The Arctic Messenger Gains a Voice - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 29

through the agenda, and at the end of the week, we had a plan for the Arctic Monitor-
ing and Assessment Programme (AMAP) that was ready for review at the January 1991
Finnish Initiative meeting in Kiruna. Today, the Finnish Initiative is more often called the
Rovaniemi Process.
Much of our negotiation of the structure of AMAP took place in Moscow and Lenin-
grad/Saint Petersburg during the painful economic change that accompanied the transition
from Soviet Union to Russia. After driving past endless queues of freezing people hoping
to buy a loaf of bread on snow-covered streets in the winter of 1990-1991, I was embar-
rassed by my own comfort. We easily forget how fragile our civilizations can be.
In June 1991, ministers for the environment of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States met again in Rovaniemi and signed on to
the Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment, which laid out their long-
term plans and vision. Accompanying the declaration was the more comprehensive AEPS,
which provided details of the arrangements that would be established to put their plans into
action. The workhorses of the AEPS were identified as AMAP, tasked with monitoring and
assessing the state of the Arctic environment; the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna
(CAFF), tasked with exchanging information and the coordination of research on species
and habitats; the Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response in the Arctic (EPPR),
tasked with providing a framework for cooperation with environmental emergencies; and
the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME), tasked with reviewing measures
regarding Arctic marine pollution. A working group supported each activity. The ministers
agreed they would meet at regular intervals (two years) to review progress and to further
develop the strategy. In 1996, a new working group on sustainable development was set
up, and in the same year (through the Ottawa Declaration), the Arctic Council was inaug-
urated. At that time, the Arctic Council subsumed within itself all activities of the former
AEPS but did not hold its first meeting until 1998 in Iqaluit, Canada.
The two major changes in this development were, firstly, that the underlying raison
d'être became sustainable development rather than environmental protection, and conse-
quently, national representation moved from environment ministers to foreign affairs min-