Governing Arctic Change

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxvii

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2. Introduction: The Arctic as a Globally Embedded Space

   • Kathrin Keil, Sebastian Knecht

   Pages 1-18

3. Imaginaries: How to Envision the Arctic in a Global Context?

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. Sustainable Development as a Global-Arctic Matter: Imaginaries and Controversies

      • Berit Kristoffersen, Oluf Langhelle

      Pages 21-41

   3. Reimagining Political Space: The Limits of Arctic Indigenous Self-Determination in International Governance?

      • Jessica M. Shadian

      Pages 43-57

   4. Globalising the Arctic Climate: Geoengineering and the Emerging Global Polity

      • Olaf Corry

      Pages 59-78

4. Institutional Politics: How to Organise a Global Arctic?

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 79-79

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   2. Coping with Institutional Challenges for Arctic Environmental Governance

      • Christoph Humrich

      Pages 81-99

   3. Global Environmental Governance and Treaty-Making: The Arctic’s Fragmented Voice

      • Henrik Selin

      Pages 101-120

   4. Preparing for the Global Rush: The Arctic Council, Institutional Norms, and Socialisation of Observer Behaviour

      • Piotr Graczyk, Małgorzata Śmieszek, Timo Koivurova, Adam Stępień

      Pages 121-139

   5. Bazaar Governance: Situating the Arctic Circle

      • Duncan Depledge, Klaus Dodds

      Pages 141-160

5. Involvement: Who Participates in Global Arctic Governance?

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 161-161

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   2. Exploring Different Levels of Stakeholder Activity in International Institutions: Late Bloomers, Regular Visitors, and Overachievers in Arctic Council Working Groups

      • Sebastian Knecht

      Pages 163-185

   3. Non-State Actors in Arctic Council Governance

      • Dorothea Wehrmann

      Pages 187-206

   4. Non-Arctic States and Their Stake in Arctic Sustainability

      • Ken Coates, Carin Holroyd

      Pages 207-228

6. Issues: What Is the Global Arctic All About?

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 229-229

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   2. Clean Air and White Ice: Governing Black Carbon Emissions Affecting the Arctic

      • Carolina Cavazos-Guerra, Axel Lauer, Erika Rosenthal

      Pages 231-256

   3. Voyage Through the North: Domestic and International Challenges to Arctic Shipping

      • Arild Moe

      Pages 257-278

   4. The Arctic in a Global Energy Picture: International Determinants of Arctic Oil and Gas Development

      • Kathrin Keil

      Pages 279-299

   5. Conclusion: Governing the Arctic as a Globally Embedded Space

      • Sebastian Knecht, Kathrin Keil

      Pages 301-310

This volume explores the governance of the transforming Arctic from an international perspective. Leading and emerging scholars in Arctic research investigate the international causes and consequences of contemporary Arctic developments, and assess how both state and non-state actors respond to crucial problems for the global community. Long treated as a remote and isolated region, climate change and economic prospects have put the Arctic at the forefront of political agendas from the local to the global level, and this book tackles the variety of involved actors, institutional politics, relevant policy issues, as well as political imaginaries related to a globalizing Arctic. It covers new institutional forms of various stakeholder engagement on multiple levels, governance strategies to combat climate change that affect the Arctic region sooner and more strongly than other regions, the pros and cons of Arctic resource development for the region and beyond, and local and trans-boundarypollution concerns. Given the growing relevance of the Arctic to international environmental, energy and security politics, the volume helps to explain how the region is governed in times of global nexuses, multi-level politics and multi-stakeholderism.

• International relations
• Sustainable development
• Environmental governance
• Geopolitics
• Arctic Circle
• International institutions
• Stakeholder involvement

“The contributors to this well-integrated and sophisticated collection are able to produce significant insights regarding the increasingly complex pattern of Arctic governance by analyzing the dynamic interplay among issues, interests, institutions, and imaginaries. In the process, they advance our understanding of global governance more generally.” (Professor Oran R. Young, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

“The Arctic is undergoing rapid change. This important and timely new book demonstrates that this is not the change of and in a remote region, but that Arctic change affects, is affected by, and is framed in global contexts and through global imaginaries. This is simply one of the best and nuanced analyses of the contemporary global Arctic available in the social sciences.” (Professor Mathias Albert, Bielefeld University, Germany)

“The deeper global approach of this edited book makes it a valuable contribution to Arctic research and a welcomed follow-up to the discussion on globalization and the circumpolar North. I can recommend the book to those scholars, other experts, and post-graduate students, who are already familiar with basic issues in the fields of IR, global politics, international law, governance, as well as the Arctic.” (Professor Lassi Heininen, University of Lapland, Finland)

• Inst. f. Advanced Sustainability Studies , Potsdam, Germany

  Kathrin Keil

• Berlin Graduate School for Transnational , Berlin, Germany

  Sebastian Knecht

Kathrin Keil is Project Scientist at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, and the Europe Director of The Arctic Institute, an interdisciplinary, independent think tank focused on Arctic policy issues based in Washington, DC, USA.


Sebastian Knecht is Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies (BTS), a joint endeavour of Freie Universität Berlin, Hertie School of Governance and the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Germany.

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