Governance for the Arctic?

It's as if two French environmentalists just read the article in the current New Yorker on Arctic Ocean shipping.  In an op-ed piece in today’s Le Monde they argue the need for new international arrangements to protect the Arctic.  The proposal comes from Jérôme Beilin and Nicolas Imbert who are, respectively, program director at Ateliers de la terre executive director of Green Cross France

Beilin and Imbert recognize that the Arctic ice cap is melting and, in the short term, there’s little we can do about it.  What we need to recognize, they argue, is that as the cap melts it’s opening up new shipping routes and new possibilities for mineral exploitation.  The U.S. Geologic Survey, they note, estimates that the newly open Arctic areas could contain a fifth of worldwide reserves of oil and gas.  Also, the newly accessible waters could eventually be handling a similar percentage of international maritime commerce.

Inevitably, this much human activity -- drilling, mining and shipping -- will have an impact on animal habitats and general environmental conditions.

Much of the debate at the moment, they say, is over national “exclusive economic zones,” (EEZ) a zone prescribed under the terms of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which can extend up to 200 nautical miles beyond a country’s coastline.  Certain proposals have advanced the idea that, to compensate for environmental impact, countries extracting resources from an EEZ be required to pay from five to seven percent of the value of these resources into a “green fund.”  Beilin and Imbert think the idea is “seductive,” but that the Arctic oceans need a more concrete structure of governance.  They propose enlarging the responsibilities of the International Seabed Authority and establishing regular scientific monitoring of Arctic conditions and sanctions applied to those violating agreed upon standards.  And they call for citizen mobilization on behalf of Arctic preservation.

Their proposals seem more than reasonable.  Can nations make progress in this area when they can't in the climate negotiations (i.e., Doha)?  I hope so.