Introduction
The Arctic is hot. Stories abound on this region and its weather and climate. 1 The relatively larger heating in the region has put this perceived periphery at the center of the global map. Among all these accounts, there is one dominant narrative: the ice is melting and this allows for increased shipping and resource extractionâor rather, when the ice melts, there will be increased shipping and resource extraction. This book is about unpacking such dominant and deterministic narratives of change that project a future we have not yet seen.
The conventional future of the Arctic trope is deterministic with climate and the extraction of natural resources as the chief two drivers of change. As will be demonstrated in this volume, these two have been interlinked for a long time. Recently, however, the possibility to choose between different futures by the way of our own actions seems virtually absent. Determinism has increased with the forcefulness of climate change, to many invisible but nonetheless perceived as unstoppable. This narrative has consequences for the possibility of action in the present. It certainly provides opportunities for some, but for others it offers mostly constraints, if not decay. The language of natural science, with terms like resilience and mitigation, and (monolithic) drivers as shorthand for explanations and complex causal relationships, points to precisely this process of adjustment and adaptation to changes as a consequence of a warming Earth. However, we must not conflate how climate responds to human actionâcaptured in the term anthropogenic climate change and brought further with the geological terminology of the Anthropoceneâwith how humans can respond to the changing climate. 2
In this volume, we claim that it is important to unpack the nested arguments of this determinism, where science, environment, resources, economy, ideology, lifestyle, etc. are mixed to form projections on the future of the Arctic. There are actors who propose these futures before they happen, and to propose and project is a practice with a long tradition. 3 History is in fact a great repository of projections about the future and not the least the future of the Arctic. The exploration of such futures, in a number of areas and in different times, forms the core of this volume. We show the processes by which futures are made and argued for, why they get traction, how they are carried out in action or alternatively lose ground and get forgotten.
This is not just another version of the idea of predict and provide, as for example in planning, but a larger and more complex argument involving entire frames of understanding of the forces behind change. 4 In this volume, we regard projections as performative acts. How projections of the future function as predictive of that same future and when they actually become performative statements are therefore questions of central importance in this volume. We have not set out to look for specific scenarios or imaginaries, to use a term recently applied in an Arctic context, 5 and we have not had the ambition to categorize the ones we have identified. Rather we aim for a more contextual analysis of the assessments of the future that are constantly produced and how they become part of history itself.
This region lends itself to a more limited and therefore manageable analysis, partly because some themes are more prominent and they have been prominent also historically. Resource extraction is one, scientific exploration and monitoring is another, and the presence and agency of indigenous peoples is a third theme. Over time, these themes have become interconnected, supporting, and even creating each other, but today they are interlinked in partly new and unexpected ways. By pointing out these processes in the past and the trivial fact that the projections did not all come true we hope to contribute to a more reflexive and critical discussion of the present production of Arctic futures.
Theoretical and Empirical Background
The present volume has developed around the theoretical understanding that the production of futures in the Arctic can be analyzed in three separate but interconnected dimensions: voices, resources, and governance. 6 Voices highlights the fact that it is actors (individual or institutional) who articulate visions, do politics, and perform the actions that shape the future of the Arctic. The actors in this framework are not just those who act on the big stages of geopolitics but also those who have a voice, of any kind, that can be expressed in the discursive production of futures. Sometimes, they voice arguments and concerns, propose alternatives and oppositions, but which do not gain traction or are actively silenced. The voice and position of indigenous peoples is a case in point. 7 To bring forward and analyze these statementsâsupported or not by scientific knowledge, economic analysis, or personal experienceâis a crucial part of elucidating the role of human and social agency in Arctic change. Or, put differently, âfacts do not speak for themselves,â 8 nor do views or experience.
Actors also articulate the value and utility of resources. Resources are a constructed categoryâtheir value and utility determined by their location within political and economic networks rather than being a priori qualities. They are not just âout thereâ ready to use. This idea, inspired by geographer Gavin Bridge, 9 also implies that resources must be understood as historical and relative to political, economic, technological, ethical, and other circumstances. What is valued as a resource is dependent precisely on value systems, which are deeply situated in specific historical and ideological contexts, and have to be voiced as such. The transformation of fossils into fuels is not just geological, and societal relations to resources are complex.
Finally, governance refers to the means through which power over people, places, and objects is exercised. Just like voices and resources, the term can be further theorized. Our understanding is rather broad and includes organizational systems, processes, and institutions as well as national politics and international agreements, such as for example the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS in itself structures the way in which the seabed is perceived and hence what claims are made and can be made in relation to this international agreement. The possibility to extract something is not universal but also situated, and therefore it is not just the actual place of the extraction that is important but also the structures that govern it. Actors mostly have to act within the given governance structures tying together resources with voices. Thus, the traditional analytical space of agency, structure, and materiality are created through these three interconnected dimensions.
The contributing authors have chosen their own individual concepts and theoretical tools to make the most of their individual chapters, but the voicesâresourcesâgovernance triad has served an underpinning and inspirational role throughout the preparation of the volume. The fact that they are interlinked and interdependent has proven to be a useful reminder to deconstruct externally invoked drivers and recognizes, for example, sea ice retreat or global oil prices as components of the futures articulated by actors rather than forces against which politics is helpless.
Many Arctics and Many Futures
As indicated above, interest in the Arctic is growing dramatically among scholars, students, so-called stakeholders, and in the wider policy community. This reflects both growing concerns for the region as well as the emerging possibilities relating to the environmental and other changes at hand. History has always reflected the interests of the present, and, as Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde have put it, âour times are marked by the increasing role of the environment, as the Earth of wonders and resources, as the threatened Planet, as a Nature full of surprises who can âhit backâ on ignorant humans, or as the material Context of our everyday lives wherever we are.â 10 The Arctic is an environment that fills all of those roles.
However, there are many Arctics. As the different contributions to this volume show, this vast region comprises a large variety of natures as well as cultures, structures as well as actors. In fact, to even regard this as a region in itself introduces new challenges of how to define it and articulate its borders. 11 We refrain from a particular definition of the Arctic and rather acknowledge what can be considered Arctic as a matter of debate, and discussion and ultimately of power. For instance, when the five Arctic coastal states formed a Declaration at the 2008 meeting in Ilulissat, they stepped out of the governance structure that the Arctic Council has represented since 1995 with eight Arctic states, indigenous representatives, and observer states. Likewise, few inhabitants of the Swedish mining town of Kiruna, or anyone in northern Scandinavia, would say that they live in the Arctic, even though they definitely live above the Arctic Circle and are thus Arctic by a geographic definition. Political claims and personal identification do not always match.
Much of the writings on the Arctic have historically been grounded in an understanding of the region as exceptional and remote. The popular framing of the Arctic has been as a place of extremes, a last frontier with pristine but dangerous nature and thus well suited for the heroic endeavor of explorers and scientists. Slightly altered, this trope is carried through into the present, supporting and serving certain ideals of nationalism, purity, and strength. 12 Arctic exceptionalism is hence a long-lived trope both in the public sphere, within the political realm and in science. Over time, this trope has formed an understanding of the region which is at the same time surprisingly stable and historically contingent.
Recent scholarship, however, has distanced itself from this idea. Arctic, Northern, or Polar studies, also including writings on Antarctica, have investigated the historical formation of this region. 13 The concept Arctic Norden has been used in framing the issue of Arctic identity in a collection of essays spanning large parts of the North Atlantic including Greenland. 14 Likewise, the North has also been studied through the lens of landscapes, understood as at the same time economic, technological, and imaginary. Northern landscapes have been formed over time spanning the entire circumpolar area, including Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Orkney, Scandinavia, etc. The argument is that the Arctic has for a long time been part of human history. 15 Other efforts have been made to bring the activities in this area out of their exclusivity with case studies from the history of science, science and technology studies, and anthropology. 16 Books aiming at a more encompassing or educational framing also contribute to this normalization of the region. 17
Recent scholarship has chosen special and quite distinct angles. Particularly focusing on legal and diplomatic issues is Polar Geopolitics: Knowledges, Resourc...