 We're almost there. Come on, come on, come on, come on. Lady, Mr. Jaeger, the floor is yours. Thanks, Heather. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Brooks Jaeger with Birdwell Strategies, which is a long-winded way of saying I work for myself. The problem with working for yourself is that your boss is usually a mean SOB and your only employee is a lazy shiftless. But other than that, it conveys a nice degree of freedom, and I can recommend it. You get to do fun projects like moderating panels at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And I'm very appreciative of Heather and the Center for asking me to moderate this panel because I think it will be somewhat unique. We often find ourselves, when we talk about matters of the Arctic, talking about geopolitics or the management of natural resources, but it's important for us to remember that the Arctic is a living natural system whose components are extremely important, vital, in fact, to the food security of many human beings who live in the Arctic and quite a few who live outside the Arctic. And certainly the marine system is a matter of some intimacy for people who live locally along the coasts of the Arctic, whether they're indigenous or more recently arrived. And so its management has a special delicacy about it, shall we say, and a special importance. And so I'm very glad that this panel is convened to talk about that aspect of the future of the Arctic. I want to thank Lawson Brigham for introducing a concept which I think is extremely important in terms of management of the future of the Arctic and certainly management of the future of something we would call fisheries in the Arctic, and that is the concept of uncertainty. If you think that it's hard to predict how many transcontinental voyages will take place in 2025 in the Arctic, imagine the difficulty of predicting whether or not there will be commercial fisheries on fish stocks that currently don't exist in the Arctic, but might move there under the influence of climate change and thermal gradients in the ocean. And our panelists, if I can feel excuse me for using a fisheries metaphor, CSIS has kindly stocked our panel with experts in the matter of fisheries management. Some people who've spent a great deal of time thinking about these uncertainties and a potential transition to the need to manage fisheries in the Arctic, there has never been a pressing need before now since there were no commercial fisheries in the central Arctic and the ice-covered Arctic, although there have been very important fisheries on the perimeter of the Arctic in places like the Barents Sea and the Bering Sea, but none really in the area that we commonly identify as the central Arctic. So as I say, we do have some experts here in this area. Our first speaker, Scott Heiliman, has been directing for a number of years an effort on behalf of the Pew Charitable Trusts to practice, shall we say, some precaution with regard to the transition to fisheries in the Arctic and I think he will explain that to you in a presentation. And I think our other two panelists have also been involved in government to government and other discussions of the future of fisheries management. I know that Ambassador David Bolton, my longtime friend and wonderful resource of the State Department has led a number of governmental discussions about how to manage the potential transition to a future in the Arctic in which commercial fisheries are at least a possibility and I think we'd be glad to talk about that. I, on the other hand, would like to push this discussion to be about a slightly broader horizon than just fisheries management because what's at stake really is the management of the entire marine system of the Arctic which is a common resource that is shared among all the Arctic coastal states and to some extent could be shared by nations with distant water fishing fleets and others but proper management will be important to make sure that as this resource is assessed and considered and exploited, if it ever is, that its benefits continue to be available to citizens and local inhabitants of the Arctic who are so critically dependent on it, as well as that it not go the way of many fisheries that we have seen in the past that were perhaps not as well managed as we might have liked but are now suffering from the results of our exploitation. So I'd like to give the floor first to Scott Heileman to start the discussion and I think it would be, I think this is an audience that will be very interested in some of the problems and uncertainties that we have to deal with in this area and also in what kinds of positive cooperation efforts might be available among the Arctic nations to make sure that this resource over time is well managed. So Scott, please go ahead. Thank you Brooks and thanks CSIS for organizing this and Heather Connelly for inviting me and I also want to congratulate CSIS on its advanced technology. When I was sitting in the audience watching the previous panels, I was wondering what was showing on the screen in front of me. Now that I'm up here, I can tell you that it's live streaming the Nigeria France game in the World Cup. So if you see something across my face, imagine me saying, Goal! But seriously, I'll jump right in in the interest of time. I want to talk today about preventing a problem before it starts and closing a gap in the international legal framework for the Arctic and note that the conference today is about Arctic cooperation so here's a nice textbook case of a place where we can all cooperate together. We're going to do this through a series of maps. The area that I'm going to talk about today is the Central Arctic Ocean. It's the area within those red lines formed by the EEZs of the five Arctic coastal countries. It's about the size of the Mediterranean Ocean. It's quite large, 2.8 million square kilometers. A couple things to note right off the bat. For the purposes of fisheries discussions, the discussions about the extended continental shelves are not that important. So that's the boundary that applies to international fisheries regardless of how the extended continental shelves are eventually extended. In this area, essentially unregulated commercial fishing is permissible unless countries agree to get together and draw rules about them. You always hear a lot about Arctic melting, but it's important to actually look at it. Essentially, the last seven years are the top seven years of melting in the satellite record. The melting occurs in a very uneven fashion, so a previous speaker mentioned, you know, don't be fooled when, and here's the example, 2012 was a record year for the shrinking, the small extent of ice in September at the low point of the Arctic ice pack. 2013 bounced back, but the yellow trend line really shows the story. Another way to look at that previous map was talking about ice cover. This is talking about ice thickness, which is another way of looking at how much quote-unquote permanent ice there is left. And you can see that if you drew a trend line there, it would be pretty significant and pronounced. So let's look at the baseline. This map shows what we used to call perennial ice or permanent ice. The median ice cover in September from 1979 to 2000. So essentially, in kind of modern human history, modern satellite record, this is sort of what most of us grew up thinking about. And I'd say to a large extent, many of our policies are still based on this idea that in September at the low point of ice in the Arctic, there's a heck of a lot of ice. And so if you superimpose the EEZs of the five countries on there, you can see why this Central Arctic Ocean area was a theoretical construct for human beings. Up until very recently, there were a handful of lawyers who actually understood where it was and worried, thought about it a little bit, but it was a very abstract concept for everyone else because it was permanently frozen. This is 2012, and as I showed in the previous slide, this was the record year, breaking the record in 2007. And so the point here is, and this is September, so this is the low point again, is you're seeing a lot of open water in the summer, at the end of the summer. And also that it's occurring, it's not occurring in some uniform fashion all around the boundaries of those countries, it's actually occurring in very specific ways that have geographic and political consequences. Mostly primarily the biggest areas between the U.S. and Russia there and above in the Chukchi Sea, and then quite a bit along the Russian boundary. And essentially we're really looking at the birth of a new ocean here that requires us to think about how to regulate parts of it. Truth in advertising, this is 2013, which as I said was not, it's in the top seven, but it's not in the record. And you can see that there's less melting along this line, but it still persists in the Chukchi above U.S. and Russia, above the Bering Strait, and quite a bit along the Russian EEZ. And this is again looking at, just for fun, we looked at percentage of the maritime boundary, where Russia's maritime boundary abuts the Central Arctic Ocean, and asked the question, what percentage of that boundary line was open water in September? So you can see in 2013 it was 30%, which compared to 2012 doesn't seem like all that much, which was over 70%, but 30% is still actually very significant, and you can see how the trend line works. So essentially it's worth working on this issue. It's worth thinking about how to deal with this. What do we know about this area that's emerging in the Central Arctic Ocean? We know that parts of it are fishable depths made up of the continental shelf and the Chukchi plateau, or continental ridges. We know that essentially in 2012, the year that I mentioned was the record, essentially an area the size of the Baltic Sea was fishable depth. So when I say it's a new ocean emerging, that's what I mean. We also know that there's straddling stocks of Arctic cod that marine mammals rely on, and that this is right on the edges of areas that Arctic indigenous people in Alaska and Canada depend on for subsistence. We also know that it's geographically accessible in the modern world of high seas fisheries. There really aren't very many inaccessible parts of the ocean. It's less a distance to go to places where fisheries are taking place in the Antarctic for many countries than it is to just go up the Bering Strait. And the most likely fishery would be an Arctic cod fishery, I believe. We have examples of, I'm going to go very quickly on this. We have examples of areas, there are many examples actually, of areas where unregulated fishing has caused ecological and economic problems when fisherman, when fishing industry gets ahead of rule making. This is an example that was important for the U.S. and Russia. They eventually resolved it, but only after the Pollock stock in this area of the central Bering Sea was overfished. And today there's no fishing in this area because those stocks haven't recovered. So this is a very real potential problem that we should be paying attention to. Again, I'll go quickly through here. These remote Arctic waters are far from Bering. There's lots more to learn about them, but essentially the same food web that occurs in waters closer to shore also takes place there. Arctic cod are the most abundant fish in this marine food web. They're the keystone species that transfer energy up and down the food web. And a fishery targeting Arctic cod could severely affect the carrying capacity of the region well before we even know what that carrying capacity is. On this issue we've spent some time trying to compile information, previously existing information about this region. And as the science panel noted, there's a fair amount of activity. It tends to be scattered and siloed and it's hard to pull together. And we've made a couple of modest attempts. This is pulling together some zooplankton information just to make the obvious point that there is life here. Zooplankton is the basis of the whole Arctic ecosystem. And then this is polar bear and ring seal data from Russian colleagues. Again, we've been sponsoring some workshops and doing some scouting around to compile existing data. And Olga Romanenko, who's in the audience here on my staff, has spent a fair amount of time in Russia talking with Russian colleagues and scientists and hosting workshops to sort of pull together some of this information. So what's the solution? I've outlined a potential problem. What's the solution? To summarize, I believe the best approach is for Arctic coastal countries to take the lead in figuring out a simple international agreement to maintain the status quo of what's happening there right now. Prevent industrial fishing from starting unless and until science and management tools are put in place to ensure sustainability and to facilitate joint research. This is a very conventional approach under UN law of the sea treaty for dealing with commercial fisheries and international waters. But the point is none of this happens automatically on the high seas. You have to get together and draw these rules up and figure out what you want to do. And unless nations act soon, the wrapping melting of this ice means that this Central Arctic Ocean is going to be increasingly accessible to unregulated industrial fishing in the next few years. And we have many experiences of what that means, and none of it is good anywhere in the ocean where this is taking place ahead of rules. It just hasn't been a pretty picture. Over 2,000 scientists from around the world, including about two thirds from Arctic countries, sent a letter a few years ago to Arctic countries asking them to take the lead and actually following this exact approach. So it's not exactly a radical idea. And there's growing political momentum towards such an agreement. Andre and David Bolton can talk about this in more detail. But essentially, since 2008, the Arctic coastal countries individually have been figuring out the policy that they would like to implement around this area issue. And countries like Canada, Greenland and Denmark and the United States have factored it into their policies. And more recently, and Russia has been very active at the experts level discussing this. And we've had some great discussions with colleagues there about this approach. And most recently, which David Bolton can speak to more authoritatively, the five Arctic coastal countries met in Newk and Greenland in March and actually developed a consensus that the approach that I've talked about, is what's needed and are trying to figure out how to iron out all the details on that. Actually, I got ahead of my slide. There's a photo of the folks meeting in Greenland. And online you can read a chairman statement and a press release, which the press release even used in the title of the word consensus. So I found this to be really a terrific progress. I was able to go as part of that meeting. I'm an amateur when it comes to diplomacy. So it was very fun to sit in a room and watch the professionals do it. And I just want to give a shout out to David Bolton who has chaired that session and previous sessions. It was really impressive to see diplomacy in action and countries sitting down and talking about their differences and figuring out a common approach. And it was quite interesting to watch. And I think in there the maps that I've showed today are available in various booklets that Olga has over there if you ask her for them. And they're also available online. Thanks very much for inviting me. Okay. Thank you, Scott. Andra, could I ask you to follow up and tell us a little bit about how you see these issues from the Russian side and also about the progress that Scott says is being made soon. Thank you. I'm not going to show many slides. Let me pick up from where Marlene ended the session saying Fisheries is very traditional for the Arctic. Not everywhere in the Arctic. That's the point. And this is an issue which Scott was addressing. I was specifically picking up different maps because I expected Scott to show the ones he did. So this is the current state of ice extent in the Arctic yesterday, June 24, which is of course much larger than it is in September. So usually people show the September maps. September is the minimum extent. Mid-March is usually the maximum extent. We are now in the early stages or somewhat mature stages of melting or receding ice in the Arctic. It's pretty extensive here also with a large portion of the thick ice there. This is the reason why fishing is traditional only in a few parts. There is very few parts in the Arctic. In the western parts, which is basically Barren Sea, Norwegian Sea, Greenland Sea, and the Bering Sea. Although Bering Sea does not fall under the definition of the Arctic in the Russian definition of the region. Most parts of the Arctic are not traditional fishing grounds. And that's exactly the issue which Scott was addressing. This is exactly the reason why there is no regulation of fishing in the central part of the Arctic Sea. Beyond the 200 nautical miles jurisdiction of the coastal states. Just let me briefly stop at pointing out that the central basin is definitely not the single issue of fisheries in the area. From the Russian perspective bilateral cooperation is very important. Both Norway and the U.S. are very important partners for Russia on the fisheries issues. Norway stands for something like two-thirds of Russian catch or cooperation with Norway. It stands for about two-thirds of Russian catch without the Bering Sea. The Bering Sea cooperation is crucial for the fisheries in the forest in the Pacific part for Russia. Also Faroe Islands are important although this is outside the Arctic directly. Greenland is an important partner but less important like Iceland is. Norway and the U.S. are very important for Russian fishes in general. Because this is a large portion of the total Russian catch in different seas. So the issue at stake is also the central part of the Arctic Ocean. Let me come back to the historic picture. I was picking up three years for June, a period of time. So this is the year of 2012, the year of a minimum extent so far. We may beat this record this year, we don't know yet exactly but the receding pace is pretty high. What is important for me, so this is images made by the Russian Arctic Antarctic Research Institute. It mainly covers the Russian part of the Arctic with the perspective from Russia. What is important for me in this picture is that whether 2012 the minimal ice extent or 2013 the most recent maximum of ice extent. Or this year in June which is not the best season in the Arctic. We see this blue part at the entry or exit of the Bering Strait. This is exactly, so I go back again, this is 2012, 2013 and this year. This is exactly the area which Scott was pointing to which leads you to the Chukchi Plateau. What are the potential fishing grounds? Of course we all realize there has been no commercial fishing there so far. The basic idea is what if it happens and there are several issues involved in the issue. So I probably here need to emphasize that I don't speak for my government. I present here a different view which devays to some extent at least from that of my government. But we did a pretty intensive research on the issue. I was myself getting interested in the issue from 2010. When we in our group first discovered the issue as the important one. And probably the most intensive summary of the discussions we have had over the past years. On that issue is included in the 2013 report by the Russian International Affairs Council. Which comes up with a very, very clear straightforward recommendation. We need to address the issue. We shall have an agreement on the central basin of the Arctic Ocean without delay. And I will explain to you why we have a problem. What are the problems as seen from the government and why we believe we need to proceed. So what is the issue about? Again as Scott was showing there is an area beyond the fisheries jurisdictions of coastal states. And it is particularly important to note that there are very few places in the global ocean. Which are not covered by any original fisheries management agreement or organization. There are very, very few areas worldwide. And this is one of the few areas which are remaining unregulated. There are three more and I think Scott was showing them as well. One in the middle Bering Sea, one in the Barren Sea and one in the Norwegian Sea. So it's basically an issue which has remained unregulated for a simple reason that there was no commercial fishing. Due to the ice conditions and due to the movement of fish into that area. We do register however that fishes starts migrating north and east in the summer season. In the Arctic summer season. And there is an expectation that fishes likely to be available for fishing in that area sometime from now. The Russian fisheries industries are very much favoring such an agreement. Many people in the academic community including experts on the issue or lawyers do support this idea. We have numerous publications on these issues. But there is no eagerness on the side of Russian government to rush with the agreement. This is not to say that Russian government would say no, no interest. It is engaged in consultations but it does not rush towards concluding the work. And I was exchanging many different arguments. I was collecting them in my research. And I found out two of them being most important for the Russian discussions. Number one argument which is very formal is to say there is no commercial fishing going to be possible anytime soon. So there is no rush to have an agreement. Okay, if there is no rush now, but basically there is a reasonable ground to believe it might be important. Why not concluding it now? And the second argument which is more important in the Russian debate is who is going to sign the agreement. Is it about the coastal states, the five, or is it about non-Arctic countries as well? And this is hitting exactly the most difficult part of the Russian debate about non-Arctic states being involved in Arctic issues, which is a progressing process but which of course causes much of the hesitance. And let me focus on the issues which are what the stakes here are. Well, first of all there is often a confusion in discussions about a proposed agreement. And this confusion is very much widespread in Russia. When people believe that what is proposed is to establish another regional fisheries management organization or arrangement. Which would be like NAFQ, an organization which collects scientific data about fish, which makes forecasts for the development of the stock, which defines for every year how much of what fish can be caught. And then the quotas for catch are distributed among the economic zones. And then the quotas for outside economic zones are being established and spread within the organization. This is not something which is for the time being considered. The proposal which is on the table basically suggests that we agree that no one is going to fish here until we decide we need a regional organization. And unless we agree on cooperation in terms of scientific research of the biological resources of the area. And on the basis of that research we would at some point in time come, probably come, probably not, come to the conclusion that commercial fisheries are available. So it's not about establishing an organization or agreement. This is to say no commercial fishing until we have agreed on the rules of fishing in that area. This is something which is absolutely clearly understood by the Russian fisheries industries as being in their interest. Secondly, when we talk about saying that no commercial fishing shall be available beyond the 200 miles economic zones, this is definitely not about coastal states because coastal states are not going to fish in that area anyway. Even if at some time commercial fisheries may be available in that area. Coastal states basically primarily fish within their economic zones. In few cases they may extend the fishing grounds but basically their area is within the 200 miles zones and usually especially for the straddling stock coastal states are not interested that third countries fish outside their fisheries jurisdictions. So this is about establishing rules not for the coastal states. This is about establishing rules for non-coastal states if we want such an agreement. Thirdly, this is not basically about every third country state which eventually could start fishing here because anyway if you go to the European Union or Norway, which is not member of the European Union, both prohibit fishing in the areas not covered by regional organizations. So we can basically assume that neither Norway nor European Union would issue licenses for fishing in that area as long as there is no regional organization here. So this is about third countries which are not in the European Union or which are not Norway. This is about other countries and this is exactly because potential fishing grounds are close to the Bering Strait. This is about countries like China, Japan, South Korea and probably a few more countries which are engaged in expeditionary fisheries far from the shores. So the point is, and this is a dilemma in the Russian debate because people would say, okay, we would not like to engage third countries in that arrangement. If this were an arrangement of five coastal states excluding others but preventing others from fishing, that would be fine. But this is something which doesn't work because under the 1995 agreement you at least must inform others who might be interested in fishing that you are going to establish something here. If you don't, if they have not been involved at the early stages of developing a regime, they are free to fish there. They have not been bound. So that's why the, and this is, as I understand, and Ambassador Walton may tell us a few words about this. It's part of the debates whether and when non-artic states may be engaged in these sort of consultations and of the agreement which is not a consensual issue yet within the consultation of five states. Basically, the hesitance on the Russian side, the Russian government side is clear to me because it's a general hesitance of getting non-artic states involved for regime issues. At the same time, there is no way of preventing them from fishing in that area except for engaging them in a regime. And again, the problem here would be not engaging third countries, but the problem would be probably other problems might be of a different sort. For me, if I was interested in fishing, eventually in this region, I would be most interested in joining the regime but also establishing the rules on how I decide that it is much mature for fishing because I would be afraid that others who are more conservative on the issues and more on the conservation side for the biological resources, I would be concerned that at the point when I want to start commercial fishing there, I may be bound by the agreement which would not allow me to begin it without consent of other more conservatives. So the basic trick here, and we are not yet over that barrier within the Russian debate, is not about whether or not we need a regional organization. This is not the point. But whether or not we are prepared to accept the solution which would prevent non-artic states from fishing by engaging them, engaging them in an agreement, an arrangement on fisheries, regulated fisheries in the central basin. We will see how things evolve. I believe that, so we do have intensive discussions in professional circles on that issue but definitely the political climate now is not most conducive for advancing on that part and I would not exclude if we want to make things work in the Arctic as part of the both bilateral and US-Russian cooperation or wider cooperation. This could be an issue which would be sort of a low-hanging fruit to pick up and with which we could go ahead but not today, probably not tomorrow, we'll see when. But I hope the American chairmanship will help to move ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Andre. I appreciate your comments on the issue which now sounds a bit that it has some complexity to it. Maybe not so simple as it seemed and yet there seems to be some agreement that in principle the idea of exercising precaution in this area is the right approach but exactly how you exercise it in the international law context might present some issues. David, would you like to comment on that a little bit? Yes, thank you, Brooks. I'd actually like to talk about two things, both briefly. One is to lend my perspective to the topic that both Scott and Andre were discussing now, the Arctic fisheries initiative, the effort to prevent unregulated high seas fishing from starting in the Central Arctic Ocean. But I also, Brooks, want to take up a thought you had at the start of the panel to talk about perhaps some broader issues about the Arctic Ocean that might be pursued either through the Arctic Council or otherwise. I don't know who's controlling the slides but it would be great to have one of Scott's pictures that shows the 200 mile line in the Central Arctic Ocean while I talk about that. Is that possible? That's fine, thanks. I'm sorry. I don't see Scott's slides. I'm afraid what's going to come up. He's probably coming here. There you go. One of those. That's good. Keep going, keep going, keep going. That's fine. Stop right there. Line from a great song. Heather Connelly asked a question of David Hayes in the last panel, what happens to try to deal with friction between the state of Alaska and the federal government? On this issue, there is virtual unanimity of perspective from all of the important U.S. constituent groups who have looked at it. The state of Alaska, the Arctic, rather the Alaska-based fishing industry, the Alaska native community, the U.S. environmental community, Congress, the administration all think we ought to be doing what we're trying to do here, namely to prevent unregulated fishing from starting up in that striped area. Indeed, the United States has already done essentially that in the area of our exclusive economic zone just below that red line north of Alaska, we have prohibited commercial fishing from starting up there through the decision of the North Pacific Ocean Management Council run into law by Secretary of Commerce. Why? Because we didn't have enough information on which to base proper fisheries management. We want to sort of take that same idea and apply it to the high seas area. And it's also a bipartisan issue in the United States. Congress passed a joint resolution that President George W. Bush signed into law calling for this same approach. So as someone trying to represent the United States internationally, this is a great and unusual benefit. Right. And yes, I do actually think we are getting pretty close. As Scott outlined, after a number of years of laying the groundwork for this, the five countries whose exclusive economic zones border that area, U.S., Russia, Canada, Denmark, Greenland, and Norway got together in New Greenland and agreed in principle to do just that. We will not allow our own officials to fish in this area until there's a proper management scheme in place based on proper science. And we will also jointly pursue scientific research related to fisheries, potential fisheries in that area. And, and this is important, we did agree, including Russia, that other states have legitimate interests in this and need to be brought into the discussion. Why? None of the five coastal states here or in any other part of the world have exclusive jurisdiction over fisheries beyond 200 miles. That's what the law of the sea says, whether you're a party to the convention or not. We, the coastal states, cannot do this on our own. The most we can do is say what the rules are for our own vessels who might someday want to fish there and set in motion a process that would involve the other states. Now, the nuke meeting happened shortly before problems in Ukraine Crimea arose. But, at least from where I sit, there ought to be all that much relationship between the two sets of events. We have already agreed in principle on a way forward. The five governments are still thinking about reducing to writing the understandings that were reached in nuke in a kind of non-binding declaration. I'm still hopeful that we'll be able to do so sometime in the near future. And then, more importantly, invite the other, what we would call in the fisheries world, distant water fishing nations, other states who might wish to send vessels to fish in this area, particularly the area that is uncovered now, as you see in that picture, and get them into a real negotiation about this. It could not be a fate or complete. We can't tell them what the result should be. But we could at least organize the five coastal states into a point of view and hope to impress upon the others the wisdom of our perspective. So I am actually pretty hopeful that this will move forward. It is not being done under the auspices of the Arctic Council that has to be clear for at least a couple of reasons. Some of the states that we wish to engage in this are not in the Arctic Council, except perhaps as observers. And a couple of the EU states that are members of the Arctic Council, Sweden and Finland, don't have fisheries management authority. They've turned it over to the EU, which is not a member of the Arctic Council. So this is being done in parallel, if you will, or it's an exercise that's moving forward in awareness of what the Arctic Council does with respect to oceans, but not as an Arctic Council initiative as such. Which brings me to what the Arctic Council is doing on oceans and what it might do in the future. There is a lot of work that the Arctic Council is doing. There's an Arctic Ocean Assessment that was recently completed with quite a lot of other work. I have often wondered, and this thought occurred to me last week as I sat in Secretary Kerry's Oceans Conference, what of the various ideas being advanced there might be profitably pursued in the Arctic? It is an emerging ocean. It is an emerging ocean in some very real ways, not only because of the reduced ice cover, but because of what we're learning about it and because the growth of human activity of many kinds has already begun and is likely to continue. One thing that is done in some other parts of the world that has not yet been done here is a kind of regional seas program. There are a number of different types of these around the world. It's an effort by states to join together to deal with common problems both within 200 miles and beyond. The United States is involved in two such programs, one in the Caribbean region, the Caribbean Environment Program, set up by the Cartagena Convention many years ago. A series of protocols to that. We're also party two. And in the Central Pacific, South Pacific area, what used to be called SPREP, we're involved in that as well. Many of the other Arctic states are involved in two others in the peripheral regions of the Arctic. One is the Oslo Paris Arrangement, known as OSPAR. Some of you may know about that. And then for the Baltic Sea, there is the Helsinki Commission, Helcon. And a lot of very good coordinated work goes on through those. And I've often wondered, would it make sense to take that kind of model and adapt it in some way to the Arctic region? Is it time to do that? And there are a lot of interesting questions about that. How would such a structure relate to the existing Arctic Council and the good work that is being done on some of those same topics through some of the Arctic Council working groups, PAIM, CAF, et cetera? But it is not a crazy idea. Here in the United States, we have taken significant steps forward in the last several years to become better stewards of ocean space under our own jurisdiction. This administration promulgated the national ocean policy, which does include the Arctic area as well. Specific to the Arctic, we have a national strategy for the Arctic region. David Hayes mentioned another related exercise, an integrated Arctic management that has both terrestrial and marine components to it. We are trying to do the right thing to manage competing uses. And for my purposes, I'm thinking about in the offshore area, no mean feat. Can we build out what we're doing? Can we learn from the other Arctic nations more than we already are about how they are grappling with some of the very same problems in their areas? Can we continue to reach clearer understandings about what ecosystem-based management means at an international level and actually apply it in useful ways? The U.S. chairmanship could be a time to find some grounding, some advancement in these issues. There are quite a few of us who work on oceans issues who would like to see that. We'll see. It's, I'd say, a profitable ground for moving forward. Oceans, by their nature, are international. And here we have an emerging ocean in the middle of a fascinating region. Most of the region, as Lawson pointed out, is ocean. Perhaps we can be doing more than we're currently doing to manage it. Thank you. Thank you, David, very much. I think we should move to open to questions fairly quickly because we got a little bit of a late start. Not too late, but we've certainly got time for questions. If I might, I would like to say I think the panelists have introduced a lot of very interesting ideas that are fodder for a very good discussion. First, the idea that there might be a way for the Arctic coastal states to work together to put in place, in a sense, a management regime ahead of any industrial fishing in the Central Arctic. To some extent, as I understand it, this idea has some grounding in U.S. policy enacted with the help of Senator Ted Stevens when he was still in the Senate in which the Regional Commission managing fisheries in the Bering Sea and the Arctic for the U.S. agreed that we don't know enough about fish stocks and fishing conditions and habitat north of the Arctic Circle to manage those fisheries intelligently currently and that we shouldn't open those fisheries until we do. So one question is perhaps for David, you might have encountered this in your discussions. What kind of science cooperation does it imply that we're interested in if we agree with the other Arctic coastal states that we want to have a better assessment of fisheries and fishery conditions and fishery habitat in the Central Arctic before we begin to fish there? Does that imply some commitment to get a better understanding to work together? Are we already thinking about that? And does that offer some basis on which we could get other nations, including perhaps even distant water fishing nations to agree to a regime if they understood what condition we're trying to meet before opening such an area to fishing? There has been fairly extensive work already to try to share what scientific information exists among the coastal states and also to reach out to other states on this. There are two scientific workshops already held formally on this and a third one committed to when we were in Nuke. There are also marine science bodies for the North Atlantic and North Pacific. Some of you may know about that, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and the North Atlantic and so-called Pisces, the North Pacific Marine Science Organization. There was an understanding that we would use or try to work through those bodies as well to build out what we do know about this. One other point though is what we know is not nearly enough yet. The scientists will tell you that mostly we don't really know what's going on inside that red area, at least not enough to base management of some fishery today, commercial fishery today. I don't really know what's entailed in finding out enough. Resources are short in all of the countries involved. This is not a high priority area yet for fisheries and yet we need to find some basic information if we're going to allow properly managed fisheries to start here someday. Great. Thank you. Scott or Andre, would you like to follow up on that or any other point before we open it for questions from the audience? Basically, I would agree, but there is a rough understanding on where and how we could go. Resources is an important issue. I believe one point which is consensual is to say that indeed, so far there is not enough stocks there for any commercial fishing. We don't know when it's going to appear there, which way, which source. Of course, also many different developments in the ocean as such, and this needs to be subject of research. But I would emphasize that we do have a very productive cooperation between Russia and the U.S. on the Bering Sea, part of the Bering Sea, which is supposed by experts in Russia who are engaged in this, which is supposed to be a good model for going ahead also in the central Arctic, not only central Arctic Ocean, but for going beyond the Bering Sea. Part of this research is, well, it's joint research. It's research ships of both sides working in each other's economic area very productively. It's very much appreciated by the Russian scientific organizations which are engaged. And it was very much structured along developing a common database on the biological stocks in the Bering Sea. And at least what I know from the Russian people who are engaged in this process, they believe that we could have avoided the problem with the Bering Sea central hole. So if we had systematic research before, they would see that one of the problems with the Bering Sea was lack of systematic research, which we don't have yet now. And the proposed idea is that we extend this cooperation first to the Chukchi Sea and may take this as a model for a scientific cooperation on the central basin of the Arctic Ocean, whoever is engaged in this sort of scientific cooperation, including developing a database which would allow us to have a systematic collection of data and monitoring and assessment of the fish stock evolution in the biological resources in general evolution in that area. And I'll just emphatically agree with the two of those just with a slight addition. The two previous speakers, I think this agreement can be used both before and after if it's eventually signed as a launching pad for more systematic research and cooperation in this area. The U.S. and Russia have a long history of bilateral cooperation in the Bering Sea, and it'd be very easy to extend that to the north in the Chukchi. And it's about, from my point of view, it's about kind of traditional fisheries stock assessments. So, for example, nobody has any idea what the biomass of Arctic cod is, the most essential forage species in this region. But in addition, it should also be looking into ecological interactions. And so not just focusing just on fish stocks, but really looking at how those fisheries resources play a role in the ecosystem because there's still much more to learn about how this region in the Central Arctic Ocean is used for migrations. Really important marine mammals that are important to the environment and also still provide important sustenance for indigenous folks that hunt them in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Russia. And there's seabird interactions with Arctic cod that are just really important to understand. We barely understand them in some of the coastal waters where it's much easier to do the research. So there's a lot of unanswered questions here. I feel like it's an opportunity to essentially double down and figure out how to do that. And then Brooks, you raised a really good point, which is using the same opportunity with non-Arctic countries. So I think there's a lot of fruitful avenues here to pursue. Great. Let's go to the audience and see if there's more to all the folks in here. I saw Lawson's hand first, and then I saw cod, and then I saw... Yeah, I mean, isn't this topic ripe for the Art of Council? If it chooses to jump into fisheries, it's not necessarily fisheries management. The Art of Council is known for assessments. And maybe... And the Art of Council has some non-Arctic state observers who are distant water fisheries interest. And also, I'm always nervous about the five Arctic coastal states doing their own thing. I understand the legal ramifications here. But if you do it in the Art of Council, Iceland has potential for distant water fisheries in the Arctic. Maybe not Finland and Sweden, but they'd probably play, probably get consensus to do it, to do an assessment and outline all of the questions and assimilate and assemble all of what you just said. And maybe it's been done before, but I'm not persuaded because I hear all the questions. And the Art of Council is good at identifying all the key questions. In fact, one of the latest studies is about acidification. I think this compelling evidence of acidification is going to diminish the potential for fisheries and the ecosystems in the Arctic. And then just outside the Arctic. So my guess is that, I mean, is it feasible that the United States and the other Arctic states might tackle this particular subject within the structure of the Art of Council? Thanks, Lawson. Conn, would you like to... And then I saw it... Yes, Kelly. Thank you. You referred earlier to the agreement, the fisheries agreement between Norway and Russia. And I'm wondering if you could summarize the lessons learned that have been learned through that agreement and what are the binational means you have for scientific assessment, for joint decision making, what have you, and are those lessons applicable to the larger Arctic community? I think we had Kelly... Is that one working? Okay, good. So my question goes to... We'll bundle and then we'll come back to Conn's question. Yeah. Goes to the safety of fishing vessels. I think the Polar Code does not apply to the fishing world, so I just would like a brief discussion of that issue as we're looking ahead. So first to Andre to talk about lessons from Norwegian, Russian cooperation in fisheries management and then to David or anyone who would like to comment on the application of the Polar Code to the fishing world. Thank you. Well, Russian-Norway cooperation of fisheries is already a long-term experience, beginning particularly with the agreements which had been signed in 1975, 1976, 1977 and establishing a special mechanism for working together and those mechanisms being expanded. Let me say there are several lessons which I may spontaneously think of to be drawn from there. Well, first of all, there is a very, very specific situation, although not unique there, because if we talk about straddling fish stocks in the Barents Sea particularly, we identify these stocks as common stocks. So we cannot divide the Barents Sea into an area into the Russian economic zone where we would fish and the Norwegian economic zone where Norwegians would fish for a very simple reason that fish in terms of ages and maturiness is distributed unevenly. We have young fish in the eastern part in the Russian economic zone and mature fish in the Norwegian economic zone and the reproduction areas particularly around the Lafoten Islands in Norwegian waters. So if we want to keep this stock intact, we shall share our fishing quotas within the area in the best way in order to preserve the stock and get it reproduced. This is a basic rationale for many years of Russian-Norwegian cooperation which is very much embedded into the existing regional fisheries management organizations, not only regional fisheries management organizations, but also if I look at the ECAS, which is a 100 years old scientific cooperation body of countries involved in this area, which produces a very solid research evidence or scientific evidence of the stock development. We have a very effective or at least it is seen as a very effective NAFQ framework for managing the stocks in the area including in the Russian-Norwegian fishing grounds. And we do have a very elaborate bilateral mechanism for working together which includes both common research. It includes defining the quotas. And it particularly includes looking after an effective reproduction of the resources. So the effectiveness of both the bilateral Russian-Norwegian mechanism and of NAFQ in general is based in Russia at least on the solid record of maintaining sustainable fishing in that area. So defining a common stock I think is a unique and it's important but not a unique experience which we did. And despite all the difficulties, because we also may look at the problems which we have with Norway, one of them different standards for scientific fishing. So Russian law requires that you dispose of the whole scientific edge without bringing it to land. Norwegian laws require that you bring everything on land. So this was a stumbling block in Russian-Norwegian cooperation in common research in that area. But of course the whole cooperation is based on common research. So sometimes now our researchers would go on board of Norwegian ships for common research purposes and participate in the Norwegian expeditions. So there are always problems but exactly defining the stock of some fishes as common stock is a solid guarantee that we work together in order to have sustainable fishing arrangement. So it's very advanced in every sense also on the research side. If I understood your remarks correctly, I think you get to a very interesting issue that I had wanted to raise. So thank you, which is we talked at the beginning about what kinds of positive cooperation might be possible in not only the area of fishery management and the area of management of the marine environment. And I think the linkage that you just talked about is an area that is worth exploring and I was wondering if David or Scott might like to comment on it. And that is the link between fisheries management and ecosystem-based management of the marine environment. And as I heard you, you were saying that you can't just manage the stock as if it was an undifferentiated stock across a boundary. You have to actually manage it with attention to the ecological aspects of its usage of the ecosystem on either side, which are not identical. If the young fisher in one location and the fisheries reproductive zone or another, you have to manage with attention to that difference. And to me, that's a very interesting question because it gets to the question of how we might use concepts like ecosystem-based management to achieve better coordination and management of the marine environment. So if anyone would like to come back on that, I'd be very interested. We're not yet that far with the regions. What we have is a very, very traditional sort of defining the quarters and sharing the quarters. Also, it went much further in seeking to the extent possible to establish the same rule of fishing, et cetera. But not yet in terms of integrated management of the sea areas. We are approaching this because Norwegians have introduced an integrated plan for the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea. We are moving towards this, harmonizing it to the extent possible with Norwegian rules. By the end of next year, the Joint Commission is supposed to present the first draft plan for the Russian government to address the issue. But so far, it was not an integrated way. And I would say that Norwegian and Russian fishers do understand each other very well. But we do see many challenges coming from the economic development, both on the Norwegian side and on the Russian side. Because it is particularly some of the most productive areas, biological productive areas, which are targeted for offshore exploration and mining. For a long time, as long as we did not have any maritime boundary in the economic zones, any exploration was prohibited in the contested area. So now we do have the maritime boundary and there is an expanding, particularly on the Norwegian side. A very, very extensive development. And if we look at the most recent huge debate in Norway concerning whether or not licenses can be sought around the Lafoten Islands, which is a reproduction area for the Barents Sea Code, so far the fishers in Norway have won the battle. But even the integrated management plan on the Norwegian side was not very helpful. And so this is the way we need to move towards, as I was mentioning at the previous panel, but we are not yet there. And not yet, not yet here in the bilateral Russian-Norwegian cooperation. Great. Thank you. David, did you have a thought on this? I was thinking instead of trying to answer questions posed by Lasse and Kelly. Is that all right? Please, feel free. So Lasse suggested that perhaps the Arctic Council can contribute to the fisheries-related issues. And yes, perhaps they can. I think we can agree that the council will never become a fisheries management organization, right? Can't do that. But perhaps through PAME or CAF or others, there could be further work done and say by the council on assessing fish stocks and other parts of the ecosystem related to the question of when and how and what fisheries might look like someday in the future. Kelly asked a question about the coverage of fishing vessels and the polar code. So I'm not an expert on this, Kelly, but my understanding, there may be others in the room who know better, is that the problem isn't with the polar code. It's with the underlying IMO conventions to start with. So I could see convention and Marple that in the way that they cover fishing vessels, which say not very much at all. And there are long historic reasons for that, probably not specific to the Arctic. What I can say is if fishing vessels are to be going up anywhere into the Arctic, they should have to meet the same basic types of standards that we're building into the polar code, right? We don't want them any more than we want tankers or cruise ships or any other covered vessels to run into problems there. How we achieve that, I don't know. Sorry, I don't know. It's my understanding that the polar code is supposed to cover fishing vessels and pleasure vessels at the next stage. Not at the stage we're discussing for the time being. But we also need to be clear that fishing vessels are responsible for 50% of the pollution so far. It's about 50% of the traffic and pollution there. So it's going to be an issue even after we have the first wave of the polar code there. Well, according to the agenda, we still have a few minutes for questions if there are further questions. I don't want to join. Yes, I have a question related to the rationale for some of the motivations for these treaties. And that is that I've heard from a number of places there's not enough information upon which to base a fishery. We don't know the science. In the U.S., the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council closed off commercial fishing five years ago. So it would be very interesting to know, okay, now five years have passed, what have the regulators asked for in terms of the knowledge they would need if they were to open a fishery and what has NOAA NIMS actually done in terms of doing research to address that. My sense is, and I'd like to be disabused of this, that precious little has been done and it seems to be, and I hate to use the word red herring here, but I'll use chicken and egg instead. When you ask NOAA NIMS, gee, why don't you do research north of the Bering Strait to say, well, you know, we only have so much money. Motivation is to do it where there is fishing, which is in the Bering and the Gulf of Alaska. So we don't have money to do fish trawls where there is no commercial fishing pressure right now. So we get in this chicken and egg. We're not going to get the science until there's a real pole demand from industry to do that. So disabuse me of my sense of this. Do you, Scott, do you want to come back on that or does someone else want to take that one on? Is the demand for better science a red herring or not? No, it's not a red herring. But John, some of what you say certainly is so. The resources available to do fishery science are not infinite. Fisheries in other parts of the U.S. or Alaska are some of the most important fisheries. In fact, are the most important fisheries the United States has. And yeah, if I'm allocating a fishery science budget with NOAA, I'm going to put it where there is great importance. That doesn't say nothing's going on. There has been some research going on in the area right along the coast. But the specific question you're asking, what are the managers of potential future fisheries in this area asking and what are they getting back from the scientists? I don't really know. That would be a good question to pose to our colleagues at NOAA. Scott. Of course, you're raising a really good question and you essentially answered it when you posed it. So I won't argue with you. But when you read the U.S. Arctic FMP, it didn't base it on we don't have enough information to make a good decision here. It actually took the best available information it had, which were some very preliminary stock assessments for three species and essentially concluded that there was not an ecosystem surplus for Arctic cod. So if Arctic cod, Saffron cod were going to be the most likely targeted species, we actually did a really nice job of then looking at what do we know about the ecosystem implications of targeting Arctic cod and concluded that basically everything we know shows us that there isn't a huge commercially available surplus because so many other parts of the ocean rely on Arctic cod. So I actually think they did a really credible job. Clearly you read between the lines, there's tons more that we need to know. I confront it with this every day, but I think the notion of best available science is really kind of one of the answers. And I still go back to the last notion that I actually think we can bring attention to this area with an agreement that says, okay, let's not start fishing as a platform for additional and extra integrated research. Thanks. Well, I think you might all agree, very good job of opening up some of the complex issues associated with managing the living resource systems in the Arctic. And this is certainly a real world example where some choices do need to be made and they'll have interesting implications and not just for the Arctic coastal states, but also for how we talk to non-Arctic states that are, let's say, evincing a new interest in the Arctic in this area. But I just want to hope you'll join me and thank the panel for their very intelligent discussion of this. All right. One more panel to go. We're going to just change the set here for a very quick panel change. We just take five minutes and then we'll start very promptly at four.