations and reflections on Arctic security and geopolitics, it is needed holistically to analyze the state of world politics, as the Arctic is globalized, and the globalized Arctic has worldwide implications.(4)

This commentary assumes that, although in world politics there is a new (East-West) great power rivalry and the related conflicts, there are not, yet, striking changes in Arctic security: Neither armed conflict nor war appears, nor changes concerning environmental degradation, like pollution, loss of biodiversity, rapid climate change still affect the region and threaten its peoples. Alas, there are changes in Arctic geopolitics as first-time pan-Arctic cooperation, in particular in the context of the Arctic Council, has been temporarily 'paused' by seven Arctic states, except Russia, which has the Council's chairmanship (in 2021-2023). Also, the traffic on the Northern Sea Route, along the Russian Arctic coast, to transport LNG from the Yamal Peninsula--one of the main economic activities of the Arctic--is mostly between the Russian Arctic and East Asia, less so between Russia and Europe or North America. These changes are becoming the biggest challenges to the high geopolitical stability of and pan-Arctic cooperation in the region.

The focus of this commentary is to discuss climate change (mitigation), representing environmental issues, and state politics in the Arctic, in particular in the context of the two realities of world politics. The commentary does not speculate what future security threats and risks might develop in the region due to the new (East-West) great power rivalry, as they are hypothetical. Behind this is the assumption that climate change has been heavily politicized in world politics, in particular in the Arctic context, and that climate change mitigation is a challenge to state politics and national security, including those of great powers. States are failing in the most important task to secure the everyday life of their citizens, in large part due to the narrow national, unilateral, competitive security policies of the military.(5)

All this indicates, even manifests, that there is an urgent need to go beyond the unified state system and to do globally what earlier was done nationally, based on the idea of 'Functionalism.'(6) The Arctic region, with rich natural resources and geopolitical stability based on constructive cooperation (e.g., Reykjavik Declaration 2021),(7) is one of the best cases to study the divergence of the two realities. The article starts by analyzing how environmental issues came onto the political agenda of states, in particular, that of the Arctic states. Secondly, it discusses huge investment packages and great power rivalry as substitutes for climate change mitigation, revealing the political inability to face new security challenges. Thirdly, the article examines the Arctic from the point of view of functional cooperation in environmental protection and that of science. Finally, it briefly concludes by considering what has possibly gone wrong in state politics related to the environment.

Environment and Climate in the Political Agenda of States

Though climate change (mitigation) has become politicized, the trend is rather recent, as environmental issues used to be among the fields of 'low politics.' In the 1960s, people and civil societies became concerned about the state of the environment--air, land, water, fauna, and flora--due to pollution (radioactivity and distribution of man-made chemical compounds) and environmental awakening' as a peoples' movement started.(8) The first UN Conference on the Human Environment (in 1972 in Stockholm) gathered state representatives for the first time to discuss the environment; interestingly, global warming was not explicitly discussed at the conference.(9) It was followed by several UN reports combining the environment and development with war and peace. On the global agenda, a concern for atmospheric pollution was growing "as scientific evidence mounted on the scope and consequences of acid rain, ... and a trend toward global warming,"(10) which led to negotiations to limit climate change by addressing acid rain such as the Arctic haze. Concerning the Arctic ecosystem, it was "anthropogenic pollutants originating in the heavily industrialized, mid-latitude regions of Eurasia which are transported in the Arctic region,(11) in particular radioactive leakages (from Chornobyl and nuclear submarine accidents in the northern seas) that awoke protests from Arctic Indigenous peoples and other local residents. 'Nuclear safety' became the trigger for an environment awakening' and related movements in the European Arctic...