Description of legal reform proposals for the Arctic Council

The first phase of circumpolar cooperation between the eight Arctic states focused on the protection of the natural environment with the formation in 1991 of the AEPS. In the eyes of many legal scholars and conservationist non-governmental organisations, this effort rendered valid comparisons between the two polar regions, the Arctic and Antarctic, and their respective governance arrangements (Nowlan, Reference Nowlan2001). These comparisons have continued since the founding of the AC. Even recognising the key differences between the two poles in terms of population, sovereignty and military and industrial activity, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS)—the Antarctic Treaty and its related agreements that regulate international relations with respect to Antarctica—appealed to those Arctic observers who viewed the weak legal basis of the AC as one of its most significant shortcomings (Koivurova, Reference Koivurova2003). Even if some of the AC’s work was useful—such as its role in reviewing international environmental regulations and treaties applicable to the Arctic and producing environmental protection guidelines—obtaining the authority to impose binding international obligations appeared to many to be the only credible route for the AC in light of new environmental and social problems in the region (VanderZwaag, Huebert, & Ferrara, Reference VanderZwaag, Huebert and Ferrara2001). With environmental regulation within the sole jurisdiction of individual Arctic states, it was hard for some to see “how much sustainable development … [the Council] could bring to the resource-rich Arctic region” (Koivurova, Reference Koivurova2003, p. 187). Specific proposals put forward to formalize the functions of the AC were enmeshed in discussions about a comprehensive, legally binding agreement for the Arctic region, even if opinions varied among the reforms’ proponents regarding the viability of any major renewal of the AC (Koivurova, Reference Koivurova2003; Nowlan, Reference Nowlan2001).

The discussion of the adequacy of existing Arctic governance arrangements became particularly heated in 2007–2008 (Young, Reference Young2009c). This period coincided with the 10th anniversary of the AC, which presented an occasion for an assessment of its contributions to environmental protection and sustainable development in the north. Despite noting the AC’s success in sponsoring scientific assessments, bringing Arctic perspectives to international negotiations and providing a new model for the participation of indigenous peoples in intergovernmental initiatives, some scholars did not view the AC’s overall accomplishments favourably. In their evaluation, the AC had found limited success in pursuing its objectives of the AEPS at the national level, conceivably due to the body’s soft-law basis and resulting lack of a legal mandate (Koivurova & VanderZwaag, Reference Koivurova and VanderZwaag2007). Koivurova and Vanderzwaag argued that “in order for the Arctic Council and its participants to make management impacts” (emphasis by this author) (Koivurova & VanderZwaag, Reference Koivurova and VanderZwaag2007, p. 157), they need to be able to influence the content of national environmental laws and the implementation of relevant regulations in the Arctic region. Accordingly, to remedy the situation, the AC would need a firm legal foundation, as well as structural and financing reform. Such changes would allow the AC to respond to looming developmental challenges and would represent a maturation of regional cooperation (Koivurova & VanderZwaag, Reference Koivurova and VanderZwaag2007). Notwithstanding the strong arguments they identified in favour of such a solution, Koivurova and Vanderzwaag did not consider such prospects likely and instead expected the AC “at least in the near term … to continue soft sledding, flexibly and opportunistically moving ahead without a binding, region-wide agreement” as a discussion and catalytic forum with a “ ‘study and talk’ mentality” rather than a regulatory or decision-making entity (Koivurova & VanderZwaag, Reference Koivurova and VanderZwaag2007, p. 191). Furthermore, in Wilson’s view, not pursuing a treaty-based AC has been a demonstration of weak levels of cooperation among Arctic states with respect to the AC (Wilson, Reference Wilson2016).

The melting of Arctic sea-ice and the 2007 planting of a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed gave many the impression—incorrectly—that an international law vacuum existed in the Arctic, in particular with respect to the Arctic Ocean. The response of scholars and practitioners took two general forms. On the one hand, some noted that the real problem was not a lack of relevant international regulation but “the gaps and shortcomings in adherence to global instruments and their implementation at the national and regional levels” (Corell, Reference Corell2006; Molenaar, Reference Molenaar2012, p. 556). Moreover, at a meeting in Ilullisat, Greenland, in 2008 five Arctic littoral states asserted that there is “no need to develop a new comprehensive international legal regime” to deal with emerging issues of governance relating to the Arctic Ocean (Ilulissat Declaration, 2008; see also Pedersen, Reference Pedersen2012). On the other hand, a flood of proposals were put forward for “an international treaty for the protection of the Arctic, having as its inspiration the Antarctic Treaty” (European Parliament, 2008), various legally binding regional agreements (Casper Reference Casper2009), the Arctic Ocean Framework Convention (Koivurova & Molenaar, Reference Koivurova and Molenaar2010) and turning the AC into “a fully-fledged international organization through a treaty sanctioned by its member states” (Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, 2012, p. 9).

The signing of the first legally binding agreement negotiated under the auspices of the AC at the Ministerial Meeting in Nuuk, Greenland, in 2011 put the discussion about strengthening the AC by means of a treaty more or less on hold. The Agreement on Cooperation in Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic represented a new approach to responding to regional challenges associated with climate change, particularly those related to commercial shipping and the exploitation of offshore oil and gas deposits (Arctic Council, 2011b). Concurrently, while the agreement raised expectations about the AC moving from a policy-shaping to a policy-making role, the Arctic states have been adamant in rejecting any proposals for an overarching treaty, and nor has the AC engaged so far in any serious examination or reconsideration of its organisation. All changes to the AC’s institutional structure have been made within its existing soft-law framework (Kao, Pearre, & Firestone, Reference Kao, Pearre and Firestone2012; Koivurova, Reference Koivurova2009).

Analysis of legal reform proposals for the Arctic Council

For the time being, the debate over a comprehensive Arctic Treaty and providing the AC with a treaty foundation appears to be largely resolved: Arctic pundits and practitioners agree that neither is desirable nor politically feasible in the current context. Yet it is important to consider arguments that question the usefulness of legally binding solutions as the primary means for the AC to address the challenges ahead. Importantly, it should be noted that this discussion does not serve as a critique of legal proposals in general, but rather it considers their usefulness in the case of the AC.

As the preceding section illustrates, proponents of a treaty basis for the AC largely thought of the role of the AC in regulatory terms (Koivurova, Reference Koivurova2003) and in terms of making management impacts (Koivurova & VanderZwaag, Reference Koivurova and VanderZwaag2007). There are, however, serious arguments against the AC taking on a regulatory role. Such arguments are based on three aspects of international norms—actor coverage, applicability and substantive strength—that are critical to any evaluation of their problem-solving potential. Whereas the criterion of applicability combines external coherence with other norms acknowledged by the international community and internal determinacy, the aspect of actor coverage concerns the involvement of those states whose participation is most important for solving the problem at hand. The third aspect, substantive strength, refers to the level, or standard, of contribution that a given norm can make to problem solving (Stokke, 2011, Reference Stokke2013). As argued, “[o]ther things being equal, opting for a norm-building niche makes good sense in effectiveness terms if an institution provides a more promising venue than others for raising the applicability, actor coverage, or substantive strength of normative commitments” (Stokke, Reference Stokke2013, p. 69) First, considering the nature of major issues on the Arctic agenda interconnected between regional and global levels, the AC’s membership is not an optimal grouping for negotiating international norms with respect to those issues. Second, with regard to applicability, assuring the coherence of new regulations and norms with existing international regulatory frameworks presents a challenge: the dense network of arrangements relevant to the Arctic oftentimes does not leave much leeway for states to take unilateral action. A useful example here is shipping in Arctic waters that are covered by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and law of the sea, whose provisions allow coastal states only a fairly narrow regulatory competence beyond their territorial waters. Third, even if a lack of mandate to adopt binding rules does not prevent the AC from becoming a venue for states willing to negotiate and adopt a free-standing treaty to raise regional regulatory standards, the reality that the AC’s members consist of states with varying interests restricts its potential to significantly elevate the substantive strength of any new regulations (Stokke, Reference Stokke2013). Such was the case with the Arctic Offshore Oil and Gas Guidelines: the strategic importance of hydrocarbon resources to certain Arctic states and the fact that new norms would have an asymmetrical effect on states endowed with petroleum reserves prevented the idea of binding regulations even from entering the agenda (Nilsson & Meek, Reference Nilsson, Meek, Carson and Peterson2016; Offerdal, Reference Offerdal, Stokke and Honneland2007). Similarly, the two first legally binding agreements negotiated under the auspices of the AC, on search and rescue and on marine oil pollution preparedness and response, did not add much substantive strength to the commitments of Arctic states already codified under, respectively, the 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation (“the Chicago Convention”) and the 1990 International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation. Accordingly, they were qualified by some scholars as capacity-enhancement, more than norm-creation, instruments, seeing they concern provision of relevant infrastructure, not the operation of vessels (Stokke, Reference Stokke2013).

Moreover, it is worth noting that most of the Arctic issues that arise and require governance solutions belong to the category of collaboration problems, not coordination problems—in the case of the latter, no actor would have any serious incentive to cheat on the clearly defined and adopted rules of behaviour (Snidal, Reference Snidal1985; Young, Reference Young1999). Instead, for most of the challenges facing the Arctic, various actors would in theory gain from violating the agreed rules of the game, as long as others did not make the same violations. Addressing collaboration problems in the context of an international body necessitates a permanent administrative apparatus to monitor the actions of all members, a mechanism for settling disputes over alleged violations and a coordinated response to violators. Moreover, it demands an authoritative interpretation of agreed rules on a regular basis (Young, Reference Young1999). Seeing how far the AC is, as of today, from any of these requirements, it is fair to conclude that it is poorly suited to effectively exercise a regulatory function or to occupy a norm-building niche with respect to most of the issues on Arctic agenda. Rather than providing a venue for binding negotiations, the AC is better positioned to support regulatory advances in broader issue-specific institutions such as the IMO (Stokke, Reference Stokke2013) or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is not through elaboration of new norms, but through development of reporting mechanisms and review procedures that the AC’s capacity for problem solving could be enhanced (Dubois, Eichbaum, Shestakov, Sommerkorn, & Tesar, Reference Dubois, Eichbaum, Shestakov, Sommerkorn and Tesar2016; Supreme Audit Institutions of Denmark, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States of America, 2015).

Finally, it is worth reiterating that in recent years the setting in which the AC operates has been undergoing fundamental changes, many of which are expected to continue transforming Arctic landscapes and societies in the coming decades. It is important to develop tools that remain flexible enough to adjust to rapidly evolving circumstances and steadily advancing science. Laws typically “reflect the current needs and recognize the present values of society. As such, legal regulation is almost inevitably responsive; it can rarely anticipate or imagine future problems” (Shelton, Reference Shelton and Shelton2000, p. 7). This does not need to be the case: the CAO fisheries agreement signed in October 2018 presents an excellent example of a precautionary approach to management in the area. Aside from a few exceptions, however, the feature of legal regulation as responsive rather than anticipatory strongly undermines the default argument that legally binding instruments and institutions are superior to non-legally binding ones.

Description of organisational reform proposals for the Arctic Council

The first in a series of internal deliberations regarding AC reform came at the request of Arctic Ministers at the second Ministerial Meeting of the AC in Barrow, Alaska, in 2000. The main reason behind the Ministers’ appeal to SAOs was that Working Groups established under the AEPS were folded into the AC, which led to some overlapping functions. To address the issue, the Finnish AC chair commissioned a study to “consider and recommend as appropriate ways to improve how work is structured in the Arctic Council” (Arctic Council, 2000). The report was prepared by Finland’s former minister of environment, Pekka Haavisto, with assistance from the chairs of the AC Working Groups, and it concentrated on how to solve the AC’s administrative problems. While recognising that the AC is “only a forum for governments and permanent participants, not a true international organization”, which “make it sometimes more difficult to solve the problems”, the study identified deficiencies in the body’s structure and work (Haavisto, Reference Haavisto2001). These included a lack of clear priorities within the AC, the ambiguous role of Observers, a gap between the scientific work carried under the Working Groups and the political guidance provided to them by SAOs, poor communication both among the Working Groups and between them and SAOs, the absence of institutional memory, the AC’s vulnerable voluntary funding structure and inefficiencies resulting from the lack of a permanent secretariat.

Albeit outside of the direct mandate from the Arctic Ministers, Haavisto also raised in his report the inadequacy of the AC’s response as international processes brought Arctic issues onto the global stage. In his view, the AC could be developed as “a powerful mouthpiece for the Arctic” (Haavisto, Reference Haavisto2001, p. 25), but improvements to its administrative structures and internal coordination processes would first be needed in order to facilitate cooperation with other Arctic stakeholders. Among the major changes he proposed was to organise Ministerial-level meetings from relevant branches of national governments in an effort to ensure the long-term political commitment of Arctic countries, to elevate the role of SAOs who should “think how the Arctic Council could become a real mouthpiece for Arctic issues” (Haavisto, Reference Haavisto2001, p. 40), and to create an equivalent of the Agenda 21 for the region—a comprehensive plan for sustainable development of the Arctic, combined with a financial plan for delivering it. With respect to the structure of the AC, Haavisto proposed a short-term solution—merging the existing five Working Groups and an Action Plan into four broad-based groups to avoid overlapping and optimise the use of resources—and a long-term solution: establishing a permanent secretariat. The secretariat’s tasks would include assisting the rotating AC chair, coordinating Arctic projects and funding, managing an Arctic databank, negotiating with financing institutions and maintaining contacts with other organisations. The report argued that, in such a form, a permanent secretariat would help to strengthen the AC and its capacity to deal with new challenges facing the region (Haavisto, Reference Haavisto2001).

Most of the ideas put forward by Haavisto were disregarded by SAOs in their report to Arctic Ministers in 2002. Pointing to a lack of consensus among Arctic states on the suggestions presented, the SAO report included neither the proposal for changes to the Working Group structure nor support for the establishment of a permanent secretariat with obligatory funding. The SAOs did, however, note that they needed to more carefully prepare and coordinate the mandates given to the Working Groups (Arctic Council, 2002).

The next time the Arctic states examined the organisation of the AC with a view to improve its effectiveness and efficiency was in 2006. The request for this review was included in the Salekhard Declaration issued by Arctic Ministers at the 10th anniversary of the AC, and commitments to initiate a restructuring process were part of the objectives issued jointly by Norway, the Kingdom of Denmark and Sweden for their AC Chairmanships from 2006 to 2012 (Arctic Council, 2006; Norwegian Chairmanship, Reference Chairmanship2006). The first step was the establishment of a joint secretariat in Tromsø, Norway, led by the Chair of SAOs. One could argue that it was during Norway’s term at the helm of the AC that the Arctic experienced the transformative change to which Arctic states felt pressured to respond. These developments were noted by the SAOs in their report to the ministers meeting in Tromsø in 2009, where they wrote that “[i]n a relatively short period of time fundamental changes have occurred in relation to the circumpolar North. Since the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Salekhard, Russia in 2006 the perception of the Arctic as a globally important region in biophysical and geopolitical terms has taken hold”, which called “for more vigorous forms of leadership from the Arctic Council” (Arctic Council, 2009a, p. 2). As a result, in 2009 Arctic Ministers acknowledged “the leadership of the Arctic Council on Arctic challenges and opportunities” (Arctic Council, 2009b) and decided to strengthen the political role of the AC by holding a deputy minister-level meeting to discuss issues emerging between the regular biennial Ministerial Meetings. They also committed to continuing the discussion of how the AC could best be structured to fulfil its objectives, what the role of AC Observers should be and how to develop the AC’s communication and outreach plan. Finally, taking advantage for the first time of a clause in the AC Rules of Procedure (Arctic Council, 1998), Ministers approved the establishment of two task forces, one on short-lived climate forcers and the other on search and rescue (SAR) (Arctic Council, 2009b).

International interest in the Arctic was visible in the pronounced increase in the number of applications for Observer status to the AC since early 2007—a development for which the AC was unprepared (Graczyk, Reference Graczyk, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012; Graczyk & Koivurova, Reference Graczyk and Koivurova2013; Young, Reference Young2009b). The problem came to a head during the Danish Chairmanship (2009–2011), and at the 2011 Arctic Ministers meeting in Nuuk the representatives approved a more detailed set of criteria for the admission of new Observers to the AC, as well as the evaluation of previously admitted ones. Following from earlier discussions, it was at this meeting that the AC approved the decision to establish a permanent AC Secretariat in Tromsø, Norway and form the two new task forces (on institutional issues and Arctic marine oil pollution preparedness and response) and instructed SAOs to develop a strategic communications plan for the AC. Last but not least, in conjunction with the meeting the Arctic Ministers signed the Agreement on Cooperation in Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic, the first legally binding treaty negotiated under the auspices of the AC, and they confirmed the AC’s commitment to address emerging challenges in the Arctic “utilizing a wide range of approaches” (Arctic Council, 2011a).

The decisions made at the Ministerial Meeting in Nuuk in 2011 were implemented during the Swedish Chairmanship (2011–2013). The standing AC Secretariat with a stable budget shared by Arctic countries opened in January 2013, and in May of the same year Arctic Ministers gathered in Kiruna and signed their second legally binding agreement, the Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic. They also adopted the revised AC Rules of Procedure, approved six new Observers to the AC (including China, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea) and established task forces to create a circumpolar business forum, to address black carbon and methane emissions reductions in the Arctic, and to work towards an arrangement on improved scientific research cooperation among the eight Arctic states (Arctic Council, 2013b). Simultaneously, in their “Vision for the Arctic” the Ministers announced that economic cooperation would be at the top of their agenda and that they would pursue an expansion of the AC’s role from policy-shaping into policy-making (Arctic Council, 2013c). Two of the task forces that came out of the meeting in Kiruna completed their work by the end of the second Canadian Chairmanship (2013–2015) and precipitated the establishment of the AEC and the adoption of the Framework for Action on Enhanced Black Carbon and Methane Emissions Reductions, another novel instrument in the AC’s portfolio, at the Ministerial Meeting in Iqaluit in 2015 (Khan, Reference Khan2017; Shapovalova, Reference Shapovalova2016). At the same meeting, Arctic Ministers affirmed “the important leadership role of the Council in taking concrete action through enhanced results-oriented cooperation” (Arctic Council, 2015), which manifested in the third legally binding agreement, the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation, signed in conjunction with the 10th Ministerial Meeting of the Council in 2017 in Fairbanks, Alaska. In Fairbanks the AC also accepted seven new Observers (six international organisations and one state, Switzerland); updated its Communications Strategy; adopted the Communications and Outreach Guidelines that specify the roles of the AC’s Chairmanship, Member States, Permanent Participants, Subsidiary Bodies and the AC Secretariat when communicating externally on the AC; and approved the Working Group Common Operating Guidelines framing and standardising their working procedures. Finally, the Fairbanks declaration included a request to SAOs to develop a strategic plan for the AC (Arctic Council, 2017). Finland has taken this on as one of its main tasks during its second AC Chairmanship (2017–2019), and while the plan was originally expected for approval by Ministers in 2019, negotiations over its final text broke down in the end and instead the Rovaniemi Chairman’s Statement instructed SAOs to continue strategic planning for the AC.

In addition to changes debated and undertaken within the AC, the scholarly and NGO communities have also made proposals for restructuring the AC. Some of these proposals involve realigning and streamlining the working groups (Nilsson, Reference Nilsson, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012), greater participation of sub-state actors and regional governments (Kankaanpää, Reference Kankaanpää, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012) and expanding the role and capacities of the secretariat by elevating the position of executive director to one of secretary general (Conley & Melino, Reference Conley and Melino2016; Graczyk, Reference Graczyk, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012). Others have put forward innovative ideas to enhance the existing architecture of the AC by adding subsidiary bodies tasked with knowledge generation, and issuing recommendations and operationalization and implementation of reforms (Dubois et al., Reference Dubois, Eichbaum, Shestakov, Sommerkorn and Tesar2016). Another study with input from individuals involved in AC operations proposed restructuring the AC to ensure the inclusion of relevant ministries and departments from Arctic states and elevating the Sustainable Development Working Group from one among six Working Groups to a body for promoting dialogue on sustainable development and managing interactions across different sectors and interest and knowledge groups like local and regional leaders, the business community and non-governmental organisations (Kankaanpää & Young, Reference Kankaanpää and Young2012). None of these suggestions, however, have been deliberated within the AC.

Analysis of organisational reform proposals for the Arctic Council

Thus far, reforms to the AC have been carried out under mandates to improve how work is structured in the AC and to examine the organisation of the AC with a view to improve its effectiveness and efficiency. Apart from considering an appropriate role for the AC in an early work by Haavisto, however, little consideration has been given by SAOs to enhancing the functions of the AC in areas where it has been most successful: “improving the knowledge base for environmental measures; preparing practical guidance on how to reduce risks associated with activities that involve threats to the Arctic environment; highlighting in broader regulatory fora the Arctic dimension of problems; and supporting the capacity of Arctic states to implement existing commitments” (Stokke, Reference Stokke, Stokke and Honneland2007, p. 10). Overall the reforms in this category, rather than focusing on how the AC could best be positioned to respond to challenges in the region, predominantly aim to streamline the organisation of the AC’s work, much in line with the logic of national administrations and bureaucracies. Consequently, one might argue that this cluster of reforms emphasises the efficiency, more than the effectiveness, of the AC. While efficiency is indisputably of great value to a forum whose financial basis has always been tenuous and whose workload has been steadily increasing since its establishment, the concept should not be conflated and confused with effectiveness.

Moreover, some of the advanced reforms and developments within the institutional architecture of the AC could even be seen as undermining both its efficiency and its effectiveness. Among other changes, the increasing use of task forces to address specific issues has raised questions about a fragmentation of the AC and competition within the body over limited human and financial resources. Permanent Working Groups and ad-hoc task forces and expert groups sometimes have overlapping mandates, and the division of work among them is not always clearly specified (Rottem, Reference Rottem2016; Supreme Audit Institutions of Denmark, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States of America, 2015). Thus, while many of the task forces have delivered concrete results, not least paving the way for legally binding circumpolar agreements and establishing satellite bodies such as the AEC, from the perspective of efficiency and effectiveness their roles might yet deserve further consideration. As some scholars have suggested, the increasing focus of Arctic officials on the AC’s decision-making capacity—reflected in the growing number of task forces—might come at the cost of eroding the AC’s processes for co-production of knowledge, which in the past have contributed to the AC’s most notable successes (Spence, Reference Spence2017). Finally, it is worth mentioning that there are limits to what any institution, regardless of how efficiently it is managed, can achieve with the funding it receives. From the outset, financial constraints have been a serious obstacle to realising the AC’s full potential: this has undercut or delayed projects and made it difficult for Permanent Participants to be actively involved across the full spectrum of the AC’s activities. The case for reforming the financial basis of the AC has been raised since the AC’s inception, yet these arguments have so far fallen on deaf ears.

The recommendations put forward by experts and scholars on the matter of strengthening the AC’s capabilities have been met with limited attention from the governments of Arctic states (Graczyk, Reference Graczyk, Axworthy, Koivurova and Hasanat2012), which are typically more occupied with streamlining workflows and ensuring a clear division of roles and responsibilities than they are with optimising the resourcefulness and effectiveness of a flexible institution. This, however, should not excuse a critical observer of Arctic affairs from careful differentiation between streamlining the AC to boost its efficiency—covered mostly in this section—and measures that could make the AC more effective, especially in light of dynamic context in which the AC operates—as carried further in the subsequent part, on functional reforms.

Description of functional reform proposals for the Arctic Council

Towards that goal, as early as 2000 Oran R. Young considered the role and development of the AC against the backdrop of institutional and international developments over the following 5–10 years. Like Haavisto, he recognised the AC’s severe limitations—it had no organisational capacity (such as an administrative body endowed with personnel and offices), resources of its own or authority to make binding decisions. Yet where Haavisto focused on the AC in its existing shape, to Young, the AC at that time was more “a proto-regime that may or may not evolve over time into a fully-fledged regime for the circumpolar world” (Young, Reference Young2000, p. 6).

Consequently, rather than assessing its effectiveness, Young evaluated the performance of the AC in terms of what it could do to generate positive outcomes for the region. His 5–10-year strategy for the AC was built around four recommendations: to focus on region-wide issues, to concentrate on work in areas in which it has a distinct advantage, to devise a well-defined division of labour both within its programmatic activities and in its interactions with other Arctic-related bodies and to make a concerted effort to avoid the perception that the AC is an enterprise controlled by officials from national capitals (Young, Reference Young2000). With institutional interplay becoming more and more important in the increasingly dense landscape of issue-specific arrangements in the Arctic, the AC should supply evidence to and amplify the voices of Arctic stakeholders in all relevant global forums, as exemplified by the work of its Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program and its contributions to the negotiations of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Moreover, in Young’s view, the AC had a role to play in setting the policy agenda for the circumpolar north and in framing the issues deliberated by national policy-makers. Finally, while he did not exclude the possibility that the AC would develop a regulatory capacity over time, he did not foresee this in the immediate future and, perhaps more importantly, he did not regard the AC’s informal character “as a defect to be remedied as soon as possible” (Young, Reference Young2000, p. 10).

The same points were reiterated by the Arctic Athabaskan Council, one of the Permanent Participants to the AC, in its discussion paper on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the AC presented to the AC in 2007. The paper was generated in response to a request from the Arctic Ministers in the 2006 Salekhard Declaration, and it recalled both Young’s and Haavisto’s arguments for reforming the AC. From the Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC). ALTERNATIVELY, the AAC can be introduced in brackets after the Arctic Athabaskan Council in lines 765–766, then here it could stay only as the AAC. AAC’s perspective, as the world’s interest in the region mounted, one of the most important questions to consider was the ability of the AC to communicate and interact with both Northern residents and non-Arctic states and global institutions, the latter of which have had a growing influence on the well-being of Arctic indigenous inhabitants (Arctic Athabaskan Council, 2007). Accordingly, the AAC saw the AC as “a good vehicle to articulate Arctic perspectives on issues to the international community”—a vehicle that needs, however, to improve its functional capacity in order to increase its global credibility and influence. To carry out this task, the AAC proposed the creation of a task force to discuss topics including the direction, structure, procedures, priorities, financing, relationships and communications of the AC (Arctic Athabaskan Council, 2007). It recommended two principles to guide SAOs in their decision whether to set up such a task force: “seeing the big picture” rather than “foundering on a narrow appreciation of national interests and a parochial attachment to the Council’s institutional architecture”, and allowing form to follow function, pointing out that “[i]t is all very well to rationalize and restructure the working groups, but if this exercise is to increase the Council’s effectiveness as well efficiency … [f]ocusing on past overlaps and friction between the working groups is only a part, and a relatively small part, of a reform agenda” (Arctic Athabaskan Council, 2007, p. 9). The AAC’s idea for a task force was not, however, picked up and taken any further, and the Task Force for Institutional Issues that was eventually established in 2011 has a much more limited and narrowed mandate.

As discussed earlier, the events of 2007–2009 and the increasing accessibility of the Arctic Ocean occasioned proposals for legally binding solutions. International relations scholars, however, were largely sceptical of the political feasibility of these ideas. They also questioned whether these proposals could effectively address the major governance challenges in the Arctic, characterised by rapidly shifting circumstances and inevitably linked to the impact of outside forces on the region (Stokke, Reference Stokke2006; Young, Reference Young2009c). Nonetheless, they also saw the need to renew and enhance the role of the AC, building on its strengths and accomplishments: its influence in setting the Arctic policy agenda, its ability to amplify the voices of Arctic actors in various global settings and the opportunity it provided for indigenous peoples to engage in and shape policy discussions and decisions. According to those scholars, members of the AC should make a concerted effort to enhance the institution’s role in raising awareness among outsiders to the region’s vulnerability to stresses resulting from human activities far to the south. To that end, the AC should expand opportunities for certain non-Arctic states and non-state actors to participate in its activities, including representatives from lower levels of government, the business community and civil society (Spence, Reference Spence2013; Young, Reference Young2009b). Finally, given the existence of various issue-specific regulatory arrangements relevant to the Arctic, the AC, rather than seeking regulatory capacities for itself, should play the role of facilitator, particularly at its biannual meetings, addressing any problems resulting from the interplay of those distinct arrangements and resolving any inefficiencies (Young, Reference Young2009b). This charge to “strengthen this complex by ensuring that all these entities are joined together in a mutually supportive manner to form an interlocking suite of governance systems for the Arctic in which the idea of stewardship is central” was also taken on in the Arctic Governance Project, an initiative of preeminent Arctic researchers, members of the policy community and representatives of indigenous peoples (Arctic Governance Project, 2010, p. 13). The strategy it proposed in 2010 for sustainability in the Arctic was based on a division of labor among individual bodies, UN agencies and programs engaged in activities relevant to Arctic governance, where “functional overlaps are addressed, and gaps in the existing architecture of governance are filled” (Arctic Governance Project, 2010, p. 10). In that context, the AC should act as a policy-shaping entity, providing support to decision makers at both national and international levels. Furthermore, recognising the inadequacy of sector-specific approaches to the increasingly interlinked components of marine and terrestrial systems, the project’s contributors conceived of the AC’s role as institutionalising integrative practices in Arctic policy-making such as ecosystem-based management and comprehensive impact assessments (Arctic Governance Project, 2010; The Aspen Institute, 2011). The same calls have been repeated by others who consider the AC to be particularly well suited to serve as a coordinating hub for a network of international agreements (legally and non-legally binding) and organisations related to the Arctic. In this scenario, the AC System, in its original or an adjusted form, would become the centre of the wheel of Arctic governance (Eichbaum, Reference Eichbaum2013; Molenaar, Reference Molenaar2012).

Analysis of functional reform proposals for the Arctic Council

The authors considering functional reforms to the AC focused on identifying the optimal role for the AC and the framework under which the body can increase its effectiveness in promoting environmental protection and sustainable development in the Arctic. This is unsurprising, given that the main contributors in this cluster are also among the leading authors in the field of regime theory, looking particularly at international environmental regimes and their effectiveness. Accordingly, the proposals they have put forward for the AC rank high in terms of their potential to tailor the AC’s function to the biophysical and socioeconomic context in which it operates. Those authors have also been attentive to the continuously shifting nature of circumstances in the Arctic and beyond, a reality that is unlikely to change in the coming decades. Many of the concrete measures they suggested have been adopted by the AC, though it should be stressed that many of these proposals have also been put forward by commentators not discussed as part of this category. The implemented measures have included, among others, the establishment of an explicit mechanism, in the form of the AEC, for the business community to provide regular input to the work of the AC, the creation of a permanent secretariat for the AC and the admission of key non-Arctic states as AC Observers. Other recommendations—such as securing a reliable funding mechanism or creating more systematic channels of communication and interaction with sub-state authorities—were not taken up by the AC, despite widespread support among Arctic scholars and practitioners.

The main issues raised among authors taking the functional approach have been, in accordance with recent findings in more generalised research on international regimes, questions of institutional complexes, institutional interplay and interplay management. Those questions have informed recommendations set forth by Young, Stokke, the Arctic Governance Project and, albeit implicitly, the AAC. Where those proposals seemed to fall short, however, has been occasionally in terms of their specificity; prescribed solutions have included insufficient levels of detail and practical guidance for implementation, for instance, on how the promoted constructive interplay among various bodies relevant to the Arctic could be achieved and enhanced. This deficiency could have compromised the relevance and applicability of the above recommendations to discussions among Arctic decision-makers and AC officials, despite offering the best chance to address emerging challenges in the evolving context of Arctic governance.

In sum, ideas to reform the AC have been floated in abundance from the body’s inception. In addition to the ones presented earlier, voices proposing reform have regularly included those suggesting a broadened mandate to include in the AC’s remit questions of military security (Huebert, Reference Huebert2016; Nord, Reference Nord2016), even advising that the AC be turned into the equivalent of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for the Arctic (Conley & Melino, Reference Conley and Melino2016), as well as those who caution against such an expansion of the AC’s responsibilities (Byers, Reference Byers2016). The discussion in this paper of three categories of reform served to elucidate their applicability to the case of the AC and their adequacy from the perspective of the challenges facing the Arctic, not as a broader critique of the major schools of thought behind them. This analysis of AC reform proposals reveals that certain ideas for strengthening the AC like providing it with a treaty foundation or streamlining its workflows have been systematically promoted from the outset, irrespective of changes in the international and Arctic natural environment. This indicates that, oftentimes, the ideas put forward by various authors stem predominantly from their general thinking about what constitutes an effective means of international collaboration and addressing environmental problems, rather than from a consideration of the specific conditions of the Arctic and the AC. This is an important inference, given the unrelenting change happening in both Arctic and global socio-environmental settings. This transformation calls into question the usefulness of past modes of thinking and forms of international cooperation. Far from offering solutions, their continuous application in particular circumstances might even impede progress in addressing present challenges.