The Arctic Messenger Gains a Voice - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 24

mains the same today - except we now have the “new” states that emerged from the disap-
pearance of such confederations as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
In the 1970s, the East and West realized that the transboundary atmospheric transport
of sulphur and nitrogen products of power generation and metal smelting was leading to
widespread acidification and the degradation of forest and freshwater aquatic ecosystems.
This led to the successful negotiation in 1979 of the UNECE Convention on Long-Range
Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) and of its successive legally binding protocols, 1
which detail the actual actions to be taken by parties to combat acidification. What is
really interesting about the CLRTAP acidification protocols is that their implementation
has evolved to become responsive to results coming from the European Monitoring and
Evaluation Programme (EMEP). The CLRTAP/EMEP experience served as a tantalizing
example of what could be done in a rational world. It was, however, a lonely example.
In addition, with the very important exception of northern Scandinavia and north-western
Russia, the CLRTAP was not active in the Arctic. There was no Arctic Messenger.
In the mid-1980s, the Soviet economy was moribund when (in 1985) Mikhail
Gorbachev was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party, a post he held until
1991. It quickly became obvious that he was not of the same mould as his predecessors.
Almost immediately, he embarked on a dramatic paradigm shift of policy that was grouped
under two broad umbrellas: perestroika , which consisted of a total restructuring of the
Soviet economy, and glasnost , which referred to new levels of openness and transparency
within the Soviet political and governmental system. One of the first signs of the changes
ahead came immediately. Discussions began between Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, the Soviet Union, Sweden and the United States about the need for a nongov-
ernmental forum to encourage and facilitate international cooperation in Arctic science.
Eventually, this led to the creation of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) in
1990. Then, in 1987, Mr. Gorbachev visited the north-western port of Murmansk to confer
the Order of Lenin on the city. The event is remembered today for a speech that is generally
recognized as the first bold step towards a new cooperative Arctic. It is a curious hybrid of
rhetoric - typical of either protagonist in the Cold War East-West divide - followed by six