Greetings and welcome to Course 3 of arctic climate, environment, and the geographies of the changing North. I'm Mark Serreze, I'm with the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, and I'm also part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Well, what's Course 3 all about? It's titled the nexus of governance, economics and culture. Now, just a little background here, in Course 1, we learned about the Arctic as a system. We learned about the geography of the Arctic, what defines the Arctic, the peoples of the Arctic, early exploration of the Arctic, how we built our knowledge of the Arctic. Then we turned to issues such as basic patterns of temperature, precipitation, and cloud cover. We talked about the Arctic ocean and sea ice cover, we talked about the Greenland ice sheet, how these fit together, and there's a lot of mention or a lot of discussion in that course about the big changes we're seeing in the Arctic. Now, the issue of change is something we just delved into deeply during the second class. Really, what is the nature of all these changes? How do they sort of fit together and what do they mean? Well, in this course, the nexus of governance, economics, and culture, we will find out that a lot of the issues of governance in the Arctic, tensions between nations, economic, so many of these drive from the big changes we've seen in the Arctic. Now, this course is going to have four modules. The first module is titled Arctic peoples governance, economics and geopolitics. First, the Arctic as a homeland. We learned that the Arctic is actually sparsely settled, but there are many indigenous groups in the Arctic, and we really need to understand that and appreciate that. This video will be given by my colleague, Matt Druckenmiller, who studied this for many years, so he'll be our guest lecturer. The Arctic Council and intergovernmental forum of the eight Arctic nations that deals with Arctic issues, particularly indigenous issues, and there are also observer states, and there are also a number of indigenous groups that are part of the Arctic Council. Arctic demographics. Again, we know the Arctic is sparsely settled, but there are many indigenous groups. It turns out that the Arctic population in total probably is not going to change all that much. But we'll learn about what we expect to see in terms of changes in Arctic demographics. Economics, just an overview of the economic sectors of the Arctic, but this will lay the stage for more detailed discussion in subsequent videos, and the Arctic and national defense. As the Arctic becomes more accessible, as it loses its sea ice cover, it becomes more strategically important. This includes importance in recognition of its significance in terms of national defense sovereignty. In the Module 2, then we'll turn right to marine use of the Arctic. Now, because as the Arctic loses its sea ice cover and becomes more accessible, it becomes more accessible to shipping of all kinds. To start out, we need to understand the United Nations Convention Law of the Sea in international law that deals with who owns the Arctic or who owns the ocean in general in terms of the high seas where nobody owns them, to internal waters, to exclusive economic zones. How that bears on the Arctic in terms of do ships have a right to just go through the Arctic Ocean or not. We'll learn about that. Then we'll turn to the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage. The Northern Sea Route, that's the passage along the coast of Russia, and the Northwest Passage is the passage through the channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. There's actually a number of different ways you can get through. But these lanes or these passages are now starting to open up on a seasonal basis, the Northern Sea Route in particular, and that means that these routes could be much more viable to shipping, so we need to understand them. But also we need to understand icebreakers. If we're going to have a busier Arctic, we need to have icebreaker capability. You might think that that's not true with less ice, fewer or icebreakers, but no, you're going to actually need more, especially because you're going to have that access all year round and they'll be winter ice for a long time. But what we'll learn is how far Russia is ahead of everyone else, makes sense because they had such a long Arctic coast. Russia has the super-duper nuclear powered icebreakers, it's pretty amazing. We'll learn about that. Also the International Polar Code, and that deals with how ships need to be equipped in their structure and their ice strength capability to operate in Polar waters, and there's rules that have been developed on this because we don't want these ships getting into trouble and sinking and having a big problem, so there's something called the International Polar Code, which really dictates the equipment that these ships need to have, how the ships are structured, their structural integrity, things like that. Then Arctic riches, oil and natural gas. Well, the Arctic is underlain by a lot of oil and gas. Now, that's underneath the Arctic Ocean, particularly off the continent underneath the continental shelves, but also on land. There are a number of countries, really Arctic nations, of course, which are developing those resources or at least exploring them. We're going to talk about what's going on in Russia, and there's a lot going on in Russia. Really Russia is leading the way on development of oil and natural gas resources. What's going on in the USA in terms of Alaska, the Beaufort and Chuck Sheets seas, that's the Alaskan North Slope. Canada, what's going on in Canada and what might be going on or planned perhaps for Greenland, and oil and natural gas development in Norway. These are big economic backbones. Then we're going to move in the final module beyond oil and gas. We're going to talk about mining. Mining, another big sector of the Arctic economy. Like oil and gas, it brings money, it brings in a lot of money, but there's also a lot of environmental concern. These are things we have to be aware of, there's two sides to every coin. Fisheries, commercial fisheries big in the Arctic, but also sport fisheries, and this really is a strong economic backbone. Tourism, take an icebreaker to the North Pole, something like that, go see the icebergs calving from the Greenland ice sheet. Tourist is big in the Arctic, and it's probably going to grow. Then I'm going to end with some recent events and flash points. Everything is changing so quickly in the Arctic that it's really pretty hard to keep up with it, so this final video, I'm going to try and cover some of the most recent events in the Arctic that really bear on economics and geopolitics. I hope you enjoy this class, I've certainly enjoyed putting it together, and I think we're going to have a lot of fun. Thank you.
