Why China plays by the rules in the Arctic

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.

Italy in the Arctic

Recorded from Rome, we cover the question of what Italy really wants in the Arctic and how it can achieve it. Marco Dordoni, todays guest, is a PhD candidate at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, where his doctoral work looks at how NATO's European non-Arctic states approach Arctic security, and a senior researcher at SIOI, the Rome institute that has shaped Italian thinking on international organizations and diplomacy since 1944. Italy has no Arctic coastline and no Arctic territory, but it has held a seat on the Arctic Council since 2013, and in January 2026 it published its first new Arctic policy in a decade. Marco lays out Italy's mix of interests, from the strategic value of a place at the table alongside the US, Russia, and China, to the concrete stakes of Arctic shipping. If the Northern Sea Route opens for longer each year, it could pull traffic away from Suez and the Mediterranean, with real consequences for ports like Genoa, Trieste, and Taranto. We get into critical minerals and the recent Italy-Norway agreement, what Italy can realistically offer on Arctic defence, and why Rome keeps positioning itself as cautious but present. We also cover Greenland, the Meloni-Trump relationship and where it has cooled, the Arctic Circle Rome Forum, and whether Italy actually has a long-term Arctic strategy at all.