6. The Arctic Council is Established: 1996
6.2 Regime governance
non-Arctic Observer states: Germany, Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore and China (AC, 1996, AC, 2013a). Nine intergovernmental organizations6 and eleven non-governmental organizations7 also maintain observer status. The membership of the Arctic Council is summarized below:
Fig 1. Arctic Council Membership
Member States Permanent Participants Observer States (year joined)
Canada
The observers vary in their participation rates. Some observer states are not very active (the European states) and maintain observership in name only, while some observer states are increasingly active in meetings as well as projects (China).
6.2 Regime governance
The Arctic Council was intentionally created as an organization without a legal personality, thus it is not an “international organization” as defined by international law (Bloom, 1999).8 Its lack of legal personality has an important impact on how states interact with it. Because the Council operates on the consensus rule, similar to ASEAN,
6 International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic Environmental Finance Corporation, North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission, Standing Committee of the Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, United Nations Development Program, and United Nations
Environment Program. Source: AC, 2015b.
7 Advisory Committee on Protection of the Seas, Arctic Institute of North America, Association of World Reindeer Herders, Circumpolar Conservation Union, International Arctic Science Committee, International Arctic Social Sciences Association, International Union for Circumpolar Health, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Northern Forum, University of the Arctic, and World Wide Fund for Nature-Global Arctic Program. Source: AC, 2015b.
8 The establishment of the Arctic Council as a “high-level forum” without legal personality was an important consideration of the United States (Bloom, 1999). This insistence for an informal forum is consistent with trends in American diplomatic practice to prefer regimes that do not legally restrict the United States from taking any future military actions.
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support. Funding for Arctic Council programs comes voluntarily by individual Arctic States. Members, permanent participants, or observers propose projects or identify working groups that they wish to support and offer funding for those projects. The Ottawa Declaration does not specify that states must give to particular programs. The Council was intentionally set-up in such a way that would not infringe on the sovereignty, or damage the national interest, of any of its members. This arrangement has had benefits as well as drawbacks. States are not coerced to spending money on projects that they do not wish to support, but the lack of mandatory minimum funding has long plagued the Arctic Council working groups that require stable funding to complete long-term research projects.The agenda of the Council is decided by the Council Chair, listed in Figure 2, which is rotated between member states every two years. The Council Chair has general influence over the priorities of the Council. For example, during Russia’s tenure as Council Chair (2005-2006), the Council prioritized work on a search and rescue agreement, one of Russia’s priorities. Meanwhile, during Canada’s second tenure (2013-2015), economic development of the region was prioritized, and the Council worked to establish an Arctic Economic Council.
The Arctic Council’s activities are governed by: ministerial meetings, Senior Arctic Officials, working groups and task forces, and the secretariat.
Ministerial meetings
The highest-level meetings take place once every two years when the foreign ministers of the Arctic States meet. In the early years of the Council a senior minster from each state would attend, but as the Council’s work has taken on increased importance the foreign ministers of each state began to attend the ministerial meetings. The US Secretary of State began attending the biannual meetings in 2011 when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Greenland for the 7th Ministerial Meeting in order to sign the Search and
Fig. 2 Council Chair
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Rescue Agreement. The 2011 ministerial meeting was an important one for the Council as it was then that the members signed their first legally binding agreement. Decisions at the ministerial level are made by consensus by all eight member-states. The Council Ministers, at the biannual ministerial meeting, must approve new proposals before action can be taken. To lessen the gap in communication, the Council has also added a deputy ministerial meeting, where the deputy ministers of each state meet. When the biannual ministerial meetings are not in session the day-to-day work is carried out by Senior Arctic Officials.
Senior Arctic Officials
Senior Arctic Officials (SAOs) are each member state’s highest level Arctic official. The SAOs work in consultation with representatives from the six permanent participants and observers. The SAOs meet at least twice per year and may choose to meet more frequently. The SAOs oversee the work done by the Council’s subsidiary bodies.
Member SAOs may work on a new proposal in the time between ministerial meetings, but they have no authority to implement proposals without the approval of the Council Ministers. The United States firmly supported this design as to reinforce the idea that the Council was primarily a forum for exchanging views and to make sure that the Council remains a “high-level” forum between states (Bloom, 1999).
Working groups and task forces
The day-to-day work of the Council is done in its working groups and temporary task forces. The working groups are where the actual scientific work of the Council is carried out. Through their research activities and due to their ability to project ideas and ability to influence the workings of the Council, the working groups have taken on an increased importance (Dodds, 2013). The working groups are comprised entirely of scientists.
Scientists from all different countries, even non-Arctic countries, work collaboratively on Arctic scientific research in these groups. The current working groups are:
• Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP): responsible for assessing the levels of pollutants in the Arctic, gives advice to SAOs on priority actions for the Council, generally regarded as the most important working group;
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• Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME): conducts research on environmental protection of the Arctic;
• Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF): conducts research on the conservation of Arctic biodiversity;
• Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR): addresses prevention, preparedness and response to environmental emergencies in the Arctic, especially oil and gas spills;
• Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG): proposes and encourages Arctic states to adopt sustainable development programs in the Arctic; and
• Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP): conducts research into the sources of Arctic pollution.
The working groups are important as they carry out the scientific work that the Council’s decisions depend on. The knowledge that the scientific community now has about the high levels of toxins in the Arctic atmosphere, the rising rate of melting sea ice and the impacts these changes have globally all come from these working groups. The Polar Code, negotiated in the IMO, depended on the risk reports of Arctic shipping that was carried out by PAME (AC, 2015a).
In addition to the work groups listed above, the Council has set up specific task forces to carry out specific research for a limited amount of time. Task forces are comprised of experts from work groups and representatives from each country. A task force may end when they reach the desired results or they may be transformed into permanent working groups. The Task Force on Search and Rescue was set up in 2009 and was given two years to complete its research on setting up an international search and rescue agreement.
The task force was ended successfully with the signing of the 2011 Search and Rescue Agreement. Given that the Arctic Council is a regime without legal personality, task forces have been particularly important during the negotiation phase of legally binding agreements; before Council members sign a legally binding agreement a two-year task force is created to allow member states to negotiate and formulate an agreement that is satisfactory to all members.
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Secretariat
When the Council was established in 1996, there was no support among the members for a permanent secretariat (Sellheim, 2012). As the Council was only a high-level forum there was no need to spend financial resources to support a permanent secretariat.
Therefore, all secretarial support was the responsibility of the Council Chair state. As the work of the Council has become greater in scope, the need for a permanent secretariat has grown. In 2006 the Council got a semi-permanent secretariat when Norway, Denmark and Sweden agreed to share the cost of a secretariat in Tromso, Norway during their continuous chairmanships from 2006 to 2012. The 2011 Nuuk Declaration included a call to set up a task force to prepare arrangements for a secretariat (AC, 2011a). In 2013, after the task force had completed its two-year research the Tromso secretariat became permanent. The establishment of a permanent secretariat furthered the institutionalization of the Council, moving it further towards an international organization.