The implications of a warming Arctic for international law will depend, in part, on the magnitude and nature of the threats that emerge over the course of the next few decades. The history of Arctic politics has been characterized by both exemplary international cooperation and intense global competition. On the one hand, the High North has long been seen as a zone of exceptional politics characterized by international cooperation. On the other hand, it has also been a zone of intense strategic competition. Climate change is a threat multiplier on a global scale. It will introduce new Arctic challenges. But it will also exert pressure on key relationships, institutions, and norms globally. Some of these new pressures—and the conflicts they generate—will have ramifications for Arctic geopolitics. In the Arctic, emergent points of conflict include concerns over freedom of navigation, fish and hydrocarbon resource management, Indigenous rights, and environmental regulation. In one possible future these points of contention might be addressed through cooperative legal regimes. In another, strategic competition might come to the fore, potentially eroding fundamental pillars of the international legal order, including norms related to the non-appropriation of international waters, the right of self-determination, nuclear non-proliferation, or even the preservation of territorial integrity. The likely future lies somewhere between these two extremes, with strategic competition returning in greater force to the Arctic, but with legal authorities and norms still serving as guardrails in a new “Great Game.”
Graefe et al. (Thu,) studied this question.