Viking Magazine - March 2012 - 22

Norway and Russia will each get a share
of the petroleum and gas reserves that lie
between the Norwegian archipelago of
Svalbard and the Russian archipelago of
Novaya Zemlya. But what they've also
gained, and what other countries have
gained as well, Gourley believes, is a new
model for resolving disputes over Arctic
territory and resources.
" We've all been studying it to learn
how they did it, " Gourley says about
the establishment of a new NorwegianRussian
boundary in the Barents Sea
(see illustration on p. 25). The treaty is
viewed " very favorably " by all the Arctic
nations, she says. Think tanks, academics
and world media are talking up the
potential for political and even military
conflict in the Arctic, so " it was hugely
important for the world to know that
two states that had a dispute, albeit a
well-managed dispute, in the Arctic were
able to resolve it peacefully. "
Gourley says, " Secretary [of State
Hillary Rodham] Clinton has even cited
the Russia-Norway boundary resolution
in the context of the South China Sea. "
There, the Philippines, China, and others
have made conflicting claims to territory.
" She has actually used that example, the
Norwegian-Russian boundary, as something
that perhaps those countries should
look to and learn some lessons from. "
Gourley represents the United States
on the Arctic Council, a forum whose
member countries (the five with Arctic
coastlines plus Iceland, Sweden, and Finland)
work together on Arctic resource
development and environmental protection.
Pointing to other border issues
that need to be settled among council
members, she says the United States, for
example, has unresolved boundaries with
Canada in the Beaufort sea, and might
rely on the same methods Norway and
Russia did to find a solution.
But Norway has been a model in the
Arctic in more than just its treaty suc22
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cess. Norway was the first to develop a
comprehensive strategy for managing its
Arctic territory and resources: the " High
North Strategy, " adopted by Norway's
government in December 2006. All of the
other Arctic nations have crafted similar
documents in the past two or three years.
Some, including the United States, had
established policy statements on the Arctic,
Gourley says, but those were often
products of the Cold War and centered
on national defense.
In fact, Gourley says, when member
countries formed the Arctic Council in
1996, they did so primarily to deal with
legacies of the environmental degradation
that occured during the Cold War. Russia,
recently emerged from Communism,
needed to be brought into the community
of nations. It had decades' worth
of pollution to clean up in the north:
petroleum and chemicals used by military
installations and left to spill from rusted
storage vessels, and a litter of repurposed
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Viking Magazine - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Viking Magazine - March 2012
