The Arctic Messenger Gains a Voice - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 38

the AAR was presented to the First Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council in Iqaluit,
Canada, in 1998. The impact of these reports in providing the key political motivation for
regional and global actions to control POPs and heavy metals under the conventions of the
United Nations will be explained in the following pollutant chapters of Part 3.
An amusing event occurred in Alta. Just before the AEPS/Arctic Council ministerial
conferences, senior Arctic government officials (SAOs) meet to review the key findings
and recommendations coming from the working groups. They then negotiate amongst
themselves the wording of the declaration and work plan of the meeting for ministerial en-
dorsement and signature. Of course, in order to preserve unanimity, the text provided to
ministers tends to represent the most progressive steps that the least progressive country
can accept. In general, this is common practice for most intergovernmental meetings and it
continues to be the practice in the Arctic Council today. To be fair, there may be no other
practical way.Itisadepressing thoughtwhenyouconsider thepressingimperative forbold
actions to limit climate change. In Alta, the very first AMAP plain language assessment
report (SOAER) was the most significant item on the agenda and the text prepared by the
SAOs to map out the collective ministerial response was very cautious and disappointing
for most of us with a concern for the Arctic. However, we were not alone with this judge-
ment.TheAEPSatthattimewaschairedbyNorway.Whentheministersarrived,theytook
about 10 minutes to compare the AMAP report with the response prepared by their senior
officials before deciding that they wanted an action plan to be proud of. What is more, they
set about writing it themselves. It was a sweet moment!
The next comprehensive AMAP assessment was published in 2003-2004 as four sep-
arate reports dealing individually with updates in knowledge on POPs, heavy metals, ra-
dioactivity and human health. In addition, there was a fifth report that originated from an
initiative of Robie Macdonald, a Canadian senior oceanographic chemist who we will en-
counter later. Towards the end of the 1990s, he pointed out to the working group that cli-
mate change could influence the way in which contaminants are transported to and from
the Arctic and how they move between media (such as the atmosphere and water - a pro-
cess known as partitioning ).