ARCTIC: Defense Strategies & more – 2nd Dec 2025

Góðan daginn from BA! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 2nd of December twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

The question of the biggest danger to a healthy Arctic is hard to answer. For a long time, climate change was the biggest threat. But, on Wednesday the 26th, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling the rapid militarization of the Arctic a danger to its geopolitical stability.

The Parliament has called for EU nations to create a stronger strategy to fight against the combined Russian and Chinese military activities in the Arctic. Protecting essential underwater infrastructure, which has been frequently sabotaged by Russian and Chinese vessels in recent years, is a key step to securing European peace in the north. The Parliament also called for efforts from EU members to allow Iceland and Greenland into the EU, to create a powerful bloc of Arctic nations working together.

Reflecting this new European stance in the north, on Tuesday the 25th, the Finnish government released its updated Arctic foreign and security policy. The policy warns that the Arctic is entering a new era, one of heightened military tension, shrinking sea ice, and increasing competition from Russia and China.

This updated policy marks Finland’s first northern strategy since the country joined NATO in twenty twenty-three, and the document reflects this significant change in military procedure. Finland has become NATO’s hub for Arctic defence, and the country will advance its cooperation with NATO even further to ensure its safety.

Alongside military strategy, the document highlights Indigenous rights. The policy says that the Saami people of Scandinavia must be central to decision-making on Arctic affairs, using Saami traditional knowledge to bolster Europe’s long-term strategies.

With the Nordic countries at the forefront of Arctic security, the constant stream of new national defence strategies can be hard to understand. To summarize and simplify this northern struggle, on Thursday the 27th, the publisher Elgar Online freely released a new book on Arctic security, titled The Nordic States, NATO and the EU in Arctic Security, by Andreas Raspotnik and Andreas Østhagen.

Every Nordic nation’s northern defence priorities are detailed, while covering how these small nations cope with an Arctic region increasingly dominated by the largest countries in the world.

To download the e-book, check out the link in the show notes.

Outside of the EU, more action is being taken to combat Russia’s growing presence in the Arctic. As reported by the news agency, High North News, on Wednesday the 26th, the UK Government will soon implement a ban on any British vessels that carry natural gas to and from Russia. This will have a significant impact on the Yamal gas facility, Russia’s largest, and located in the far north. Yamal LNG is reliant on the six ice-class carriers provided by Seapeak Maritime, which is based in Glasgow, to ship gas out of the Arctic and around the world.

This upcoming ban will cut off Russia’s supply chain at the source, and with alternative ice-class ships both rare and expensive to find, the UK government has just dealt a significant blow to the Russian energy industry.

Meanwhile, even though Ukraine seems far from the Arctic, the two regions could soon become closely linked. As reported by the news outlet, The Barents Observer, on Friday the 28th, the Russian Institute of Water Problems revealed a novel solution to the serious lack of freshwater in the Donbas region of Ukraine, currently illegally occupied by Russian forces.

The Institute has proposed to build a pipeline from the Pechora river in northwest Russia, running through numerous other river basins as it travels 2,000 kilometers south, about 1,200 miles, to Donbas.

With sea ice melt causing a surplus of freshwater in the Arctic, the Institute even believes this pipeline could mitigate the negative effects of rapid ice melt.

Life along the Arctic’s rivers is getting harder, but Alaskan fisheries have had a surprisingly good year in twenty twenty-five. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s preliminary annual summary was released on Monday the 24th, and reveals that Alaska commercial fishers caught much more salmon in twenty twenty-five than they did last year. Almost 200 million salmon have been caught this year, compared to only 100 million in twenty twenty-four. While initially positive news, salmon size in Alaska continues to shrink.

The 100 million salmon caught last year were valued at about $300 million US dollars. While the number of salmon caught this year doubled, the value only increased to $540 million US dollars, as climate change and habitat loss create worse feeding conditions for Alaska’s salmon.

The Icelandic salmon fishing industry is under threat too, but this threat comes from an unexpected source: Björk, Iceland’s most famous artist. As reported by the music magazine, NME, on Wednesday the 26th, Björk celebrated turning sixty by detailing her lawsuits against the Icelandic State.

Björk is suing the Icelandic government due to its practice of industrial salmon farming, which has been accused of animal cruelty and causing environmental harm. Björk noted that she has brought another case against the Icelandic state, but hasn’t detailed the reason behind this suit yet.

The Icelandic government may be focusing on bigger threats, though. On Thursday the 27th, The Ministry of Justice announced it submitted a bill to Parliament which will create a new national emergency level, intended to be declared when the nation is at a state of national peril.

The level, named þjóðarvá, has been proposed due to the increasing frequency of serious emergencies occurring in Iceland. The great storm of twenty nineteen, landslides, the Covid pandemic and repeated volcanic eruptions near Grindavík, alongside climate change and military threats, have all caused serious damage to the country. The government believes it needs to prepare for similar emergencies.

Iceland has many threats to worry about, but the northern Norwegian islands of Svalbard are focusing on their biggest problem for their marine life: climate change. The Norwegian Species Data Bank updated its endangered species list on Thursday the 27th, and the news for Svalbard’s residents is not good.

Every habitat that requires sea ice in Svalbard is now listed as critically endangered, with the ice disappearing at a rate faster than anywhere else in the world. The assessment notes that ocean acidification, mineral extraction and bottom trawling also harm marine habitats in the area, meaning there is plenty of work to be done to ensure the safety of Svalbard’s fragile marine environment.

With the declining environmental health of the Arctic, it’s important that governments treat the issue with the severity it deserves. According to a report published on Sunday the 30th by Canada’s Intact Center on Climate Adaptation the three Arctic Canadian territories are not doing enough to protect their coastal communities.

While coastal erosion is an issue globally, the Arctic faces a unique threat: Permafrost melt. The melting frozen grounds are accelerating coastal erosion, with some areas eroding by one meter, about three feet, per year. The report calls for territorial governments to create proper action plans to reduce erosion, or prepare for evacuation, if northern coasts continue to disappear.

And finally, given the varied ways Arctic health is in danger, it takes creative ways to monitor these changes. If you had to consider how to best monitor plastic pollution, the last solution you might consider would be adding more plastic, but that’s exactly what the Arctic Council’s new project, launched on Friday the 28th, is doing.

The Arctic Council says that it is launching two GPS-tracked plastic bottles from Greenland, to track how they move around ocean currents and monitor how pollution migrates around the North Pole.

To keep an eye on this most unique letter to Santa, track the bottles yourself with the link in the show notes.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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