Balancing Diverse Interests for Sustainable Development in the Arctic Ocean

Over the past several decades warming across the Arctic region is twice the globally averaged rate for climate warming.  This is evident in the regularity of new record highs in air and water temperatures throughout the Arctic, and it is equally evident in shrinking snow and summer sea ice cover and in the shifting distributions of plants and animals. No other ocean is likely to change in the near future as rapidly as the Arctic Ocean. Over the past three decades Arctic summer ice extent has declined by about 1 percent per year, and recently it has become more variable. In 2007, the area of summer ice was much less than expected from the earlier trend. Without summer sea ice, the marine productivity of this ocean could increase but it will be based upon different ecological assemblages of microalgae, crustacea, and fish. How will this change affect Arctic animals, especially the mammals, which have evolved with a dependence on sea ice? Organic and metallic pollution is also an increasing concern in today’s Arctic food web.   How might this be different in warmer Arctic?  Commerce in some regions of the Arctic will be enhanced, including oil and gas extraction, and with this will come additional risks to Arctic ecosystems.  Increased tourism with easier access for ships with conventional hulls will introduce new risks as well. What about the people whose ancestral histories and cultures are based within the Arctic and who depend upon key species in these ecosystems for their food, livelihood, and other traditional ways of life? There is a long history of cooperative international research in the Arctic, but current efforts are woefully inadequate to answer the simple questions raised above.  We have but a brief moment to focus on these critical issues and to assemble international support to address them.  Further warming and associated change in the Arctic is inevitable, but with international political resolve to slow rates of climate change and Arctic based research to understand the implications of this warming, some negative impacts on Arctic ecosystems and on the lives and livelihoods of Arctic people can be avoided.