Posted April 23, 2021
Modern polar scientific expeditions originated with the first International Polar Year in 1882–1883 and have developed further during each of the three subsequent International Polar Years, the most recent in 2007–2008. The idea for the first International Polar Year can be traced back to the 1870s, when the Austro-Hungarian military officer Karl Weyprecht campaigned for ship-borne expeditions to be replaced with a multinational network of land-based Arctic observatories or geophysical stations following the “failure” of an Arctic expedition he had led with another officer.
1 As a result of Weyprecht’s campaign, during the first International Polar Year 11 European nations combined their expeditions to study meteorology and magnetic phenomena in the Arctic.
Posted April 23, 2021
The central question in Arctic regional relations over the last decade has been to what degree developments in the north can be insulated from events and relationships elsewhere. If the goal is to keep the Arctic as a separate, “exceptional” region of cooperation, the Arctic states have managed to do a relatively good job, despite setbacks due to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The most pressing regional challenge, however, is how to deal with Arctic-specific security concerns, which are often excluded from cooperative forums and venues. As great-power politics has emerged on the agenda in recent years, finding ways to raise security concerns and alleviate pressures perhaps even develop codes of conduct has become more urgent.
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On August 27, 2019, the U.S. announced that it had ratified the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Commercial Fishing on the High Seas of the Central Arctic Ocean.REF The object of the agreement is to apply precautionary conservation and management measures to ensure the sustainable use of fish stocks in waters outside the jurisdictions of the signatory nations. Although the agreement has a laudable purpose, it should have taken the form of a treaty, not an executive agreement. The U.S. should remedy the agreement’s defects of substance and process by seeking to replace it with a multilateral treaty covering all major fishing nations.
What happens in the Arctic doesn t stay in the Arctic – EURACTIV com euractiv.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from euractiv.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The ol fishing line that you shoulda been here yesterday may be about to change: Warming Arctic could lead to a lucrative fishery, depending on what policymakers do.
By Daniel Grossman | Thursday, February 25, 2021
Will fishing boats currently having little interest in now-fishless Arctic ‘high-seas’ find valuable fish there as its waters warm? How might the international community anticipate and respond?
Commercial fishing doesn’t bother much with the Arctic Ocean. Ice covers a third of it even in the summer. It’s remote and has few lucrative fish. Horrendous storms and icebergs lurk. But the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. The ocean’s cap of sea ice, just 40 years ago as big as Australia, is shrinking fast.