Environment and Natural Resources

Arctic Initiative Co-Director John Holdren and Senior Fellow Fran Ulmer call for increased U.S.-Canadian cooperation on geopolitical challenges around relations with Russia and China as well as the critical problems being imposed by climate change on the North American Arctic.

This paper explores the unique conditions that made the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean possible and examines how success was achieved by the interrelationships of science, policy, legal structures, politics, stakeholder collaboration, and diplomacy.

Joel Clement describes the Leaders Summit on Climate, held on April 23, 2021, as making a strong point that the Biden administration is up to the challenge of combating climate change.

Joel Clement writes that the federal government must allow community voices to drive infrastructure investment  and conservation in the North.

Fran Ulmer advocates for better U.S. federal Arctic coordination at home and abroad by detailing three steps that are a good first start.

Arctic Innovator Abby Conyers writes that Greenland stands to benefit from a shift to online education — and to lead the way for the rest of the region.

From the 1950s, after a brief stint at the fledgling United Nations, Timerbaev was directly supporting Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko on nuclear weapons issues. (He remembered drafting the first Soviet proposal for a fissile material cutoff treaty in 1958.)  Preventing nuclear annihilation became his consuming, life-long passion. He retired from the Foreign Ministry just as the Soviet Union was collapsing, resigning as permanent representative to the international organizations in Vienna, including, of course, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The economic opportunities in the North are leading to greater investment in infrastructure. As part of this growth, internet connections are emerging in previously disconnected communities. This connectivity is not equally distributed nor is it a priority for all governments, but as internet connection becomes more and more central to the modern world, indigenous communities will be presented with increasing opportunities to use it for their benefit.