The AMAP meetings that took place in San Francisco from 8–12 February 2010 comprised an AMAP strategy workshop and an AMAP Working Group meeting. One of presently six Arctic Council Working Groups, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) was originally established in 1991 to implement parts of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS). The primary function of AMAP is to advise the governments of the eight Arctic countries (Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States) on matters relating to threats to the Arctic region from pollution, and associated issues. After 20 years of work, resulting in a series of high quality scientifically based assessments of the pollution status of the Arctic, AMAP now enters a phase of strategic renovation. AMAP has been requested by the Arctic Council to address, in its assessment activities, impacts of environmental and climate changes on the socio-economic conditions and cultures of northern and indigenous communities. Furthermore, AMAP is planning to develop a strong scientific and policy outreach to provide Arctic information at both the national and international levels to better inform environmental, climate, and human health policy and decision-making.
About 60 AMAP experts and observers came to San Francisco to review and evaluate the existing strategy and monitoring programme. Three days of workshop discussions produced key conclusions and recommendations that will guide the preparation of a new mandate for the working group. The strategic theme continued into the following meeting of the AMAP Heads of delegation but a more in practical vein. SWIPA Report, Mercury Assessment, SAON (Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks) and international cooperation were among the agenda items. The SWIPA group (Snow, Water, Ice, and Permafrost in the Arctic, aka. the Cryosphere Project) presented its layman‘s report in six different language versions: English, Danish, Greenlandic, Chinese, Russian, and French. It also presented a SWIPA film and another film about one of its components, the GRIS (Greenland Ice Sheet) project, as well as a SWIPA pamphlet presenting the main scientific messages to the press and interested public. It was noted that these kind of products were in high demand among educational institutions. However, the secretariat actually does not have the capacity to provide material suitable for educational purposes. The AMAP meeting also saw presentations from two new Ad Hoc Observers, namely China and Japan, that, together with the presentation made by one of the seasoned Observers, the Netherlands, expressed a shared interest in digging into polar research and making plans for future contributions to the work of the Arctic Council.

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At the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Tromsø in April 2009, the chairmanship of the council was passed on from Norway to Denmark. Denmark, at the end of its term in 2011, will in its turn pass the chairmanship on to Sweden that will thus take the suite of Scandinavian Arctic Council Chairs to its completion in 2013. In their common programme, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden in 2007 stressed the need for applying an integrated, sustainable, and ecosystem-based approach to the use of Arctic resources, all of which concerns, according to the programme, might be comprised within a holistic perspective. And the needs of Arctic communities and indigenous peoples is clearly seen as falling within a such perspective. The Danish chairmanship, in its own program, likewise evokes a holistic perspective to comprise a complex of concerns about environmental protection, conservation of Arctic flora and fauna, and the preservation of the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and Arctic communities that, the programme states, remains at the core of the work of the Arctic Council. Thus, on the one hand, the Chair recognises the centrality of indigenous peoples' needs and rights, via the category of Permanents Participants, to the idea of the Arctic Council; yet, on the other hand, like in the Danish programme, the council is cautious to speak not only of indigenous peoples, but also of local people, and to speak not only of people(s), but also of communities and residents. Conversely, the indigenous peoples' organisations that are permanents participant in the Arctic Council also cautiously stress that they - as is the case with the Arctic States - are much more than that and that they partake actively in international processes and initiatives in their own right and outside of the auspices of the Arctic Council.
  
Climate change A clear-cut example of this could be seen in connection with COP15 in Copenhagen in December last year. The Arctic Council Chair announced that no consensus could be reached with respect to having the Arctic Council itself apply for accreditation as an observer to the COP15 and, consequently, the Arctic Council would not formally take part in it. At the same time, most of the Arctic indigenous peoples' organisations were already accredited as observers to the UN climate negotiations system. In 2008, the Arctic Council Indigenous Peoples Secretariat (IPS) and the six Permanent Participants organised and took part in a climate change adaptation workshop financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers. The proceedings from this workshop formed part of the input to the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change that was held in Anchorage in April, 2009. And, notwithstanding its not especially unified character, the declaration resulting from the Summit formed part of the indigenous peoples' input to the climate negotiations meeting leading up to and to the COP15 itself. Although not being formally a participant, the Arctic Council contributed indirectly to the Copenhagen conference as reports on and films about one of its projects, the "Arctic Cryosphere project - Snow, Water, Ice, and Permafrost in the Arctic" was featured in a COP15 side event, viz., the "Melting Ice" event organised by Norway, Denmark, and former vice-President of the United States of America, Al Gore. Two permanent participants, the Inuit Circumpolar Council and the Arctic Athabaskan Council, were each granted a side event slot at the COP15 venue, and each of these events was eventually affected by the logistical problems that in different ways marked the course of events in December 2009. Some 40,000 participants and accredited observers had come to Copenhagen for the conference, and as the official venue, the Bella Centre, had a maximum capacity of around 15,000, and with no clear and transparent access regulations in place, with people standing in endless lines outside the venue, waiting in vain to be let in, the often chaotic outcome was in reality predictable. The mood of growing discontent and despair among observers left outside in the cold no doubt mirrored that of most negotiators inside the venue at the official plenary meetings as the conference drew towards its close with only a disappointing and inconclusive Copenhagen Accord to show for itself and the world.

The Arctic and the Globe Just as the stakeholders of the Arctic Council have eagerly sought to bring their concerns to and imprint the global climate negotiations, so an increasing international focus on Arctic issues - spurred by the facts, the threats and new opportunities of climate change - is making itself felt, and applications from non-Arctic states and organisations for observer status at the Arctic Council keep ticking in. The official consensus reached by the Arctic Council is to consider Observers and Observer applicants assets to the work of the council, and that ways should be found to further the Observers' involvement in and contributions to the strivings of the council to promote sustainable development for its member states and for peoples of the Arctic. The Danish chairmanship has stated that, in this process of increasing international interest, increasing importance, and increasing work load of the council, the Permanent Participants category's unique contribution must be safeguarded and strengthened, thereby implying that the growing number and influence of Observers might potentially shift the established and prescribed role of the Permanent Participants within the council. The Permanent Participants, along with the Arctic Council state members, have engaged themselves deeply in the work with assessing applicants as well as in the work with revising criteria for granting Observer status. Thus, the Permanent Participants have objected to applicants that have not adequately stated and described their intentions to work with the Permanents Participants. To sum up, the Permanent Participants seem to be up against challenges related to the globalisation, to the demands for an ever increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of Arctic and global environmental processes, and to the ever increasing need for transcending the Arctic scene and attend various Conferences of Parties, the next of which will be the that of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Japan, October 2010. The challenge, not least and as seen from an observational, yet deeply engaged stance consists in finding ways to redefine the being and processes of indigenous living in relation to other processes of linking regional, Arctic issues and concerns to the corresponding global ones, in such a way as to avoid the predicament of being exclusively linked to concerns of conservation and preservation of natural diversity, and so as to allow space for operating in terms of cultural, ethnical, and socio-economic developments and concerns and to not have these confused with those of natural science.

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This article will appear as a chapter on the Arctic Council in IWGIA's "The Indigenous World 2010" yearbook

Canada has announced that it will host a high-level meeting to discuss the future of economic development and environmental protection in nations bordering the Arctic Ocean in Chelsea, Quebec on March 29, 2010.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Laurence Cannon described the upcoming gathering as a means to "provide an opportunity for Arctic Ocean coastal states to prepare for and encourage development that has positive benefits, including economical and environmental. It will reinforce ongoing collaboration in the region, including in the Arctic Council."

Minister Cannon has invited his counterparts from the five countries bordering the Arctic Ocean to the summit, but has received harsh criticism for excluding representatives from Arctic Indigenous organizations, particularly the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) and the Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC).

AAC International Chair Bill Erasmus responded to Minister Cannon's exclusion saying: "We don't see how the minister can discuss 'responsible development' in the Arctic with his counterparts from the United States, Russia, Denmark/Greenland and Norway without representatives of northern Canada."

Pointing out that AAC and five other Arctic Indigenous Peoples organizations are permanent participants to the eight nation Arctic Council Mr. Erasmus said "It makes no sense for us to be included in the Arctic Council but excluded in meetings of the five Arctic Ocean states".

Erasmus commented that Minister Cannon has billed the summit as a chance to "reinforce ongoing collaboration in the region, including in the Arctic Council," to which Erasmus added: "We invite the Minister to tell us how this will be achieved when we are not even in the room."

 

ICC Canada president Duane Smith also released a statement urging Cannon to include indigenous representatives at the summit "because Inuit are a coastal people, because the summit is about the Arctic Ocean coast, because Mr. Cannon underlined the importance of our involvement in multilateral meetings outside the Arctic Council."

Some have raised concerns that this so-called A-5 meeting, paired with the May, 2008 Illulissat meeting signals a disturbing trend that could weaken the Arctic Council as a high-level forum dealing with Circumpolar issues.

Gunn-Britt Retter of the Saami Parliament in Norway said: "It's our concern that we see some of the states involved in the Arctic Council now ... move the discussions out of the Arctic Council and to create kind of separate bodies."

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Link: Canadian Chair's summary

The Sakha Republic's Department of Culture and Education hosted the "Arctic Indigenous Siberian Languages Symposium" in September of 2009. The symposium was a Russian follow-up to the Arctic Councils "Arctic Indigenous Languages Symposium" held in Tromsø in November 2008. It was arranged in collaboration with the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON). The symposium focused on indigenous languages in the Sakha Republic, which is home to 26 indigenous languages. Several research groups from Sakha presented their research results and their on-going work. Presentations outlined the systematic approach to document these indigenous languages and the initiated revitalization of some of them. The linguistic rights, written formulation, development of textbooks, focus on different cultural expressions and printing of literature and textbooks were among the issues discussed. Teaching in indigenous languages is being intensified in the Sakha Republic through language policies and a systematic approach in developing educational materials. The Sakha Republic has extensive working relationships with the neighboring political entities and with the international research community dealing with those issues. There are several educational and research institutes that focus on the indigenous cultures and languages of the Russian Federation. Some have existed for several years and are now producing and reprinting cultural and education materials as well as indigenous literature both in the forms of traditional tales and poetry of today. Participants in the symposium included national and international experts from UNESCO (UN-New York), Oqaasileriffik (Greenland Self Rule), Catalan (Barcelona, Spain), the University of Chicago (USA), the University of Leiden (Holland) and the Herzen Institute of St. Petersburg (Russian Federation) and Moscow University (Russian Federation). Representatives from neighboring political entities (Magadan Oblast, Sakhalin Oblast, Kamchatka Krai, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansisk Autonomous Okrug, Karelia Republic) and from Permanent Participants to the Arctic Council (Arctic Athapascan Council and RAIPON) were also invited to participate in the symposium on Indigenous Languages of Siberian Languages. The proceedings of the symposium will be distributed to the participating institutions and organizations as well as other groups interested in the symposium, such as the Arctic Council. Source: Carl Christian Olsen

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As the climate in the Arctic changes and the Greenlandic Ice sheet and sea ice melts at a more rapid rate and scale than expected mean model projections, the Ministers of the Arctic Council member states have established a task force on short-lived climate-forcing agents (SLCF's) in a meeting in Tromsø in April, 2009. The mandate from the Tromsø Declaration reads: "Decide to establish a task force on short-lived climate forcers to identify existing and new measures to reduce emissions of these forcers and recommend further immediate actions that can be taken and to report on progress at the next Ministerial meeting" Black Carbon is one of the short-lived climate forcing agents (tropospheric ozone and methane are SLCF's too). Black Carbon is an air pollutant composed of very fine particles of carbon that can be released into the air in aerosol form. Black Carbon is created by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels (diesel and coal particularly), bio-fuels, and biomass. Carbon dioxide (CO2), on the other hand is the most well-known greenhouse gas, but is not as such a toxic substance. In fact, plants utilize CO2 in the photosynthesis. The problem with CO2 is its accumulation in the atmosphere and its ways of heating it up. When Black Carbon from the atmosphere in Arctic areas is deposited on ice and snow it makes the ice and snow packs darker, reducing the Albedo effect (the ability to reflect sunlight). The effect it has on snow covered sea ice is much more pronounced because as the snow melts, the Black Carbon accumulates on the ice surface in high concentrations. That makes snow and ice absorb more heat and thereby accelerates melting in summer months, which is the kind of feedback loop that practically defines the climate change problem. Black Carbon has another characteristic which has drawn attention in the climate change debate. While CO2 has a life of up to about 40 years in the atmosphere, Black Carbon remains in the atmosphere for a matter of weeks. Black Carbon is considered responsible for having an important impact of the Arctic melting. Due to Black Carbons short life, it is expected that emission reductions can rapidly reduce the rate at which Arctic ice is melting and therefore presents a unique opportunity to have an immediate impact on climate change. Debates are taking place in the international forums on the benefits of respectively reducing the emissions of Black Carbon and mitigating CO2 emission. Black Carbon reductions have more certain and immediate benefits, while reductions in CO2 emissions through CO2 mitigation will probably also have positive effects on climate change however it will only be realized over the longer term. However action on Black Carbon is not seen as an alternative to action on CO2. bvh