The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2021 29 council to respond to current and future needs of the region. It should also become more accountable, by instituting a practice in which its members regularly report on their imple- mentation of decisions that the body has taken. Russia takes over as Arctic Council chair this month and may not have much appe- tite for taking any of these steps. Then again, Moscow will want to claim success at the end of its two-year term, and may be open to one or more of these ideas after all. Even if it is not, efforts that the Biden administration initiate now could bear fruit beginning in 2023, when the Arctic Council will embark on a six-year span during which a succession of Scandi- navian governments (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) hold the chair. Beyond the Arctic Council Finally, the Biden administration should pursue ways to improve governance of the region—and particularly of the Arctic Ocean— outside the Arctic Council. The region will need an architecture that is more robust than the council, with its inherent limitations in terms of authority and structure, can provide. As noted above, melting sea ice has made the Arctic Ocean dramatically more accessible. Commercial shipping has already increased, particularly along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, with further increases expected. Yet the Arctic Ocean remains poorly understood and poorly charted. Current arrangements and rules relating to the Arctic Ocean—including those generated by the Arctic Council, the Interna- tional Maritime Organization’s Polar Code, the 2018 Arctic Fisheries Agreement and the Arctic Coast Guard Forum—are not likely to prove either sufficiently strong or sufficiently well coordinated to manage increasing human activity there in the coming years. The United States can and should lead efforts to improve this regime in a variety of ways. In that regard, the initial meeting between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau included a focus on the Arctic region, and committed the United States and Canada to A German research vessel floats among the icebergs in the central Arctic Ocean in 2015. MARIOHOPPMAN During the 2015 Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Iqaluit, Canada, local Inuit residents join U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Minister for the Arctic Council Leona Aglukkaq. ARCTICCOUNCILSECRETARIAT work together on “Arctic governance,” among other things. To strengthen Arctic governance, the two governments might begin by jointly proposing the creation of a marine science body for the Central Arctic Ocean and, sometime thereafter, a marine management body for the Central Arctic Ocean. n