Transatlantic Policy Options to Address the Rapidly Changing Arctic
Impacts from rapidly occurring climate change in the Arctic region are creating shifts in economic priorities, especially in the energy, transport, fisheries and tourism sectors. Economic expansion combined with escalating environmental stress poses uniqu
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Transatlantic Policy Options to Address the Rapidly Changing Arctic Sandra Cavalieri and R. Andreas Kraemer
Abstract Impacts from rapidly occurring climate change in the Arctic region are creating shifts in economic priorities, especially in the energy, transport, fisheries and tourism sectors. Economic expansion combined with escalating environmental stress poses unique management challenges for these vulnerable socio-economic and ecological systems. This shifting economic landscape brings new challenges that threaten fragile Arctic ecosystems and the survival of indigenous communities and their way of life. Results from a multi-stakeholder transatlantic dialogue conducted through the Transatlantic Policy Options for Supporting Adaptations in the Marine Arctic (Arctic TRANSFORM) project in 2008–2009 reveal both sectoral and cross-sectoral regulatory gaps and present a set of policy options. Progress to ensure environmental security in the Arctic depends on the development of resilient, adaptable, and coherent governance regimes capable of protecting terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. However, the current governance framework is more a patchwork of legal instruments, ranging from soft-law arrangements to bilateral and multilateral agreements, supra-national, national and sub-national arrangements. In addition, most of these instruments and related institutions focus on global issues, rather than specifically targeting the Arctic. Thus, there is need for coordination in an integrated governance and regulatory system both among Arctic states and at the international level to manage the Arctic region.
S. Cavalieri (*) • R.A. Kraemer Ecologic Institute, Pfalzburger Straße 43/44, 10717 Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 281 P.A. Berkman and A.N. Vylegzhanin (eds.), Environmental Security in the Arctic Ocean, NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4713-5_25, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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S. Cavalieri and R.A. Kraemer
Introduction
Arctic sea ice is melting faster [22] than the worst case scenario presented in the global climate assessment published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [18]. In September 2007, summer Arctic sea ice retreated to the smallest extent since satellite records began in 1979. In December 2010, winter sea ice extent was the lowest on record for all previous December months, with a linear rate of decline of −3.5 % per decade [20]. Thawing permafrost is more difficult to observe, but there is a general increase in permafrost temperatures in Alaska, Siberia and Northern Europe, with significant warming in Arctic coastal areas during the past 5 years (Romanovsky 2010). The consequences of rapid change in Arctic marine and terrestrial systems for global biogeochemical cycles are uncertain. Loss of sea ice may expand economic opportunities in the energy, transport, fisheries and tourism sectors. Increased economic activity coupled with escalating impacts of climate change,
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