Arctic Council Meetings in Norway 2009

Delegates from the Arctic Athabaskan Council including Chiefs Bill Erasmus, Michael Stickman, Liard McMillan and Gary Harrison, are in Tromso, Norway attending the meeting of the Senior Arctic Officials to the eight-nation Arctic Council to be followed on April 29th by a meeting of the Arctic Council ministers. This is the end of the Norwegian Chairmanship of the Council and the beginning of Denmark's tenure as chair.

Ministers will approve a nine to ten page declaration that identifies priorities for the council for the next two years and a seventy-five page report by Senior Arcitic Officials on what the council has done over the last two years. Reports will be approved from the council's working groups. The council itself is increasingly an issue in light of the burgeoning interest in the Arctic by non-Arctic states and non-governmental organizations. Some want the council to be established in international law rather than a political declaration. The council deferred applications for official observer status by China, South Korea, Italy and the European Union but has agreed to consider how best it should engage the increasing number of state and non-state observers. 

Ministers are scheduled to hear from Al Gore, former vice-president of the United States, who will speak about the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses. The debate amongst ministers is likely to stress climate change and the draft Tromso Declaration deals more with this issue than any other. Interestingly ministers are scheduled to establish a task force to look into the influence of black carbon - a short term driver of climate change, potentially of great influence in the Arctic.