Arctic Futures: Agency and Assessing Assessments

Abstract

The future is a common theme in discussions of the Arctic, whether in media, policy, or scientific communications. The future is not a given, and there are several possible futures that different actors strive to enable at any given time. At present considerable attention is given to monolithic “drivers” of change in this region, including melting sea ice, technological development, and global resource geopolitics; and although this discourse is far from new (Doel et al. 2014b), the end of the Cold War and the amplification of climate and global change have reframed the discussion (Christensen et al. 2013). The media has played a large role in propagating the “drivers” discourse, usually understating the role of human agency. While recognizing that these “driving” factors are important, this chapter will analyze some of this “future-talk”, in relation to the future of the Arctic. We would argue that there is considerable discursive power (Foucault 2002) in these images of the future, which explains why they are so visible and articulated with such fervor. It is not our intention to suggest that this talking about the future in and of itself constructs the future that actually unfolds. Rather, we hold that the genres of future-talk are closely connected to real interests connected to particular versions of Arctic futures. No other region of the world has as many scientific assessments per capita as the Arctic, Nina Wormbs and Sverker Sörlin posit in this chapter. This extensive assessment industry has a long history and is continuing to influence policy and politics in the region, especially with respect to questions of sustainability, resilience, and resource extraction in an era of anthropogenic climate change. Reports such as the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP, 1997) and the Arctic Resilience Interim Report (2013), Wormbs and Sörlin show, generate a limited view of environmental and societal “drivers” in the Arctic region, often with little concern for social and cultural complexity. Wormbs and Sörlin are particularly concerned with the role of science in the production of certain kinds of “future-talk” that are manifested in these assessments. This chapter argues that real world interests and potential conflicts are being delegated to the scientific community, which is, willingly or unwillingly, serving as a putatively neutral and non-political quasi-authority on Arctic futures.This chapter analyzes the theoretical and methodological paradigms that have informed Arctic assessments in the past and the predictions for the future these reports have generated.