Mistra Arctic Futures Annual Report 2011 (pdf)

Our final key insight so far concerns the status of climate
their utility are determined by their location within political
change as a political resource. Much current discussion about and economic networks rather than being a priori qualities.
the future of the Arctic presents climate change as a force with We relate both of these concepts to “governance,” i.e. the
the capacity to exclusively determine future action. The 1925 means through which power over people, places, and objects is
Svalbard Treaty, the 1994 United Nations Convention on the exercised (including but not limited to political structures such
Law of the Sea, the 1996 establishment of the Arctic Council, as the Arctic Council, or legal instruments such as UNCLOS).
and the 2008 Ilulissat Declaration can all be regarded as steps The strength of this framework is that it emphasizes human
in a gradual process of integrating Arctic spaces into existing agency; sea-ice retreat or global oil prices are recognized as
political and economic systems. These governance regimes have components of the futures articulated by actors rather than
naturalized the values that prevailed at particular historical forces against which politics is helpless.
moments and “filtered out” dissenting voices and visions of the Our approach derives inspiration from actor-network theory,
present and future Arctic, not least through their authority to a sociological framework that has proved highly stimulating for
define who constitutes a legitimate Arctic stakeholder. Focusing analyses of science and policymaking. There are also similarities
on the origins of this authority redirects attention toward the to the concept of “political ecology,” used in relation to the
political contexts in which climate change is articulated as a 1950s Alaska, which asserts that the political and economic
crucial issue for the future of the Arctic, recognizing that even landscape must be considered within the same context as
the most convincingly-argued scientific findings can only gain the physical geographical landscape when evaluating the
political authority through political processes.
relationship between resources and human populations. This
framework is developed in a stand-alone academic paper,
Scientific approach and general outcomes
The research team has prioritized the creation of a
methodological framework capable of structuring our future
output from the perspective of three interrelated categories
flagged in the project title: voices, resources, and governance.
Today’s visions, and the voices behind them, are analyzed
in relation to longer-term historical and geopolitical forces
– sometimes stretching back over a century – that have
shaped modern conceptions of the Arctic. The term “voices”
highlights the fact that it is actors (individual or institutional)
rather than monolithic “drivers” (such as climate change or
demand for hydrocarbons) that articulate visions, create and
uphold politics, and perform actions that shape the future of
the Arctic. Our conception of “resources” builds on the work
of geographers such as Gavin Bridge, who have argued that
resources are a constructed category; that is, their value and
1
The referenced material can be found in the Communication section of this report on page 64–65.
which is in the final stages of completion (Avango, Nilsson,
and Roberts) 1 . It has also already started to underpin other
research within the project (Depledge and Roberts; Avango
and Roberts). This approach also “de-privileges” the Arctic by
embedding it in existing discourses and geopolitical patterns.
Finally, our analyses de-construct the most prominent
narrative in current future visions of the Arctic – the idea that
a decrease in sea ice driven by the reinforced version of climate
change called “Arctic amplification” will almost by necessity
lead to an increase in shipping and exploitation of natural
resources in the region.There have already been several quests
for energy resources in the Arctic over the 20th century, and
none were predicated on a discourse of global warming and
melting sea ice. On the contrary, when there actually was a
considerable warming of the Arctic (between around 1920 to
1950), it was not connected to enhanced resource use. Indeed,
companies then articulated visions of the future in which they
TABLE 1. FIRST-YEAR PROJECT STAFFING
Researcher
Affiliation; discipline
Dag Avango KTH; industrial archaeology (PhD 2005)
Julia Lajus
European University at St. Petersburg; history of
science and environment (PhD 2004)
Annika E. Nilsson SEI; political science and governance (PhD 2007)
Peder Roberts
Strasbourg; history of science and historical
geography (PhD 2010)
Sverker Sörlin
KTH; history of science and environment, and
research policy (PhD 1988)
Nina Wormbs KTH; history of technology and media (PhD 2003)
Ekaterina Kalemeneva European University at St Petersburg; history
Eric Paglia
KTH; environmental history
Andrian Vlakhov European University at St Petersburg; anthropology
TABLE 2. ANTICIPATED ADDITIONS TO STAFF – 2012
Researcher
Affiliation
Sabine Höhler KTH; science and technology studies (PhD 1999)
Patrik Lantto
University of Umeå; Centre for Sami Research
(PhD 2000)
Paul Warde UEA & Cambridge; history (PhD 2002)
Lize-Marie van der
Watt
University of Stellenbosch; history (PhD 2011)
would successfully domesticate the Arctic through sciencebased
industrial technology, turning the ice into a challenge
that could reveal expert ability (Avango and Högselius, in
press).
Competence building and staffing
The original staffing of this project reflected a wish to meet
the Mistra call for building competence, and combines
members with extensive experience in political, historical, and
archaeological studies of the Arctic with scholars who are able
to bring expertise in cognate areas to the research programme.
This blend of competences has successfully enhanced the
group’s capacity to produce new conceptual tools, rather than
merely uncover new data.
The project application was written by a team of six
scholars, all of whom have worked in the project during the
first year. Four members of this team have long histories of
Arctic engagement, while two are relatively new to Arctic
research. The cluster of experienced Arctic scholars at KTH
has provided a vital home for our research. We are building
further collaborations in Stockholm with the Defence University
College, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the
Stockholm Resilience Centre, and internationally by building a
research group in St. Petersburg and through our multifaceted
cross-breeding with other projects. So far, we have three PhD
students on our team. As new graduate students are hired at
KTH in the coming years, this number is likely to grow.
We also build competence by bringing new Arctic expertise
to Stockholm. Roberts will move to Stockholm in 2012 for
what promises to be a multi-year stay. We will have another
postdoctoral scholar, and additional mid-career scholars from
Sweden and the UK. By the end of 2013 we will have produced
one PhD, one post doc, and established several mid-career and
senior Arctic scholars in the Swedish humanities and socialscience
research communities.
Conference and workshop participation, project
and programme working mode
Project members have participated in a range of conferences,
workshops, and seminars (see the full list under Communication
on page 64–65. Key events include the Seventh International
Congress of Arctic Social Sciences meeting in Akureyri (June
2011), where we presented the methodological approach for
the project as well as results from ongoing research within
individual work packages. Five project members participated in
the IPY “From Knowledge to Action” conference in Montreal
2012. We have also travelled to core conferences in our
respective disciplines, including environmental history, the
history of science, governance and area studies, bringing the
project and its approach to a wider audience.
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