For many years, concerns have been expressed about environmental issues in the Arctic. While the Arctic region, unlike Antarctica, has been inhabited for thousands of years, it is under unique threat because of its vulnerability toward resource exploitation and the deposition of various airborne pollutants. With its varied populations, and with eight Nations asserting territorial interests, the Arctic needs a careful approach to its protection and development. This report describes the current Arctic environmental legal regime. It also discusses the possibility of negotiating a sustainability treaty for the Arctic with high standards of environmental protection similar to those in the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. It is hoped that this review of the legal and policy contrasts between the Arctic and Antarctic can help in the consideration of future directions for the Arctic legal regime.

This work draws upon the history of Arctic development and the view of the Arctic in different states to explain how such a discourse has manifested itself in current broader cooperation across eight statistics analysis based on organization developments from the late 1970s to the present, shows that international region discourse has largely been forwarded through the extensive role of North American, particularly Canadian, networks and deriving form their frontier-based conceptualization of the north.

Originally published in 2000, The Arctic provides a comprehensive overview of the region's rapidly changing physical and human dimensions, and demonstrates the importance of communication between natural scientists, social scientists, and local stakeholders in response to the tremendous challenges and opportunities facing the Arctic. It is an essential resource for all Arctic researchers, particularly those developing multidisciplinary projects. It provides an overview of key areas of Arctic research by renowned specialists in the field, and each chapter forms a detailed, varied and accessible account of current knowledge. Each author introduces the subject to a specialist readership, while retaining intellectual integrity and relevance for specialists. Overall, the richness of the material presented in this volume reflects the ecological and cultural diversity of this vast and environmentally critical part of the globe.

This title was first published in 2000: The book analyses the development of arctic environmental cooperation since the late 1980s until the establishment of the Arctic Council in 1996. The study is based on the discourse analysis of statement, documents and interviews by the different actors in the cooperation. In this book, the problem of the environment is seen as a problem of order: it is a problem of ordering relations among related actors, of ordering priorities of action and of ordering relations between different institutional arrangements locally, regionally and internally. Three discourses were found in the cooperation: discourses of sovereignty, knowledge and development. In the discourse of sovereignty, the development of relations between state and indigenous peoples in terms of international environmental cooperation is central. In the discourse of knowledge, the different forms of knowledge and the role of different producers of knowledge in cooperation has been discussed. The discourse of development focuses on the idea of sustainable development and its applications in defining the future of the Circumpolar North and the activities of the Arctic Council. The arctic cooperation can be understood as a regional effort to make an order of sustainability into practice.

Northern Lights Against POPs tells the many-faceted scientific, policy, legal, and advocacy story that led to the Stockholm convention. Unique in its perspective, scope, and breadth, it reveals the key links among environmental and health science, international politics, advocacy, law, and global negotiations. Never before have public health concerns articulated by northern Indigenous peoples in Canada and throughout the circumpolar Arctic had such a direct impact on global policy-making. Authors show how research on POPs (persistent organic pollutants) in the Arctic from the mid-1980s influenced international negotiations and analyze the potential for the convention to be effective. Contributors include elected representatives, researchers, civil servants, Indigenous people who participated in the negotiations, and scientists who provided the compelling Arctic data that prompted the United Nations Environment Programme to sponsor negotiations. Contributors include David Anderson (Minister of the Environment, Canada); Nigel Bankes (University of Calgary); John Buccini (Consultant, former chair of the Global POPs Negotiations); Sheila Watt-Cloutier (Inuit Circumpolar Conference-Canada); Barry Commoner, Paul Woods Bartlett, Holger Eisl, Kimberly Couchot (Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, City University of New York); Eric Dewailly (Laval University); David Downie (Director of Educational Partnerships, Columbia Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York); Terry Fenge (Inuit Circumpolar Conference-Canada); Henry Huntington (Consultant, Anchorage) and Michelle Sparck (Circumpolar Conservation Union, Washington, D.C.); Harriet Kuhnlein, Laurie Chan (Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment, McGill University), and Olivier Receveur (formerly Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment, McGill University); Lars-Otto Reiersen (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme Secretariat,Oslo); Henrik Selin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); David Stone, Russell Shearer (Northern Contaminants Program, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Canada); Klaus Topfer (Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme).