The Circumpolar

Critical minerals in the Arctic

China controls almost every critical mineral the green transition needs. Gørild Heggelund, research professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, explains how it built that lead, going back to a Deng Xiaoping line about oil and rare earths, and why the Arctic states now want an alternative. We get into where the deposits are and what mining means for the people who live there, why Greenland's projects have stalled, Norway's pause on deep sea mining, and China's rare earth export controls against the US. And why Russia and China, so often grouped together in the Arctic, cooperate far less on minerals than their friendship suggests. Our last episode of the season.

Why China plays by the rules in the Arctic

China has no Arctic territory, calls itself a near-Arctic state, and has  worked its way into almost every legal regime in the region. Dr Iselin Stensdal talks about international law as China's way in. The conversation covers the Law of the Sea and the Northern Sea Route, the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement, the Svalbard Treaty, research rights at Ny-Ålesund, and why China keeps playing by the rules. The closing argument: the Arctic may matter far less to Beijing than the headlines suggest.

AMAP and the climate data dilemma

For four years, Russian climate data has been nearly impossible to reach. Now the United States is cutting its climate support and stepping back from the IPCC and the UN climate convention. Two of the biggest Arctic states are going dark at the same time, right when we most need to know how fast the climate is shifting. Serafima Andreeva talks with Rolf Rødven, Executive Secretary of AMAP (the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, a Working Group of the Arctic Council), about what that missing data actually costs. Pull Russian measurements out of the Arctic station network and some climate models fall back by 80 years.  They cover the three hardest data gaps to close, why satellites cannot simply fill them, and why indigenous and traditional knowledge belongs next to the science.

Don't bury the Arctic Council yet

For a dead institution, the Arctic Council has been remarkably busy. Serafima Andreeva draws on four years of research to explain how the Arctic Council survived Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and why it may be one of the more quietly resilient bodies in international diplomacy right now. She goes back to the Council's 1990s origins as a route into post-Soviet Russia, walks through the "temporary pause" of 2022 and the chairship handover from Russia to Norway, and ends with a prediction about what threatens it next. The uncomfortable part: Russia may not be the Council's biggest problem, and the United States belongs in that conversation too.

Japan & South Korea in the Arctic

Japan and South Korea became Arctic Council observers on at the same time in 2013, and they usually get filed alongside China as "Asian observers." But Tokyo and Seoul are not the same actor. Alma Karabeg is writing her PhD on Japan and South Korea in the Arctic at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. We get into what actually drives the engagement (it is partly nation-building), why sustainability is the frame she uses to read both strategies, and how each country handles Russia after 2022. Japan still imports Russian gas. Both had to sanction Moscow even though it does not suit their economies, and both, Alma argues, have a room for maneuver on science diplomacy that the West does not. We finish on the Northern Sea route, Korea's bet on Busan, and a blunt recommendation: European Arctic states are not brave enough about building their own infrastructure or coordinating on what moves through their ports.