“We need to change our view of the Arctic as a frontier.” Part 2

For a discussion of how global warming is transforming Arctic ecosystems, the region’s geopolitical relevance, and the colonial narratives that still inform its perception, see the first part of this interview.

— How did international cooperation in the Arctic take shape? What role does the Arctic Council play, and what is Russia’s status there today?

– The Arctic cooperation started to actively develop in the post-Cold War era, in 1989, amid the optimism of Perestroika. After the Reykjavik summit, Gorbachev outlined a vision of the Arctic as a zone of peace, scientific collaboration, and cooperation between the Soviet Union and Western states. The Council was formally established in 1996. Today it includes eight permanent members — every Arctic state: Russia, the United States, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

It also includes permanent participants representing Indigenous peoples: six organizations in total, including those from Russia. That said, many Indigenous leaders argue that Russian group RAIPON is not representative, a subject they can speak to far better themselves.

In addition, the Council has observer states — Germany, India, China, Switzerland, among others — that are not Arctic nations but maintain scientific or economic interests in the region.

The organization is grounded in multilateralism and supports political, scientific, and economic cooperation. It is far from the only international Arctic body, numerous nongovernmental organizations also play important roles, especially in science diplomacy.

Until recently, Russia held a crucial place in the Arctic Council as its only non-Western permanent member. Even as political tensions increased over the past decade, that conflict largely stayed outside Arctic diplomacy.

The community often invoked the concept of “Arctic exceptionalism”, the idea that strategic disputes elsewhere should not impede cooperation in the far north.

In some ways, the model resembled collaboration aboard the International Space Station.

For many years the Council and other Arctic institutions expanded their work with notable success, despite occasional disputes, for example, over the status of the Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges. But in 2022, the era of optimism Gorbachev helped initiate came abruptly to an end. In March of that year, the Council’s work was effectively put on hold. It still operates in a limited capacity through working groups, but primarily among Western members. Political cooperation with Russia has almost halted.

— What does this suspension mean for climate monitoring and scientific research?

— First, it is crucial to understand that Russia comprises half of the Arctic’s landmass. Excluding it from monitoring systems is not a matter of simply removing one small state from the dataset. Even in the best of times, Russia remained the least studied Arctic region. Some not populated parts of Canada share this problem, but Scandinavia and Alaska, for instance, have long maintained extensive monitoring programs.

In most of Russia’s Arctic territory, only limited research has been conducted, even in favorable periods. And while scientists rely on remote sensing, and even those satellite data are now at risk due to cuts in NASA’s funding, they still require ground-truth measurements.

Removing Russian data and the expertise of Russian scientists already undermines climate models.

A study published last year in Nature modeled eight essential ecosystem variables — temperature, moisture, biomass, among the others — using data from the INTERACT network with and without Russian stations. When Russian sites were excluded, uncertainty in many projections grew so dramatically that it became comparable to the projected impacts of climate change itself. In other words, we risk losing a clear picture of what is happening in the Arctic.

This is a deeply troubling situation. We are talking about essential global infrastructure that provides humanity with data on how the planet is changing. For now, previously gathered pre-2022 data are still being published, and some individual researchers continue to collaborate informally, relying on personal trust in spite of geopolitical tensions. But without proactive action from the scientific community, and ideally from governments, conditions will deteriorate further.

Constraints exist on both sides: Western sanctions restrict cooperation, while within Russia scientists face severe political pressures, chronic underfunding, and major obstacles to acquiring high-quality equipment from abroad.

— How has Russian Arctic policy changed since the invasion and the imposition of sanctions?

— The most visible trend is securitization: increased military presence, the reopening of Soviet-era bases, and heightened secrecy. In some cases, these developments even extend into protected areas, such as UNESCO Natural World Heritage site Wrangel Island.

Economically, the state is compensating industries for sanctions-related losses by easing access to natural resources. This has produced a slow but systemic rollback of environmental protections.

For example, references to high environmental standards have been removed from the updated Russian Arctic Strategy. Numerous NGOs, including those focused on Arctic conservation, have been criminalized.

Russia is also withdrawing from international environmental agreements. It recently exited the Ramsar Convention, which protects wetlands. Cooperation with other Arctic Council states has largely ceased. Russia declined to sign the treaty establishing marine protected areas, a measure supported by many Global South countries. The trend is clear: intensified resource extraction and deeper securitization.

At the same time, the Arctic is now experiencing a second wave of crisis. The first rupture occurred when Western states severed ties with Russia. The second involves the political shift in the United States: with Trump’s return to office, another major Arctic power is abandoning multilateralism, scaling back environmental commitments, and adopting the language of threat. Critical scientific infrastructure, including NASA programs and university research, is facing severe funding cuts.

This is a difficult moment, one that underscores the need to preserve human-to-human networks and international cooperation. We cannot leave global scientific collaboration to governments alone, not during an ecological emergency. Scientists must learn to navigate new constraints and find creative ways to continue working together, even when states withdraw support or actively discourage collaboration.

This will also require solidarity with researchers in vulnerable positions, those losing their jobs due to political pressure, or whose fields are labeled “pseudoscience” and defunded. The scientific community must collectively decide how to protect itself and its essential work for the sake of people everywhere.

— What message or slogan could climate activists apply to the Arctic?

— We must treat the Arctic as a shared commons. It is one of humanity’s most vital assets, and its ecosystems should be jointly conserved and jointly researched. This applies above all to the High Arctic regions without permanent populations and with limited state presence that governments are already attempting to carve up.

That race needs to stop.

States and corporations operating in the Arctic must adhere to meaningful environmental standards, recognize the extreme fragility of Arctic ecosystems, and accept responsibility to both the region’s residents, especially Indigenous communities, and to humanity as a whole.

The Arctic cannot remain a resource frontier.

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