Abstracts - Posters

Climate Change & the Arctic Council's Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Policy Document: Dead letter or Living Blueprint?

Dave Roddick
Consultant
dave_roddick@hotmail.com

The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) has demonstrated the value of comprehensive, regional integrative assessments for revealing new challenges and opportunities facing national, regional and local political decision-makers (ACIA: 2004; MacCarthy and Martello, 2004). The Arctic Council's 2004 ACIA Policy Document, endorsed by Ministers at the 2004 Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, articulates a set of high-level policy goals for member Arctic states and Permanent Participants to follow, based on the recommendations made by Senior Arctic Officials in light of the ACIA science report and key findings (AMAP: 2004).

The ACIA Policy Document may be viewed as a blueprint for focused circumpolar action at the national, regional, local and Indigenous community level to combat the negative impacts of climate change. On this basis alone it constituents one of the few, collective policy statements made by Arctic states -among them some of the world's most industrialized nations- as to what should (and by omission) should not be done about climate change with regard to specific mitigation and adaptation policies and actions.

The Arctic Council's ACIA Policy Document fell short of the Indigenous Permanent Participants' expectations for concrete, statewide circumpolar action, based on the evidence brought forward in the ACIA science study. This discrepancy was evident during negotiations among Indigenous Permanent Participants and Senior Arctic Officials regarding the final ACIA Policy Document text, subsequently endorsed by Arctic Ministers in Reykjavik.

In the aftermath of the Arctic Council's Reykjavik Declaration, including the ACIA Policy Document, a number of initiatives have come forward from Arctic states that might count as implementing ACIA Policy Document. In light of Indigenous Permanent Participant's dissatisfaction with the ACIA Policy Document, to what extent do these new initiatives reflect the challenges and opportunities facing local and indigenous communities as described in the ACIA Science report, and as measured against the compromise language agreed to in the ACIA Policy Document? By extension, what does it tells about the political efficacy of comprehensive regional climate change assessments? And how might scientists, politicians and policy-makers make better use of the results of comprehensive regional assessments in future?

2005-04-06