War in Ukraine has implications for Arctic co-operation, climate change research Social Sharing

Russia's invasion of Ukraine may seem half a world away, but it has implications for northerners and for circumpolar collaboration on important issues, including climate change, according to Robert Huebert, an associate professor at the University of Calgary whose work focuses on Arctic security and sovereignty. The situation also underscores gaps in the Canadian government's approach to its northern defences, Huebert said in an interview with CBC News. Huebert describes the situation as horrifying. "Any myth that the Russia of old, the aggressor expansionary Russia had been a thing of the past" has been laid to rest, Huebert said. "It tells us that the Russians are, in fact, willing to use any means possible to seize the territory of a sovereign state." There's two major impacts. The first is in terms of the ability of the Arctic nations, including the Russians, to get together on meaningful co-operation. And we've seen this in the multilateral agencies, the Arctic Council being the most obvious body. A lot of our understanding of climate change comes from the co-operative sharing of information and science with the Russians within the context of the Arctic Council. We have search and rescue treaties. We have a whole host of very meaningful steps. Those, I'm afraid, are all either going to be frozen or rendered irrelevant. With this type of naked aggression on the part of the Russians, I just simply can't see us being able to wait for the killing and dying to stop in Ukraine and then to turn around to the Russians say, "OK, well, what's the next thing on the agenda for the Arctic Council?" The Russians are the chair of the council right now. As we impose sanctions, as we have said we will, the Russians will then retaliate and the essence of what is required for any form of co-operation will have been eliminated. The second is on the military. Our government, ever since it was elected and came up with the defence policy, said one of the most critical things that it needed to do was to modernize the NORAD defensive capabilities. That's the alliance and agreement we have with the Americans to have the shared defence of North American aerospace.