Arctic Yearbook 2016 looks at Arctic Council in its 20th year

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry—the current chair of the Arctic Council, holds the gavel handed to him by then-Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq, the Canadian environment minister and minister responsible for the Arctic Council, at the end of the April 2015 Arctic Council ministerial gathering in Iqaluit. With that, the chair of the Arctic Council passed to the U.S. until 2017. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

The Arctic Yearbook this year is devoted to the Arctic Council, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2016.

If you want to know more about the past, present and future of the Arctic Council, now in its 20th year, a new 400-plus-page online publication gives you plenty to think about.

The Arctic Yearbook—an international effort—has been published annually since 2012 with the goal of providing critical analysis on Arctic politics, governance and security.

In 2016, the Arctic Yearbook aims to offer “the most substantial evaluation of the Arctic Council ever published.”

“Although it faces many challenges, the Arctic Council can be heralded, after twenty years, as a marvel: the world’s first, and only, post-modern international organization. …It is not perfect; but we would contend that it is the closest thing we have to perfection in international relations,” says the Arctic Yearbook’s introduction, “The Arctic Council: Twenty Years of Policy Shaping,” by Lawson Brigham, Heather Exner-Pirot, Lassi Heininen and Joël Plouffe.

In the next 20 years, these authors would like to see bigger and even better Arctic Council, founded in Ottawa in 1996, to use its “policy shaping, knowledge disseminating and building powers” to grow.

They’d like the Arctic Council to address sustainable development issues through “innovative applications of technology and engineering” and to see more northerners involved.

They would also like to see the Arctic Council figure out how to involve “sub-national governments”—that is, states, provinces, territories or regions— in the work of the Arctic Council, “especially as it seeks a more prominent role in addressing issues of development.”

And they want the Arctic Council to keep the co-operation going with Russia, “even in the face of incongruent foreign policy actions elsewhere in the world.”

That’s a view shared by Canada, which wants to have the Arctic Council help to preserve dialogue with Russia on common issues—despite political tensions between Russia and some of the other Arctic Council members.

These members include Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States, with six organizations representing Arctic Indigenous peoples — the Arctic Athabaskan Council, the Aleut International Association, the Gwich’In Council International, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, the Saami Council and the Russian Association of Indigenous People of the North taking part as Permanent Participants.

Among the other issues explored in the Arctic Yearbook—whether the Arctic Council should be an exclusive or inclusive forum.

To approve the admittance of an observer to the consensus-based Arctic Council, the eight member states of the council must agree. That means every member state holds an effective veto.

States that enjoy full observer status receive automatic invitations to attend most Arctic Council meetings.

But only 12 nations enjoy observer status at the moment.

In 2015, in Iqaluit, the Arctic Council postponed all observer applications until at least 2017, pending a review of observer issues that will likely lead to a report for the U.S. ministerial meeting scheduled for the spring of 2017 in Fairbanks, Alaska.

“The Arctic agreements are so far open to only Council member states. But there are good arguments to include observers and other Arctic stakeholders in joining the agreements. At the same time, a lot can be done to enhance the interaction between member states, indigenous peoples and observers within the Council proceedings,” says an Arctic Yearbook commentary by Hannu Halinen, the Arctic Ambassador of Finland and former Senior Arctic Official in the Arctic Council, which Finland takes over for a two-year period starting in 2017.

While there’s lots to read in the 2016 Arctic Yearbook—and it’s easy to consult online, you have to accept its big-view optic of the Arctic, which is focused on organizations and the political issues that involve the entire region—and not necessarily on Arctic residents on the ground.

The Arctic Yearbook’s timeline, for example, mainly shows international meetings or events with a few other mentions, such as this past summer’s finding of the HMS Terror and the voyage of the cruise of the Crystal Serenity through the Northwest Passage.

One of the best features of the 2016 Arctic Yearbook, produced by the Northern Research Forum and the University of the Arctic Thematic Network and launched last week in Ottawa: It’s free.

And readers may download, distribute, photocopy, cite or excerpt this Arctic Yearbook material provided it is properly and fully credited and not used for commercial purposes.

You can find it here.