U.S. Arctic strategyU.S. formulates strategy for a new Arctic landscape

U.S. national security officials have become increasingly concerned about the national security implications of an ice-free Arctic. In May, top U.S. government officials were briefed at the White House about the topic.

The Arctic will become ice-free during the summer by mid-decade.

The May meeting brought together NASA’s then-acting chief scientist Gale Allen (now deputy chief scientist at NASA), director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Cora Marett, and representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.

Following the meeting, the White House published a document, National Strategy for the Arctic Region, which outlines the U.S. approach to a new Arctic (see also this 10 May 2013 White House press release).

The Guardian reported that the meeting was the latest indication that U.S. officials are increasingly concerned about the international and domestic security implications of climate change.

In the meeting, ten leading Arctic specialists made presentations and answered questions from government security officials. Among the scientist was Professor Carlos Duarte, director of the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia.

In early April, Duarte warned that the Arctic summer sea ice was melting at a rate faster than predicted by conventional climate models, and could be ice free as early as 2015, rather than toward the end of the century, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected in 2007. Duarte said that “The Arctic situation is snowballing: dangerous changes in the Arctic derived from accumulated anthropogenic green house gases lead to more activities conducive to further greenhouse gas emissions. This situation has the momentum of a runaway train.”

Duarte is lead author of a paper “Abrupt climate change in the Arctic,” published last year in Nature Climate Change.

For a while now, U.S. national security officials have been developing strategies, and coordinating with allies, in an effort to adapt U.S. policies to a new Arctic landscape (see, for example, “Top U.S., Canadian officials meet to discuss quickening pace of Arctic changes,” HSNW, 14 December 2012).

Earlier this year, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its new Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap,which noted that climate change will have “… significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to greater competition for more limited and critical life-sustaining resources like food and water.”

The DoD document points out that the effects of climate change may “Act as accelerants of instability or conflict in parts of the world… [and] may also lead to increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response, both within the United States and overseas … DoD will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on its facilities, infrastructure, training and testing activities, and military capabilities.”

The U.S. armed forces’ role is not to mitigate or prevent climate change. Rather, the U.S. military should adapt its strategy in order to make sure it is “better prepared to effectively respond to climate change” as it happens, and “to ensure continued mission success” in military operations.

DoD noted that the melting Arctic ice presents challenges and risks, but also offers opportunities: “The Department is developing cooperative partnerships with interagency and international Arctic stakeholders to collaboratively address future opportunities and potential challenges inherent in the projected opening of the Arctic.”

The DoD document stressed that the imperative to protect U.S. resource interests required increasing regional military penetration: “Melting sea ice in the Arctic may lead to new opportunities for shipping, tourism, and resource exploration, but the increase in human activity may require a significant increase in operational capabilities in the region in order to safeguard lawful trade and travel and to prevent exploitation of new routes for smuggling and trafficking.”

DHS’s own Climate Change Roadmap, which was released last year, warned that climate change “could directly affect the Nation’s critical infrastructure,” as well as aggravating “conditions that could enable terrorist activity, violence, and mass migration.”

— Read more in National Strategy for the Arctic Region (White House, May 2013); United States Coast Guard Arctic Strategy (USCG, May 2013); Joan M. Bondareff, “As the ice melts, the White House and coast guard turn their attention to the Arctic,” Lexology (9 October 2013); Bryant E. Gardner, “Defining a National Strategy for Arctic Alaska,” Maritime Executive (15 October 2013); Department of Defense FY 2012 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap; Department of Homeland Security Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap (June 2012); and Carlos M. Duarte et al., “Abrupt climate change in the Arctic,” Nature Climate Change 2 (27 January 2012): 60–62 (doi:10.1038/nclimate1386)