Working Together - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 21

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Part II Working Together
When the Cold War dominated world politics, the Arctic held the longest common boundary
or front line between East and West. It was an area of great military significance and sens-
itivity. If there had ever been a major nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the
United States, missiles and aircraft would have passed over the Arctic, which was therefore
encircled by radar stations and other military installations. Cooperation to investigate the
health of the Arctic environment was not high on the agenda of Arctic country governments.
In this section, we look at how quickly this hiatus changed after Mikhail Gorbachev
came to power in the Soviet Union, an event that at last provided real and meaningful op-
portunities for all the Arctic countries to work together. In particular, we will recognize
the foresight of the Finnish (Rovaniemi) Initiative that began in 1989 and resulted in the
Rovaniemi Declaration of 1991. The declaration and its accompanying Arctic Environment-
alProtectionStrategy(AEPS)wereadoptedbyalleightArcticcountries(Canada,Denmark/
Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and the United States). From the per-
spective of this story, the most important element of both documents was the creation of the
Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP). This new institution was charged
withprovidingArcticgovernmentswithcomprehensiveandreliableinformationonthestate
of and threats to the Arctic environment. In addition, AMAP was to provide advice on ac-
tions to help Arctic governments put in place appropriate preventative and remedial envir-
onmental actions. Today, AMAP remains a key element of the Arctic Council (which sub-
sumed the AEPS in 1996).
AMAP is quite a remarkable organisation, deserving several pages to describe how it
was built and how it operates. It has essentially no guaranteed operational budget to conduct