ARCTIC: EU and Greenland & more – 19th Mar 2024

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 19th of March twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

This week marks the start of a new era for Greenland. On Friday the 15th, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, arrived in the country to bring Greenland and the EU closer together. Through a statement released on Friday, Von Der Leyen confirmed three major agreements. The EU will build an office in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, to facilitate cooperation with local businesses, and invest over $100 million US dollars in an education and renewable energy program. The EU is looking to protect the Arctic while also extracting critical resources needed to power renewable technologies. Greenland is one of the EU’s major targets for meeting these goals.

The Arctic is developing in many ways, including its militaries. NATO has long asked that its members spend two percent of their GDPs on defense, though many have historically not met this goal. Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway’s Prime Minister, announced in a speech on Thursday the 14th that it will increase Norway’s defense budget to meet NATO’s target with the May national budget proposal. The government believes that strengthening national security has become increasingly important, so other national departments will likely receive static or lowered budgets in the coming year.

The biggest Arctic nation, Russia, decided its future when, from Friday the 15th to Sunday the 17th, the country held presidential elections to decide whether Vladimir Putin would be given a further six years in power. On Sunday, the Kremlin announced Putin won with a staggering eighty-seven percent of the votes. However, on Monday the 18th, Western governments decried the election as rigged and undemocratic. EU ministers gathered in Brussels on Monday and released a joint statement dismissing the results of the election and agreeing on a new barrage of economic sanctions against Russia. In the leadup to the election, each of Putin’s political rivals were banned, arrested or suffered sudden deaths, prompting fears of a crumbling democracy in Russia.

Another Russian getting a career boost is Konstantin Kabantsov. The Barents Observer reported on Friday the 15th that military officer Kabantsov will take over command of Russia’s most powerful naval force, the Northern Fleet. Kabantsov had gained a reputation as a master of Arctic underwater warfare. He led the expansion of Russia’s Arctic submarine division and is expected to increase the Northern Fleet’s underwater capabilities during his upcoming tenure.

Moving on, there's a new conflict between the state of Alaska and the US federal government, which could become very expensive. In June twenty twenty-three, the federal Environmental Protection Agency blocked the Alaska state from building a new huge gold mine in the Pebble Bay in western Alaska, citing environmental concerns. The federal supreme court upheld this ban in January. Yet on Thursday the 14th, Mike Dunleavy, Alaska’s Governor, announced a $700 billion dollar lawsuit against the federal government. The lawsuit contends that the mine, projected to sustain Alaska's economy for a century, was unjustly halted based on unfounded environmental claims. Delores Larson, director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, responded the same day, saying that she fully expects the lawsuit to fail as the initial ban was founded in science and has broad public support.

In Iceland all seemed to be calming down after months of volcanic eruptions battering the town of Grindavik. However, all of a sudden, on Saturday the 16th, another eruption took place in the same location where four eruptions happened in four months. The Icelandic Meteorological Office confirmed that this one was the strongest of the recent eruptions, thankfully there have been many protective barriers built and lava quickly flowed toward the evacuated town but could not get past Grindavik’s defenses. The biggest danger is that the lava reaches the Svartasengi Power Plant, since it has water pipes that supply 20,000 people in the area.

Staying in the Nordics where Finland has been urged to address its historic mistreatment of the Sami people. On Friday the 15th, Fabian Salvioli, a UN Human Rights Expert, visited Finland and released a statement saying the Finnish government needs to address matters of reparations and restitution to the Sami people. Even though legislative reform in the nineties ended the harmful policies of stripping Sami people of their language, land and culture, there has been little progress in reversing the harm done over 200 years of cultural assimilation. UN accords state that Indigenous people have the right to self-determination, but Finland does not guarantee this right. Salvioli has urged Finland to rectify its Sámi Parliament Act to meet international standards.

In Sweden, the Sami people face challenges in securing a fair future. A groundbreaking report published on Thursday the 14th in the journal Society and Natural Resources by the Stockholm Environment Institute is the first to investigate energy companies purchasing land rights from Sami communities for resource exploitation. The study scrutinized fifteen agreements between renewable energy firms and Sami communities in Arctic Sweden, revealing that the adverse effects generally outweighed the limited benefits to the local community. These agreements, all containing confidentiality clauses and lacking transparent consent measures, resulted in harmful outcomes such as reindeer deaths and land dispossession. The Swedish government's green energy push often disregards Indigenous rights, but recent Sami-led court battles have managed to delay or halt harmful projects.

Native people in the US are facing a fairer future. On Thursday the 14th, US Congress took a significant step toward improving the future of Native Americans by passing a bill allocating over $1.3 billion dollars for Native American Housing programs. This funding targets Native Hawaiians, Alaskan Natives, and American Indians, empowering each local community to determine spending priorities. Recent census data underscores the stark disparities Indigenous populations face, with double the likelihood of poverty and a prevalence of inadequate, overcrowded tribal homes. Hawaiian senator Brian Schatz acknowledges the funding as a starting point but emphasizes its insufficiency in addressing generations of social decline, calling for ongoing housing assistance to uplift communities from poverty.

What about funding for Swedish hedgehogs? On Tuesday the 12th, the World Wildlife Fund (or WWF) Sweden announced a significant boost, securing over $2 million US dollars from the Swedish Postcode Lottery for a new four-year conservation project. This initiative aims to help the population of ten endangered species, including birds, fish, mammals, and insects, spanning from the Arctic fox in the north to the hedgehogs in the south. While the WWF acknowledges that effective conservation requires sustained effort beyond four years, this project marks a promising start in rescuing these ten species from peril.

And to close this edition, The Arctic Winter Games drew to a close on Saturday the 16th. After a week of Indigenous athletes from across the Arctic Circle competing in traditional games, team Alaska has emerged victorious, winning over 200 medals in total. Second place team Yukon won 160 and reigning champions Greenland only got over fifty medals. On Saturday’s closing ceremony, Phillip Blanchett, the Master of Ceremonies, declared the occasion had been a big success, with over 2,000 athletes making it to Alaska to show what they could do. Next year’s games will be held in Whitehorse, Canada.

The event has been a visual and cultural feast. For a photographic roundup of the Arctic’s biggest sporting event, take a look at the link in the show notes!

And that’s it for this week!

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