All posts by Romain Chuffart

About Romain Chuffart

Romain Chuffart is a Ph.D. candidate in law at Durham Law School and at the Durham Arctic Research Centre for Training and Interdisciplinary Collaboration (DurhamARCTIC) at Durham University (UK). He is also a research associate at The Arctic Institute, Washington, DC.

Svein Vigeland Rottem, The Arctic Council: Between environmental protection and geopolitics (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2020)

Book review (editorial review), ,

In 1996, government officials of eight States, who would later be known as the “Arctic 8”, gathered in Ottawa alongside representatives of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (now Council), the Saami Council and the Association of Indigenous Minorities of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation (now RAIPON) to sign the Ottawa Declaration on the establishment of the Arctic Council. To the few attentive observers and experts present at the time, the Arctic environment was already undergoing drastic physical changes. Arctic collaboration, however, was not high on the agenda. A forum bridging the gap between politics and Arctic scientific research was therefore regarded as a means to develop cooperation on environmental issues.

As the world of Arctic governance celebrates the council’s 25th anniversary, it does not come as a surprise to see an array of both monographs and edited volumes looking back at how this high-level intergovernmental forum has managed to put itself at the centre of Arctic affairs. Published last year (2020), Rottem’s The Arctic Council: Between Environmental Protection and Geopolitics gives a rather thorough overview of the history and work of the Arctic Council. It is a careful retelling of the Council’s well-documented journey from a body solely focused on environmental matters in the late 1990s and early 2000s to one that finds itself at the forefront of international cooperation in the Arctic. In the now typical style of Palgrave’s Pivot series, which often offers concise and to-the-point introductions to specific specialised topics in around a hundred pages, the book manages to explore the nuance and diversity of an organisation whose prime focus is the production of relevant Arctic knowledge.

The Arctic Council is, of course, only one element of Arctic governance. Many other more regional and subregional fora spring to mind when thinking of Arctic cooperation (e.g. Barents Euro Arctic Council, West Nordic Council, Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation Program, Northern Forum, etc). However, few have found themselves under so much spotlight as the Arctic Council has. Studies and publications about the council’s role in Arctic governance, such as The Arctic Council, have therefore become common occurrences. Across five different chapters, the book weaves Rottem’s own broad experience and knowledge of Arctic issues with the history and challenges facing regional cooperation.

Readers interested in the functioning of the Arctic Council will, without doubts, relish reaching Chapter 4 where Rottem advocates for ways in which the Arctic Council could be reformed to foster closer coordination. Of course, the conversation around reforming the Arctic Council is not a new one. For instance, a few years ago, Exner-Pirot et al.[1] and Smieszek[2] published their research assessing the Council’s strengths and weaknesses in light of the 2019 strategic plan. Acknowledging that both efficiency and effectiveness are key for the AC going forward, these recent publications suggested concrete recommendations to improve the Arctic Council’s form, function, and funding streams. In the same vein, Rottem’s The Arctic Council regards structural changes as key for the high-level intergovernmental forum to keep its place as the main venue for discussions around the future of Arctic governance (p.73).

Once again, rooting its analysis in calls for past reforms and ensuing reports, the book identifies some proposals to streamline the Council’s work. According to Rottem, the recurring challenges for the AC are the lack of clear long-term vision and strategy that could offer certainty and continuity to the Council’s work (p. 86). Amongst his suggestions, the author makes the case for appointing an expert panel tasked to overview potential structural changes, discuss and recommend steps to improve coordination, avoid overlaps between Working Groups and reorganise the Council’s structure. The idea of a clearer strategic vision is pivotal to Rottem’s book. His other suggestions, the creation of an Arctic Summit and holding SAO meetings in capital cities for relevant organisations to attend and partake in an “Arctic Week”, are both linked to give the Council’s a broader reach and better clarity going forward.

Beside chapter 4, which explores the above-mentioned recommendations, there is nothing significantly new about the book. Rather, it is an ode to the Arctic Council itself, as a platform navigating between the global and regional challenges of a changing region. Early in the book, Rottem expresses the hope that having read it, readers would have gained some understanding of the Arctic Council (p. 2). With The Arctic Council, not only does Rottem provides some understanding of the Council, but he also manages to brush a complex and nuanced portrait of its crucial role as a focal point for bringing a broad range of different stakeholders, not just indigenous representatives and state governments, to the same table, or at least to the same room. The Arctic Council provides a starting point for people interested in geopolitics, from seasoned academics to undergraduate students, who are looking to dive into the world of Arctic affairs.

Endnotes

1 Heather Exner-Pirot et al, “Form and Function: The Future of the Arctic Council”, The Arctic Institute (5 February 2019) Available online: https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/form-function-future-arctic-council/

2 Gosia Smieszek, “Costs and Reality of Reforming the Arctic Council”, The Arctic Institute (9 April 2019) Available online: https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/costs-reality-reforming-arctic-council/

A. Shibata et al. (eds.), Emerging Legal Orders in the Arctic: The role of non-Arctic actors (London: Routledge, 2019)

Book review (editorial review), , , ,

There is no doubt that the Arctic is undergoing unprecedented changes. Not only has the Arctic environment been changing at a rapidly fast pace over the last decades, the Arctic has also become a more distinct social, political and legal region. All these ontological changes require more stable norms and institutional frameworks. Based on these premises, Emerging Legal Orders in the Arctic has put together a wide-ranging collection of deeply polar legal research by both familiar names in the field of polar legal studies but also by early-career researchers. As the editors point out at the beginning, this book is the outcome of a symposium held by the Polar Cooperation Research Centre at Kobe University, Japan in December 2017 on the role of non-Arctic states and actors in the Arctic legal order-making. The overarching theme of this book is to explore how, where and to what degree traditional non-Arctic actors, especially Asian States, interact with, influence and shape the creation of the legal order in the Arctic from a normative angle.

Part I of the book aims at giving a contextual understanding of and define the present and future scope of non-Arctic states’ engagement in regional governance with Timo Koivurova’s chapter and the rise of Asian countries, mainly China and Japan, on the Arctic stage. Describing the political and economic contexts of Asian engagement in the Arctic, Tonami points out, in chapter 3, that Asian states mainly pursue economic diplomacy with the aim to both enhance national economic prosperity and use economic leverage to increase domestic political stability. As Asian States’ role in Arctic governance increases, Arctic States expect them to be even engaged within existing institutions such as the AC and contribute to international norm-making in the region. Tonami argues, however, that from an Asian perspective, they are only willing to play this role to the extent that it serves their long-term political and economic agenda. According to her, the rise of Asian States in the region has resulted in a period of contested multilateralism. In chapter 4, Japan’s former ambassador in charge of Arctic affairs, Keiji Ide, analyses Japan’s contribution to the rule of law in the Arctic. He concludes that the challenges presently faced by the Arctic might be too great for Arctic States to deal with on their own. He argues in favour of more involvement and cooperation between both Arctic and non-Arctic states to face the challenges of our times. Taking the example of China and its Arctic policy white paper, Nielsson and Magnússon assesses China’s efforts to create and foster relationships with Arctic partners in order to better understand the region as a whole. According to them, China’s white paper on Arctic policy presents a balanced view between the opportunities for Chinese companies to enhance economic cooperation, the protection of the environment and combatting climate change.

Part II titled “People(s) in the Arctic” is the book’s shortest section with only two chapters. Chapter 6 written by the international chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Dalee Sambo Dorough, argues that any discussion about the legal order in the Arctic should recognise the status and rights of indigenous peoples for whom the Arctic is home.  She emphasises that indigenous peoples are not just stakeholders in Arctic-related matters they are rightsholders in the region. According to her, although they are not Arctic states, non-Arctic States must engage more with Arctic indigenous peoples as they seek to become more involved in the Arctic legal order. Indigenous rights should not only be mentioned in Arctic policies, the status, rights and role of Arctic indigenous peoples should be respected in practice. Dalee Sambo makes some interesting recommendations for non-Arctic actors to better engage with indigenous peoples. To her education in the field of indigenous and human rights, engaging with communities at the local level, engaging outside with indigenous peoples outside of the AC, reaching out to indigenous peoples’ organisation and the AC Permanent Participants, identifying areas of mutual interests both within and outside the AC, being clear and straightforward about their Arctic interests and projects and, advancing research in social sciences and other areas of concerns to Arctic indigenous peoples are all means worth exploring to foster meaningful cooperation. The other chapter in Part II is an assessment of the role of non-governmental organisations (NGO) in influencing the Arctic sealing, whaling and hydrocarbon regimes in the Arctic by Nikolas Sellheim and Marzia Scopelliti.

In Part III on the marine Arctic, Joji Morishita discusses the Arctic Five-plus-Five process that led to the negotiations of the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries (CAOF) Agreement. Morishita analyses each of the ten countries that took part in this process and takes the readers to the heart of the negotiations of this unique fisheries agreement. Although the Arctic Five (Canada, Kingdom of Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States) and the Plus Five (Iceland, Japan, China, Korea, and the EU) have substantial different interests, they share the same objectives regarding how the CAO should be managed according to the precautionary principle to avoid illegal fishing activities. The next chapter by Law of the Sea specialist, Erik J. Molenaar, is an almost-40-page-long masterpiece, which complements and adds another layer of understanding to Morishita’s chapter and provides one of the most in-depth analysis of the CAOF Agreement published thus far. Molenaar gives a concise but thorough overview of how the CAOF Agreement fits into international fisheries law and international law. Towards the end of the chapter, Molenaar also makes a comparative analysis of how participation in the Five-plus-Five process and the CAOF Agreement compares to participation in other RFMO/As. The following two chapters turn their focus on Arctic shipping as Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen delves into transnational knowledge network and epistemic communities and Leilei Zou provides a thorough analysis of cooperation between China and Russia in the legislative development of the Northern Sea Route.

Part IV switches gear to focus on scientific cooperation and the Arctic Council. In chapter 12, Akiho Shibata analyses the Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement that entered into force in May 2018 from the perspectives of non-Arctic States. In reviewing this third agreement negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council, Shibata assesses to what extend AC Observers States have been able to give substantive inputs at the negotiation stage. In his analysis, Shibata concludes that many pressing Arctic governance issues (e.g. black carbon) cannot be addressed without including non-Arctic actors. One of Part IV’s main themes seems to analyse the evolution of the relationship between AC Observer States and the Arctic Council. In their chapter, Sebastian Knecht and Jennifer Spence show that despite legal equality of all AC Observers, political considerations still play an important role. In the last chapter of the book, Yuanyuan Ren expands on China’s relation with the Arctic Council. According to Ren, China has shown more engagement at the AC level since being granted Observer status in 2013.

The book’s small, and perhaps only, quibble is that most of the chapters focus on non-Arctic States and look at Arctic law-making through a State-centric lens. This can in part be explained, as Sellheim and Scopelliti mention, because international law remains a state-driven process that tends to exclude non-State actors and communities. This seems like a missed opportunity to broaden that scope and to expand on the relation between non-Arctic actors, non-State actors and Arctic indigenous peoples in the context of creating new legal orders in the region. Such quibbles however do not detract from the book’s overall scholarly quality. The exploration of the evolution of the Arctic normative framework and its expansion on the global stage is still very much a work in progress. As the first edited volume in Routledge’s Research in Polar Law series, Emerging Legal Orders in the Arctic provides an in-depth and timely look at how the Arctic legal order is evolving and is a most welcome addition to the literature on international law that will certainly be of value not only to legal scholars involved in polar research but also to those with a broader interest in both Asian studies and region-building in the Arctic.

Elana Wilson Rowe, Arctic Governance: Power in cross-border cooperation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018)

Book review (editorial review), , , ,

Either described as a peaceful and stable region where a special type of governance has been instrumental in building trust among States or as a region prone to potential future conflicts over territory and resources, the Arctic is now at the centre of many studies and research in policy-making, governance and international relations about the changing post-Cold War  geopolitical world. In Arctic Governance: Power in cross-border cooperation, NUPI Research Professor and Adjunct Professor at Nord University in Norway, Elana Wilson Rowe, explores the contested but largely cooperative nature of Arctic governance in the post-Cold War period, and the ways in which power has shaped both cross-border cooperation and performance of diplomacy in the region. An important premise of the book is that, in global governance, power should not be viewed a zero-sum game but rather as a fluid performance between different actors. Rather than focusing on describing power as it is, the book uses different analytical frameworks from international relations to geography to understand how this performance of power plays out in practice.

Building on this idea of power, Wilson Rowe focuses on how Arctic cross-border cooperation is marked by power relations that are under constant re-enactment and renegotiation. She takes Russia’s role at the Arctic Council as an example to examine to what extent Arctic governance can be understood as a competition for the exercise of authority over certain places and certain audiences. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to governance, security and diplomacy in the Arctic, it calls for establishing more inclusive and situated ways of looking at the interplay all Arctic. Throughout the book, Wilson Rowe develops four key propositions to demonstrate how Arctic cross-border cooperation has been marked by these relations of power.

After an introduction and a first chapter where the book sets the contextual underpinnings and describes the five groups of actors at the centre of Arctic governance (i.e. Indigenous peoples, States, commercial actors, NGOs, and Scientists), Chapter 2 focuses on how power relations are manifested in and shaped by the definitions and representations of Arctic policy objects and the region more broadly. The Arctic as physical space is framed and understood through specific dichotomic narratives (e.g. the Arctic as region of peace or conflict; conservation and environment against sustainable development) and visual vocabularies. However, the complexities of Arctic governance cannot be analysed through simple binary frames. This chapter illustrates that such framing is not fixed and is often contested or used by actors to promote one narrative over another when performing Arctic diplomacy. She further argues that while framings are often regarded as an academic analytical tool, they are also actively used by the actors themselves to realise their preferred outcomes. Wilson Rowe narrows her analyses down to three discursive framings: 1) “the Arctic as a zone of peace”  and the challenges following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, 2) “the global Arctic versus the regional Arctic” the involvement of new Arctic Council Observer States, and 3) “business as a tool of pan-Arctic” and the establishment of the Arctic Economic Council in 2015. Experienced players in Arctic governance seem highly aware of these framings and the importance of what Wilson Rowe calls “geo-power”. Contestation and debate only arise when these narratives and framings are placed under pressure by changing circumstances or new considerations.

In Chapter 3, Wilson Rowe studies the proposition that as policy fields come together and endure, it is important to study how structured power relations work. Having a hierarchical outlook is a useful analytical tool in an Arctic context. Apart from the more obvious “Arctic States” (A8) and “Arctic Coastal States” (A5) clubs, Wilson Rowe illustrates this proposition with the examples of Russia and the United States. According to her, both countries are best understood as resting power in Arctic relations. In day-to-day Arctic diplomacy and interactions, the two countries act like any other A8 or A5 country, however, at critical, agenda-setting junctures, their participation is seen by other states as essential and their actions have long-lasting significance for the development of Arctic multilateralism. Norway is another good example of a State that was able to navigate predetermined hierarchical norms and position itself as a ‘knowledge power’ at the leading end of Arctic governance and politics, especially as a central actor in Russia-Western cooperation.

In Chapter 4, Wilson Rowe examines the role of informal norms and key social constraints characterizing Arctic cross-border cooperation. She uses Russia’s role at the Arctic Council between 1997 and 201 as an example to argue that countries are shaped by policy field norm constraints and seek to transform them. She concludes that between 1997 and 2007, Russia showed low levels of participation and had some successful “low-political” cooperation as the projects proposals only focused on the Russian Arctic without additional cooperation. As argued in the chapter, this challenges the expectation that all Arctic countries will participate in circumpolar governance. However, the second decade (2007-2017) saw Russia significantly invest in creating binding agreements and be a norm-making leader in the region.

Chapter 5 explores how different actors constantly work to refine or redefine power relations. Arctic governance is understood as a form of competition over who has authority and who can exercise this authority. Using negotiations at the ‘science–policy’ and ‘peoples–states’ interfaces at high-level Arctic Council meetings, Wilson Rowe uses the framework of “civic epistemology” to understand how authority is articulated or challenged. Her work examines the interplay between politics and authority in the performance of power.

Absorbing and well-written, the book conveys complex ideas and approaches in a simple way that allows readers to engage and connect with the text. Far from the conflict-driven narratives of more realist approaches to international relations, Wilson Rowe’s in-depth analysis of how power performances between multiple actors shaped relations in the Arctic provides a most-interesting perspective on the need to prioritise and expand pan-Arctic cooperation. Overall, Wilson Rowe’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in international relations and the Arctic. Published by Manchester University Press and available for open-access download, Arctic Governance: Power in Cross-Border Cooperation offers one of the most timely and refreshing takes on Arctic governance.

Simon Marsden, Protecting the Third Pole: Transplanting international law (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019)

Book review (editorial review), ,

Protecting the Third Pole: Transplanting international law is Simon Marsden’s third and final book in an Edward Elgar series analysing the current and prospective regional and sub-regional legal framework and governance in Asia. Building on his two previous volumes, Transboundary Environmental Governance in Asia, co-authored with Elizabeth Brandon (2015), and Environmental Regimes in Asian Subregions (2017), Marsden offers a sharp and in-depth look at international environmental law and the law of international watercourses to protect the Himalayas.

While it might not be obvious at first why a review of Protecting the Third Pole might find its way into the present volume of Nordicum-Mediterraneum, Marsden’s comparison between the legal regimes in place in the first (the Arctic), the second (Antarctica) and the third pole (Himalaya-Hindu Kush mountain range and the Tibetan Plateau) seems to be a perfect match for this journal at a time where the academic focus on the polar regions is rapidly increasing. Whereas the three poles experience different ecological, social and legal realities, there are good management practices that could be learnt, and transplanting or adapting the legal framework of one pole to another can help developing better ecological governance in the region. The Third Pole, with its ice fields containing the largest reserve of fresh water outside the polar regions, is the source of ten major river systems that provide irrigation, power and drinking water for over 1.3 billion people in Asia.

Throughout his book, Marsden explores what legal frameworks can potentially guide the development of a comprehensive regime to protect the environment of the Third Pole. Following an introduction where the author sets his main methodological approach and discusses the environmental significance of the region, the second chapter gives a comparative law overview by focusing on legal transplants. The first part of this chapter centres around more theoretical questions linked to the overall feasibility of legal transplants and norms diffusion. The author lays down several approaches to international legal transplants while also stressing that contextual awareness is key from any transplant to be successful; in that this does not differ from the introduction of domestic law within the context of any other State.  Towards the end of the chapter Marsden analyses the potential to transplant the governance models of certain legal institutions (e.g. intergovernmental organisation) elsewhere. Marsden analyses the Arctic Council (AC) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and asks whether the institutional arrangements of the AC and its focus on collaborative knowledge exchange (e.g. the negotiations of the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation)  and environmental protection (e.g. EIA guidelines) could be transplanted to the Third Pole through SAARC. He concludes that the mix of hard and soft law arrangements negotiated under the auspices of the AC demonstrates that there is no best single to protect the Third Pole.

Having laid robust theoretical underpinnings, the book examines the development of global protected areas in international law under the Wetlands Convention, the World Heritage Convention and the European Landscape Convention in chapter 3. Marsden suggests the possibility of the European Landscape Convention to be transplanted to the Third Pole as it could both enhance cooperation and enable public participation, and it would strengthen the provisions of the World Heritage Convention regarding landscapes. Mindful as always in his analysis, Marsden is conscious that there might be a greater possibility in some Third Pole States where the political climate is more incline to changes. Chapter 4 on connecting area and species protection considers the European Nature Convention and the Antarctic Environmental Protocol as clear candidates for connection area and species protection via the Ecosystem Approach (EA) for the integrated management of land, water and living resources and promote conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way.

In chapter 5, Marsden studies the applicable customary international related to environmental impact assessment (EIA) in light of several decisions by the International Court of Justice. As most scholars working in this field, the author highlights that while the procedural requirements of EIA have become customary, the lack of substantive process obligations limits the effectiveness of EIA as a customary norm. He thus recommends looking at the Espoo Convention on Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment and its subsequent Kiev Strategic Environmental Assessment Protocol as potential legal transplant for the Third Pole. Given the practicalities and global contextual application of the Espoo Convention and the Kiev Protocol, this proposal seems like the most feasible for now. In the rest of the chapter, Marsden uses polar EIA mechanisms such as the EIA guidelines developed by the Arctic Council (soft law) and the three-level detailed regulations for EIA in the Antarctic described  Annex I of the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty (hard law) to advocate for the creation of contextualised Third Pole EIA Guidelines or for an EIA treaty. Chapter 6 and 7 respectively analyse the evolution of protection regimes for international rivers (i.e. the 1997 ICJ Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dams case, the UN Watercourse Convention, the UNECE Water Convention and the Mekong Agreement) and transfrontier mountains through the Alpine and Carpathian mountain regimes. In concluding his chapters, Marsden emphasizes the importance of creating cross-border solutions to protect the environment and make a genuine contribution to sustainable development – especially when it comes to energy production.

In sum, Marsden offers three potential solutions to answer the question of what international legal frameworks can help guide the development of a comprehensive regime to protect the the Third Pole environment. His first suggestion is to transplant existing international law that originated in either a European or a polar context to Asia’s Third Pole. The second suggestion is the transplant of a framework treaty based on the Alpine or Carpathian regimes. The European focus of option one and two might hinder their viability, and he recommends further research to test them. For the third option, Marsden suggests developing a new treaty involving all relevant regional stakeholders and public participation. With Protecting the Third Pole, Simon Marsden once again manages to publish an excellent contribution to the fields of international environmental and polar legal studies. His detailed, rigorous and comparative examination of relevant customary international law and treaty obligations helps better understand the connections between all the different environmental regimes at play. Protecting the Third Pole not only manages to describe the current legal regimes in place at the poles, it also distils complex legal theory and approaches into understandable analyses and conclusions. Marsden’s book will certainly delight environmental lawyers and is a must-read for any legal or policy scholars working on environmental issues.

Ulrik Pram Gad and Jeppe Stransbjerg (eds.) The Politics of Sustainability: Reconfiguring identity, space and time (London: Routledge, 2019)

Book review (editorial review), , , ,

In The Politics of Sustainability, Ulrik Pram Gad and Jeppe Strandsberg brought together well-known Arctic social-scientists to rethink and establish new ways of understanding sustainability. In doing so, this edited volume provides a constructive alternative to the way the basic and evasive political understanding of sustainability is used to promote one narrative – what is important to sustain, when and where – over others. The idea of sustainability helps structure these narratives about future political decisions. As the editors rightly highlight, differences over what should be sustained remain key to the struggles over rights and resources in the Arctic.  These struggles vary depending on the context, yet patterns emerge as the Arctic becomes more integrated and institutionalized. The reconfiguration of sustainability through different lenses divides the book along three main lines (identity, space, and time). These three analytical frameworks are then neatly woven together to understand the complex and constant rearticulating of sustainability as a tool of governance.

The reconfiguration of identities is done through discerning the referent object of sustainability or, in other words, what deserves to be sustained. Individual or collective actors leverage political legitimacy and shape the discourse to sustain their own agenda. By analysing different sectors, such as fisheries in Greenland (Rikke Becker Jacobsen) and mining in Greenland and Nunavut (Marc Jacobsen), and the outside global vision of environmental sustainability in the Arctic petroleum development debate (Gerhardt at al.) highlight that the relationships sovereignty and power in affirming what needs to be sustained. Gerhardt et al. concludes that while Greenpeace has been able to bring the narrative of the pristine Arctic to the fore, their actions also triggered a backlash in targeted States where other types of sustainability (e.g. a fundamental commitment to securing the political sustainability of the nation state) are being prioritized. Another excellent example can be found in Ingrid Medby’s chapter where she provides a nuanced analysis of sustainability as a discursive legitimation of authority rather than a concrete praxis. In her study of Norway, Iceland and Canada, she demonstrates that a country’s ‘Arctic identity’ can be embedded within pre-existing national identity and imagined future narratives. In this way, speaking of Arctic sustainability is about sustaining a present object, or some its aspects (environment, cultures, economies), within a framed temporal dimension which in turn helps foster a broader national narrative.

The second dimension of this book is a reconceptualization of sustainability through space and the existence of a spatial dimension of the referent object in relation to a one specific environment. Sustainability is then articulated in terms of “scales”. In this spatial context, local and national geographical scales are being contrasted against the environmental scale of regional ecosystems and the global climate. As Gad and Stransbjerg argue in the conclusion, choosing one spatial scale often means prioritizing one dimension of sustainability over another. Temporality makes up the third dimension of this edited volume. The idea here is more to outline different ways of claiming responsibility and authority in the Arctic in relation to the sustainability of communities and ecologies. Sustainability narratives are again viewed as discursive tools to empower certain types of actors to act towards a sustainable future. As pointed out in the book, “sustainability narratives need to organize time to be able to credibility claim the environments which makes their preferred referent object sustainable.”

The Politics of Sustainability is dense and does not shy away from high-level theoretical discussions. It is a true tour de force that dissects every aspect of sustainability from a multiple of different angles. Written by well-established scholars atop of their fields in the broad world of polar research, this multidisciplinary edited collection not only achieves what its title suggests (i.e. a conceptual rethinking of sustainability a political concept) but, also provides one of the most complete academic analysis of Arctic governance under the umbrella of sustainability and sustainable development. As several researchers point out in their chapter (Keil; Wilson Rowe; Dodds and Nuttall), in mainstream political discourses sustainability is often conceived as a balancing act between social and economic development and environmental protection. However, there is a postcolonial critique of sustainability as a balancing act that needs to be added within this multi-layered framing to escape colonial ideas of indigeneity. Arctic sustainability is much more intricate than merely achieving balance between “ways of life” of Indigenous communities and what States want to do in the region.  Along these lines, the book manages to distil and explain challenging and complex critical Arctic geopolitical researches in a way that is both understandable and highly impressive. Each chapter are kept short, but they all surely deserve a stand-alone glowing review. In spite of a hefty price tag, The Politics of Sustainability will without doubt be of use to social scientists and researchers involved in Arctic research as well as advanced graduate students.

Duncan Depledge, Britain and the Arctic (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2018)

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Does geographical proximity make you closer to a region than long-standing historic ties? Is Britain a “forgotten Arctic State”? How can Britain find its way in the “Global Arctic”? These are the questions, Duncan Depledge, director of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Polar Regions Secretariat in Westminster and Special Adviser to the UK House of Commons Defence Committee tries to answer to in his new book Britain and the Arctic. In the field of polar research – in Britain or abroad – Depledge does not need any introduction anymore. His name, alongside his former professor at Royal Holloway, University of London Klaus Dodds, has become synonymous with high-quality research in both international relations and polar studies. Based on a doctoral thesis Depledge defended at Royal Holloway in 2014, this book might be regarded by some as a timely contribution to the field of polar studies, especially at a time where Britain is gauging its involvement in the Arctic. On a more structural level, Britain and the Arctic is written as a collection of six thematically self-standing essays that each tries to assess Britain’s relation to the high north in an all-encompassing and detailed manner. Written in a short, punchy format, each chapter takes the form of an essay (with an abstract at the beginning) that makes the whole book more reader-friendly.

As pointed out at the beginning of the introduction, Britain’s present interest in the Arctic has never been as high since the Cold War. Although one might be forgiven to think that British interests in the North is an offspring of Britain’s colonial past, Depledge posits the Arctic has come into focus based on the need to make sense of how the Arctic is changing and how understanding these changes can help Britain be more productive in terms of science, trade, conservation and national security (p.6). With this new contribution, Depledge endeavours to analyse four overarching themes to better assess Britain’s relation with the Arctic. Drawing on Britain’s long history as a global power, Depledge first shows that Britain has had a massive role in influencing and defining the Arctic for centuries. He then argues that in spite of the “circumpolarisation” of the Arctic where the Arctic Eight (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US) have pushed non-Arctic states such as Britain towards the periphery of Arctic affairs, interests for the region within Britain domestic political, scientific and public landscapes have continued to grow in the last decades. The third theme is linked with the production of new scientific knowledge and the interests of British scientists in understanding how the region is likely to evolve in the future. This comes at the interplay of science, environmental, military and security concerns. Finally, Depledge also assesses the extent to which Britain’s contemporary engagement in the region, mainly due to its colonial past, is shaped by the country’s need to atone and demonstrate sensitivity in engagement in postcolonialism and neocolonialism debates.

As Lassi Heininen suggests in one of the blurbs, the idea of that Britain might be a “forgotten Arctic State” definitely comes as a surprise at first. The layperson might indeed wonder how a State whose northernmost tip (Out Stack, Shetlands) lies a bit further north than Bergen, Norway but still south of the Faroe Islands  could be an Arctic State, let alone a forgotten one.  In Chapter Two (Britain: The Forgotten Arctic State), Depledge cleverly demonstrates that closeness is not only a matter of topographical proximity. In the Arctic, a geopolitical region that is being construed as more and more global, Depledge highlights the problems with creating an arbitrary dichotomy between Arctic and non-Arctic States that relies solely on geographical proximity. Such closeness, he argues, is also a matter of topology. While acknowledging that Britain’s longstanding history in the Arctic comes as a result of its colonial past, Depledge demonstrates that topography and topology offer two different ways of thinking about Britain’s proximity to the Arctic. Although topography might play a more important role in the contemporary geopolitical landscape and also makes the Arctic look further away from Britain – demonstrated in framing Britain as “The Arctic’s Nearest Neighbour” in successive government policies since 2010 -, Britain, he argues, share deep and extensive topological links with the Arctic. From a topographical perspective, Depledge points out that the Arctic as a regional construct would still be vulnerable to further changes if and when the Faroe Islands and Greenland ever chose to become independent. In this changing Arctic landscape, Depledge also briefly mentions  the “spectre of Scotland one day becoming independent” and how, he argues, “few would seriously question whether the rest of Britain’s interest in the Arctic should be at all diminished or that Scotland should have a greater role than the rest of the Britain in Arctic affairs” (31). However, this analysis might come as oblivious of Scotland sharing a similar set of commonalities with northern/Arctic European states. Scotland’s growing role in Arctic affairs over the past few years from its involvement in para-geopolitical fora such as the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik to being one of the driving Arctic forces within British politics.

Elsewhere in 2011 and 2012, Depledge had already made the case for the UK government to develop an overarching formal Arctic framework which would help Britain and other stakeholders reflect on what actually matters for Britain in the region. Following the release of the Arctic Policy Framework in 2013, British involvement in the Arctic has not ceased to grow. Depledge highlights the challenges the Polar Region Departments have encountered in their attempts to communicate Britain’s Arctic interests at home and abroad and the need for a new British Arctic strategic document. Such challenges include the recent short-term vision that has been dominating British foreign policy making. In Britain and the Arctic, Depledge argues for a review of the Arctic Policy Framework and for a new strategic document to be published. Since Britain and the Arctic’s publication however the UK Polar Regions Department did publish a new Arctic policy (Beyond the Ice: UK policy towards the Arctic) in 2018. However, the 2018 policy did not surprise much and had a rather conservative approach to Britain’s relation to the region.

Britain might not be a forgotten Arctic State, but the book’s overall raison d’être appears less to be putting Britain on the Arctic map once again and more a statement for Britain to become even more involved in the Arctic than it already is. As Depledge argues if Britain wants to have a bigger role and an impact on Arctic affairs, the focus should be less on claiming topographical proximity (“Britain as the Arctic’s nearest neighbour”) and far more on making Britain the Arctic’s closest neighbour through science, defense, trade and cultural links (127). This kind of involvement from contemporary non-Arctic actors is to be welcomed as the Arctic is being construed as a more global and evolving region. Cooperation between Arctic and non-Arctic stakeholders is key to build a better integrated region. Britain and the Arctic is an exemplar of quality research about the globalisation of the Arctic. With its practical outlook, Depledge has made many positive contribution to academic research in the field of polar studies and Britain and the Arctic offers the most recent example of such contributions. Its concise format and affordable price tag make it a must-read for everyone interested in Arctic affairs, from decision-makers and politicians to senior academics and undergraduate students.

G. Baruchello et al. (eds.), No One Is An Island: An Icelandic Perspective (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018)

Book review,

No One Is An Island: An Icelandic Perspective explores how Iceland’s behaviour is influenced by the country’s small size and is a timely contribution to Icelandic studies and small states studies in general. This interdisciplinary edited collection came as a result of “No one is an island: Iceland and the International Community”, a conference held at the University of Akureyri in March 2016. The book provides an extensive overview of the subject at hand as it brings together works by Icelandic scholars, mainly from the field of social sciences.  As Frímannsson points out in the epilogue, the overall aim of this book is to reflect on Iceland’s and Icelanders’ attitudes and relation to the outside world (135) as the country gradually and dramatically changed over the course of the last century. Comprising of six unique articles divided into two sections, this short book in size but not in content will be of help to scholars and students alike interested in small states, microstates and everyone wishing to know more about Iceland’s position and future in the international community.

The first section explores Iceland’s representation through non-Icelandic academic research, within the Icelandic media and through the experience of people who chose to migrate to Iceland. In Chapter One, Giorgio Baruchello reflects on his twelve years as the editor of Nordicum-Mediterraneum (NoMe). As editor of NoMe Baruchello has been dealing with and reading many articles by non-Icelandic, mainly Italian, scholars who have intellectually explored the island from various viewpoints. Baruchello identifies four recurrent themes: Iceland as “the land of the Vikings”, Iceland as a Nordic State, Iceland as an Arctic State, and Iceland as a dimension of the spirit. Fully aware that it would be a difficult task to assess how representative these four themes are of both the stereotypes and the commonplaces in the collective consciousness about Iceland, Baruchello concludes by assessing how well they fit with Icelanders’ self-representation and presentation of their culture to foreigners. Iceland as an Arctic nation might be the fastest-growing identity. In the last decades or so, the Arctic has managed to carve itself a space in the Icelandic consciousness and within Icelandic politics. The majestic, almost spiritual character of the Icelandic landscape and geography will not surprise anyone – it is how Icelandic touring companies have advertise the island since the tourist boom of the last few years. Nonetheless, Baruchello’s conclusion is that although Icelanders still partially enjoy their country in the same way their ancestors did, urbanisation and high living standards have also had an impact on how Icelanders perceive their country’s own identity as they sometimes tend to agree with how the country is regarded abroad rather than on their own perceptions.

Birgir Guðmundsson then shifts the focus to media in a microstate. Using Iceland as a case study, Guðmundsson posits the media system in Iceland is in many way similar to its Scandinavian counterparts, more specifically regarding the extent to which cultural and historical factors play a role in the literacy development and the universality of communication and media (36). Guðmundsson also pinpoints several differences that make the media landscape in Iceland unique, such as a lower trust in internal political pluralism and less developed journalistic professionalism. The latter is due to the cumulative effect of a distrust in political pluralism within different media outlets as well as competition within a small media market. Comparatively, Guðmundsson concludes that changes seen in other Nordic/Northern European countries are also being seen in Iceland. Global-level trends and technological changes have had an impact on the way the Icelandic media now handle the news.

Chapter Three “Migrating to the High North” (Stéphanie Barillé and Markus Meckl) is based on interviews with people who have immigrated to Akureyri, Iceland. Beside the wealth of information about how migrants might feel when moving to Akureyri and how they have adapted to their new life, this chapter is truly of interest because it conveys a positive narrative about migration studies. In researching on migrants’ well-being and happiness – an under-researched topic in migration studies – studies like this shift the focus to the positive impact of migrating onto the host country.

The second section tries to make sense of Iceland’s role and interests within the international community. Of particular interest in this section is Chapter Four and Chapter Five. The former (Rachael Lorna Johnstone and Hjalti Ómar Ágústsson) focuses on Iceland’s role in Arctic governance. This chapter offers a thorough overview of Iceland’s geopolitical and legal interests in the North as it explores Iceland’s multilateral approach to Arctic relations and how Iceland has managed to frame itself as the only “full Arctic” state. Trying to make sense of Iceland’s priorities in the Arctic, the authors show that multilateral cooperation is key to Iceland’s strategic position in the region. From its Arctic policy documents to fisheries management to Iceland’s exclusion from the “Arctic Five” table, the country is shown as promoting cooperation with Arctic and Non-Arctic stakeholders through the Arctic Council, a forum where a small state has as much say in the decision-making process as “big Arctic players” such as Russia or the United States. Toward the end, the chapter also briefly touches on Iceland’s role within the emerging West-Nordic cooperation. Albeit brief, this last part provides readers with a platform to the next chapter in which Grétar Thór Eythórsson and Gestur Hovgaard consider the West-Nordic Region and the Arctic. A republic since 1944, Iceland is the bigger player in this newly emerging cooperation nexus in the North Atlantic. Building on previous research and contributions, the authors examine the unique relation between Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland as this relation intricately evolves between the West-Nordic region and the Arctic. Contrasting each country’s interests as well as Danish interests, the authors find common grounds and challenges for the West Nordic region. West Nordic cooperation needs to challenge the status quo and find innovative ways and structures to have a real impact as a geopolitical subregion.

“Iceland and Foreign Aid” (Gunnlaugsson et al.) depicts Iceland’s path from a poor country under Danish rule in the 19th century to a recipient of foreign aid in the post-WWII period to a donor country in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Iceland’s transformation, often credited to applying free market logic and policies, is mostly due to a combination of several factors within different economic contexts. Its geographic position and military importance during the Cold War meant that Iceland received generous development assistance through the Marshall plan, PL480 and the UN Development Program and beneficial loans from the World Bank. As pointed out in this chapter, this meant that Iceland could lay the foundation for its own development aid agency while still receiving foreign aid. Using Malawi and district (local) cooperation as a case study, the researchers also show how Iceland has shifted its focus in development aid from fisheries only cooperation towards including more social sector initiatives such as health, water and sanitation and education alongside fisheries.

In the epilogue, Guðmundur Heiðar Frímannsson provides some personal reflections on the previous chapter as well as on the small size of Iceland’s society and its effect on Icelandic life as a whole. With the eye and the insight of an Icelandic philosopher, Frímannsson offers what could be deemed as a concluding comment in which he wraps up the contributions to this volume. His final analysis is that the book contributes to a deeper understanding of Iceland’s smallness. One can indeed only agree with such a concluding remark,  overall No One Is An Island is a superb addition to the field of small states, regional and Icelandic studies. Baruchello, Kristjánsson, Jóhannsdóttir and Ingimarson have managed to compile high-quality articles in a readable, small format that will suit even those who lack time for academic readings – the book can be read in one evening. The book’s only drawback might be its price. Coming up at £58.99 on Cambridge Scholars Publishing’s website, this concise book might not be in everyone’s budget but its in-depth and thorough overview of the subject at hand is well worth the read and would make an excellent addition to university libraries’ collections.

Jordi Jaria i Manzano, Nathalie Chalifour and Louis J. Kotzé (eds.), Energy, Governance and Sustainability (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017)

Book review

In 2014, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Academy of Environmental Law organized its annual colloquium themed “Energy for a Fair Society on a Safe Planet”, and the present edited collection was subsequently published as a selection of research by legal experts from across the globe on the future of energy governance and the role of law. As a result of the changing climate, energy transition and environmental justice have been at the forefront of both the debate about energy security and environmental concerns. By focusing on the law, this timely book provides a sharp insight and novel ideas for rethinking sustainable energy governance. On a structural level, the book is divided in three parts (foundations, experiences, and governance gaps) and fourteen chapters giving different perspectives on the issue at stake.

The book does contain interesting parts, and it neatly weaves together legal theory, human rights, environmental justice and their application to create new cutting-edge energy policies. In Foundations (section I), the theoretical, legal and conceptual frameworks are laid out in a way that highlights legal innovations for renewable energy development from constitutional law and transnational developments through international agreements to environmental justice and innovative financing techniques. Of particular interest in this section, Klaus Bosselmann’s chapter about the legal concept of Energiewende (German for “energy transition”) might help scholars and practitioners think anew and be more proactive when it comes to pushing for social changes. His radical ecocentric approach tries to bridge the gap between legal scholarship and legal activism. In this chapter, he posits that rather than looking at sustainability from a legal viewpoint, environmental lawyers should look at the law from the perspective of sustainability. To him, shifting to and legislating in favour of renewable energy is both a matter of consciousness and ethics: are human societies sufficiently concerned and aware of their impacts on the environment to make a conscious choice to change?

As the title may suggest, Experiences (section II) discusses and analyzes case studies of energy governance in several jurisdictions. For example, Daya-Winterbottom gives a fascinating overview of the complex legal development and challenges for renewable energy investment in New Zealand. Through a careful analysis of New Zealand case law, the author shows that New Zealand has not yet developed a coherent environmental policy regarding renewable energy and climate change despite having plenty of renewable energy sources accessible (hydro and geothermal energy as well as wind and tidal energy). This lack of a coherent policy has led the courts to step in, strengthen and sometimes weaken the legal framework for renewable energy development and climate change mitigation. Although in terms of climate change the judiciary might have rendered climate litigation untenable, the courts have also played an important role in balancing the protection of the environment alongside developing wind energy projects.

Albeit brief Governance Gaps (section III) might be the most interesting section, and the book might have gained in having expanded this section a little further. Prior to this section, the book comes across as western-centric mainly focusing on energy governance in European and other countries in the Northern hemisphere. The final two chapters of this book highlight global energy governance and the impact of environmental changes on developing countries. Eloamaka Carol Okonkwo’s chapter might be one of the most interesting in the entire book as she focuses on the negative impacts of oil and gas exploration and extraction on local communities living on the Niger River’s delta. She highlights the urgent need to protect environmentally displaced persons that have been affected by environmental pollution. Okonkwo calls for the development of a new legal framework in both Nigerian and international law. She further emphasizes the need to implement both regional and international instruments and guidelines to provide for normative protection to displaced communities. In the meantime, oil companies should be challenged for infringing fundamental human rights such as cultural rights and the right to a healthy environment. Okonkwo also suggests that challenging the government for encouraging such behaviour might also help.

As mentioned above, a volume of this nature is indeed timely. Although the book does a great job at giving a broad range of experiences and research, it is safe to say that the book’s omission of the Arctic region might be a shortcoming when discussing energy transition and governance on a world scale. Communities across the globe are diversifying their energy sources with cleaner, lower-cost, renewable options while also developing non-renewable forms of energy. While each region comes with its own set of local preconditions and challenges, energy transition and sustainable energy governance development are also present in regions such as the Arctic. Shifting the focus of research to less-talked-about regions might help changing the narrative around energy development and facilitate investment in these regions.

This criticism aside, the book provides a rather comprehensive overview on the possibility for new forms of energy governance that could lead to fairer, safer and more sustainable societies. New solutions do exist and new forms of energy governance are on the rise. Governments and legislators should be pushed to make the energy transition happen and to regulate in favour of renewable energy and sustainability. As Anaïs Guerry (chapter 10) points out, energy transition should be understood as a cultural change as well as a radical change in the way we legislate and govern. More local production paired with citizens taking back control of the means of energy production might help bring about the radical – and much needed – change in energy governance. Social theories of taking back control of the means of production are not new ideas, but applying them in the context of energy transition and governance provides keys to better understand the issue. The book is quite technical at times and its in-depths perspectives and high-quality legal research might not be for newcomers to the field of environmental law. However, Energy, Governance and Sustainability will without doubts be of interest to legal practitioners, lawyers and policymakers as well as legal scholars well-versed in energy, natural resource and environmental law. Its affordable paperback version might also be an excellent addition to graduate and postgraduate environmental law students’ reading list.

Geir Hønneland, Russia and the Arctic: Environment, Identity and Foreign Policy & Leif Christian Jensen, International Relations in the Arctic: Norway and the Struggle for Power in the New North (London/New York: IB Tauris, 2016)

Book review, , ,

Geir Hønneland and Leif Christian Jensen, both friends and colleagues at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway, wrote one book each that were published in the early part of 2016 by indie publisher, I.B. Tauris. Although each book discusses a subject of its own, for many reasons, the two books seem to nicely complement each other especially for scholars seeking a more holistic approach to Norwegian-Russian Arctic relations. As the present author started reading Hønneland’s book first and then went on to read Jensen’s, this review unfolds in exactly the same manner.

In “Russia and the Arctic: Environment, Identity and Foreign Policy,” Geir Hønneland goes back to one of his most prolific research subjects, namely Russia, and more specifically how Russia defines its own Arctic identity. Indeed, the aim of Hønneland’s book is to shift the discourse from the more media-friendly notions of the “Arctic buzz” and the “Scramble for the Arctic” to discuss what Russia actually wants in the Arctic, and how Russia actually defines itself, through its own Arctic and political discourses, as an Arctic nation. At the heart of the book lies an essential conceptualization of narrative and identity theory in which narratives are not construed as being a mere reflection of the world, but rather constitutive of the self, and as Hønneland puts it, narratives are rarely of one’s own making. In having Russia as the main protagonist of his book, Hønneland is able to further explore the role of the Arctic in shaping Russia’s projection of its own identity at the national level as well as onto both the international and the inter-regional (i.e. Arctic) stages. To do so, Hønneland divided his book into six chapters of relatively equal size touching upon subjects such as the so-called “Rush for the Arctic”, the delimitation of the Barents Sea, management of marine resources, continental shelf issues and Region building processes through identity formation. As a Norwegian researcher, Hønneland also strongly focuses on the relation between Norway and Russia, especially at the Barents-region level but also onto the broader stage.

Ambivalent relations could be said to be one of the major premises on which this book is built. Internally, Russia is perceived as the epitome of the epic absurdist genre, the “anti-Disneyland” where everything that could go wrong actually goes wrong, but Russia also likes to be seen as “the territory without limits”, the boundless, borderless land with no edges. And, to this respect, Hønneland shows the readers that the characteristics, which are generally associated with “Northern-ness” or with the Arctic, are the ones Russia associates with itself in a process that aims at constructing its own Arctic identity in blurring the boundaries between the Arctic as such and Russia. On this subject, Geir Hønneland even concludes that the Arctic is more Russian than Russia itself.

In the collective unconsciousness, the Russian struggle for identity is often perceived as being linked to its unconventional relation with the West and, in this view, the only choice there is to make for Russia is between being willing to create relations with the West – to get closer to Europe – or to create a sense of national identity more focused on Russia itself.  In either case, Russian identity is construed as being a narrative in which Russia needs to other the West in order to have a more stable identity. In modern days, as Hønneland points out, the Arctic is the modern incarnation of Russia’s willingness to work with the West, especially when Vladimir Putin talks of the Arctic as “our common Arctic home.” In this mind-set, Russia is both depicted as being warry of the West – especially Norway in the Barents Region and Canada in the broader Arctic – but also as being willing to sit at the table with other Arctic nations.

On top of discussing four key Arctic issues from a Norwegian perspective (i.e. security, Russia, the environment, and the exploitation of natural resources in the Barents Sea), with “International Relations in the Arctic: Norway and the Struggle for Power in the New North,” Leif Christian Jensen aims at offering a new methodological and analytical framework to the field of discourse analysis and to social sciences (more so than Hønneland), thus the first two chapters of the book are heavily theoretical. These methodological chapters focus on how dominant discourses enable and disable actions both at the domestic and the international levels and “how socially oriented discourse analysis can be relevant to analyses of actual political issues.”  Indeed, Jensen himself states that one of his sub-aims is to demystify discourse analysis and make it more accessible (to make it “less frightening and more tempting”) to both scholars and students who are active in political science and other fields within social sciences. Therefore, Jensen’s book, which is an extended version of his doctoral thesis, could well be read with a non-Arctic approach if one was to focus on the broader theoretical framework. Nevertheless, the case study being the Norwegian ‘struggle’ to construct itself as an Arctic nation, being knowledgeable in Arctic matters helps to understand how Jensen’s analysis is to be applied.

Throughout the book, Jensen wants to demonstrate that discourse is constructive, and that, through discourse, it is possible to construct truth, meaning, and knowledge. To do so, he divided his book into eight chapters in which he covers subjects such as discourse analysis of Arctic policy debates and official Norwegian and Russian foreign policy discourses on the New North. Relying on a well-constructed database research analysis of four of the main Norwegian newspapers (i.e. Aftenposten, Dagens Næringsliv, Klassekampen, and Nordlys), Jensen researched how national identities are constructed in newspapers and texts written by those holding power. Furthermore, Jensen uses the example of Norwegian mineral resources exploitation to show to what extent discourses and narratives can be co-opted and how Norway’s main official discourse in the Barents Sea shifted from being environmentally-friendly to “drilling for sake of the environment.” Indeed, the argument of Norwegian environmentalists was co-opted and reversed by the pro-oil side whose argument has been to focus on others, such as Russia, and say that if Norway left it to other states or private businesses, they would do a worse job at being environmentally friendly. To link this with Hønneland’s theory, this can be seen as a Norwegian attempt to other Russia to justify its own Arctic identity. Jensen even goes further in his analysis in stating that this kind of shift in discourses is accentuated by the press and by official publications, through which the main discourse reinforces itself.

One of the most positive aspects of Jensen’s book – and something rare in academia – is Jensen’s strong commitment to connect with his readers and to involve them through the text itself. Far from the generally dry and anonymous academic approach, which, more often than not, tries to suppress any trace of temporality and of self in order to make a lasting contribution to the researched field, Jensen’s inclusion of himself and of his readers into the structure of his research manages to make it easier for the readers to relate and to understand the theoretical framework.

Both Hønneland and Jensen managed to avoid talking of the Arctic as the new hotspot in international affairs, and, to some extent, their down-to-earth approach to Arctic relations can be seen as an attempt to normalise Arctic issues and to hush the “rush for the Arctic” discourse and to finally put it to bed. Both books can also be seen as a successful attempt to show how important it is, in terms of international affairs, to understand how countries perceived themselves and how they would like to be seen on the international stage. Far from gathering dust on libraries’ shelves, these books will be interesting for students, academics, and anyone interested in Arctic relations, especially in Norwegian-Russian Arctic relations and how this relation is construed on both sides of the border. However, these books should not only be read by Arctic scholars, as they also have much to offer to those seeking to read more about identity and discourse analysis and how it can be used in nation building and in international affairs.