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The Back River Project is an approved gold mine in Nunavut, Canada owned by Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. Sabina developed a comprehensive community engagement program during the environmental assessment phase of the Project to share information, receive and address local feedback and concerns, and develop productive relationships in support of Project advancement. This paper outlines Sabina's engagement program, successes and challenges encountered from the perspective of a mineral developer, and insights obtained for effective community engagement in a Canadian Arctic context. The program has been commended by observers and is consistent with best practice models. Sabina's experiences revealed the importance of engaging early and often using a context-specific approach; comprehensive record-keeping and reporting; the meaningful incorporation of community perspectives and Traditional Knowledge; and focusing on long-term relationships, partnerships, and local benefits. Effective community engagement subsequently played a key role in Sabina securing major licenses and permits for Project advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines search and rescue and backcountry medical response constraints in the Canadian Arctic and potential for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to aid in response and preparedness. Semi-structured interviews (n = 18) were conducted with search and rescue responders, Elders, and emergency management officials to collect data on current emergency response and potential for UAV use. UAV test flights (n = 17) were undertaken with community members. We analyzed five years of weather data to examine UAV flight suitability. Numerous challenges face Arctic search and rescue and backcountry emergency response. Changing social and environmental conditions were described as increasing vulnerability to backcountry emergencies. Responders desired additional first aid and emergency training. Legal and weather restrictions were found to limit where, when and who could fly UAVs. UAVs were demonstrated to have potential benefits for hazard monitoring but not for SAR or medical response due to legal restrictions, weather margins, and local capacity. We find that communities are ill-prepared for ongoing SAR demands, let alone a larger disaster. There are numerous limitations to the use of consumer UAVs by Arctic communities. Prevention of backcountry medical emergencies, building resilience to disasters, and first responder training should be prioritized over introducing UAVs to the response system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Earth's changing climate has deepened into a climate crisis, the Arctic region has emerged as one of the clearest indicators of the scale and pace of that change. As the ice melts, opportunities are expanding to exploit the Arctic's oil and gas reserves, precious metals, fish stocks and maritime routes. Increased access and development will inevitably generate "system-wide environmental impacts" and will pose novel management challenges for the Arctic states. In the quest to find an effective balance between competing ocean activities and actors, marine protected areas (MPAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) have emerged as indispensable tools to achieve ocean health, including in the Arctic. After first introducing these concepts, this article will discuss the Canadian and Russian domestic regimes for the establishment of MPAs and OECMs. The conclusion will then offer some insights into the key challenges confronting both states in the creation of effective networks of MPAs and OECMs in their Arctic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparative article reveals how the general focus of Canadian and Russian threat perceptions in the Arctic have shifted from a Cold War fixation on hard defence to accommodate soft security issues over the last three decades. Both countries now pay greater attention to threats and challenges stemming from climate change, security, and safety risks associated with resource development and increasingly accessible sea routes. Although concern about military conflict arising from Arctic disputes continues to frame some media discussions in both countries, most strategic analysts and academics have moved away from this line of argument. Instead, military functions now include assertion of Canadian and Russian sovereignty over their respective internal waters, as well as protection of resources in their exclusive economic zones and on and in extended continental shelves; protection of economic interests in the North, including mineral and bio-resources; prevention of potential terrorist attacks against critical industrial and state infrastructure; and dual-use functions, such as search and rescue operations, surveillance of air and maritime spaces, support to safe navigation, and mitigation of natural and human-made catastrophes. The authors argue that analysts should parse two forms of military modernization in the Arctic: one of capability development related to the global strategic balance, where the Arctic serves as a bastion or a thoroughfare; and a second intended to address emerging non-traditional security challenges. They contend that these modernization programs do not inherently upset the Arctic military balance and need not provoke a regional arms race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Arctic navigation increases and states work, both at the international and the domestic level, at ensuring legal readiness, this article takes a closer look at regulation of Arctic Shipping in Canada and Russia. The analysis first focuses on the current domestic regimes that have developed over the past decades. It highlights that dissimilar political, economic and environmental contexts have shaped not only different shipping patterns off the Canadian and Russian coasts, but also dissimilar coastal state approaches that do not seem to converge noticeably under the influence of the Polar Code. The analysis then turns to challenges that lay ahead as existing regimes could be called into question due to receding ice cover and may need to adapt to evolving shipping patterns and technological innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global human influence on the climate is growing at an alarming pace. This trend appears doomed to continue. Polar regions are feeling the effects first. This means that if the impacts of climate change serve to motivate effective policies, polar regions could be a good place to look for climate policy innovation. It is within this context that this article considers Arctic climate policy in Russia and Canada. The basic question posed is whether the unique and immediate threat climate change presents in the Arctic is reflected in progressive laws and policies with respect to four key areas: mitigation, adaptation, impacts and vulnerability, and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the census is sometimes understood to be an objectifying practice that constructs and makes up a population, in this paper I am concerned with how it is necessary to produce census subjects in order to construct population. By drawing on formulations by Latour, Deleuze and Law, I conceive of census taking as a practice performed by heterogeneous socio-technical arrangements of actors - humans, paper forms, categories, concepts, definitions, topography, geography - whose mediations, interactions and encounters produce census subjects. It is through the relays and interactions between varying and never fixed technological, natural and cultural actors that census taking is performed. I analyse these arrangements as constituting agencements, which focuses our attention on how agency and action are configured by and contingent upon the socio-technical arrangements that make them up. Agencements assume different socio-technical configurations and thus construct different social realities and populations that cannot be captured in a single account. The argument is advanced through an account of the taking of what was declared the first 'scientific' enumeration of 'Indians' and 'Eskimos,' the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Canadian Far North in 1911. I argue that the agencements were not able to bring forth the subjectivities necessary to construct population in the Far North. Not able to find subjects then, census taking could not produce nor construct a population in the Far North and the practice of census taking ended up creating a record of a census 'other' - an indeterminate multitude that could not identify and could not be identified as part of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis examines the actions taken by the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper between 2006 and 2015 in drawing attention to Canada's Arctic territory through the lens of securitization theory. This analysis focuses not only on the rhetorical attention that the Harper government paid to Arctic security, but also the difficulties encountered in translating a discursive securitization process into tangible policy outcomes. This analysis additionally focuses on how the Harper government's securitization of the Canadian Arctic resonated in public opinion polling. This research has implications for connecting securitization research focusing more on the construction of speech-acts to second-order results in bureaucratic processes. By expanding on existing tenets of securitization theory, this analysis is a useful case study in understanding how national governments "sell" the idea of an Arctic security "problem" to their respective citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new carbon isotope record for two high-latitude sedimentary successions that span the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary interval in the Sverdrup Basin of Arctic Canada is presented. This study, combined with other published Arctic data, shows a large negative isotopic excursion of organic carbon (δ13Corg) of 4‰ (V-PDB) and to a minimum of −30.7‰ in the probable middle Volgian Stage. This is followed by a return to less negative values of c. −27‰. A smaller positive excursion in the Valanginian Stage of c. 2‰, reaching maximum values of −24.6‰, is related to the Weissert Event. The Volgian isotopic trends are consistent with other high-latitude records but do not appear in δ13Ccarb records of Tethyan Tithonian strata. In the absence of any obvious definitive cause for the depleted δ13Corg anomaly, we suggest several possible contributing factors. The Sverdrup Basin and other Arctic areas may have experienced compositional evolution away from open-marine δ13C values during the Volgian Age due to low global or large-scale regional sea levels, and later become effectively coupled to global oceans by Valanginian time when sea level rose. A geologically sudden increase in volcanism may have caused the large negative δ13Corg values seen in the Arctic Volgian records but the lack of precise geochronological age control for the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary precludes direct comparison with potentially coincident events, such as the Shatsky Rise. This study offers improved correlation constraints and a refined C-isotope curve for the Boreal region throughout latest Jurassic and earliest Cretaceous time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scientists disagree about the rate at which Arctic ice is melting, climate change will greatly alter the northern latitudes in coming decades if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed. Many of the expected changes will be negative; already, permafrost is melting in Siberia, and apartments and factories are sinking into quagmires. The melting of Arctic ice, however, will also open sea-lanes to shipping and allow access to enormous oil and gas reserves beneath the Arctic Ocean. The prospect of increased Arctic commerce brings with it competition among countries and companies for control of the area’s riches, and international competition always carries the possibility of conflict. Three authors, all experts in national security and the Arctic, explore the military, diplomatic, environmental, and economic outlook for the Arctic in 2030: from Russia, Yury Morozov (2012); from Canada, Rob Huebert (2012); and from the United States, George Backus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change is already occurring in the Arctic and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment recently concluded that future climate change could be devastating for Inuit. This paper characterises vulnerability to climate change in two Inuit communities in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, focusing on the resource harvesting sector. In both communities, Inuit have demonstrated significant adaptability in the face of current changes in climatic conditions. This adaptability is facilitated by traditional Inuit knowledge, strong social networks, flexibility in resource use, and institutional support. Changing Inuit livelihoods, however, have undermined certain aspects of adaptive capacity and have resulted in emerging vulnerabilities. Global and regional climate projections indicate that climatic conditions which currently pose risks are expected to be negatively affected by future climate change. These projections are not without precedent and analysis of current vulnerability and identification of adaptation constraints by Inuit in the two communities indicate the continued importance of traditional coping mechanisms. The ability to draw on these coping mechanisms in light of future climate change, however, will be unequal and the research indicates that young Inuit and those without access to economic resources, in particular, are vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than 100 years the Atlas of Canada, published by Natural Resources Canada, has told the story of Canada through geographical and historical maps reflecting the country's social, environmental, and economic diversity. The Atlas' original North Circumpolar Region map was published in 1990; revisions followed in 1996, 1997, and 2004. The latest edition, published in 2008 for the International Polar Year, reflects significant progress in data collection, data integration, and cartographic methods. The revision process presented a number of challenges that led to innovative cartographic and technical solutions. This article focuses on some of the objectives, challenges, and methods associated with undersea and terrestrial relief, bathymetry, drainage features, sea ice, glaciers, and ice shelves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has reduced the extent and thickness of sea ice in the Arctic, making international shipping in the Northwest Passage a virtual certainty in the foreseeable future. Such future shipping raises the question of whether the Passage is or might become an international strait, with the consequent right of transit passage. This article examines the two possible legal bases for Canada's claim that the waters of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago are internal waters: a historic title and straight baselines. It also addresses the issue of the possible internationalization of the Passage, if Canada does not take preventive measures. Some such measures are recommended in the last part of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]