emerging uk arctic policy

Emerging UK Arctic policy

DUNCAN DEPLEDGE*

International Affairs 89: 6 (2013) 1445–1457© 2013 The Author(s). International Affairs © 2013 The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2dq, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

The United Kingdom’s contemporary interest1 in the Arctic is plagued by uncer-tainty. As a recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) briefing paper noted: ‘The Arctic is changing rapidly … It is not the Arctic of twenty years ago and it will likely be different again twenty years from now.’2 The govern-ment’s uncertainty relates to the unprecedented scale and planetary reach of the changes taking place in the Arctic, whether associated with the climatological and geophysical processes influencing the extent of seasonal sea-ice cover, related implications for weather patterns over northern Europe, shifting patterns of species migration and biodiversity, economic interest in developing shipping routes and mineral resources, or the policies of other self-identifying state and non-state actors which more or less consider themselves Arctic ‘stakeholders’. To the extent that these changes are already having an impact on UK policy discus-sions, it is reasonable to suggest that the Arctic is once again demanding attention from the British government, just as it did for much of the Cold War, albeit for very different reasons.

In fact, British interest in the Arctic stretches back over 400 years at least, with British explorers, companies, ships and scientists often at the forefront of efforts to draw the Arctic, and Arctic resources, into global economic, political, scientific and cultural networks.3 However, it was not really until the Second World War that the Arctic became ‘demanding’ of UK policy planners. During the Second World War, the Arctic—specifically, the Norwegian and Barents Seas—emerged as a signifi-cant strategic theatre, with resupply convoys being sent through the icy waters to support the Soviet Union. Northern Norway also became a theatre of a small, but strategically important, conflict between Allied and German forces attempting to establish and disrupt weather stations which provided vital data for the war effort

* The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer and Professor Klaus Dodds for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. The author would also like to acknowledge the support received for this research from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Royal United Services Institute.

1 As expressed by the coalition government (2010–15) of the United Kingdom.2 ‘UK and the Arctic: summary of UK government policy’ in Foundation for Science and Technology,

‘Knowledge into action: development in the Arctic region’, FCO briefing paper, 2011, http://www.foundation.org.uk/events/pdf/20111214_Summary.pdf, accessed 11 Oct. 2013, p. 3.

3 Duncan Depledge, ‘The United Kingdom and the Arctic in the 21st century’, in Lassi Heininen, ed., Arctic Yearbook 2012 (Akureyri: Northern Research Forum, 2012).

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Duncan Depledge

1446International Affairs 89: 6, 2013Copyright © 2013 The Author(s). International Affairs © 2013 The Royal Institute of International Affairs.

further south in Europe.4 As the Second World War turned into the Cold War, this military–scientific (and, increasingly, commercial) complex continued to play an important role in NATO operations aimed at securing the North Atlantic from any potential breakout by Soviet Union forces stationed on the heavily militarized Kola Peninsula. British interest in the strategic importance of the Arctic peaked during the so-called ‘second’ Cold War of the 1970s and 1980s. Two British scholars in particular, Clive Archer and David Scrivener, actively sought to bring the Arctic to the attention of policy planners in government.5 In 1979 they founded the Study Group on Northern Waters within the Scottish branch of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, with the aim of examining the ‘interrelationship of security, resources and jurisdictional issues in Northern Waters’. The imperative behind this initiative lay in the fact that the UK was committed to overseeing the defence of the Greenland–Iceland–UK ‘gap’ and was poised to be first responder to any potential invasion of Norway by the Soviet Union.6

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK has continued to support a low-level physical presence in the Arctic, manifested primarily in two ways: through scien-tific research and military training. Since 1991, the UK has operated a scientific research station on Svalbard, responsibility for which was recently handed to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the government’s foremost research institute for polar science. The BAS also holds responsibility for a £15 million Arctic research programme funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, and continues to work with the FCO—a legacy of the BAS’s continued role supporting Britain’s south Atlantic and Antarctic territories. Moreover, the UK is a longstanding observer to the Arctic Council (established in 1996), supporting the engagement of British scientists in a number of large-scale Arctic science research programmes run by the Arctic Council working groups. The British physical military presence in the Arctic entails close cooperation with Norway and Canada (both fellow NATO members and Arctic states). For example, the UK continues to send Royal Marine Commandos and other units to train for cold weather operations in Canada and northern Norway, and regularly participates in joint military exercises in Arctic waters (albeit as part of the UK’s wider force readiness requirements, rather than in anticipation of an armed conflict breaking out in the Arctic in the near future—more on this below).7

However, in the last few years (at least since 2007), this low-level British presence in the Arctic, which has quietly been maintained since the end of the Cold War, is being augmented by the emergence of a wider community of British stakeholders, including but not limited to UK-based companies and environmentalists, whose Arctic activities are ever more visible thanks to deliberate publicity campaigns as well as growing media interest in the Arctic. High-profile reports about the

4 See e.g. Richard Woodman, Arctic convoys: 1941–1945 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, 2007); Douglas Liversidge, The third front (London: Souvenir Press, 1960).

5 Clive Archer and David Scrivener, eds, Northern waters (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1986).6 Archer and Scrivener, eds, Northern waters, preface. 7 Duncan Depledge and Klaus Dodds, ‘Testing the northern flank: the UK, Norway and Exercise Cold

Response’, RUSI Journal 157: 4, Aug.–Sept. 2012, pp. 72–8.




impacts of climate change on the Arctic,8 surveys of potential resource bonanzas,9 spectacular campaigns by environmental groups such as the recent ascent of the Shard in London by Greenpeace activists,10 and diplomatic manoeuvring by Arctic and non-Arctic states,11 supported by intense and at times hyperbolic commentary in the popular press and foreign policy magazines,12 have made it more difficult for the British government to continue acting in the Arctic quietly, particularly given the public scrutiny now directed onto British Arctic ‘policy’.13

The aim here, then, is to consider some of the ways in which British Arctic policy (to the extent that such a policy can be identified) is emerging. The meaning of ‘emerging’ here is double. On the one hand, I use it to draw attention to the fact that British Arctic policy is becoming more visible (more accurately, re-emerging) in public debates as academics, environmental campaigners, journalists and MPs increasingly push government officials to outline and justify the nature of the UK’s contemporary relationship with the Arctic.14 Second, I use the term ‘emerging’ in a more theoretical sense to draw attention to the continued ‘liveliness’ of British Arctic policy—to argue, that is, that British Arctic policy is more usefully seen as a continuing process (adapting, reacting, responding to encounters with the uncertainties outlined at the beginning of this article) through which policies and interests in the Arctic, as well as a sense of what the very term ‘Arctic’ denotes, emerge, rather than as a fully formed object of analysis. The point is to emphasize that British Arctic policy is continually evolving, and there is nothing inevitable about where it is headed (an inevitability all too commonly claimed in the broader rush to prophesy about the future of the Arctic and naturalize actors, acts and interests which might be otherwise contested).15

To do this I focus on three emerging areas of UK Arctic policy through which I think it is possible to discern more general developments. These areas relate to the recent activities of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, and related work by the FCO to develop an

8 Impacts of a warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. ACIA overview report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

9 Kenneth J. Bird, Ronald R. Charpentier, Donald L. Gautier, David W. Houseknecht, Timothy R. Klett, Janet K. Pitman, Thomas E. Moore, Christopher J. Schenk, Marilyn E. Tennyson and Craig J. Wandrey, ‘Circum-Arctic resource appraisal: estimates of undiscovered oil and gas north of the Arctic Circle’, US Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2008-3049, http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3049/, accessed 4 Sept. 2013.

10 Matthew Taylor, Peter Walker and Karl Mathiesen, ‘Greenpeace activists scale the Shard to send an Arctic message to Shell’, Guardian, 11 July 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/11/greenpeace-shard-shell accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

11 ‘A warmer welcome’, The Economist, 18 May 2013, http://www.economist.com/news/international/21578040-arctic-council-admits-its-first-permanent-asian-observers-warmer-welcome, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

12 Scott Borgerson, ‘The coming Arctic boom’, Foreign Affairs 92: 4, July–Aug. 2013, pp. 76–89, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139456/scott-g-borgerson/the-coming-arctic-boom, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

13 See e.g. Thomas Harding, ‘Britain “woefully unprepared” for Arctic warfare’, Telegraph online, 10 Aug. 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8692295/Britain-woefully-unprepared-for-Arctic-warfare.html, accessed 11 Oct. 2013; Terry Macalister, ‘UK Arctic policy review due amid surge of interest in far north’, Guardian, 14 March 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/14/arctic-policy-review-far-north, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

14 Duncan Depledge and Klaus Dodds, ‘The UK and the Arctic: the strategic gap’, RUSI Journal 156: 3, June–July 2011, pp. 72–9.

15 For a recent example see Charles Emmerson, ‘Attraction of the North Pole’, World Today 69: 7, Aug.–Sept. 2013, pp. 14–18.


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Arctic Policy Framework.16 The account I provide rests on my analysis of official government documents and a series of interviews with UK parliamentarians and civil servants between 2010 and 2013.

Emerging interest

In the UK, the impacts of Arctic change are already being felt in diverse ways, from the implications for local weather and the global climate to political, economic and reputational risks associated with the deepening involvement of UK-based companies in mineral exploration and exploitation, both onshore and offshore, in the Arctic. All manner of heterogeneous elements (fish, birds, minerals, pollut-ants, satellites, ships, scientists, diplomats, companies, campaigners, journalists and explorers) connect the UK with the Arctic, and circulate between them. Encour-aging this circulation has been beneficial to the UK, as it helps with the pursuit of a range of interests that contribute directly and indirectly to the economy, as well as adding to the UK’s diplomatic leverage in a range of international forums (especially those such as the Arctic Council, International Maritime Organiza-tion and UN Framework Convention for Climate Change, where scientific and technical expertise is a valuable source of influence). However, all these different elements must also be understood to have some sort of life of their own, by which I mean that for all our scientific and technical expertise, they retain a tendency to act and interact in unexpected ways which may pose new challenges and oppor-tunities.17 Put simply, none of us can foresee all the implications environmental, political, technological, economic and social change might have for the future development of the Arctic, or the UK’s relationship to it.

More or less established UK interests relating primarily to commercial, scien-tific, environment-related and political activities in the Arctic have been well rehearsed elsewhere.18 What is of interest here are some of the ways in which these interests are being pursued. Since at least 2008 (prior to which there were very few government publications with content on the Arctic), emerging Arctic issues relating to commercial interests, scientific activities, environmental protection and coordination of UK government policy have been considered to varying degrees by a number of government departments and agencies, including the FCO, the MoD, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK Trade and Investment, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Department for Transport, as well as a range of other non-departmental government agencies and institutes, including the BAS, the National Oceano-graphy Centre, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Hadley Centre/16 Other departments and non-departmental bodies such as the Department for Energy and Climate Change and

the British Antarctic Survey will be the subject of a longer research paper by the author. 17 Duncan Depledge, ‘Geopolitical material: assemblages of geopower and the constitution of the geopolitical

stage’, Political Geography, forthcoming in print, available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629813000462, 11 Oct. 2013.

18 Depledge and Dodds, ‘The UK and the Arctic’. See also Clive Archer, ‘The United Kingdom and the Arctic’, Baltic Rim Economies, no. 4, 30 Nov. 2011.


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629813000462

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629813000462



Met Office, the Scottish Association for Marine Science and the UK Hydrographic Office.19 However, despite apparent widespread interest across government, there has been very little indication of how these departments are responding individu-ally, other than a call for greater coordination between them.20

Perhaps the most energetic government activity has principally involved trying to get a better sense of potential Arctic futures, their various implications for the UK, and how such futures might be brought about or avoided. As the FCO has noted: ‘Today the speed of climate change and the associated impacts and oppor-tunities mean that developments in the region will affect the UK’s interests more than ever.’21 Since 2008 there have been a number of UK government studies on the political and economic implications of Arctic change, including for example the UK Foresight Programme’s International Dimensions of Climate Change project and the Global Strategic Trends series produced by the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC).22 And, as noted above, the government has invested £15 million in Arctic science to support research that might lead to a better under-standing of the geophysical changes in the region. More recently, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has undertaken an inquiry (discussed in more detail below) into how the UK can contribute to the protection of the Arctic as new opportunities for shipping and resource exploitation arise. Such projects evince concern that, as the Arctic continues to change both physically and politically in potentially unpredictable ways, new and unexpected challenges and opportunities are likely to emerge which will have implications for the UK.

Arctic policy tracks

In recent years, two main tracks of Arctic policy development have been more or less visible to observers in London. The first, and less visible, track can be found in the continuing work of the MoD to anticipate future security challenges in the Arctic as part of a commitment to ensure that the armed forces are adequately trained and provided with the necessary capabilities for operating in extreme cold should they need to do so in defence of the UK’s national security interests. The second, and increasingly visible, track of Arctic policy development can be seen in the related activities of the Environmental Audit Committee and the FCO to develop a more formal UK Arctic policy (or, as we shall see, ‘policy framework’), in part to demonstrate the legitimacy of British interest in the present and future development of the region.

19 See e.g. Global Biodiversity Sub-Committee (GBSC) meeting papers, ‘UK–Arctic stakeholders report of conference held at the Scottish Association for Marine Science’, March 2008, http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/gbsc_0809ArcticbiodiversityObanReport.pdf, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

20 GBSC, ‘UK–Arctic stakeholders report’.21 ‘UK and the Arctic’, FCO briefing paper, p. 3.22 Government Office for Science, Foresight International Dimensions of Climate Change: final project report, http://

www.bis.gov.uk/assets/foresight/docs/international-dimensions/11-1042-international-dimensions-of-climate-change.pdf, accessed 11 Oct. 2013; Ministry of Defence, Global strategic trends—out to 2040, 4th edn (Shrivenham: Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, 2010).


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Anticipating future security challenges

The Arctic is no longer the potential hot spot for conflict that it was during the Cold War, when the threat of a Soviet invasion of Norway (a fellow NATO member) and a naval breakout through the Greenland–Iceland–UK gap demanded the attention of UK defence planners.23 For much of the 1990s and early 2000s, the MoD was far more concerned with the development of its expeditionary capabili-ties than with the territorial defence of Europe (including the North Atlantic/Arctic) as the UK’s armed forces were sent to intervene in conflicts around the world, most notably in the Middle East. However, as an MoD official put it to me in 2011, since the election of the current government in 2010, interest in the Arctic has ‘never been greater’.24 A number of developments over the past decade have drawn the UK defence community’s attention back to the Arctic. These include prophecies about a coming economic boom in the Arctic related to climate change and resource access, and concerns about a resurgence of Russian ‘assertiveness’, as evidenced by the planting of a Russian flag on the seabed below the North Pole in 2007 (although this was a private expedition), and the brief Russia–Georgia war in 2008 which led a number of north European countries to seek greater assurance from NATO that their security was still being taken seriously.25 Moreover, the incoming UK Defence Secretary in 2010, Liam Fox, had a personal interest in the region and was broadly supportive of the need to reaffirm NATO’s commitment to northern Europe.26

Two issues in particular currently stand out for the MoD in thinking about the changing Arctic. The first is ensuring that the UK is capable of supporting NATO allies in the region. While an armed conflict is highly unlikely to break out as a consequence of developments in the Arctic, any major conflict with Russia (or, to some extent, China) in the future would be likely to include an Arctic theatre of operations, thus creating an imperative to ensure that British armed forces are adequately trained and provided with the necessary capabilities for operating in the region. The second, partly related, concern is that the UK is increasingly dependent on Norway for oil and gas imports. In 2012, Norway accounted for the supply of more than half (55 per cent) of the UK’s gas and almost half (46 per cent) of its oil imports,27 thus making it critically important to safeguard supply infra-structure between the UK and Norway from potential attack or disruption (a vital national security interest, as identified in the UK National Security Strategy).28 As Norway pushes deeper into the Arctic to develop oil and gas reserves that may well provide a proportion of future exports to the UK, the imperative to safeguard

23 Archer and Scrivener, eds, Northern waters. See also Clive Archer, ‘Norway and the UK: a defence and security perspective’, British Politics Review 6: 4, Autumn 2011, p. 4.

24 Author’s interview with MoD official, 19 Oct. 2011. 25 Tom Parfitt, ‘Russia plants flag on North Pole seabed’, Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/

aug/02/russia.arctic, 2 Aug. 2007, accessed 11 Oct. 2013; Tomas Valasek, ‘NATO, Russia and European security’, working paper (London: Centre for European Reform, Nov. 2009).

26 Author’s interview with MoD official, 19 Oct. 2011.27 DECC, Digest of UK energy statistics 2013 (London: The Stationery Office [TSO], 2013); see chs 3 and 4. 28 Cabinet Office, A strong Britain in an age of uncertainty: the National Security Strategy (London: TSO, 2010).




supplies will necessarily draw the attention of the defence community deeper into the Arctic as well.

In response to these two challenges, neither of which poses an imminent threat to UK national security, or warrants the scale of attention demanded of defence planners during the Cold War, the MoD has largely been engaged in anticipatory activities with the aim of assessing potential Arctic futures. This has shifted the emphasis of the MoD’s work towards the kinds of emergent threats recognized specifically in relation to the Arctic in a speech by Ann Taylor (who at the time was minister for international defence and security) at a joint NATO/Iceland conference in 2009:

It is clear to us that security in the Arctic is not foremost a military concern. We are not returning to the Cold War. But security cannot be divorced from economic activity, environmental interests and political considerations . . . A secure Arctic environment will require not just agreement over how we control militarisation, but more importantly how the legal status of the physical space is defined, how economic activity is monitored and how the rights of the indigenous communities are protected.29

Far from simply expounding a traditional account of state-centric security to include a range of non-military threats, the use of the word ‘will’ is indicative of the UK’s concern for the future security of the Arctic. Addressing this concern has involved looking at the potential implications of geopolitical change in the Arctic, where the ‘geo’ is changing at least as much as the ‘political’.30 This is because geophysical change has potentially significant ramifications for capability developments which often have long lead-times. Developing new warships with strengthened hulls for operation in icefields could take decades and would be very costly, and in the current economic climate the justifications for doing so are by no means clear.31 The focus for now, therefore, is on developing a credible knowledge base about the changes taking place in the Arctic in order to provide a more solid basis for decisions about capability requirements.32

The MoD is building up this knowledge base in a number of ways. The first involves attempts to forecast the future by developing scenarios that seek to identify common elements in a range of possible futures. These accounts are largely based on political, economic, technological and environmental trends, often identified in consultation with experts from outside the MoD. The trends are then analysed to produce a number of different scenarios for the future devel-opment of the Arctic. The purpose of the scenarios is not to predict the future but to identify as many potential threats as possible that are common to a range

29 Ann Taylor, ‘Joint NATO/Icelandic government conference (security prospects in high north), Reykjavic [sic], Iceland’, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDe-fence/ People/Speeches/MinISD/20090129JointNatoicelandicGovernmentConferencesecurityProspectsInHigh NorthReykjavicIceland.htm, accessed 11 Oct. 2013 (emphasis added).

30 Depledge, ‘Geopolitical material’. 31 The challenges of procurement in a tough economic climate can be seen in recent debates about the

development of new aircraft carriers for the UK armed forces. See e.g. Rajeev Syal, ‘MPs criticise Ministry of Defence over “vulnerable” aircraft carriers’, Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/03/mps-criticise-ministry-of-defence-vulnerable-aircraft-carriers, 3 Sept. 2013, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

32 Author’s interview with MoD officials, 7 Feb. 2012.


Duncan Depledge


of possible futures, and then to use this analysis as the basis for guiding policy decisions about where to invest resources (for example, in capabilities, training, alliances, etc.). A second way in which the MoD is building its knowledge base is through the participation of the armed forces in a range of joint military training exercises such as Cold Response, Arctic Roller and Loyal Arrow, as well as other training activities in northern Norway and Canada. Such activities provide impor-tant opportunities for physical testing of military equipment and personnel in Arctic conditions (including extreme cold and icy waters). These exercises usually invoke an imagined threat in order to add a sense of urgency; however, the tests are designed to make the results relevant to a range of different future threats, both military and civilian, in order to expose potential gaps in the preparedness of the armed forces.33

In addition to constructing this knowledge base, the MoD has also been involved in what might be described as ‘anticipatory’ alliance building. Specifi-cally, this has involved reaffirming strategic partnerships with north European nations. For example, in 2010, on the initiative of the then UK Defence Secre-tary Liam Fox, the Northern Group of Defence Ministers convened for the first time. Comprising representatives from Nordic, Baltic and other north European nations including the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, the forum was created to discuss shared security concerns in northern Europe.34 Significantly, the main aim of the forum was to be forward-looking: in other words, to consider what threats to northern Europe (including the Arctic) might emerge in the future. The identity of the alliance partners in the room was itself an act of anticipation, signifying the UK’s security partners in the region. While there has been some slippage in the focus of the Northern Group since its inception, the MoD is for now relatively unconcerned about this, mainly because it sees the real value of the Northern Group as lying in the relationship-building work that is implicitly opening up diplomatic channels that may be used in the future should a threat emerge in northern Europe and/or the Arctic.35

All these activities are important for the UK’s overall preparedness to meet any potential threats that might emerge as a consequence of Arctic change. In partic-ular, the MoD’s work is directed not towards an ‘inevitable’ Arctic future, but towards managing the uncertainties surrounding the changes that are occurring. This work is being undertaken quietly so as not to cause alarm, either domestically or abroad. Even so, this track of Arctic policy work is essential for the realization of the UK’s dominant interest in the Arctic: to benefit from the economic oppor-tunities that might emerge, while at the same time retaining the necessary capacity to protect British interests should new threats arise.

33 Depledge and Dodds, ‘Testing the northern flank’. 34 MoD, ‘Defence Secretary launches new forum of northern European countries’, https://www.gov.uk/

government/news/defence-secretary-launches-new-forum-of-northern-european-countries, 10 Nov. 2010, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

35 Author’s interview with MoD official, 8 Dec. 2012.




Developing an Arctic Policy Framework

In 2008 the FCO convened a meeting of Arctic ‘stakeholders’ at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, Scotland. As noted in the meeting report, a key conclusion was that ‘it was clear that there was a need to provide some form of governance framework to address issues not covered by the Arctic Council and to facilitate greater stakeholder participation in decision-making’.36 This conclusion reflected a need identified in the House of Lords in 2007 to develop a cross-departmental strategy towards the Arctic.37 Since then, there has been much debate among academics, parliamentarians and policy-makers about whether and how this end should be pursued.38 As noted elsewhere, such a strategy would probably be aimed at crystallizing ‘further cooperation between stakeholders within and beyond Whitehall, providing a level of coherence that conceptual policies and speeches alone cannot provide, while also reminding the wider inter-national community of the UK’s longstanding and enduring interest in the Arctic Region’.39

The FCO has been hesitant to develop such a strategy for a number of reasons, primarily related to a reluctance either to be seen ‘strategizing’ about the sovereign territory of other states, or to provide potential critics with a document that can be used to evaluate and judge UK policies and practices.40 This position has largely been developed under the purview of the Polar Regions Department (PRD), a sub-section of the FCO comprising seven members of staff historically respon-sible for managing the British Antarctic Territory and the UK’s interests under the Antarctic Treaty. When the UK became an observer to the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy in 1991, and later (1996) the Arctic Council, the responsibility for maintaining these relationships was also given to the PRD. The UK’s relation-ship with the Arctic Council in particular has therefore been a key element shaping the PRD’s work. For example, the UK’s role as an observer state in the Arctic Council is largely limited to what it can contribute at the level of the scientific and technical working groups which carry out much of the Arctic Council’s assess-ment work. Only member states (the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Russia) are able to participate in policy-level debates. Consequently, the PRD is sensitive to the risk of being perceived as overreaching itself (as, for example, the European Parliament did in 2008 when it called for the negotiation of an international Arctic Treaty). Moreover, the mandate of the Arctic Council until recently largely centred on issues of scientific investigation of the Arctic and environmental protection. It is only in the last few years that issues of economic development have risen up the agenda, while military issues remain firmly off it. Therefore the Arctic Council, and the UK’s relationship to it,

36 GBSC, ‘UK–Arctic stakeholders report’, p. 6.37 Hansard (Lords), 15 Jan. 2007, vol. 688, col. 502. 38 For an overview see Depledge and Dodds, ‘The UK and the Arctic’.39 Depledge and Dodds, ‘The UK and the Arctic’, p. 72.40 Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), Protecting the Arctic: the government response. Fourth report of session 2013-

14, HC 333 (London: The Stationery Office, 2013), http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmenvaud/333/333.pdf, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.


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represents only some of the UK’s interests. Other interests are pursued bilaterally through a range of departmental/country-desk links that the PRD has no official mandate to coordinate (although it does provide advice when it is sought).41

Nevertheless, together with the growing prominence of the Arctic Council as the primary regional forum for discussing Arctic affairs, the recent related activities of the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) appear to be providing something of a fillip to the PRD, helping to centre it as the primary coordinating body for emerging UK Arctic policy. The EAC is a cross-government House of Commons Select Committee, all of whose members are MPs. It was established in 1997 under the Labour government to audit the performance of government departments and non-departmental public bodies against targets for sustainable development and environmental protection. Its past inquiries have focused on a wide range of environmental issues including fiscal incentives for environmental policies, different kinds of pollution, and the impact of UK activities overseas on environmental protection and climate change measures in developing countries.42 In 2012, the EAC announced an inquiry to assess what more the UK government could do to ‘protect the Arctic as retreating ice opens the region up to oil drilling, new shipping routes and new fishing grounds’.43 An interview with a member of the committee revealed three reasons behind the decision for an inquiry: the increasing media coverage of the extent of the summer sea ice minima, especially since the record low in 2007; the growing prominence of the Arctic Council; and the committee’s perception that the subject followed on naturally from previous work on the impacts of climate change.44

The EAC’s inquiry has been far-reaching, drawing on evidence provided from multiple stakeholder groups including government, environmental NGOs, academics, scientists and business. So far it has produced four reports based on a number of hearings and also on the evidence provided in responses to an appeal for written evidence from experts representing the different stakeholder groups. Primarily, the EAC has been concerned about the potential impact of British action or inaction on the Arctic environment, especially in respect of protecting it from exploitation by UK-based hydrocarbon firms. Its inquiry resulted in a call for a moratorium on all drilling activities in the Arctic until a more satisfactory regulatory regime was in place encompassing all of the Arctic states. The expecta-tion of the EAC was that the UK, through the various bilateral and multilateral diplomatic channels open to it, should be pushing the Arctic states towards higher standards of environmental protection, rather than simply seeking opportunities for British extraction firms to participate in hydrocarbon development.45

41 Author’s interview with FCO official, 19 Oct. 2011. 42 EAC, ‘Inquiries’, http://www.parliament.uk/templates/Committees/pages/CommitteeInquiryListing.aspx?i

d=26527&epslanguage=en&y=2010&mode=0#P, accessed 11 Oct. 2013. 43 EAC, ‘Protecting the Arctic’, http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-

select/environmental-audit-committee/inquiries/parliament-2010/protecting-the-arctic/, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

44 Author’s interview with EAC member, 23 Oct. 2012.45 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: second report of the session 2012–13, HC 171 (London: TSO, 2013), http://www.

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenvaud/171/171.pdf, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.


http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenvaud/171/171.pdf




In the light of this focus on diplomacy, it has naturally fallen to the FCO, and more specifically the PRD, to provide the response. This in turn has boosted the PRD’s efforts to coordinate emerging UK Arctic policy as it has sought input from other government departments and non-departmental agencies about how best to respond to the EAC’s recommendations. To do this, the PRD is producing what it is calling an ‘Arctic Policy Framework’ (APF) document based on consultations with ‘interested stakeholders, including the Arctic states, and includ[ing] plans for public outreach to increase awareness of the UK’s interests in the Arctic’.46 The purpose of the APF, which is due to be published before the end of 2013,47 is to ‘bring together the Government’s views and action on the UK’s main Arctic policy interests, including: oil and gas extraction; Marine Protected Areas; sustainable fishing; shipping; and Arctic governance’.48 Significantly, Mark Simmonds, the under-secretary of state responsible for the polar regions, has stressed the ‘lively’ nature of this framework: ‘the framework document is a live document, so once it is produced it will not be cast in stone’.49 In other words, the government has explicitly recognized the uncertainties surrounding the changing Arctic and the need to be attentive to these through regular (six-monthly) reviews of the APF. Moreover, the APF is being developed and will be updated under the oversight of the existing cross-government Arctic network group which the PRD chairs, and in the process is likely to further reinforce the PRD’s position at the core of emerging UK Arctic policy.

Conclusion: a ‘living’ Arctic policy?

The decision by the UK government to publish what it is calling an ‘Arctic Policy Framework’ in 2013 signals that a more coherent position towards the Arctic is being developed under the purview of the PRD, in response partly to the EAC’s inquiry, but also to an emerging public debate about what kind of role the UK should be playing in the Arctic.50 At the same time, albeit less visibly, the MoD is engaged in a parallel track of policy development to build up a credible knowledge base of potential threats to national security. Both tracks of policy development are a response to the demands of a changing Arctic which require a (re)positioning of the UK in relation to the region to enable it to contribute more effectively to scien-tific investigations and to benefit from emerging economic opportunities, while at the same time recognizing that new threats to national security interests may emerge as a result. As long as the ‘mood’ in the Arctic remains largely cooperative,

46 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: government response to the committee’s second report of session 2012–13. Third special report of the session 2012–13, HC 858 (London: TSO, 2013), http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenvaud/858/858.pdf, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

47 An analysis of the APF will be the subject of a further research paper by this author, to be published early in 2014.

48 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: government response to the committee’s second report of session 2012–13. Third special report of the session 2012–13.

49 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: the government response. Fourth report of session 2013-14.50 See also Duncan Depledge, ‘What’s in a name? A UK Arctic policy framework for 2013’, Geographical Journal,

forthcoming in print but available online at doi:10.1111/geoj.12039.




Duncan Depledge


as it has done for much of the past two decades,51 there is little reason for the MoD to be outspoken about its efforts to understand the shifting geopolitical dynamics of the region. Doing so would only serve to feed the hyperbolic coverage of foreign policy commentators in newspapers and magazines expressing concern about military buildups and armed conflict in the Arctic. Moreover, it would risk damaging the efforts being led by the PRD to increase the UK’s influence among the Arctic states, all of which are keen to downplay any sense of potential armed conflict in the region.52

More specifically, this approach has emerged in response to the fact that the UK cannot attempt to control the changes taking place in the Arctic, lacking both the scientific, technological and economic capability and—more importantly—the political jurisdiction required to do so. As Mark Simmonds’s predecessor Henry Bellingham observed in 2012: ‘[The UK] is not in the driving seat but what we can do is supply people of great experience, and with impeccable CVs [to the Arctic Council].’53 Similarly, the longstanding head of the PRD, Jane Rumble, has noted: ‘Most of our role is in the advocacy area of trying to support what [the Arctic states] are doing among themselves . . . [as well as] ensure they do not go off into a closed room and do something that will have some impact on the UK.’54 Given these limitations, it is my view that emerging UK Arctic policy is largely developing in a positive manner, which most importantly of all appears atten-tive to the ‘lively’ nature of the various changes taking place in the Arctic, both geophysical and geopolitical. It may well be that the liveliness of emerging UK Arctic policy will be an asset in the UK’s future encounters with Arctic change, as it provides a degree of flexibility for responding to the liveliness of contemporary Arctic geopolitics.

However, there are also a number of issues requiring close attention. Of these, two points in particular stand out. The first is that the government should not use the ‘liveliness’ of the APF to obscure very apparent contradictions in emerging UK Arctic policy. The most obvious of these is the one that continues to be foregrounded by the EAC. As the committee noted in its fourth report on the government’s response to its original report:

The Government has failed to provide a coherent argument to support its view that exploring for oil and gas in the Arctic is compatible with avoiding dangerous climate change . . . The fact that the world already has more proven oil and gas reserves than can be burnt without producing dangerous climate change, together with the lack of proven oil spill response techniques [in the Arctic], make exploring for new reserves in the pristine and harsh environment of the Arctic needlessly risky.55

51 Oran Young, ‘Whither the Arctic? Conflict or cooperation in the circumpolar north’, Polar Record 45: 232, 2009, pp. 73–82.

52 Rob Huebert, Heather Exner-Pirot, Adam Lajeunesse and Jay Gulledge, Climate change and international security: the Arctic as a bellwether (Arlington, VA: Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, May 2012), http://www.c2es.org/publications/climate-change-international-arctic-security, accessed 11 Oct. 2013.

53 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: second report of the session 2012–13.54 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: second report of the session 2012–13.55 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: the government response. Fourth report of session 2013-14.




Readers are likely to have noted the lack of analysis in this article of the DECC’s involvement in emerging UK Arctic policy debates. This is due not to a lack of interest but to the difficulty of assessing the DECC’s position on the matter. My own limited discussions with DECC officials produced similar responses to those presented to the EAC: that the DECC sees the development of Arctic hydro-carbons as contributing to global energy security, with indirect benefits for the UK, because it will help to cushion the effects of price volatility in global energy markets.56 As far as the DECC, and the government more broadly, are currently concerned, it should be left to the market to determine whether hydrocarbons should be developed in the Arctic, and as such the emphasis should be on creating a level playing field for UK-based firms to participate in that development, not on trying to prevent such development.57 The risk posed by the APF is that ‘liveli-ness’ is used as an excuse not to resolve this contradiction in a broader government policy that attempts to reconcile the seemingly incompatible goals of participating in developing new hydrocarbon reserves while at the same time committing itself to the mitigation of climate change and environmental protection of the Arctic.

The second caveat to be made is that the APF should not be used as an excuse for not engaging more substantially with Arctic affairs. A ‘lively’ and ‘responsive’ APF might easily be equated with a ‘wait and see’ approach which puts at risk the UK’s potential to strengthen its future influence in Arctic affairs. While some readers may doubt just how much influence the UK can exert in the region, given the limits imposed both by the state of the UK’s economy and the rules governing the Arctic Council, the recent decision at the ministerial meeting in Kiruna to accept the applications of a number of Asian states to become observers is likely to mark only the beginning of a new period of international interest in the region. The UK will not be able to compete with the financial resources that countries such as China and South Korea are committing to the region, and as a result the UK will need to take a more subtle, more strategic approach in order to position those resources it does have (whether infrastructure or expertise) where they can have most impact on Arctic affairs. This is something which the UK has success-fully managed in the past (witness the contributions of UK scientists to major Arctic Council reports such as the Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment in 2004); but it may struggle to do so in the future if the government does not keep up with scientific, technological, political and economic developments in the Arctic in the coming years.

56 Author’s interview with DECC officials, 27 Oct. 2011. 57 EAC, Protecting the Arctic: second report of the session 2012-13.


emerging uk arctic policy

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