The Arctic ‘will not be business as usual’

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Feb 17, 2023 View in browser   By Luiza Ch. Savage Welcome back to Global Insider’s Friday feature: The Conversation. Each week a POLITICO journalist will share an interview with a global thinker, politician, power player or personality. This week, Luiza Savage, POLITICO’s executive editor for growth, talks with two Norwegian officials as their country prepares to take over the chair of the Arctic Council from Russia. Follow Luiza on Twitter | Send ideas and insights to lsavage@politico.com Programming note: We’ll be off this Monday for Presidents Day but will be back in your inboxes on Wednesday.   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID.     The Conversation Morten Høglund, Norway’s senior Arctic official. | Bård Gudim/FrPMedia A little-discussed casualty of the war in Ukraine has been the Arctic Council, a 26-year-old body that is supposed to be the main diplomatic forum for Arctic nations to collaborate on shared goals like sustainable development and environmental protection. Russia was in the middle of its turn at the two-year rotating Council chair when Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine prompted the other seven member nations to bring their work to an abrupt halt. On May 11, Norway is slated to take over the chair from Russia — and faces the delicate diplomatic task of coaxing the Council members, who are supposed to operate by consensus, back into some sort of interaction. I sat down with two Norwegian officials, Anniken Krutnes, Norway’s ambassador to the United States, and Morten Høglund, Norway’s senior Arctic official, about the prospects for bringing the Council back to life while the war in Ukraine rages and the polar ice melts. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. What are Norway's plans for the Arctic Council and what will that transition from the Russian chair look like?  Høglund: After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we decided on March 3rd last year among the seven states, all states except Russia, to put all official meetings and activities of the Council on pause. Russia being the chair of the Arctic Council was a very strong reason for that decision. In June of last year, we opened up so that projects that were previously approved and had no Russian participation could continue to function. But there is no body where they can report, or hand over the projects, or get a new mandate and things like that. The Council is absolutely not operating as normal. We have ambitions, when we take over as chair, to open up the work. It will not be business as usual. We cannot have the normal type of political interaction with Russia. Normally, you would have a ministerial meeting with foreign ministers. There was one in Reykjavik two years ago. It was Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken, [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov and others. That’s not going to happen. But we are hopeful that we will be able to find a way to get work going on a lower level, on the expert level, technical level, project level and so on. So how will you be able to get the Americans and the Russians, for example, to sit down together and work on Arctic issues?  Høglund: We are discussing with everybody how to make this happen. We have to find something that everybody is comfortable with. We see a strong interest from everybody to safeguard the Arctic Council and to make sure that it continues to operate. We’re very pleased to see that in the U.S. Arctic strategy that came out last year, the Arctic Council is prominently featured. There are different ways of making this work. I don’t want to go into details on this, because it’s a work in progress. But we are hopeful that we will find a way that we can at least get important work done relating to climate and biodiversity. We know that climate change in the Arctic is on average four times the speed of other places. We cannot wait for the political climate to be perfect and wait for Russia to be a different country. We need to find a mechanism to make this work. What is the most urgent project that's been on hold?  Høglund: I think that depends on who you ask. When we paused activities, there were 130 projects on the list, from large scientific undertakings to smaller projects. Some of what we see as key projects that are now missing in action is the monitoring of permafrost and everything related to that. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, right, confers with Bergdís Ellertsdóttir, left, Iceland's ambassador to the United States, and Anniken R. Krutnes, middle, Norway's ambassador to the U.S. | Mark Thiessen/AP Photo What are you observing about Russia's activities in the Arctic right now? Are their oil and gas activities accelerating as the ice melts? Krutnes: The Arctic is extremely important for Russia, and that is where they have their economic resources, such as oil and gas. And we have seen that they have developed these resources lately, especially in the Yamal Peninsula, where they have huge gas installations. We see a lot of traffic in the Northern Sea route going from the Yamal [peninsula] to Asia with gas. Of course, Russia has economic challenges and they are under a sanctions regime that makes it difficult for them — hopefully impossible — to get access to the newest technologies. What they get is financial investment from China. China has an interest in getting these energy resources. Russia needs the money. How do you think about Russia’s military activities up there? Krutnes: The military buildup in the Arctic is, of course, an issue of concern. And we’ve seen them building up over the last decade, at least. We are very close to their main submarine base. It’s just a few miles across from the Norwegian border, at the Kola peninsula. That's where they have their nuclear submarines. I’m more worried about the nuclear subs than their icebreakers. Have you seen a downgrade in Russia’s military capabilities in the Arctic since the Ukraine invasion? Krutnes: The Norwegian Intelligence Service had a yearly press conference on the threat assessment to Norway. And it said that, yes, when it comes to land forces just across the border from Norway, that they are less. They are much less. They have moved east. For years there have been efforts to bring internet service to Arctic communities, to bring telemedicine and so on. What do you think is the most exciting or promising technology right now? Is it StarLink? Is it Elon Musk? Krutnes: There is a project called the Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission. It’s a Norwegian company called Space Norway, which is owned by the Norwegian government. They are sending out two satellites by the end of this year and that will give broadband to the entire Arctic region from 2024. The satellites are being built by Northrop Grumman and it’s a project we do together with the Americans. And they will be shot up by Elon Musk, yes. I also want to underline that there is a difference between the European Arctic and the American Arctic. It's much more densely populated on the European side. We are not all about the solitude and icebergs and the polar bears. We’re about people. And that's important to us because we live there so we have to make a living. It's not a museum. I understand that Arctic diplomacy is very different … what is it like? Krutnes: It’s a special breed of people. We meet in small places, Arctic places. You don’t wear a tie to those meetings. It’s very casual dress. We are like a big family. Of course, the presence of all the indigenous organizations – we call them permanent participants – that makes it different from any diplomatic gathering. It becomes a family. Høglund: The way you discuss – it’s like around the dinner table of any other dysfunctional family. Is there a shared vision among Arctic Council members? Are there competing visions? Krutnes: I think we all want to preserve the pristine environment. The ice melting, climate change, is the result of greenhouse gases and emissions that don’t necessarily come from the Arctic. If you want to stop climate change, you have to stop emissions where emissions happen. You can’t simply say, “Don’t drill in the Arctic because that will melt the ice.” It’s more complicated. To me, you cannot just draw a line on the map and say, “This is the Arctic and north of the Arctic the environment is more vulnerable than south of the Arctic.” No, it depends on the local conditions. The vision is, of course, to have a prosperous Arctic with a lot of people living there. And when it comes to our Arctic, it’s the neighbor to Russia. We need to have people there. That’s also for resistance and for security. So we need economic activity, but we’ll do it as environmentally friendly as we do it everywhere else in Norway. The Arctic is no different. Thanks to editor Heidi Vogt and producer Andrew Howard.   LISTEN TO POLITICO'S ENERGY PODCAST: Check out our daily five-minute brief on the latest energy and environmental politics and policy news. Don't miss out on the must-know stories, candid insights, and analysis from POLITICO's energy team. 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