The web of responsibility in and for the Arctic

Abstract

What does it mean to be responsible in and for the Arctic? This article addresses this question, noting that responsibility has become a core policy norm in different governance areas in recent decades. The article contributes to the current debate on responsibility in global politics, arguing that one should consider not only who is responsible (and what for) but also the capability foundations upon which responsibility is exercised, as well as the underlying normativity of this practice. Instead of only focusing on capabilities as first principles from which responsibilities arise, this article suggests approaching responsibility as a web of relations. On the basis of this theoretical discussion the article turns to two cases of contemporary Arctic policy where we can observe responsibility ‘at work’. The fields of search and rescue and sustainable development are both marked by a cooperative approach among (state and non-state) parties, whose interactions centre on a particular ethical understanding of responsibility rather than on power-oriented politics. Yet each policy field contains specific dilemmas, as Arctic governance is characterised by a web of responsibility that comprises multiple subjects in charge and/or objects for which they are responsible.

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of the article were presented at the European Workshops in International Studies at Cardiff University in June 2017 and the International Studies Association Convention in San Francisco in March 2018. The article significantly improved as a result of these discussions and the feedback obtained by two anonymous reviewers for the journal.

Disclosure Statement

No conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Susan Park and Antje Vetterlein define policy norms “as shared expectations for all relevant actors within a community about what constitutes appropriate behaviour, which is encapsulated in […] policy” (Park and Vetterlein 2010, 4).

2 Compare: http://latin-dictionary.net/definition/35550/spondeo-spondere-spopondi-sponsus (accessed September 1, 2017).

3 In what is probably the most widely-cited example in the literature, Hart presents a neat but oversimplified account of responsibility types: “As captain of the ship, X was responsible for the safety of his passengers and crew. But on his last voyage he got drunk every night and was responsible for the loss of the ship with all aboard. It was rumoured that he was insane, but the doctors considered that he was responsible for his actions. Throughout the voyage he behaved quite irresponsibly, and various incidents in his career showed that he was not a responsible person. He always maintained that the exceptional winter storms were responsible for the loss of the ship, but in the legal proceedings brought against him he was found criminally responsible for his negligent conduct, and in separate civil proceedings he was held legally responsible for the loss of life and property. He is still alive and he is morally responsible for the deaths of many women and children” (Hart and Gardner 2008, 211).

4 The example is that of a parent that does not pay enough attention to playing children and therefore is responsible for an accident, even though they did not directly cause it themselves.

5 They are Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Iceland, the United States and Russia, as the so-called Arctic-5, plus Finland, Norway and Sweden, extending the circle to the Arctic-8.

6 MDA can be defined as “the effective understanding of anything associated with the maritime domain that could impact global security, safety, economic activity, or the environment”; see Vance and Vicente (2006).

7 These are the Minister of National Defence (Canada), the Danish Maritime Authority (Denmark), the Ministry of the Interior and the Finnish Transport Safety Agency (Finland), the Ministry of the Interior (Iceland), the Ministry of Justice and the Police (Norway), the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, as well as the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defence, Emergency, and the Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (Russia), the Swedish Maritime Administration (Sweden) and the United States Coast Guard (USA).

8 Capacity was built through installing watchtowers along the coast. In 1822 the Waterguard was transferred from the Treasury to Customs and the name was changed to the Coast Guard. In 1828 the first guidelines were published, among which the Coast Guards were given responsibility to deal with shipwrecks and life-saving. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Coastguard_History (accessed June 30 2017).

9 An indication of Hillary’s normative position can be derived from the title of his book published in 1825: “An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck”. Like the group of men who lobbied for the abolition of slavery in the UK around the turn of the nineteenth century, he was also a Quaker (Hochschild 2005).

10 In 1923 control of the Coast Guard services was transferred to the Mercantile Marine Department of the Board of Trade (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C729) (accessed June 30, 2017).

11 The German Maritime Search and Rescue Service was founded in 1865 and is also still run as a charity financed through private donations, membership fees and legacies. The French Societé nationale de sauvetage en mer also dates from 1865 and receives two-thirds of its income from donations. The legacy of the Dutch Royal Netherlands Sea Rescue Institution/Koninklijke Nederlandse Redding Maatschappij can be traced to origins in 1824. By comparison, the Spanish Sociedad Española de Salvamento de Náufragos modelled itself on the RNLI but was only set up in 1880.

12 Since 1974 SOLAS can be updated and amended by tacit agreement, i.e. automatically unless reservations have been submitted by a certain number of states by a particular date. For example, SOLAS prescribes the number of life boats a ship most provide, as well as placing a requirement on each party “to ensure that any necessary arrangements are made for coast watching and for the rescue of persons in distress at sea round its coasts” (cited in Byers 2013).

13 Available from https://de.scribd.com/document/18191224/Anexo-12-Search-and-Rescue (accessed September 14, 2017). This agreement also covers the high seas or “areas of undetermined sovereignty” – with zones of responsibility in those latter areas being determined by regional air navigation agreements (Art. 2.1.1.1).

14 Available from: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%201405/volume-1405-i-23489-english.pdf (accessed September 14, 2017).

15 Available from: http://www.arctic-council.org/index.php/en/our-work/agreements (accessed 30 June, 2017).

16 The different agencies responsible for SAR include the Canadian Forces and Canadian Coast Guard, the Danish Maritime Authority, the Danish Transport Authority, the Ministry of Fisheries – Faroe Islands, the Finnish Border Guard, the Icelandic Coast Guard, the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Northern Norway (JRCC NN Bodø), the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency and Russian Federal Agency for Marine and River Transport, the Swedish Maritime Administration, and the United States Coast Guard and Department of Defense (compare Exner-Pirot 2012, endnote 8).

17 The US Department of Defense publishes a list of their freedom of navigation operations: http://policy.defense.gov/OUSDP-Offices/FON/ (accessed August 1, 2017).

18 Arctic Frontiers conference 2018 in Tromsø, author’s observation.

19 Permanent Participants do not hold sovereignty like states, but their involvement in consultation means they can exert quasi-vetoes, and their own perception is that they are sovereign rights holders rather than merely stakeholders. Their presence in the Arctic Council challenges conventional understandings of sovereignty in International Relations (compare Shadian 2017, 53).

20 Compare National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (2011).

21 Compare article by The Maritime Executive (2016).

22 Compare Arctic Council (2016).

23 Compare Gordinier (2016).

24 Compare Arctic Coast Guard Forum (2017) .

25 Compare Finnish Environment Institute (2018).

Additional information

Funding

Research was supported by the British International Studies Association's Early Career Fellowship (grant 512334), Cardiff University's CUROP scheme and research assistance funded by the School of Law & Politics. Research assistance by Alicia Hunt and Charlotte Gehrke is gratefully acknowledged.