Introduction At the extreme north pole and south pole of the Earth’s rotational axis lie the Arctic and Antarctic regions, each comprising approximately one tenth of the Earth’s total surface area. Surrounding the north pole is the Arctic, a region of small human settlements, treeless tundra, and marine areas covered by ice in the winter. At the south pole lies the Antarctic, inhabited only by native species, scientists, and their support staff. The Antarctic region includes the entire continent of Antarctica and the southern portions of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans.
The unique Arctic Ocean coasts of northern Asia, Europe, and North America led to the development of a large number of small nomadic human cultures. In northern Russia, more than forty indigenous cultures still live in the Arctic region and just south of the Arctic region, in the “subarctic” region. Some of these people still practice their traditional nomadic way of life. In northern Scandinavia, the Sami people have maintained their identity while intermixing with the Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns. In North America, Inuit (Eskimo) and Native Alaskans have partially integrated into the Canadian, United States (US), and Greenlandic economies, but many continue their subsistence hunting and fishing practices. In general, the lands of the Arctic have all been conquered by nations to the south. The extreme climate has slowed the migration of outsiders to the region, especially in North America, and this relative lack of immigration has, to some degree, helped preserve the cultural practices of the indigenous Arctic peoples.
Antarctica has no permanent human residents, but it faces many environmental challenges that have been caused by humans, such as overfishing, persistent organic pollutants, and damage from a weakened ozone layer. The Arctic lies closer to large human populations in North America and Europe and, therefore, in addition to having the same environmental issues as Antarctica, it also suffers from more industrial related environmental issues such as acidification and radioactivity. The particular political structures, diverse indigenous religious traditions, and expansive wilderness geography of the polar regions all affect environmental policy in these locations.
The Arctic
Political Structure
The Arctic region includes land in Asia, Europe, and North America that has been divided among eight different nations. Russia controls the Asian Arctic; Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden hold Arctic lands in Europe; and Canada, Denmark, and the United States govern Arctic lands in North America. Of these, only Iceland lies wholly within the Arctic. However, the other nations all have political subunits with significant Arctic areas, including Russia’s divisions of Chukotka, Nenetsie, Taymyria, and Yakutia; Canada’s Northwest, Nunavut, and Yukon Territories; Alaska, one of the fifty United States; and Denmark’s division of Greenland.
Over many centuries, non-Arctic Europeans and their North American descendants conquered all Arctic lands and peoples. The Norse settled the previously uninhabited island of Iceland (c. 874) and southern Greenland (c. 985). These settlements began to interact with the Inuit culture of northern Greenland in the thirteenth century. The Norse, preoccupied with continental matters, stopped sending ships in the fourteenth century, and their settlements on Greenland soon disappeared. Denmark then asserted control over Greenland in 1776.
In northern Europe, the Norse, Swedes, and Russians conquered the native Sami people in the Middle Ages. Active colonization of Sami land began in the seventeenth century. In north Asia, Russia conquered Siberia during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, then occupied Alaska in the nineteenth century before selling it to the United States in 1867.
The last Arctic region to be conquered was northern North America. Formal treaties and Canadian territorial authorities were not established in all areas until the 1920s.
Since the mid-twentieth century, there has been a movement toward greater regional autonomy for Arctic peoples. In Greenland and several regions of Russia, Canada, and the United States, Indigenous peoples and regions with Indigenous majorities have obtained semi-autonomous governance. In a step toward greater autonomy, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have established Sami parliaments, primarily as advisory bodies to the national parliaments of those countries. In 1999, the Canadian territory of Nunavut was created in order that the Inuit might constitute a majority in a regional government within Canada. Established in 1991, the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat of the Arctic Council facilitates communications among all Indigenous Arctic peoples.
In many ways Arctic life remains closely connected to the economic interests and military conflicts of the nations that are dominated by non-Arctic populations, especially in the US and Russia. The US and Russian Arctic areas are major sources of petroleum. The closest air and sea routes between the Russia and the US pass through the Arctic, therefore this region is an essential part of each country’s energy resources and both are heavily patrolled by US and Russian military forces (e. g., submarines). The proposed US ballistic missile defense system would rely heavily on a network of bases throughout allied Arctic nations.
The legacy of colonial rule in Arctic regions has, to date, prevented any Arctic indigenous nations from gaining full sovereignty. No Arctic indigenous nation, for example, has its own seat in the United Nations. Greenland is the only indigenous-majority region that is seriously considering full independence. The second-largest political party in Greenland, the Eskimo Brotherhood, favors the full independence of Greenland from Denmark and opposes the installation of missile-defense radar at the US base at Thule, Greenland.
Religious Diversity
Of the several million people living in Arctic and subarctic (taiga-forested) regions, there are at most a total of 200,000 members of the forty-four small indigenous Russian groups (e.g., the Chukchi and Nenets), 150,000 Inuit (Eskimos) of North America and Greenland, 50,000 other Native Alaskans, and 60,000 Sami in northern Scandinavia.1 Perhaps one million more Russians are members of cultures with some Arctic features, such as the Yakut, who have lived in northern Siberia (in eastern Russia) but are originally Slavs from central Europe. The smaller islands of the North Atlantic include several indigenous communities as well.
Most indigenous and non-indigenous residents of the Arctic currently practice Christianity in the same forms as the nation in which they reside. In Russia and southern Alaska, the Christian affiliation has been Russian Orthodox since missionaries converted many of the Indigenous people in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The Russian Arctic has also been a refuge for many communities of persecuted religious sects, such as the “Old Believers” who split from the Russian Orthodox Church after it executed priests who opposed its liturgical reforms of 1666. In Greenland and northern Europe, the affiliation of the Inuit and Sami is primarily Lutheran. In Canada and northern Alaska, the affiliations of the Inuit and Native Alaskans are to Catholicism and a variety of Protestant denominations.
Indigenous belief systems, either in their original or mixed forms, can also still be found in the Arctic region, although at significantly diminished levels. The Alaskan Eskimos, for example, have maintained traditional medical practices and beliefs in rebirth after death; the beliefs of some Sami are still connected to shamanism; and, the relative absence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Siberia following the Soviet era has facilitated a resurgence of shamanism.2 Mixed religious communities, such as the Lutheran-influenced Laestadian churches of the Sami, and the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches in Siberia and Alaska that have incorporated some indigenous rituals, are more common in the region than original indigenous traditions.3
Geography
The lands of the Arctic form a circle around the Arctic Ocean. Most flat maps of the world exaggerate the modest size of that land circle. In fact, Alaska sits only a few thousand miles from Greenland. Thus it is not surprising that the humans, animals, and plants of different Arctic regions share similar characteristics.
Changes in Arctic continental plates, climate, and sea level over millions of years have shaped the species of Eurasia and North America. North America was connected to Europe via the North Atlantic land bridge (now Greenland) into the Miocene epoch (24 to 5 million years ago).4 At that time, a single forested area stretched from North America to East Asia. As a result, approximately sixty-five plant varieties (e.g., tulip-poplar trees and witch hazels) are still found, in closely related forms, in both Eurasia and North America.5 Another land bridge, connecting Siberia and Alaska, existed during the low sea levels of recent Ice Ages, allowing humans and many other species to migrate between the continents.
Two interconnected ecosystems dominate the Arctic. On land, the tundra is a domain of low grasses, shrubs, mosses, and lichens living in permafrost.6 Tundra areas are located on level or rolling plains and are comprised of thick black topsoil and permanently frozen subsoils that are unable to support tree life. Offshore, the Arctic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, Hudson Bay, and Bering Sea maintain unique marine environments that contain a variety of diverse species (e.g., clams, coral, walruses, and seals). Some terrestrial and marine species, such as the polar bear, utilize both domains—they hunt seals in the water but often are terrestrial den dwellers.
Just south of the Arctic are the subarctic taiga forests. In these areas, coniferous trees growing on swampy ground dominate the landscape. The Arctic is cold, but the central Siberian subarctic is the coldest place on Earth. The Arctic terrestrial and marine species are uniquely adapted to coexist within the context of these frigid temperatures.
The repeated advance and retreat of glaciers over the past two million years has disrupted species development and migration patterns throughout the Arctic region. For this reason the number of species on the tundra is relatively small compared to other parts of the world where species have been diversifying undisturbed for millions of years. Since the last glacial retreat approximately 10,000 years ago, very few species have arrived to claim the newly uncovered land. The Arctic is home for many insects, some rodents, many migratory birds, and a few larger mammals such as foxes, weasels, elk, caribou, and bear. Several different Indigenous peoples herd domesticated caribou, called reindeer, in these Arctic regions.
In the North Atlantic and other outlying Arctic seas, large populations of tiny copepods and krill provide food for teeming populations of seabirds, fish, seals, and whales. In the central Arctic Ocean, algae grows on the underside of the pack ice, which is eaten by small amphipods that, in turn, feed schools of Arctic cod. Like the terrestrial Arctic ecosystems, the marine ecosystems are fragile and vulnerable to many of the major environmental changes now occurring in this region.
Environmental Issues
As environmental degradation proceeds, and scientists continue to conduct new research in the Arctic region, the list of environmental issues experienced by this region is also growing. In 1991, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy identified eight leading Arctic environmental issues:
- Persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
- Heavy metals
- Acidification
- Global climate change
- Radioactivity
- Noise pollution
- Ozone layer depletion
- Oil pollution7
The most notorious examples of the first environmental issue, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), are dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). POPs are utilized for a variety of useful purposes, but create serious health problems in humans and other animals. For example, DDT is a useful insecticide for killing the mosquitoes that carry malaria but it is extremely toxic to fish and birds.8 Many nations are currently considering ratification of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (adopted in 2001), which phases out the use of twelve particularly dangerous POPs.
The second environmental issue, heavy metals, has similar characteristics to POPs. Both POPs and heavy metals are manufactured toxic pollutants that accumulate at dangerous levels in larger animals. These animals take in these pollutants from food sources, air, and water, but then do not expel them from their bodies effectively. This process is called “bioaccumulation.” The most dangerous heavy metals accumulating in the Arctic are cadmium, lead, and mercury. Power plants and vehicles using leaded gasoline are leading sources of airborne heavy metals that spread throughout the Arctic. Industrial and military sites create localized concentrations of heavy metals.9
Acidification of soil and water is the third Arctic environmental issue. The major ingredient of Artic acid rain is sulfuric acid, created when water vapor mixes with the sulfur dioxide emitted by metal smelters and power plants in North America and Eurasia. When sulfuric acid interacts with the extremely cold Artic atmosphere, a thick Artic haze is created. This phenomenon is not found in warmer climates.10
The Arctic is particularly vulnerable to issues relating to POPs, heavy metals, and acidification because air and ocean currents deliver and deposit pollutants from industrialized areas into these pristine ecosystems. This cumulative deposition process leads to unusually high concentrations of these elements in the Arctic region.
Global climate change is a serious challenge for all the world’s ecosystems, especially those of the Arctic, where glaciers and oceanic ice packs are retreating as temperatures warm. As ice packs recede from shorelines, polar bears are being stranded on land, without adequate food sources, for longer periods of time each year.11 This may be an indication of the fact that the migration and feeding patterns of various species, especially polar bears, are being influenced by specific, sometimes synergistic environmental problems (e.g., climate change, habitat intrusion, increased human settlement, etc.).
Radioactivity has also been a special concern for this region. Two major sources have contributed to this problem:
- Atmospheric radioactive deposits from the Chernobyl explosion
- The dumping of nuclear waste, primarily by the Soviet Union, in Arctic regions
In regard to the former, wind currents carried high levels of radiation from the 1986 nuclear reactor explosion in Chernobyl (Ukraine) across Europe and into Arctic regions. This radiation irradiated lichens and mushrooms that were then eaten by the reindeer population in the region. The reindeer plays a significant role in the culture and diet of the Sami people. The Sami people’s reindeer continue to accumulate such high radioactivity levels that the reindeers’ diets still have to be altered to keep their meat safe for human consumption. In this manner Chernobyl, an event that occurred 1,000 miles to the south of the Arctic, was devastating to the livelihoods and cultural traditions of the Sami people.
The dumping of nuclear waste into the Arctic Ocean by the Soviet Union has also increased levels of radiation in this region.12 Russia continues to hold enormous quantities of nuclear waste in temporary storage facilities. Other nations are working to assist Russia in choosing the safest options for storing these wastes. One example of a multilateral assistance program is the Declaration on Arctic Military Environment Cooperation (AMEC), signed by Russia, Norway, the US, and the United Kingdom.
The disruption of animal life by noise pollution was also highlighted as an environmental concern by the 1991 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy. The noise of ships and low-flying aircraft can disorient whales and cause fatal stampedes among seals and walruses. There has been relatively little study of these effects compared to the other environmental issues highlighted by Arctic nations.
The two remaining environmental issues identified by the 1991 Arctic Environment Protection Strategy are oil pollution and ozone layer depletion. Concern about oil extraction has broadened to include pollution caused by extraction of natural gas and coal. Several of these environmental challenges face Antarctica as well as the Arctic. Antarctica faces rising POP and heavy metal concentrations, habitat loss driven by global climate change, and most notably, the worst ozone layer depletion on Earth. International treaties and national environmental ministries have been developed in an attempt to address many of these important issues.
Antarctica
Political Structure
Antarctica was completely uninhabited by humans, except for a few people who maintained exploratory teams and/or bases in the region, until the influx of the scientific community during the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958). The experience of scientists from many nations cooperating in Antarctica led to the adoption of the Antarctic Treaty, enacted in 1961, that bans any military action to enforce the claims of ownership of Antarctic lands by several countries. The current population of Antarctica is transient, consisting of approximately 4,000 personnel that conduct and support scientific research in this region.
Religious Diversity
In Antarctica, scientists from a wide variety of religious and cultural traditions, representing dozens of nations, work out of a small number of camps. Their relationships have become a subject of study in their own right.13
Geography
The continent of Antarctica comprises approximately ten percent of the Earth’s total land area while the oceanic area of the Antarctic, called the “Southern Ocean,” includes approximately ten percent of the Earth’s water surface area. Glaciers and ice packs cover more than ninety-five percent of Antarctica. The Transantarctic Mountains divide the continent into eastern and western regions. Exposed rock and limited soils, scattered throughout the continent, support lichens, mosses, and algae, but there are no native vertebrates on Antarctica.
The Southern Ocean is the area south of the Southern Convergence, where a sudden change in ocean temperatures separates Antarctic marine ecosystems from warmer, northern marine ecosystems. The Southern Convergence runs through the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans; the southern portions of these three oceans are known collectively as the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean maintains large populations of phytoplankton and krill, a shrimp-like crustacean now harvested for food by fishing fleets from several countries. Many seals, whales, penguins, and other seabirds also live in this area.
Environmental Issues
Antarctica has serious environmental challenges but has also experienced some notable environmental successes. Warming temperatures present a particularly serious threat to the Antarctic region. Temperatures have been rising more quickly in Antarctica than in most regions of the world, and this has caused several ice shelves to collapse, thereby endangering the habitat of some penguin colonies.14 Scientists are currently exploring the relationship between increased Antarctic warming and global climate change. Another factor in the health of the oceans is over-fishing, which has become a serious threat to marine ecosystems. Krill, which is the food supply for many birds, seals, and fish, is being over-harvested.15
On the positive side, Antarctica is unlike any other continent in that many environmental stresses have been proactively prevented by international treaty. A leading example is the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. The Protocol bans mining and oil drilling through 2048, unless three-quarters of the ratifying countries vote to reverse the ban. The stratospheric ozone layer above Antarctica is also benefiting from one of the most successful international environmental efforts, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Environmental Trends
Ozone Layer Depletion
The depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer has reached much higher levels in Antarctica than anywhere else on Earth. Ozone is a specific type of oxygen molecule. Ozone high in the atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet (UV) radiation, creating the heated layer of the atmosphere called the stratosphere. Thinning of the ozone layer cools the Earth slightly and increases the level of ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching the Earth’s surface. Excessive UV radiation causes skin cancer and eye cataracts. It is also suspected of impairing the immune systems of both humans and animal species.16
In the 1970s, the scientific community recognized that pollution could cause the ozone layer to thin. Shortly thereafter, they identified some of the chemicals (e.g., chlorofluorocarbons [CFCs], halons) that could potentially contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to this information, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was adopted in 1985.
Later that year, scientists based in Antarctica announced their discovery of a major reduction, or “hole,” in the stratospheric ozone layer above Antarctica. The problem becomes most acute every spring, immediately following Antarctica’s winters when the stratospheric temperatures there are the coldest on earth. Such cold temperatures greatly enhance the chemical processes through which certain pollutants destroy ozone.17 With the unexpected discovery of severely reduced levels of ozone in Antarctica, a much more specific international agreement, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, was negotiated in 1987.
Since 1987, all developed countries have actively pursued the goals of the Montreal Protocol. As a result, the production of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) has fallen by more than ninety percent, primarily through the adoption of replacement technologies.18 There are, however, still concerns regarding this problem as the most common CFC replacements are chemicals, such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), that also weaken the ozone layer, albeit at slower rates. Additionally, scientists have discovered that global climate change may also be a contributing factor to ozone depletion.19 Ozone depletion in all regions has now been stabilized, but not before dangerous thinning of the ozone layer spread from the Antarctic to the Arctic and both the northern and southern mid-latitudes. Many nations are now considering technological interventions that may enable the ozone layer to be restored more quickly. For example, many European household refrigerators now use isobutane, a hydrocarbon that has no effect on ozone, instead of HCFCs.20
Meanwhile, marine biologists have been closely studying the effects of higher ultraviolet levels on organisms in the Southern Ocean. According to the 2002 overview report of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Environmental Effects Assessment Panel, the worst fears of serious damage to marine ecosystems has not been realized, but serious consequences for individual species have been documented. “Phytoplankton, macroalgae, fish eggs and larvae, zooplankton and primary and secondary consumers exposed to UV radiation . . . [have experienced] reductions in productivity, impaired reproduction and development . . . [and] increased mutation.”21
Fossil Fuel Extraction
Four countries that lie partially in the Arctic—Russia, Norway, Canada, the United States—extract fossil fuels from the region to produce gasoline and electricity for use in non-Arctic areas. Each of these countries conducts major oil drilling, natural gas extraction, and coal mining operations that have degraded local Arctic environments. In contrast, Iceland conducts little trade in fossil fuels, as it enjoys unusual, copious supplies of hydroelectric power from waterfalls and geothermally heated water from wells drilled close to volcanic heat sources. In Antarctica there is no fossil fuel extraction of any kind due to the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty.
Once fossil fuels have been extracted, the transport of these materials to ports, refineries, and power plants presents new environmental hazards. The transport of natural gas and coal requires the construction of pipelines, railways, and roads that cut through wildlife habitats. The transportation of petroleum has proved to be even more dangerous. For example, Russia’s aging pipelines have led to some of the largest oil spills in history, destroying thousands of square kilometers of fragile tundra habitats.
The US oil pipeline in Alaska has had far fewer spills than Russia’s, but a group of senior BP Amoco employees anonymously claimed, in 1999, that the pipeline is unsafe and grossly mismanaged.22 President Bush has called for an increase in US petroleum production and favors opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northern Alaska to oil drilling. The indigenous Gwich’in of the region have opposed the proposal, fearing harm to their culture and the polar bears, caribou, birds, and other species that live on ANWR.
Ocean transport provides even more environmental challenges. For example, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill released eleven million gallons of oil into some of the most pristine subarctic ecosystems in the world (e.g., Prince William Sound, Kenai Peninsula). Thousands of sea otters and seabirds were killed when they were drenched in oil, and the impacts on many other species are still being assessed.
Environmental Ministries
Environmental policies covering Arctic regions are generally enacted by national governments seated hundreds or thousands of miles from the Arctic. That distance, combined by the relative lack of political power held by indigenous peoples that populate these regions, has weakened environmental protection of these areas. For example, when the US Congress considered bills to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Gwich’in opposition received little media coverage. It has taken the active opposition of US residents living thousands of miles from the Arctic region to defeat the attempts to pass the legislation thus far. Effective protection of the Arctic environment is therefore hampered by the lack of local control over environmental policy.23
Similarly, in Russia few major environmental decisions are made by regional governments located in the Arctic. The Arctic has benefited from the generally sophisticated environmental policies of the eight Arctic nations, but national economic development plans (e.g., to grow Russia’s petroleum industry) have often taken precedence over the protection of the environment.
There are some portions of the Arctic that have substantial autonomy in environmental policy. The clearest examples of environmental ministries based in the Arctic are those of Iceland, Greenland (a division of Denmark), and the Canadian territory of Nunavut.24 Iceland is studying its potential to be the first nation to completely replace all fossil fuels with hydrogen fuels. However, the small populations of these jurisdictions—276,000 in Iceland, 56,000 in Greenland, and 28,000 in Nunavut—can provide only limited resources for enforcement of environmental regulations over such large areas.
Conclusion
Both the Arctic and Antarctic are remote locations, but their climates, politics, and cultural histories are very different. Because of its proximity to highly populated nations, the Arctic faces a wider variety of environmental problems than the Antarctic. The policy responses to environmental issues in the two regions have also differed.
In the Arctic, humans and ecosystems uneasily co-exist with polluting industries such as fossil fuel extraction. Pollution produced to the south enters the Arctic and drives the global climate change that threatens the Arctic’s ecosystems. Most Arctic peoples have only a small voice in the decisions of their nations because most of the nations’ populations live to the south, outside the Arctic. Only in the 1990s have all the nations with Arctic regions begun formal cooperation on environmental matters.
In the Antarctic, many governments have worked together to take more proactive measures to protect the continent from development. One landmark policy that illustrates international cooperation on a global environmental threat is the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. Other issues in the Antarctic, from climate change to over-fishing, have had much less coordinated responses.
The state of the polar environments, and the public policies enacted to protect those environments, are still primarily driven by outside economic interests. Future environmental policies may change if local Arctic populations are granted more authority. Although Antarctica’s land has been protected from international competition its atmosphere and oceans are experiencing significant environmental impacts. Reversing environmental degradation in Antarctica and the Arctic will require the cooperation of many nations located far from the poles.
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