Arctic Tipping Points

The auditorium here in Tromsö is packed full for the start of Arctic Frontiers. This is the fifth of these conferences and it attracts a lot of international attention. I asked a Norwegian newspaper colleague if it was likely to get a lot of attention in the national press. He says: sadly, no. He thinks there has been so much talk about climate change opening up new shipping routes, access to oil, gas and minerals that people have lost interest now that is actually happening. Overkill? Return to business as usual? Of course that’s just one person’s opinion, but this seems to be a general problem with the climate change topic.. Anyway here in the packed hall with almost a thousand participants registered for the course of this week, we certainly can’t complain about a lack of interest. And I hear a lot of Russian voices. There is a lot of talk of increasing cooperation between Norway and Russia (and they did settle a long-standing dispute about Arctic borders last year).

Jonas Gahr Store is Norway\’s foreign minister. Last night he opened an exhibition on polar explorers. This morning he opened the Arctic Frontiers conference with a speech entitled “State of the Arctic – Challenges ahead”.
It was a good summary of the current situation. He started with a reference to famous polar explorers, the Norwegians Fridtjof Nansen und Roald Amundsen, and the Russian Mikhail Lomonossov, all of whom are being commemorated as part of various anniversary ceremonies this year. He says humanity today faces a challenge in some ways similar, but as a collective challenge. Like the great explorers, we have to seize the moment, he said. He made it quite clear the Arctic climate is changing fast – and faster than anticipated – and quoted figures on temperature and sea ice decline, which make the region today very different from it was in the days of those polar explorers. Amundsen was the first to sail the North-East and the North-West passages, in 196 and 1920. Last year, modern „explorers“ sailed both within a few weeks.
Store says he is „deeply worried. The conference title is Arctic Tipping Points and that is being interpreted in various different ways at this Tromsö meeting. For the scientists, it refers to the climate. More about that in later sessions. It can also be a tipping point in terms of relations between different countries – those with Arctic territory and others, showing an increasing interest in the oil, gas and mineral resources of the Arctic, and, of course, the shipping routes.
If I try to put Store’s remarks into a nutshell: He stresses the need for international cooperation both with regard to the Arctic and reducing emissions. He admits a paradox between his country’s interests in coal, oil and gas, which, in turn, drive further climate change. But he says opting out of all that alone would not solve the problem. He says Norway will keep working for more renewables, capture carbon and storage and international agreements. He’s optimistic there will soon be a practicable „polar code“ for shipping
in the „harsh and environmentally challenging“ waters of the northern Arctic. (The BP-Russian agreement is creating some concern amongst people I’ve talked to here). He also looks forward to a legally binding search and rescue agreement, which he hopes will be signed in May in Greenland.
Of course sustainability is a buzzword here as elsewhere.
And with reference to possible security conflicts in the race to exploit resources,“low tension in the high north“ is the motto given by the Norwegian foreign minister.
Let me stop at that and listen to some more.