To mark the Arctic Council’s 30th anniversary, we conducted a series of interviews with the people who helped build the Arctic Council, shape its work and carry it through some of its most challenging moments.
In this interview, we sat down with Ambassador David Balton, Senior Fellow with the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative and former Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials during the United States’ Arctic Council Chairmanship from 2015-2017.
David Balton speaks about the Council’s evolution, lessons from the past that can be of inspiration today, and why amid geopolitical tensions, the Arctic Council remains essential.
David Balton: The Arctic Council grew from fairly modest beginnings to rise in importance really significantly. It first came to people's attention through some of the assessments that it produced – the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment come to mind.
During the middle period of the Arctic Council's history, it served as the venue for the negotiation of treaties among the eight Arctic States, including on search and rescue, marine oil pollution, and scientific cooperation. For me, those are some of the big highlights of the Arctic Council's past.
David Balton: That was one of my favorite experiences in my entire career. The lessons I took away had mostly to do with listening. The Arctic is about building long term relationships with people who actually live in the Arctic and care about the Arctic. And they have different opinions about things. In order to forge consensus, it's really important to invest the time – getting to know people and what they care about, what their problems are, and trying to find solutions to those.
David Balton: I have spent my life working in many different international fora, and the Arctic Council is unique in a number of ways.
One of the things that makes it unique is the involvement of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples as Permanent Participants. Their voice is virtually as strong as those of the Arctic States. Although, strictly speaking, only the eight States take decisions, in fact, at least while I was Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials, consensus among the 14 sitting around the table was more or less required.
Beyond that, the Arctic Indigenous Peoples lend a historical memory as well as authenticity and legitimacy to the work of the Council, so that's quite important.
David Balton: The Arctic Council still is important now, despite or perhaps even because of growing tensions in the geopolitical sphere.
Ten years ago, when I was Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials, there were also tensions. Yet at that time, the Arctic States and the Permanent Participants chose to set aside those differences and focus on the common problems that they had in the Arctic and continue to cooperate.
That has changed, the Arctic Council is having difficulties and is no longer meeting in person at the political or technical level. And yet, the Arctic Council is still producing worthwhile products for people of the Arctic. And we need that. We really need the Arctic Council to continue to work. There are no other fora focused on circumpolar issues that have the reach and the history that the Arctic Council does. My hope is that over time, the Arctic Council can return to something closer to normal working operations.
David Balton: The geopolitical tensions we're experiencing today may not subside any time soon. The Arctic Council may have to continue to work under constrained circumstances for some time, but I believe it will survive this period and reestablish its larger role. There was a time not long ago when the Arctic Council was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I would like to see the Council returning to that level of stature sometime soon.
David Balton: It was widely perceived that each of the eight Arctic States individually did not have the capacity to deal with search and rescue incidents adequately. But by pooling our resources, by doing joint training and exercises, by being able to call on one another in the event of a search and rescue incident, we could become more than the sum of our parts. That was the essence of the search and rescue agreement. It was kind of a proof of concept, but all eight Arctic States committed to the negotiation and we got it done within two years. It was hailed as a great success, and followed shortly on by a similar agreement.
It was understood that if a major oil pollution incident took place anywhere in the Arctic, each of the eight Arctic States operating alone would not have adequate capacity to contain it. But by pooling our resources, doing joint training and exercises, being able to call on one another in the event of an actual spill, we could again do better collectively than individually. And hence the second agreement on marine oil pollution, preparedness and response was born.
David Balton: Those agreements had something interesting in common. Here I would add a third agreement, the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation, which came in 2017. They were all co-chaired by the United States and Russia, at a time when the United States and Russia were having difficulties with one another. Yet, it proved to the world that those two governments could come together and do something not only in their mutual interest, but in the interests of all the Peoples of the Arctic.
I'd note that Norway was the third co-chair on the oil pollution agreement, but nevertheless, the fact that the U.S. and Russia could work together then remains a lesson that may even be applicable today. We can find things that we want to do and can do together.