DLR-Institute for the Protection of Maritime Infrastructures at the MSC Arctic Security Roundtable in Reykjavik
The Arctic region is significantly changing due to the pronounced and rapidly advancing effects of climate change. Almost all future scenarios foresee the region as a living environment, traffic area and economic region, especially in light of resource depletion.
The Arctic through the eyes of science and policy
Against the backdrop of the constantly high or even increasing demand for raw materials and the hope for shorter and thus also more economical transport routes between East and West across the Arctic Ocean, this route seems more realistic than ever before. The now widely formulated claims of the five coastal states bordering the Arctic – as well as the growing interest of non-Arctic states such as China and India – continue to bear witness to this development. Whatever the scenario, both individual countries and the global community alike will need to cope with the major political and technological challenges to come. These include, among others, questions on how to monitor and protect a highly-sensitive ecology, how to hold future agreements regarding its economic exploitation to account, how to use independent systems to exploit marine resources in the deep sea and, last but not least, a number of political and technical security considerations.
Climate change is the driving force and greatest danger to the region
"For years, the Arctic has been an area of great and very successful international cooperation for years now, with a surprisingly low level of geopolitical tension and conflict potential, despite today's much more complicated global political situation," says Dennis Göge, Founding Director of the Institute for the Protection of Maritime Infrastructures at DLR. Göge adds, "The changes that we are encountering there, which are primarily spurred on by global climate change, require innovative ways of thinking and new solutions for hitherto unknown problems in terms of policy, science and technology."
In particular, the difficult relationship between usability on the one hand and the extreme conditions on the other will also remain a special focus in the future. Although climate change leads to economic expansion of the area, in many respects the region still remains an extremely difficult environment for both people and technology. Increased economic use of the outlying regions will, for decades, remain dependent on international cooperation on political and technological levels.
The Munich Security Conference continues to focus on Arctic security
Despite, or maybe precisely because of the fact that there are no particularly pressing security issues in this region at the present time, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) had already incorporated the topic of Arctic security onto its agenda last year and launched its own series of events for this very purpose. The MSC is bringing together about 40 high-ranking representatives from government, industry, academia, the coastguard, the navy and civil society around these so-called Arctic Security Roundtables. Göge, representing DLR, attended the second of these meetings, which took place on 12 October 2017 as part of the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik. The aim is to support the process of change in the Arctic from the outset, both politically and technologically, in terms of potential conflict as well as security issues. It also includes discussing possible solutions to these issues by using a forward-looking approach within the context of international dialogue.