Transcript Shipping in the Arctic

Regulating Arctic Shipping
Past, present and future role
of the Arctic Council
Outline
• How Arctic-wide inter-governmental co-
operation has evolved?
• What kind of shipping-related work has
been done in the WG’s
• Recent challenges to the work of the AC
partly because of shipping (CC and EG)
• Conclusions
1. Arctic co-operation in brief
• 1991 AEPS
– Priority environmental problems
– Institutional structure
– Four environmental protection and
assessment WG’s (CAFF, PAME, EPPR, AMAP)
– Participants
– 1991-1997
Continued
• Arctic Council
– Common issues
– Participants and decision-making (unique
position to IP’s)
– New institutional structure (semi-permanent
secretariat in Troms)
– Two new WG’s
– Ambitious assessments
– 1996-
What has, in the end, changed?
• AEPS
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Mandate
Participants and DM
Institutional setting
Commitment (legal
status, funding)
– Deliverables
– Normative deliverables
• Arctic Council
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Mandate
Participants and DM
Institutional setting
Commitment (legal
status, funding)
– Deliverables
– Normative deliverables
Mid-term conclusion
• From the beginning, the Arctic-wide co•
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operation has remained much the same –
resilience to change
Performs most effectively via co-ordinating
assessments (spotlighting), with connected
policy recommendations
Indigenous perspective
Other normative work non-binding, technical
and hard to evaluate how effective
2. WG’s - 1. phase
• AEPS – priority pollution problems
• Climate change was seen as a secondary issue
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to be taken care of in global forum
WG’s commenced their work 1992-1993, and
thus tried to prioritise action
1996 PAME report – shipping part
Current and future shipping trends should be
evaluated, but because of economic
developments (NSR), not climate change
WG’s - 2. phase
• Climate change work starts even if AMAP
was hesitant during Clinton administration
• Turns out to change the whole work in all
WG’s since it was only with the ACIA work
that Arctic was established as the earlywarning system of climate change
• And a region which is transforming
radically and on ongoing basis
Continued
• This had already from 2000 influence on
the work of all WG’s and explicitly so after
the release of ACIA, which provided as
one of its key findings that:
• ”Reduced sea ice is very likely to increase
marine transport and access to resources”
Continued
• Hence, this had the effect of having all
seen shipping future in fairly different
terms – as compared to the 1. stage
• Connected with hydrocarbon
development, it meant lot of new shipping
• With the melting sea ice, it meant a totally
new planning horizon for navigational
routes
WG’s 3. phase
• So, after ACIA process 1998-2004, shipping
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issues back in the agenda
a new set of connected assessments were
commenced, among these AMSA (oil and gas),
which was part of AMSP 2004
Suddenly, shipping became one of the hot issues
in the Arctic Council, starting with the
assessment
AMSA a very prominent, inclusive process
Shipping deliverables within these
3. stages
• Direct: 2004 Arctic Waters Oil Transfer Guidelines
• 3-stage ”assessment of existing measures for port reception
facilities for ship-generated waste and cargo residues” – overlapp
with IMO work
• Indirect: All the ecosystem-based governance work under AMSP,
CPAN potential?
• Much of EPPR work: Environmental Risk Analysis of Arctic Activities
(1998) Field Guide for Oil Spill Response in Arctic Waters (1998);
Circumpolar Map of Resources at Risk from Oil Spills in the Arctic
(2002); Shoreline Clean-up Assessment Technique (SCAT) Manual
(2004); Arctic Guide (updated annually; information on emergency
systems and contact points, overview of environmental risks, and
applicable agreements);
Mid-term conclusion
• The most influential work clearly been done in
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the AMSA, in the assessment field, with policy
recommendations
Some influence on limited issues with the
technical guidance but no evaluation as to
whether these have made any real-life
management impacts
So, very much in line with the 1- mid-term
conclusions
3. Future work
• Could AMSA induce any of the processes VanderZwaag
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identifies as possibilities in AMSA paper
IMO designation for Arctic sea areas?
IMO revision of the Polar Code?
IMO’s Standards of Training, Certification and
Watchkeeping (polar training?)?
Arctic MOU on port state control enforcement efforts?
Ballast water exchange recommendations, such as in the
Antarctic?
Shows how AMSA triggers new ambitious governance
questions
4. New dynamics resulting from
changing Arctic
• Many states and political entities re-drawing
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their Arctic policies in strong part because of
securing hydrocarbons from the region + future
navigational routes
This shows in:
Coastal state co-operation – perhaps even
challenging the AC and causing
Internal pressures in the Arctic Council
Even more inclusive multilateral initiatives
Coastal state co-operation –
Ilulissat declaration May 2008
• Remain committed to law of the sea + no Arctic-specific
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treaty
“we intend to work together including through the [IMO]
to … develop new measures to improve the safety of
maritime navigation and prevent or reduce the risk of
ship-based pollution in the Arctic Ocean”.
They are concerned of risk of accidents and “therefore
the need to further strengthen search and rescue
capabilities”
“We will work to promote safety of life at sea in the
Arctic Ocean, including through bilateral and multilateral
arrangements between or among relevant states”.
Conclusion on Coastal state cooperation
• What is interesting is that these 5 seem to
be identifying agenda for future cooperation
• Uncertainty (SAO briefing)
• Friction (SAO briefing + shadow Council)
• And shipping seems to be one of the main
agenda items
New states and entities wanting to
have a (better) say in the AC
• Non-Arctic states observers to the Council
wanting better status
• New applications to observership (EU
South Korea, even Japan?)
• This shows that more and more states and
EU want to have their say in the AC – and
one reason is the shipping agenda
More radical proposals
• Commission work – “[d]evelop an EU Arctic
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policy based on the evolving geo-strategy of the
Arctic region, taking into account i.a. access to
resources and the opening of new trade routes”
- Solana has publicly taken up a multilateral
treaty
Arctic Communication (9.9.2008 Joe Borg in
Ilulissat Greenland, Nordic Council of Ministers
meeting).
Continued
• EU Parliament (European Parliament
resolution of 9 October 2008 on Arctic
governance) – urges the Commission to
pursue ATS type of solution or at a
minimum core Arctic Ocean
• These have been shot down by the
current Arctic Council chair Norway (+ 5)
5. Overall conclusion
• Arctic Council has only recently energised its
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work on shipping
Important assessment work, otherwise marginal
Probably the recommendations from AMSA
influence AC shipping agenda + the agendas of
others
It remains to be seen where the incipient coastal
state co-operation will challenge the AC or
whether there are pressures to even some
broader treaty arrangement – all of this have
bearing on regulation of shipping in the Arctic