Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic: Perspectives from the Barents Area

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Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic: Perspectives from the Barents Area

Yamalo-Nenets

Svalbard

Nenets

Barents Sea

Komi

Major ocean currents

Finnmark

warm cold

Murmansk

Troms

Arkhangelsk

Lappland

Barents Region political cooperative agreement area

Norrbotten

Karelia

Oulu

Nordland

Västerbotten

Figure 2.1 AACA Barents area.

transformed from one with predominantly rural characteristics in terms of economy, culture and lifestyle, to one which can be characterised as urban ” (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2011) constitutes a strong trend in the region. The service sector is a large employer in the region, while employment in the secondary sector – processing, production, constructing – is dominant in some areas. Activities in the primary sector are of less importance in terms of employment but are of strong economic importance (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2011). The region thus has a mixture of industrial and post- industrial characteristics, with relatively well-developed services, infrastructure and administration throughout much of the region. Svalbard and Franz Josef Land as well as Novaya Zemlya, differ from the Barents Region core areas in having a relatively High- Arctic character with very limited human populations.Yamal- Nenets, lying outside the Barents Region, is an important oil, gas and reindeer husbandry district.The marine areas covered in this chapter are mostly unproblematic in a jurisdictional sense, especially after the 2010 Russian-Norwegian agreement on delimitation of the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and continental shelf regions within the Barents Sea (Byers, 2013). 1 This chapter describes the natural terrestrial and marine environments of the area and then provides an overview of socio-economic and political structures, with a particular emphasis on environmentally-based sectors that are likely

to be influenced by climate change. The focus is mainly on highlighting characteristics that are important for understanding the uniqueness of the area within the broader Arctic context and for placing it in an international context. It should be noted, however, that because much of the Barents Region is highly developed and heavily populated compared to other Arctic areas, a much wider range of topics than just natural systems and environment-based industries would be necessary to understand the many factors influencing adaptation even in this area. For instance, almost all the industries mentioned here formpart of international flows of people,energy and resources, such that global economic changes, competition, energy prices, and changes in international (especially European Union) contexts, will influence the region and decisions made at any level within it.

2.2 Natural environment

2.2.1 Terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems The terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems of the Barents area cover 1.8 million km 2 , with about 75% of this in Russia. Using the Barents Protected Area Network (BPAN) categorization for terrestrial areas there are five main ecosystem types: glacier, freshwater, open wetland, alpine and lowland tundra, and forest.

1 The Svalbard Archipelago is subject to a separate legal regime established by the 1920 Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty, which means that it constitutes a specific decision-making arrangement.The Treaty bestowed sovereignty over the islands to Norway,including responsibility for introducing non-discriminatory nature conservation measures, but at the same time it secured free commercial and scientific access for nationals and companies from other parties to the treaty.There is an ongoing disagreement between Norway and some parties over whether the commercial rights guaranteed to other contracting states’ nationals on the basis of the Svalbard Treaty also apply to the EEZ on the continental shelf surrounding the islands. These latter concepts have arisen decades after the treaty was adopted. One of the consequences of this disagreement is that a Fisheries Protection Zone was established around Svalbard, rather than an EEZ, with consequences for fishing as well as potentially more broadly.