In December 1974, representatives from Canadian and U.S. subnational entities and from the capital cities of Norway, Sweden and Finland convened on the Japanese island of Sapporo for the first International Conference on Human Environment in Northern Regions. The conference focused on climatic, environmental, economic and social issues faced by the Arctic region, and its participants came to the conclusion that the way one northern region addressed them could serve as a case-study for most, if not all, the other Arctic regions. A second conference, held in the Canadian city of Edmonton, followed in September 1979 and included some sessions on urban environments. The conferences were very important for setting the ground on which the Northern Forum would have been built, but the absence of the then-Soviet Union, which controlled just below half of the Arctic region, greatly limited their radius. We should wait until September 1990 to see the Soviet participation in the third and last conference on Human Environment, held in Alaska’s main city of Anchorage.
The idea of a permanent forum of Arctic subnational entities emerged for the first time during this third conference, when many stated that it would “offer opportunities to exchange ideas, solve common problems, and plan cooperative initiatives were concretised with a constituent assembly organised still in Anchorage by the then-Governor of Alaska Walter J. Hickel on 8th November 1991, with the participation of representatives of 11 regions (Yukon, Canada; Heilongjiang Province, China; Lapland, Finland; Hokkaido, Japan; Dornod, Mongolia; Trøndelag and Tromso, Norway; Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Kamchatka Krai and Magadan Oblast, Russia; Republic of Korea; and Alaska, USA). The Northern Forum (henceforth “the Forum”) was born, with the clear objectives of promoting sustainable development, protecting the environment and supporting indigenous cultures.
Walter J. Hickel was probably the main architect of the Northern Forum. He also wanted Alaska to play a pivotal role in it, establishing Anchorage as its HQ and setting up the Institute of the North with the ultimate aim of functioning as the educational branch of the Forum. His engagement didn’t vanish even after leaving the office, as shown by his nomination of Secretary-General for Life of the Forum and his lobbying for getting $500,000 fundings for the Forum’s activities. In the following years, the Forum got the adhesion of Sakhalin Oblast in Russia (1993), Canada’s Alberta (1994) and Northwest Territories (1997), while branches of the Secretariat were opened in Bodø (Norway), Rovaniemi (Finland), Yakutsk and St Petersburg (Russia). The Forum’s perspectives were promising, and the favourable international environment fostered the pan-Arctic cooperation among nations which used to be on opposite fronts until a few years before.
The birth of the Forum run in parallel with the process which led to the institution of the Arctic Council. A few months before the aforementioned Anchorage Summit, after a letter sent by Finland in January 1989, government officials from all Arctic states convened in Rovaniemi to set up the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS). The meeting was observed by representatives of three indigenous peoples’ organisations, which would get the status of Permanent Participants in the Council, as well as officials from Germany, Poland, the UK and the United Nations. The main focus of the conference was the protection of the Arctic environment, and, as the conferences on Human Environment in the Northern Region led to the creation of the Forum, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy evolved into the Arctic Council with the 1996 Ottawa Declaration.
Although they share the focus on the Arctic region and a structure made of focus groups on different topics, the Northern Forum and the Arctic Council are not actually competitors. The Arctic Council is made of states; the Northern Forum has been participated almost exclusively by subnational entities. Moreover, while the Arctic Council is open only to Arctic nations and indigenous organisations, the Northern Forum has often admitted among its members subnational entities which lie outside of the Arctic region, but which meet “basic characteristics of a northern region or a region interested in involvement in international cooperation in the Arctic and the North” (the Arctic Council would admit non-Arctic nations just as observers). This clause allowed the Northern Forum to admit among its members not only a number of Siberian oblasts which do not strictly belong to the Arctic region, but also the Hokkaido region and the South Korean province of Gangwon, even though they are actually closer to the Equator than to the North Pole. The adhesion of the last two provinces, nevertheless, would make more sense if we consider that both of them have a mountainous territory with a rather cold and often snowy climate, as shown by the fact that both of them hosted Winter Olympic games (Sapporo, in particular, is one of the snowiest major cities in the world). Moreover, the northernmost Japanese island is one of the traditional homelands of the Ainu people, together with Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands north of the border.
When the Arctic Council was set up in 1996, the Northern Forum got an observer status. Observers in the Arctic Council are invited to each of their meetings and can make contributions through the working groups. But what is apparently a great success would actually imply a subordinate role of the Forum vis-à-vis with the Council, especially if we consider that the Forum initially requested to be a permanent participant. It should be noticed that the observer status is the lowest rank of the three-level hierarchy in the participation of the Arctic Council, which includes members, permanent participants, and observers. While membership is reserved to Arctic Countries, and permanent participants have a consultive role, observers are invited in most Council meetings, but participation in projects and task forces within the working group is not always possible. Also, while membership and permanent participant status cannot be removed, observers are required to self-assess their contribution to the Arctic Council every two years and to restate their continuous interest in the observer status every four years; moreover, their status can be suspended or revoked under particular circumstances.
The low status the Northern Forum got in the Arctic Council may have not been the only cause of its subsequent decline, but it has been certainly a main one. The Forum’s membership peaked between 2001 and 2003, with 25 subnational entities from 10 different Countries; then, slowly but steadily, it started to decline. All Canadian entities, for instance, quit the Forum during the 2000’s (the Northwest Territories withdrew in 2003, Alberta in 2009); and, while Quebec joined the Forum in 2010, it also left three years later. But what is more remarkable is the changing attitude of the subnational entity which actually initiated the Forum itself: Alaska.
Hickel’s successors, indeed, did not share his enthusiasm for the Forum. During his 8-year governorship, Tony Knowles attended the meetings of the Forum only once, despite some of them taking place in Alaska and the Forum itself having its seat in Anchorage. Instead, he usually sent his assistant to the meetings, while his interest was diverted mostly towards the ongoing creation of the Arctic Council. Tony Knowles’s stance can be attributed at least in part to his close relationship with the then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, himself a main supporter of the Arctic Council; but the return of Alaska under the Republicans in 2002 (Hickel was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, but he subsequently joined the GOP) didn’t imply automatically a renewal in the interest to the Forum. Frank Murkowski gave a great importance to international relations, but his interest was directed mostly towards the Pacific Rim, while his successor Sarah Palin, who would subsequently rise into national prominence thanks to her nomination as the Vice-President Candidate of the Republican Party in the 2008 elections, even slashed the funds to the Forum from $75,000 to $15,000, using the 2008 economic crash as a justification. The final act was the decision of Sean Parnell, Palin’s successor and former Lieutenant Governor, to officially withdraw from the Forum in 2011. Following Alaska’s withdrawal, the Forum’s Headquarters were moved from Anchorage to Yakutsk, where they are currently located.
The decline of the Forum in the 2000s and early 2010s can be attributed to several factors. The Alaskan legislators involved in the state’s withdrawal pointed at flaws in its organisational design, which includes a lack of clearly defined objectives and vague criteria according to which a region could be defined as “Northern”, and a general inability to separate professional and personal relationships. As put by an Alaskan politician, “Alaska is small enough so that things get very personal, very quickly, and this held true for the Forum”. But an often-overlooked element is a general tendency towards the regionalisation of the cooperation among the Arctic subnational entities. Those in the European Arctic, for instance, have founded the Barents Regional Council (BRC) in 1993. The BRC, part of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC), included at its peak subnational entities from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia (the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk Oblasts, the Karelia and Komi Republics and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug). Likewise, in November 2009, a group of subnational entities from Canada and the United States including Alaska set up the Arctic Caucus of the Pacific Northwest Economic Region. Finally, Greenland, the Faroe and the Aland Islands are members of the Nordic Council together with the five Scandinavian countries.
Unlike the Northern Forum, the BEAC, the Arctic Caucus and the Nordic Council are not observers in the Arctic Council. This would give the Forum a comparative advantage over them. Still, in a context where Arctic regions may still need to cooperate with one another in order to discuss common issues and promote an Arctic agenda, a subnational entity may prefer to join a “local” Arctic organisation rather than a “global” one. While refocusing on Russian regions and on Asian regions with somehow “Northern” features could make sense in lieu of this competition, the Forum had still a natural global outreach due to its origins and its observer status in the Arctic Council. A number of reforms were held since November 2015, under the direction of the new executive director Mikhail Pogodaev, leading to changes in the fee structure and a better definition both of “Northern” countries and of the aims of the Forum. And, since these reforms were made in cooperation with Alaska, they played a paramount role in the state’s decision to re-join the Forum in 2016.
Apart from Alaska, none of the other non-Russian old members re-joined the Forum, in spite of the reforms, although the growing tensions between Russia and the West related to the Ukrainian Crisis and the Syrian Civil War may have played a role. This, nevertheless, does not imply that the Forum was inactive. In 2019, the Forum organised together with the Yakutian government and the North-Eastern Federal University the first Northern Sustainable Development Forum, one of the most important initiatives of the Forum itself. The first edition was held in Yakutsk between 24th and 28th September 2019, and it hosted 50 foreign guests from 13 different Countries that discussed topics such as cooperation between Russia and Asia, sustainable development of Arctic regions and cities and the issues of the minor indigenous peoples of the North. Since then, the Northern Sustainable Development Forum is held in Yakutsk each year (with the exception of 2023), and in 2021-22 it was also included in the Calendar of Russia’s Chairmanship in the Arctic Council.
At the moment, the Northern Forum includes 12 members: 10 regions of the Russian Federation (the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the Kamchatka Krai, the Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Magadan Oblast, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Sakha Republic, the Khabarovsk Krai, the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug – Yugra, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and the Yamalo–Nenets Autonomous Okrug), the U.S. State of Alaska and the South Korean Province of Gangwon. Its involvement in the Arctic Council has been stopped in March 2022, due to a general freeze of the activities of the Council itself, but in a context where cooperation with Russian and Western Countries and subnational entities has been mostly halted, the Forum is remarkable for hosting a U.S. state (Alaska) and a subnational entity of a Western-aligned Country together with a number of Russian subnational entities. Nor is the interest from Western allies vanishing: on 5th March 2024, for instance, the President of the Ocean Policy Research Institute of the Sakasawa Peace Foundation of Tokio Hide Sakaguchi expressed the willingness of his foundation to host Northern Forum events in Japan. But, during the latest years, the international relations of the Forum have been directed mostly towards non-Western Countries.
There has been also a growing cooperation between the Forum and Mongolia, thanks also to a positive trend in the relations between Moscow and Ulaanbaatar. In the end of February, representatives of the Northern Forum and of the Namsky and Verkhoyansk uluses of Sakha (Yakutia) visited Mongolia, with the aim of taking part to an investment forum and discussing initiatives about climate change, environmental protection and the Gastronomic Week of the Northern Forum, which was held in the Mongolian cities of Ulaanbaatar and Kharkhorin between 1st and 7th August. Moreover, on 23rd April 2024, the Mongolian province of South Khangai has applied to join the Forum together with the Tomsk and Arkhangelsk oblasts, while a further meeting between the forum and South Khangai representatives, including the then-governor, was held on 7th June.
Last but not least, there has been a growing focus on Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa. The cooperation with Russian and African universities has been discussed during the last 5th Northern Sustainable Development Forum, when it was also announced the institution of the Siberian – African Consortium. At the moment, the Consortium has 10 members: 7 Russian universities, led by the North-Eastern Federal University of Yakutsk, 2 Cameroonian universities (the University of Douala, the largest city of the country, and the University of Bertoua) and a Malian university (the University Ahmad Baba of Bamako). As put by the Director of the Centre for the Cooperation with Africa and the French-speaking countries of the North-Eastern Federal University of Yakutsk Izabella Borisova, the Consortium will be chiefly devoted on the study of ethnic issues in both Siberia and African Countries, with a peculiar focus on languages, traditions, ethnic relations and identity issues. This cooperation with Africa is not something new: the University of Yakutsk, after all, already cooperates also with universities and civic organisations in Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and Tunisia.
Will this cooperation be fruitful? While not being an Arctic region strictly speaking, South Khangai displays many of the “Northern” characteristics mentioned on the Forum’s charter, such as a partial permafrost cover and very cold – albeit occasionally mild for Mongolian standards – dry winters due to the altitude and the Siberian High. The partnership with China is fuelled by academic and economic collaborations, while cooperation with African universities on ethnic and cross-cultural studies can be very fruitful from an academic point of view. With few exceptions, such as Somalia, almost all countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are ethnically heterogeneous, and while a single ethnic group may end up dominating a whole Country, like the Amhara in Ethiopia, national states in a Western sense are the exception rather than the rule (Ethiopia itself is a multiethnic state with an imperial background). The affinities with the Arctic region are self-evident. Moreover, like in the Arctic, many African ethnic groups are actually spread into different Countries, as shown by the cases of the Tuareg, the Hausa and the Somali themselves (Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya host sizeable Somali minorities). The potential is undoubtedly great, but the risk of losing the focus again is still around the corner.
Giuseppe Cappelluti
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