The Arctic This Week Take Five: A Year In Review

China releases its official Arctic Policy (February 9, 2018)

On January 26, China released its first official Arctic Policy. To some, it’s considered an extension of the 2013 Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious plan to build infrastructure linking China to Europe and Africa via land and sea routes that involves more than 60 countries (The Straitstimes). The new phase focuses on building a Polar Silk Road by developing the Arctic shipping routes, reducing the travel time by almost 20 days compared to the traditional route through the Suez Canal. China wants it all – oil, gas, mineral resources, fishing, and Arctic tourism in cooperation with the Arctic States to boot (while respecting and recognizing the territorial sovereignty, traditions, and cultures of the North, of course) (The Diplomat, The Straitstimes).

Take 1: China’s Northern engagement is a reminder of just how global the Arctic has become. Despite its lack of territorial claims in the Arctic, China is becoming more active in the polar region. Its permanent observer status in the Arctic Council and more recent official Arctic Policy clearly identify China as a “near-Arctic State.” At first, not everyone was on board with China’s polar ambitions, but, with time and investment, China has slowly gained acceptance as a stakeholder. The backside of all those fuzzy feelings? As China advances in the polar region, the more we’re reminded of the United State’s lack of engagement in the region. The US still doesn’t have a real deep water port along Alaska’s Arctic waters. It has little military presence, and insufficient diplomatic engagement.

Democracy Controlled (March 23, 2018)

On March 18, Vladimir Putin secured victory in the Russian presidential election. He won with more than 76% of the votes, and voter turnout was reportedly about 67%, higher than six year ago. Some of the best results were reported in the Far North, in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug region that is rich in oil and gas. In Sabetta, the region’s new industrial hub on the northeastern coast of the Yamal Peninsula, the results showed that Putin received 95.14 % of the votes with a voter turnout as high as 94.89%. Military towns also saw overwhelming results (BBC, The Independent Barents Observer).

Take 2: Presidents Putin’s unsurprising victory makes him the longest serving ruler in Russia since Joseph Stalin. He has created a political system that revolves around him and is geared more towards short-term stability, as a government without him at its core could make things only less secure. In regards to arctic issues, a continuation of the Putin regime means that Arctic exploration and exploitation will continue to expand as Russia seeks to create new sources of income.

Plastic Taking Over (April 27, 2018)

On April 24, Nature Communications Journal published the results of a new Arctic study. From 2014-2015, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research took samples from five different locations in the Arctic Ocean and found up to 12,000 pieces of microplastic particles per liter of ice. The results were three times higher than levels in previous studies. In addition to finding a record amount of plastic, the researchers were able to identify its potential source, tracing some of it all the way to the massive North Pacific Garbage Patch (BBC News, Nature Communications, The Guardian, The Telegraph).

Take 3: When the Arctic sea ice moves and melts, it transports plastic particles around the region. The world’s oceans have seen a large increase in plastic pollution, and its traceable movement from large garbage patches has elevated concerns about the impact on marine life and humans. The implications of these tiny particles still remain unknown, but it is no secret that marine plastic pollution is a huge problem. Every year 8 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the world’s oceans. Plastic does not go away, and it is definitely dangerous to animals. When animals like fish eat plastic, toxic chemicals can be absorbed into their body and passed to humans through the food chain. Scientists disagree on whether microplastic is absorbed into animal tissue or expelled from the body, but the oceans are definitely not a place for any kind of plastic, that is for sure (Cosmos, Plastic Oceans Foundation, The Guardian).

Not a Complete Picture (August 17, 2018)

29 scientists from Lund University in Sweden recently published the results from a review study of Arctic climate change research. The goal was to gain better knowledge of our understanding of climate change across the Arctic. The scientists started with googling “Arctic climate change,” giving them over 66 million results. They then limited their search to scholarly publications alone, resulting in 1.39 millions results. From there they focused on an even more refined field, the scientific articles found on August 18, 2015 in a database called the Web of Science. A total of 1,840 scientific articles were found, representing 6,246 locations and more than 58,000 citations in scientific journals. The researchers then extracted data from the 1,840 studies over a period of eight months. During this time the researchers read every article, identified the research station or site involved, and plotted the findings on maps. Their findings showed that 31 percent of the cited studies were derived from research done within 50 km of two research stations, the Toolik Field Station in Alaska, and the Abisko Scientific Research Station in Sweden (CBC News, ScienceDaily).

Take 4: The recent findings are worrisome. The fact that scientists rely on data largely collected in only a handful of Arctic locations means that much of the Arctic is still left untouched by fieldwork, or fieldwork that is done is not reaching the broader scientific community. This includes large areas along Russia’s Arctic coastline, and much of the northern Arctic Archipelago in Canada. It turns out that scientists in the Arctic have only really been studying a small portion of the full spectrum of climates and environments that exists across the region. This is a problem as sparse sampling can mean inaccurate assumptions. It is for example possible that we have an inaccurate grasp of the quantity of carbon storage in permafrost across the Arctic and the release from thawing ground. It is therefore also quite likely that scientists are underestimating the global impact of warming in the Arctic. Field research needs to be distributed more randomly or regularly, not intensely concentrated in few places like it seems to be now.

IPCC Publishes Special Report on Global Warming (October 8, 2018)

On October 8, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest special report on global warming. The new report examines the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial, and lays out various pathways to stabilize global warming at 1.5 °C. It was written and edited by 91 scientists from 40 countries over a period of more than two years, relying on more than 6,000 scientific studies. The report was commissioned by the UN after the Paris climate agreement in 2015 where countries agreed to keeping temperatures below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C. What the new IPCC report shows is that the terms agreed in the Paris Agreement are no longer sufficient to limit climate change. Without major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, 1.5 °C can be reached by 2040, a rate faster than previously thought. Limiting warming to just 1.5 °C is possible but require a rapid and urgent transformation of society and the world economy. Without such changes temperatures will continue to rise, having catastrophic consequences (IPCC, YLE News).

Take 5: The new report is worrisome, and urgent changes are clearly needed to limit warming to 1.5 °C. Action now can help cut the risk of extreme heat, drought, floods, and poverty. Dying corals, melting sea ice and rising sea levels is a reality, but will be far worse if the temperature increase is 2°C. In the Arctic, the overall goal of the 1.5 °C limit means an increase of between 6-8 degrees in the Arctic region. This will have negative impacts on flora and fauna, and the local communities and indigenous peoples that rely on the Arctic for their livelihoods. At least some of the climate impacts can be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C. For example, the likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C instead of at least once per decade with 2°C.