Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Lessons From Heroines and Heroes: From Rovaniemi
to the Arctic Council
Until 1989-1991, no advocate existed that combined the capacity of putting its finger on the
pulse of the Arctic environment with the responsibility to simultaneously advise Arctic gov-
ernments on the status of the patient's health. No mechanism existed that would empower
governments to consider responding to such advice with cooperative environmental protec-
tion measures. All that suddenly changed in 1989 with the bold initiative of Kalevi Sorsa,
Kaj Barlund and the Finnish government. In a clever and practical suggestion, they showed
how the environmental elements of Mr. Gorbachev's 1987 Murmansk speech could easily
be put into action without any complicated legal agreement. The so-called Finnish Initiative,
or Rovaniemi Process, bore fruit, and in 1991, the eight Arctic countries signed on to the
Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy in Rovaniemi, Finland. The Rovaniemi flame was
alight and it has served the Arctic well. It has motivated much of the cooperative scientific
progress, understanding and environmental actions we have been following in this topic.
We all owe a great debt of gratitude to Mikhail Gorbachev, Kalevi Sorsa, Kaj Barlund
and the Finnish government. They taught us to never be afraid of proposing something we
believe in and to always seek the most practical ways to achieve our goals. The subse-
quent transformation of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) into the Arc-
tic Council now led by ministers of foreign affairs or ministers of state further strengthened
the scope and responsibility of the organisation (to include economic development) until
Canada, at the beginning of its two-year term as chair, decided to reverse the trend by ap-
pointing its environment minister to this role in 2013.
The Finnish proposal recognized that protection of the Arctic required circumpolar co-
operative environmental monitoring. The Norwegian government took up this challenge and
led the negotiations to create Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) as a
fully integrated component of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy. They sought a
way to collect and assess reliable circumpolar scientific information and to provide a path
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