The focus of the Green Arctic Game is to examine the possibility - or impossibility - of reaching an international consensus that the Arctic should remain a global commons that is held in trust on behalf of humanity. In this scenario, the pristine nature of the Arctic environment would be preserved for posterity and future generations. That would involve the parties to the Arctic exercising a degree of self-restraint and limiting its use as a commercial waterway, restricting the exploitation of the hydrocarbon and mineral deposits in the region, and acting to preserve the fish stocks found in the region. There are commercial incentives for the parties involved in the Arctic to exploit it to the full. Can they come together to overcome these temptations?
In designing the game, we decided to follow the template set out in our Blue Arctic pathway scenario. The Green Arctic Game was to be an end state game that examined the possibility of the Blue Arctic developing into the Green Arctic. We maintained the same players as before - Canada, the US, Russia, China, Japan, and the European Commission. It was correctly pointed out that this largely excludes the Global South. This is true, but it's hard to see what interest the Global South could exert in a game about the Arctic. This may have been a significant oversight, but that was a risk we were prepared to take.
As with the Blue Arctic, Canada favoured an enclosed Arctic and reaching consensus through the Arctic Council. Russia favoured an enclosed Arctic, to be policed through national action. The US was in favour of the Arctic as a global commons, but with a weak institutional base; whilst the European Commission was in favour of the Arctic as a global commons, with an enhanced institutional basis. China was indifferent about the tenure of the Arctic and the institutional structure as long as it was open for large scale commercial exploitation. Japan was of a similar view and tended to side with the US, whilst China was naturally drawn towards Russia.
We felt that the focus of the discussion should be a quota framework for the commercial use of the Arctic. Only three players were members of the Arctic Council (Canada, the US, and Russia). It was upon the non-members to influence the members as best they could. There were four focus points - the amount of freight passing through the Arctic (measured in TEUs), the amount of hydrocarbons and minerals extracted in the Arctic (expressed as bpd equivalents), and the amount of Cod and Salmon fished in the Arctic. We set a baseline of the current usage in 2050 in the Blue Arctic scenario and asked the players to set about reaching an agreement to limit the usage to sustainable levels. These were lower than current levels.
There were six rounds of negotiation using the structure of a committee game. The objectives of some players were to see usage lower than the 2050 baseline, whilst those of other players were to achieve a level that was higher than the 2050 baseline. We also included a range of sub-objectives for the players to use as negotiating points and it was interesting to see whether the players could find those other touch points and utilise them.
In the six rounds of negotiation, no consensus results emerged. The players were close to an agreement on fishing quotas at one point, but an eventual solution eluded them. This is something of an expected result, that has some important consequences. We will go into greater detail on this in our next post. For now, suffice it to say that we didn't solve the tragedy of the commons. However, as nobody else has in 2,000 years of trying, we ought not to feel too despondent just yet.
Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2022
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