Global Conventions and Regional Cooperation: The Multifaceted Dynamics of Arctic Governance

The Arctic is a globally embedded space. This is as true for the impact of global climate change on the Arctic and the consequences of Arctic climate change for the rest of the world as it is for governance for and in the Arctic. This chapter analyzes the dynamics that structure and result from the coexistence of global and regional governance mechanisms in four issue areas: the governance of marine and maritime spaces, Indigenous Peoples, climate governance, and environmental protection and conservation. It assesses how global conventions impacted regional governance and, in turn, how regional cooperation influenced governance on the global level. In order to do this, we distinguish four ways in which the nexus between global governance and regional cooperation can be established: as harmonious, cooperative, conflictive, and indifferent. For each way, an outside-in (from the global to the regional level) and an inside-out (from the regional to the global level) perspective can be considered. This yields a typology of eight different kinds of links between regional cooperation and global conventions. Much of the previous research has focused on harmonious and cooperative links. By contrast, we intend to show that as global interest in the Arctic grows, along with the need for regulatory governance in the region, the nexus might increasingly become conflictive. In order to retain control over the region and its governance, Arctic states’ cooperation seeks to limit both their own global commitments and the influence of exogenous actors or institutions.