As the ice melts, a perilous Russian threat is emerging in the Arctic | Barry Gardiner | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/13/arctic-russia-nato-putin-climateThe eight Arctic states – Canada, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the US and Russia – have long collaborated on scientific research through the Arctic Council, a non-military body. Until now. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Arctic Council meetings ceased. So did cooperation with Russia. This has hampered progress on climate and environmental research and turbocharged the militarisation of the Arctic.
The success of the Arctic Council depended on its geopolitical balance. It is not a security alliance and has always tried to remain independent from politics. Five of the eight countries were part of Nato; the other three were not. That has now changed. Finland joined Nato in April. Sweden is in the process of joining. Soon, Nato will literally be surrounding Russia in the Arctic.
To understand why this matters, we must first understand the climate emergency taking place in the region. Summer sea ice has declined by 30% in the past 30 years; 90% of old ice, which is classified as five years old or more, has gone. That ice used to act as the great heat shield for the planet, reflecting back the sun’s rays. But the loss of ice is producing a vicious spiral of heating. The Arctic is now warming three times faster than the global average. This process is called Arctic amplification. It means that scientists now project an Arctic free from summer ice by 2040–45.
As the ice cover is lost, a trans-polar route is opening to connect east Asia to Europe and the eastern coast of North America. And the ice barrier that once protected Russia’s northern shore will be exposed as never before. Russia represents 53% of the Arctic coastline and the need to protect its northern border as the ice barrier melts is a key national security concern.
Vladimir Putin already had ambitious plans for the northern sea route, seeking to more than double the cargo traffic. But over the past six years, Russia has also built 475 military sites along its northern border. The port of Severomorsk, on the Kola peninsula, is the base of the country’s northern fleet. In recent years, the Russians have reactivated 50 Soviet outposts in the Arctic and equipped its northern fleet with nuclear and conventional missiles.
The challenge of all this has not been purely logistical. As the permafrost thaws, the structural base for roads, buildings and other key infrastructure has collapsed. Russia is trying to deploy huge amounts of infrastructure and military capacity to build structures on land that is disintegrating, across roads that are disappearing
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On a recent visit to the Ny-Ålesund international research station on Svalbard, it was depressing to hear that scientific cooperation with Russia on climate matters has effectively ceased. The Arctic is an environment where cooperation is essential. Arctic science must be done over the long term, and the relationships and trust built up between partners offer predictability and greater stability. In a region that is becoming over-securitised, every opportunity to minimise accidental misunderstandings and avoid a military response should be seized.
A militarised Arctic would undermine scientific cooperation and pose an existential threat. Somehow, we need a diplomatic effort to separate the politics of war from the imperatives of climate research.