Because the United States has environmental, political and security interests in the Arctic, U.S. policymakers should reconsider the country's stances regarding climate change in the region and participate in international preservation efforts, according to a report released last week by Dartmouth's Dickey Center for International Understanding, the University of the Arctic and the Carnegie Endowment.
U.S. leaders should take advantage of the current economic slowdown and lack of security issues to push environmental policies to preserve the Arctic before climate change does serious damage, Dickey Center director Kenneth Yalowitz said.
"The environment and the management of natural resources are the most pressing security issues in the North," the report concluded. "Large-scale damage to the Arctic from transportation accidents, energy development, fishing and pollutants from the South pose greater immediate threats than classic security issues. Existing emergency response systems and contingency plans are not up to the task."
Potential boundary disputes on Arctic land, which could cause conflict if multiple countries make land claims in the Arctic, are another concern for policymakers, Yalowitz said.
While there are existing institutions that traditionally help to solve boundary disputes, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows nations to lawfully claim ocean land, the United States does not recognize its authority, Yalowitz said.
"In terms of U.S. policy, we need to ratify the Law of the Sea treaty," Yalowitz said. "The report shows that is the single most important international convention dealing with these issues."
Because the United States has not ratified the treaty, it cannot defend land claims far beyond the North American continental shelf, Yalowitz said.
"While other countries' claims will be judged and adjudicated under the Law of the Sea treaty, America will sit on the sidelines," he said.
The report recommended that the United States also make additional policy shifts to address environmental threats in the Arctic and more fully participate in international efforts to combat them.
"Currently we are observers, not players," Yalowitz said. "The U.S. needs to play a leadership role in peaceful adjudication of these areas."
Other recommendations include creating a sub-cabinet commission on climate change to address their effects on the Arctic.
Officials could also support scientific research to identify how to prevent climate change and how any of its effects can be mitigated, he said.
Yalowitz and Ross Virginia, a professor of environmental studies who directs Dartmouth's Institute of Arctic Studies, co-authored the final report with James Collins of the Carnegie Institute, Yalowitz said.
The report was a result of the Arctic Institute of Applied Circumpolar Policy conference of several dozen international Arctic experts held at Dartmouth in December 2008.
The experts included academics, policymakers, shipping and energy experts, indigenous leaders and government officials from Russia, Canada, Great Britain, the United States and Norway, according to Yalowitz.
"The effect of climate change on people in the North is truly a multidisciplinary problem, which is why it's crucial that efforts to combat it include scientists, economists, policymakers and representatives from any affected population," Yalowitz said.
