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International agreement for Arctic SAR Arctic Council achieves agreement between the eight Arctic nations for international search and rescue roles and responsibilities Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In a move marking notable cooperation between the eight Arctic nations of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and the United States, the Arctic Council has brokered the negotiation of a treaty for international cooperation in Arctic search and rescue arrangements, Julia Gourley, U.S. senior Arctic official, U.S. Department of State, told a meeting of the Institute of the North on Aug. 18. This is the first legally binding agreement among the Arctic nations, Gourley said.
“We thought it was time to do this because there is so much human activity happening, and much more every day, in the Arctic,” Gourley said, commenting that the Arctic is seeing new commercial activity including the passage of cruise ships and oil tankers, in addition to new interest in economic development in the region.
“All of the Arctic nations are (now) legally bound to help each other when needed,” she said.
Under the new treaty each nation has a clearly defined region over which it has prime responsibility for search and rescue operations, with an agreement for mutual support between nations as necessary. Establishing the search and rescue regions, covering a total area of about 3 million square miles, mainly involved aligning boundaries of existing maritime and aeronautical search and rescue regions, with some of the boundaries never having been formally ratified before. It only took about a year to complete the treaty negotiations, Gourley said.
Founded in 1996 The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental forum, founded in 1996 and having a closed membership of the eight Arctic nations. Six groups encompassing the majority of indigenous people living in the Arctic also participate actively in the council.
“It is the only forum in the world that has indigenous representation sitting right next to the governments,” Gourley said.
The council consists of foreign ministers from the member nations, supported by six working groups and with each nation taking a two-year stint in a revolving chairmanship arrangement.
The United State signaled the seriousness with which it views the council by sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the council meeting held in Nuuk, Greenland, in May of this year — Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell accompanied Clinton to the meeting, Gourley said.
One outcome of the May meeting was the creation of a permanent secretariat for the council, to provide more stability within the revolving chairmanship and to enable a legal structure for operations such as the contracting out of work, Gourley said. The council also created criteria for determining which non-Arctic countries should be granted observer status at the council — China, Japan, South Korea and Italy have been operating as observers, and the European Union has asked to become an observer, she said.
Oil spill task force Given anticipated Arctic offshore oil and gas activity, the government ministers attending the May meeting also agreed to initiate a new Arctic oil spill preparedness and response task force. The council has been meeting industry representatives and has been discussing U.S. involvement in this task force — it is not yet clear how exactly the task force will operate, but the U.S. Coast Guard will lead the U.S. delegation, with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and representatives from Alaska all likely to be involved.
The task force will particularly focus on oil spill response, with an emergency prevention, preparedness and response, or EPPR, working group taking the lead on the oil spill prevention aspects of oil spill risks. The EPPR group will make recommendations to the task force after investigating the ways in which the various Arctic nations can find common ground in establishing potential spill prevention measures.
Another working group investigating the protection of the Arctic environment has developed some offshore oil and gas guidelines and is now looking into health, safety and environmental management, and into the use of best operational practices when drilling in the Arctic offshore.
Cryosphere assessment The council has released a new assessment of snow, water, ice and permafrost in the cryosphere, the area of the Earth containing various forms of frozen water. This assessment has raised several unanswered questions, including the impact of freshwater flowing into the Arctic Ocean from melting ice; the speed of melting of the Greenland ice cap; and the potential impacts of cryosphere changes both on Arctic societies and on the global climate system, Gourley said.
A council task force has been investigating the impacts of what are referred to as “short-lived climate forcers,” in particular black carbon, methane and tropospheric ozone, all of which impact the climate but which have short cycle times within the atmosphere. One outcome of this investigation was a recommendation for voluntary reductions in the Arctic of black carbon emissions, mostly in the form of soot from the burning of various materials or from diesel engines, with the idea of established a viable model for worldwide black carbon mitigation.
Biodiversity The council is also involved in an assessment of Arctic biodiversity. Key findings to date are that while some unique wildlife habitats are disappearing and some Arctic species are declining, the majority of species are stable or increasing, with climate change being the main stressor on wildlife, Gourley said. Under a U.S. initiative, a working group is investigating the overall management of Arctic ecosystems. One particular U.S. focus, especially in NOAA, is ocean acidification, she said.
And, with data needed to underpin much research, the council is investigating how to sustain the Arctic observing network, a system of projects for Arctic data collection. A major objective here is the better integration of various observation systems, including improved collaboration between the observation stations located around the Arctic.
Two working groups are investigating Arctic human health issues, including the impact of environmental contaminants on health, and the impacts of health-related issues such as lifestyle and disease transmission. A new area of interest is the question of food security and access to good quality water for the indigenous people of the Arctic, ensuring that traditional foods are safe and available.
Norway, in particular, wants to investigate the whole issue of the changes impacting the Arctic. Sweden is initiating some work on resilience to change. And there is a project in the offing to investigate transportation infrastructures across the Arctic, and how those infrastructures might be improved.
Canada and the United States have started talking about initiatives that they might introduce during the four years that these two countries will next chair the council — Canada from 2013 to 2015, and the U.S. from 2015 to 2017, Gourley said. The U.S. will be looking for advice from Alaska.
“Stay tuned on that,” Gourley said.
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