The Arctic is opening. Global warming is leading to seasonal sea-ice retreat, which in turn opens hitherto impassable shipping routes and new areas for resource exploitation. Such changes are elevating the Arctic�s geostrategic value and stoking inter-state competition. The admission of five Asian states as Arctic Council observers in 2013 underlines the increased importance of the High North in global politics. And as the sea ice retreats, so military forces are redeployed northwards, raising the prospect of conflict. Christian Le Mi� and Jeffrey Mazo bring much-needed sobriety to the discussion of change in the Arctic, outlining the possibilities of and limits to economic opportunities in the High North while providing a detailed examination of the political and military changes this might bring. Their analysis provides an invaluable guide as the region transforms from a parochial concern to a global interest. .
The North American Arctic addresses the emergence of a new security relationship within the North American North. It focuses on current and emerging security issues that confront the North American Arctic and that shape relationships between and with neighbouring states (Alaska in the US; Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada; Greenland and Russia). Identifying the degree to which ‘domain awareness’ has redefined the traditional military focus, while a new human rights discourse undercuts traditional ways of managing sovereignty and territory, the volume’s contributors question normative security arrangements. Although security itself is not an obsolete concept, our understanding of what constitutes real human-centred security has become outdated. The contributors argue that there are new regionally specific threats originating from a wide range of events and possibilities, and very different subjectivities that can be brought to understand the shape of Arctic security and security relationships in the twenty-first century.
The Arctic, long described as the world’s last frontier, is quickly becoming our first frontier—the front line in a world of more diffuse power, sharper geopolitical competition, and deepening interdependencies between people and nature. A space of often-bitter cold, the Arctic is the fastest-warming place on earth. It is humanity’s canary in the coal mine—an early warning sign of the world’s climate crisis. The Arctic “regime” has pioneered many innovative means of governance among often-contentious state and non-state actors. Instead of being the “last white dot on the map,” the Arctic is where the contours of our rapidly evolving world may first be glimpsed. In this book, scholars and practitioners—from Anchorage to Moscow, from Nuuk to Hong Kong—explore the huge political, legal, social, economic, geostrategic and environmental challenges confronting the Arctic regime, and what this means for the future of world order.
Visitors to the Arctic enter places that have been traditionally imagined as otherworldly. This strangeness fascinated audiences in nineteenth-century Britain when the idea of the heroic explorer voyaging through unmapped zones reached its zenith. The Spectral Arctic re-thinks our understanding of Arctic exploration by paying attention to the importance of dreams and ghosts in the quest for the Northwest Passage. The narratives of Arctic exploration that we are all familiar with today are just the tip of the iceberg: they disguise a great mass of mysterious and dimly lit stories beneath the surface. In contrast to oft-told tales of heroism and disaster, this book reveals the hidden stories of dreaming and haunted explorers, of frozen mummies, of rescue balloons, visits to Inuit shamans, and of the entranced female clairvoyants who travelled to the Arctic in search of John Franklin’s lost expedition. Through new readings of archival documents, exploration narratives, and fictional texts, these spectral stories reflect the complex ways that men and women actually thought about the far North in the past. This revisionist historical account allows us to make sense of current cultural and political concerns in the Canadian Arctic about the location of Franklin’s ships.
This report calls for a halt on Arctic oil drilling until: a pan-Arctic oil spill response standard is in place; a stricter financial liability regime for oil and gas operations is introduced that requires companies to prove that they can meet the costs of cleaning up; an oil and gas industry group is set up to peer-review companies' spill response plans and operating practices, reporting publicly; further independent research and testing on oil spill response techniques in Arctic conditions is conducted, including an assessment of their environmental side-effects; an internationally recognised environmental sanctuary is established in at least part of the Arctic. Drilling is only currently feasible in the Arctic during a short summer window and if a blow-out occurred just before the dark Arctic winter returned it may not be possible to cap it until the following summer - potentially leaving oil spewing out under the ice for six months or more with devastating consequences for wildlife. This report also warns that a collapse in summer Arctic sea-ice, increased methane emissions from thawing permafrost, melting of the Greenland ice-sheet and changes to the thermo-haline circulation could all have disastrous consequences for the world - pushing up sea levels and transforming weather patterns. Temperature rises in the Arctic are already affecting the UK's weather. The report points out that there are already more proven fossil fuel reserves in the world than can be burnt safely and calls on the Government to rethink its approach to combating climate change by tackling the supply of fossil fuels, as well as demand
Once ice-bound, difficult to access, and largely ignored by the rest of the world, the Arctic is now front and center in the midst of many important questions facing the world today. Our daily weather, what we eat, and coastal flooding are all interconnected with the future of the Arctic. The year 2012 was an astounding year for Arctic change. The summer sea ice volume smashed previous records, losing approximately 75 percent of its value since 1980 and half of its areal coverage. Multiple records were also broken when 97 percent of Greenland's surface experienced melt conditions in 2012, the largest melt extent in the satellite era. Receding ice caps in Arctic Canada are now exposing land surfaces that have been continuously ice covered for more than 40,000 years. What happens in the Arctic has far-reaching implications around the world. Loss of snow and ice exacerbates climate change and is the largest contributor to expected global sea level rise during the next century. Ten percent of the world's fish catches comes from Arctic and sub-Arctic waters. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that up to 13 percent of the world's remaining oil reserves are in the Arctic. The geologic history of the Arctic may hold vital clues about massive volcanic eruptions and the consequent release of massive amount of coal fly ash that is thought to have caused mass extinctions in the distant past. How will these changes affect the rest of Earth? What research should we invest in to best understand this previously hidden land, manage impacts of change on Arctic communities, and cooperate with researchers from other nations? The Arctic in the Anthropocene reviews research questions previously identified by Arctic researchers, and then highlights the new questions that have emerged in the wake of and expectation of further rapid Arctic change, as well as new capabilities to address them. This report is meant to guide future directions in U.S. Arctic research so that research is targeted on critical scientific and societal questions and conducted as effectively as possible. The Arctic in the Anthropocene identifies both a disciplinary and a cross-cutting research strategy for the next 10 to 20 years, and evaluates infrastructure needs and collaboration opportunities. The climate, biology, and society in the Arctic are changing in rapid, complex, and interactive ways. Understanding the Arctic system has never been more critical; thus, Arctic research has never been more important. This report will be a resource for institutions, funders, policy makers, and students. Written in an engaging style, The Arctic in the Anthropocene paints a picture of one of the last unknown places on this planet, and communicates the excitement and importance of the discoveries and challenges that lie ahead.
"Documents the tumultuous climate of the American West over twenty thousand years, with tales of past droughts and deluges and predictions about the impacts of future climate change on water resources."--Back cover.
This open access book is a result of the Dalhousie-led research project Safe Navigation and Environment Protection, supported by a grant from the Ocean Frontier Institute’s the Canada First Research Excellent Fund (CFREF). The book focuses on Arctic shipping and investigates how ocean change and anthropogenic impacts affect our understanding of risk, policy, management and regulation for safe navigation, environment protection, conflict management between ocean uses, and protection of Indigenous peoples’ interests. A rapidly changing Arctic as a result of climate change and ice loss is rendering the North more accessible, providing new opportunities while producing impacts on the Arctic. The book explores ideas for enhanced governance of Arctic shipping through risk-based planning, marine spatial planning and scaling up shipping standards for safety, environment protection and public health.
From soft politics, soft power and soft spaces to fluid territories, software and soft programming, Bracket 2 unpacks the use and role of responsive, indeterminate, flexible, and immaterial systems in design. In an era of declared crises--economic, ecological and climatic, among others--the notion of soft systems has gained increasing traction as a counterpoint to permanent, static and hard systems. Acknowledging fluid and indeterminate situations with complex feedback loops that allow for reaction and adaption, the possibility of soft systems has reentered the domain of design. The examples displayed in "Bracket goes soft" are offered as nothing more than a short catalog of soft systems--some explicitly architectural, others geological, others entirely metaphorical. In all cases, these examples explore how the notion of going soft can be iterated across professions, disciplines, and fields of research. The book is divided into the themes "sensing/feedback"; "interfacing/ enveloping"; "subverting/hijacking"; "formatting/ distributing"; "contingency/ resilience"; "diffusing/generating". Bracket is a book series structured around an open call that highlights emerging critical issues at the juncture of architecture, environment, and digital culture. The editorial board and jury for Bracket 2 includes Benjamin Bratton, Julia Czerniak, Jeffrey Inaba, Geoff Manaugh, Philippe Rahm, Charles Renfro, as well as co-editors Neeraj Bhatia and Lola Sheppard. Bracket is a collaboration between InfraNet Lab and Archinect.
Conversations defining the Arctic region often provoke debate and controversy -- for scientists, this lies in the imprecise and imaginary line known as the Arctic Circle; for countries like Canada, Russia, the United States, and Denmark, such discussions are based in competition for land and resources; for indigenous communities, those discussions are also rooted in issues of rights. These shifting lines are only made murkier by the threat of global climate change. In the Arctic Ocean, the consequences of Earth's warming trend are most immediately observable in the multi-year and perennial ice that has begun to melt, which threatens ice-dependent microorganisms and, eventually, will disrupt all of Arctic life and raise sea levels globally. In The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall offer concise answers to the myriad questions that arise when looking at the circumpolar North. They focus on its peoples, politics, environment, resource development, and conservation to provide critical information about how changes there can, and will, affect our entire globe and all of its inhabitants. Dodds and Nuttall explore how the Arctic's importance has grown over time, the region's role during the Cold War, indigenous communities and their history, and the past and future of the Arctic's governance, among other crucial topics.
