Search

This study sought to identify the major barriers to the implementation of the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation (2017) and to uncover ways of facilitating the Agreement that may enhance Russia–Japan scientific cooperation in the High North. The Russia–Japan case exemplifies the difficulties as well as the potentials of the Agreement in enhancing Arctic scientific cooperation between Arctic states and non-Arctic states. Ultimately, the study identified several possible ways to facilitate the Agreement’s implementation. This paper first examines these means within the Agreement’s legal framework; more specifically, it explores how to operationalize the effective review process established under Art.12, utilize the 2000 Japan-Russia bilateral Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement to implement Art.17 on ‘Cooperation with non-Parties’, identify Arctic research projects and infrastructure available under the Agreement, and designate appropriate authorities as contact points under Annex 2 of the Agreement. The paper then examines the potential of linking the Agreement’s implementation with other forums and institutions. In particular, it recognizes the Arctic Council as a platform for enhancing Arctic scientific cooperation and considers how cooperation within various Arctic professional organizations and associations may be revived and how to create synergy between the Agreement and Arctic Science Ministerial processes. This paper’s discussion is largely based on information and political contexts before February 24, 2022, but the concluding section provides a few policy suggestions specific to the implementation of the Agreement in light of the post-Ukraine situation.

Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2022 was the end of the Arctic cooperation between states and others as we knew it, despite the fact that Russia’s illegal actions are not occurring in the Arctic region. Russia’s attack on Ukraine caused pronounced security fears and responses, particularly from the European and North American countries, including the other Arctic states. This naturally affected Arctic cooperation because it is precisely in the Arctic region that Russia is such a vastly central actor. For example, the region’s pre-eminent inter-governmental forum, the Arctic Council, is struggling to continue its activities in full, as the seven western Arctic states paused participating in meetings held in and activities involving Russia. On the other hand, the first in-person meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) fisheries agreement in late November 2022 successfully adopted its COP Rules of Procedure by consensus, including Russia. The purpose of this article is to investigate how adversely Arctic international cooperation in inter-governmental forums and treaties has suffered due to the Ukraine war, utilising a qualitative research methodology to collect internal and sensitive information from key informants. In particular, the article aims to find an answer to the following question: In which types of Arctic inter-governmental structures have the states been able to continue the cooperation and for what reasons? The hypothesis that will be tested in this article is whether treaty-based cooperation has fared better than cooperation founded on soft law. This article will flesh out the current state of Arctic cooperative frameworks and actual cooperative activities under them, analysing three soft law-based cooperative frameworks, including the Arctic Council and several treaty-based cooperative frameworks, such as the CAO fisheries agreement and Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement. This article is based on the facts as of 22 February 2023.

At the Arctic Council’s Iqaluit Ministerial Meeting in April 2015, the eight Arctic States decided to extend the mandate of the Task Force on Enhancing Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic (SCTF) in order to work toward a legally binding agreement on scientific cooperation. Based on the Oslo Draft of February 2015, this paper finds that the Agreement may improve the legal environment for Arctic science beyond current international law, including the law of the sea. The Agreement would lower the hurdles heretofore identified in international Arctic scientific cooperation, for example, the difficulties in accessing research areas and research facilities; and, the delays in border crossing procedures for entry and exit of scientists and their equipment and materials. Such an agreement is a good idea and should be promoted. However, non-Arctic States and their scientists may have an issue because the improved legal environment that is sought may benefit only the eight Arctic States and their scientists. In effect, the Agreement may create a two-category system where non-Arctic States and their scientists do not benefit from such improved environment. This paper examines whether they have substantial interests recognized under international law or by the Arctic scientific community by which they can claim certain benefits of the Agreement. We argue that the degree of benefits to non-Arctic States and their scientists under the Agreement should be commensurate with the degree of substantial interests accorded them by international law and by the Arctic scientific community.

This article addresses the normative potential of the principle of sustainability to integrate the rules, principles, and procedures of international law applicable in the Arctic, so that Arctic international law can be posited more holistically and systematically. The holistic and integrative approach towards international law is particularly called for in the context of the Arctic, as the inextricable interconnectedness between its changing natural environments, its societal particularities, and its economic and industrial potential is the fundamental characteristic of the Arctic. In line with the purpose of the special issue, this article takes up a harder case of sustainability, in addressing Arctic mineral resource development. This article posits the principle of sustainability as a principle with an integrative function operating behind the primary norms relating to resource development at the international law level. In response to the claim of fragmented nature of the law at issue, this article calls for an academic examination into the normative function of the sustainability principle to forge the relevant and evolving norms applicable in the specific context of the Arctic mineral resource development towards an integral, coherent whole. This aim will be pursued using the analytical methodology employed by the International Law Commission’s (ILC) work on the “fragmentation of international law” (2006) and the “principle of integration” as identified by the International Law Association’s (ILA) work on the international law relating to sustainable development (2002–12). Finally, as an initial attempt to articulate the legal reasoning for such integration, this article examines the legal institution of environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a tool to present a holistic view of the international law on Arctic mineral resource development.

This paper examines whether core foundational principles can be distilled from the 100 years of history of the legal order-making in the polar regions. Despite differences in geo-physical, socio-historical, and legal circumstances conditioning the Antarctic and the Arctic regions, the examination of the processes of legal order-making in both polar regions demonstrates that there are some foundational principles being assessed and applied in designing their respective legal regimes. The identification of those core foundational principles would not necessarily lead to similar end products, nor would such examination necessarily advocate, for example, an Arctic Treaty System. This paper, instead, submits that between the Antarctic and the Arctic there are mutual learning processes already discernible at the foundational level of process legitimacy in international legal order-making. This examination also provides a broader framework to assess the existing literature that sees certain interactions between the two regimes at the level of substantive principles and rules.

The present collection of essays gathers contributions written in honour of Professor Ryuichi Ida by his colleagues and former students, covering a variety of fields of international law with particular emphasis upon the context, effectiveness and purposes of international law.

The Basel Convention on the Control of the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal was adopted in 1989 in order to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects that may result from the generation, transboundary movement and unsound management of hazardous wastes. This chapter first examines the Basel Convention regime relating to "systems of reporting and inspection or external monitoring". These systems constitute the foundation of any effective scheme of compliance control, for they provide the factual state of compliance by Parties with treaty obligations. The chapter then briefly outlines the regime's treatment of traditional means of ensuring compliance with international law, namely state responsibility, liability and dispute settlement systems. These systems may be called confrontational means of ensuring compliance with environmental law. Next, the chapter examines in some detail the recently established Basel Compliance Mechanism and attempts to identify its unique features. Keywords: Basel Convention; compliance control; dispute settlement; environmental law; international law; state responsibility