HCSS Centre for Strategic Studies

Future Issue - The Arctic

(10/23/09)

In the past, the vast, mostly frozen ocean that forms the Northern-most region of the globe elicited little, if any attention among policymakers or the general public. However, this has changed dramatically over the past few years. The Arctic has suddenly become subject to a plethora of policy memoranda, newspaper editorials, international declarations, industry conferences, planning studies, military expeditions, and advocacy reports. Beyond any doubt, the ‘new Arctic’ is en vogue.

This HCSS Future Issue examines the prospects and pitfalls of this ‘Arctic Promise’ and explores the likely security implications of the complex and precipitous developments in this region.

Through a thorough survey of the foresight community, this Future Issue has identified diverging views on four key issues in a melting Arctic, (Arctic resource extraction, trans-Arctic shipping, Arctic governance and conflict, the Arctic environment), and has sought to analyse the complex underlying drivers that determine their future. The findings show a rapidly evolving debate that judges rapid Arctic shrinkage ever more likely, but simultaneously grows more sceptic about the prospects of trans-Arctic shipping and large scale exploitation of Arctic offshore hydrocarbon deposits, at least in the short and medium term. Serious Arctic conflicts between littoral states are also deemed increasingly unlikely among experts.

However, as long as deep uncertainty surrounds the future trajectory of the Arctic region, prudent policy-makers are going to closely monitor a region of potentially great geostrategic value.