Polar Geopolitics - Arctic and Antarctic analysis

In the midst of an escalating diplomatic crisis between the United States and Denmark, international relations expert Prof. Paul Musgrave joins the Polar Geopolitics podcast to provide analysis, insight and an array of perspectives—American, global, historical—on Donald Trump’s interest in buying Greenland, an unfolding story that has sent shockwaves far beyond the Arctic.

Reports of Donald Trump's interest in the U.S. buying Greenland from Denmark - without doubt the most unexpected and outrageous Arctic news story in recent memory - has attracted ridicule and rapidly morphed into a diplomatic crisis. Associate Professor Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, an expert on Denmark-Greenland-U.S. relations at the Royal Danish Defense College, joins Polar Geopolitics for an analysis...

In a continent recognized as a global commons, yet where seven states hold frozen claims and others are eager to be seen as stakeholders, history and the cultural heritage remains of earlier expeditions to Antarctica are deeply entangled in the geopolitics of the southern polar region. On this episode, Polar Geopolitics speaks with three polar historians and cultural heritage experts—Dag Avango, L...

A confluence of events in 2007 made the media take major interest in the Arctic, and the geopolitical narrative that emerged that year continues to shape public and political perceptions on the opportunities and risks the region and the world faces in the wake of accelerated climate change. This episode features three experts—Alice Rogoff, founder of Arctic Today; technology historian Nina Wormbs;...

Many stakeholders, particularly environmental NGOs, involved with last October's meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources were highly critical of the Commission's failure to reach agreement on additional Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Frida Bengtsson is global Project Lead for the Greenpeace 'Protect the Antarctic' campaig...

What lessons for contemporary climate adaptation can we learn from the Viking-era Norse settlement on Greenland, which was founded in the midst of the Mediaeval Warm Period and disappeared during the Little Ice Age? Prof. Thomas McGovern, an environmental archaeologist and world leading authority on Medieval Arctic cultures, shares his insights from decades of fieldwork in the North Atlantic into...

In part two of the interview with Polar Geopolitics, Dr. Annika Nilsson shares her insights into the history and inner-workings of the Arctic Council, including its role in promoting peace, enhancing environmental knowledge, and facilitating science diplomacy among member states and non-Arctic observers to the Council. She also considers contrasting portrayals of the Arctic as a region of peaceful...

Earth system science studies the planet as an array of interacting “spheres” that represent components of a single system. Antarctica dominates the cryosphere—the frozen parts of the planet consisting of ice and snow—and thus has a major influence on the overall functioning of the Earth system. Joining the podcast is Prof. Will Steffen, a world leading Earth system scientist and public intellectua...

Indigenous communities are facing multiple challenges from a changing climate across the circumpolar North. In this episode, two experts with extensive experience in the American Arctic —former senior Interior Department official Joel Clement and Nicole Misarti of University of Alaska—discuss with Polar Geopolitics the array of impacts affecting native Alaskan communities, and what measures are be...

What parallels exist in governance regimes for Outer Space and the Arctic? On this episode, Prof. Michael Byers, a leading Arctic and international law expert, shares his insights into why extreme environments often foster international cooperation. He also explains the complexities of Canadian Arctic politics, and the nuances of the concept of sovereignty, in a far-ranging discussion that encompa...

Prof. John P. Holdren is a leader of the Arctic Initiative at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The former Chief Scientific Advisor to President Barack Obama attended the 2018 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he sat down with the Polar Geopolitics podcast to explain the impacts of climate change on the Arctic and how this in turn affects the global env...

Despite the Arctic Council’s core mission of promoting sustainable development and environmental protection, it has to date done little to actually combat climate change. According to Dr. Annika Nilsson — an expert on Arctic politics at the Stockholm Environment Institute — this ambivalence towards climate mitigation constitutes one dimension of what she calls the “Arctic Paradox”. In the first pa...

The economic development and political evolution of Greenland, whether remaining within the Kingdom of Denmark or eventually as an entirely independent country, is an ongoing process and open question of enormous consequence for the geopolitics of the greater Arctic. In the second part of the interview with the Polar Geopolitics podcast, Dr. Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, an international relations schola...

Representatives of Arctic governments recently returned to Greenland to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2008 meeting in Ilulissat—the somewhat controversial gathering of the so-called “A5” Arctic Ocean littoral states that left other regional actors feeling excluded. In the first of a two-part interview, Associate Prof. Jon Rahbek-Clemmesen of the Royal Danish Defence College, who co-autho...

In this second part of his interview with Polar Geopolitics, Prof. Klaus Dodds discusses the recently-updated British Arctic policy Beyond the Ice: UK policy towards the Arctic; elaborates on relations with Russian in the context of Arctic politics; shares his outlook on the Arctic Council’s role in upholding the liberal international order; and considers the possibility of Great Britain eventuall...

In the inaugural episode of the podcast, Klaus Dodds, political geographer and Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway University of London, explains the ways in which the geopolitics of the polar regions are distinct from other parts of the globe. The discussion with Prof. Dodds further includes two recent cases of marine spatial planning—the Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, and the fisheries m...