 The subject of our presentation today is the Arctic region cooperation or confrontation. The Arctic region has raised its profile, one could say, over the last 10 years especially. On the one side because of global warming and global warming and the prospects that the sea route across the north of the European continent or the Eurasian continent might be freed and you might have an ordinary sea route leading from East Asia to the Atlantic. On the other hand there has been an amount of exploitation of natural resources in the area especially oil and gas which perhaps to some extent was dependent on the price of oil being as maybe $120 a barrel which is not the case today. The cooperation such as it is in the area is regulated by the Arctic Council composed of Russia, United States, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway and there are other groups also. There was a kind of stunt carried out by the Russians in 2007 which involved the placing of a titanium flag under the ice cap of the Arctic Ocean more or less at the North Pole which has set heads wagging and speculation rife as to what it imports by way of extension of the shelf of Russia. There is also of course a wider interest in the northern sea route on the part of China and Japan when you look at the Chinese plans for a silk road one belt one road I think it's quite understandable that the Japanese might be very interested in an alternative via the northern sea route. So all these things have made the area of great interest and great speculation in recent years which is why we're very happy to have Matti Antonin the on the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland to speak to us. Mr. Antonin's career has been connected with Russia for many years. He served as ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2012. Before that worked as director for Russia and later as deputy director general of the division for Russia Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He's not a however completely one sided he's also served in Washington DC and with the permanent mission of Finland to the UN in Geneva and he told me before we began that some 30 years ago he studied politics at Trinity College Dublin. So I think nobody better qualified could be invited to speak to us on this very interesting subject. Okay thank you and really really nice to be here in Dublin after so so many years. I said earlier I have a little personal history with this country having studied in Trinity College for one year as an exchange student and also having worked three summers in various places of this country doing voluntary work in Galway, Mayo, north of Danuk and then also in the south and in Kilkenny. So I have some understanding of this country but that's over a very long duration. I know that this country has been celebrating its in a way 100 years of the East rising which then led six years later to the independence independently public. Next year Finland will be celebrating its 100 years of being an independent republic independence for which we have been paying a rather high price later on when our eastern neighbor wanted to bring back us to the orbit which they didn't succeed but they managed to create a rather working relationship with them then later on. Something which is also uniting us is that we have had a functioning democracy here almost 100 years and in Finland 100 years because many of the European countries they had to live without democracy at least few years when those countries were occupied by different forces but Finland has been democracy with regular elections 110 years already the Russian period we had a parliament where the women women got the vote and tried to be elected in 1907 first time in Europe. But this is not the topic I was supposed to speak about Arctic region. When you think about the region of the world I think there's of course Antarctica which is even less talked about but I think it's a good competitor will be the Arctic region. Not so much in the headlines it is very remote from most places there are very few people less than four million depending on the definition but Arctic there's very little economic activity as a whole and no major transport links go through that area and what is positive also that there's no major conflicts in the area. The just approved global strategy for the European Union for an a security policy covers Arctic in two sentences so I think that tells about the about the area quite a lot but what makes Arctic interesting at the moment and in the coming decades that all those things I enumerated are going to change and there's a very one big driver for this change and that's the global warming caused by the climate change and this will mean that much of the Arctic sea will be open for navigation. Justine I want to show you one picture because I don't usually like to show powerpoint presentations but sometimes one picture is useful. This is the medium ice for yesterday or the day before 81 2010 the ice was this big now the white is the ice this is the third smallest amount of ice you have in the north 2012 there is even less so I mean this is the big change and it's real there's no doubt about it and you know this is kind of about the change which could happen because it's a real change and very likely to continue so let that not be there because maybe I can use it for a some later when I show where what the places I'm talking about but this means that the hydrocarbon and mineral resources will be more available and this will also open up transport routes between Asia Europe mainly and this will also change the livelihoods of the people because the nature and the climate will change it's already changing just imagine when you build something on permafrost it's like rock when that rock melts away it will be very different world as said earlier you know the definition what's arctic is a bit fluffy you know usually we talk about the area which is inside the polar circle then there are you know other definitions the permafrost area the treeless area in the north but anyway what even you know taking into account the different definitions it's a big area only the arctic ocean the big blue thing there is size of Russia a bit smaller but anyway I mean if you want the ballpark figure it's about the size of Russia covered by ice the whole winter and then covered by is so little in summer and in the whole region less than the population of Ireland when we talk about the cooperation which was referred to earlier in the region it all started in 91 when Finland invited the the environmental environmental ministers of the old all the eight arctic countries Canada Denmark Iceland Norway Soviet Union Sweden and United States to Rovaniemi and that started the process mainly concentrated on the environmental side environmental protection and that led to then uh 2096 to the establishment of arctic council in Otsava 20 years ago but still much of the work of the arctic council is being done in the working group which were founded in in Rovaniemi 91 but what is interesting with this organization which is an intergovernmental organization that also the indigenous people are present there as participants permanent permanent participants and in addition there are 12 observers the European Union member countries have been pushing very much to get the European Union as an observer so far with no success but we continue that work but when we're kind of looking at this region in in many ways uh from natural geographic point of view it looks very much the same but there are actually three very distinct development models in the region if I start with the kind of what is closest to us and what is smallest by by kind of area here in north of north of Scandinavia we have a very different model than they have in north America and Russia we think that there are very few people there but per square kilometer we have much more people per square kilometer in northern Scandinavia than in other areas we have democratic traditions we have a infrastructure there rail roads roads airports things you can reach those areas and there is quite a lot of economy there but the share of indigenous people is rather limited in whole of Finland I think we have the Sami people it's about 10 000 people of them half live in the north half live scattered in in other parts of the country uh then we have the north american model mainly in canada alaska very low population density density very little economic activity mainly the the only economic activity in the region is the oil in alaska and the kind of substantial and very poor infrastructure hardly existing and very high proportion of indigenous indigenous population in nunabut is almost three fourths in northwest territory half in in yukon around one one quarter and then you have the russian model and the russia russia is by far the biggest power in the Arctic you have a lot of several pockets of economic activity which were developed in the soviet time and the soviet model did not really take economics into account because by if you take the natural conditions it's very challenging environment as in north america but when you don't have to take economics into account you can do things you can build norilsk which is producing a copper nickel palladium and platinum you have a whole city in the tundra more than 100 000 people you know the the north american model would not allow that to happen because you know in market economy that kind of things do not happen the environmental cost of these enterprises norilsk is the second most polluted place in in in russia the biggest source of stationary non-transport pollution in the country and russia is also present more militarily in the region than the others and there is a very clear explanation for that because if you think murmansk that's the only port where the russian navy can get more or less directly to the atlantic ocean if you think the boldixi or the black sea you know you have the turkish straits you have the danish straits they are much more restricted the number of indigenous people in russian north and the russian model it's more it's bigger than in in in scandinavia but their share is much smaller than in north america and the economic situation of those people is not very good because in a way they are very much part outside those economical pockets which are creating the wealth in the north but so this is the kind of picture some some similarities but in a way three very different models of development of the region uh i've been dealing with russia and i i start with that because as i said you know it's the most important player and relatively the russian Arctic is much more important to russia than the Arctic of north america or the Arctic of finland sweden and norway why because russia is a major producer of oil and gas as we all know 90 percent of russian gas comes from jamal on enetia 90 percent russian gas 20 percent of oil's gas production comes from the russian Arctic and a huge deficit there as well uh half of russia's oil comes from hunting marcia which is south of jamal on enetia in the middle of western Siberia so when a country when a country's exports are consisting of oil and gas 65 70 percent and when the budget income they cover 40 percent of the budget income you can understand that this Arctic is important for that country uh the names of the region come from the indigenous people living there nenets in the north and hunt the amansi in the south they're kind of small fenogreek tribes which have been living there but their share of the population at the moment is very small something if if jamal on enetia is the biggest gas producing region in the world it's also the region with the highest number of reindeer in the world so kind of if you can talk about dual economy that's a dual economy you have reindeer and then you have a super modern production of gas in the massive scale but this is kind of challenging strategy when when the country is so dependent on oil and gas i think this year's most interesting lecture i've heard was took place in london uh earlier this year during the ebrd annual meeting when i had the opportunity to listen to uh sir nicholas stern which is a really well known climate economist and i think he put it in a very concrete and good way that if we take these two per two centigrade limits seriously that the global climate would not heat up more than two per two degrees 70 percent of worlds known coal gas and oil reserves have to stay where they are okay and then we have a country which is so dependent on oil and gas and i think the big question coming out of uh me serves nicholas's presentation is that who who's 30 percent will be sold to the markets before you know this 70 percent has to stay because you know it's purely arithmetics that you know there's a x number of a tons coal there and if you let that to the to the air you know if you burn everything you're clearly by far over this two two degrees centigrade uh so this is a big challenge for russia and it's somewhat kind of related to their arctic strategy at the moment there is very little uh transport of this this is the so-called north east passage and this is the north west passage going through the canadian arctic alarm this north east passage cuts the journey between jocohama and Rotterdam by one third between Shanghai and Rotterdam by 25 percent we can all understand what it means if that would be navigable for a long period much shorter distance between the major training partners and what is happening now is that uh russia is building the first ever big lng facility here on oak bay which is on the kind of steel covered by ice according to the americans and it will mean that they will be transporting that gas to the Asian markets summertime using the north east passage first time ever this sea route is being used for massive amount of export of hydrocarbons it's not yet there people have not noticed it but because much of the equipment is being manufactured in finland we know that it's going to take place it's going to be a reality and in a way it will be it will be a kind of changing many things in the region of course in a way it's safe to transport lng because that's not an environmental hazard the same way you are transporting oil because you know it's methane and the worst thing which might happen is the methane kind of evaporates in the air but it doesn't pollute the sea but it will change the whole map of worlds kind of thinking about the north and there will be a couple other oil then related terminals which will be built in the in the neighborhood of this this port and there are also these mineral deposits in in norils which is here is uh viennese big river comes here and it's near the mouth of viennese there's norils which is the probably the world's kind of richest deposit of of minerals because it's still very profitable to exploit that even if you have the whole city to manage and to pay for uh something which is concerned to us is that the russians have similar kind of not very clean production facilities in our neighborhood in in uh in uh colap and insular the situation has improved during the years but there's a long way to go before they are reaching the Nordic environmental standards and you can see that from the surroundings of these of these plants it's on a moonscape something we have to remember is that russia's history is full of these mega projects my question to to my Finnish uh young colleagues is that what is the biggest ever mega projects of this kind and it's the city of san petersberg it's a bog in the end of gulf of finland the most inhospitable horrible place to build the city of five million inhabitants but peter the great said it's going to be here and i forbid building any stone buildings anywhere else in russia than here and he brought the workforce and he built the city and now it's there and it won't move away but the place was not a very good one you have such olympics the railroad and the road connection to the mountains cost 100 million euros a kilometer five billion euros we can't we can't afford that kind of things but fresher can and that's the way the country has been developed during the you know history but you know it's useful to remember that it's not something for the present fresher it has been the tradition but somebody in in kremlin law san petersberg decided let's let's build a railroad to to pacific and then it continues but of course with that kind of management system you cannot handle many of these things so there's going to limit the amount of of these projects which can be done at the same time but when we kind of jump to the other side of the Atlantic to north america this type of a kind of action is not possible you have to take money into account and if you think of the north american kind of economic history both alaska and northern part of canada they were part of these gold gold rushes around 100 years ago that was the kind of the first time we heard about alaska and and uconn for example then i think the next stage was about 70 years later when alaska and oil was developed and the pipeline was built during the last decade with the with the boom in the in the commodity markets we had few small projects which were mature enough to be realized like one on the baffin island here and there is an island mine in the middle of the northern part of baffin island which was you know developed during the last decade and now is up and running but nothing major new happened there in that part of the world there's one big project going on in northern alaska to produce gas and then ship it to the south make it into lng and ship that to the markets in in asia but it's most likely that it will be realized it will take at least 10 years so north america with these commodity prices will look quite quite silent compared to the russian north one challenge now two challenges which they have i was in canada a week last june and if i had pinpointed two things important for the country how to develop infrastructure which is really lacking no railroad no roads no electricity networks very few ports very few airports at least big ones the number one question and the number two question how to provide meaningful employment for the indigenous people in those conditions and taking it into account at the supermarket economy nothing not the easy thing to do maybe a few words about norway because norway used to be a country as poor as finland 100 years ago if there are four countries in europe which lost i mean the if you count the countries which lost most people in in immigration number one was ireland number two was scotland number three was norway and number five was number four was sweden i mean those countries were not so wealthy 100 plus years ago it wanted to remember anyway it's an oil country again but the different kind of oil prices in russia and their oil production is shifting from the north sea to the barren sea and they have managed to negotiate with russia a new border treaty which allows this to happen because when there's a clear border in the sea between the parties you can sell licenses and the companies can operate there and in the last licensing ground in spite of the low oil prices all the licenses were taken and there will be a lot of exploration activity in the norwegian north on the russian side of the border the eu and us sanctions they have had their impact because you know arctic oil exploration is one of the sectors which have been restricted and the role of the foreign companies has been major in those projects because russia has very little own experience in producing oil and gas in the arctic arctic offshore arctic onshore they are very big but arctic offshore is something new they have actually only one prilas lomnie field which has been operated by by gas from neft for a while but it took more than 10 15 years to build and they are huge already known hydrocarbon reserves like the huge stockman field which is in the middle of the barren sea if you think of kind of compared that the finished gas consumption a year it would fulfill finished gas consumption for 700 years so it's big but it's going to be there because there are no technological solutions which would be kind of economical enough to make make that a profitable so many things might be staying in the ground in the north if we take this mixturns 70 percent seriously as said here earlier this shrinking ice has made this area also interesting for those parties which are not coming from the region china south korea and japan especially because for them if they can get so much faster to the european markets it's good economically and ecologically as i said it's at the moment many theory after this big lng facility and the regular traffic will see how real it is the conditions are very tough even in summer we need much better and much more reliable whether an ice forecast in the region we need navigational aids we need search and rescue if something happens you can just imagine if a big cruise liner you know something happens in the cruise liner and you have 2000 people stranded somewhere there it will be a major catastrophe we can we can kind of tell our own story because in 1994 a major ferry ship sank in gulf of finland and it brought down 800 900 people and it happened in gulf of finland which is not big it's not kind of big ocean but the conditions can be really tough and as a whole we need much more research in order to make the better use of natural resources possible and also the understanding the impact of the climate change because in the arctic region we are talking about adaptation the world's climate will not be saved there the world's climate will be saved in china in in india in the united states in europe where the emissions are north will be just they have to adapt because the climate change is about it's it's kind of estimated to be twice as fast in the north that's than on the average so if you are talking about two per two centigrade average warm heating globally it means four to five degrees in the north and that's that's that's really a lot then it was also mentioned that of course because you know the opening up of the opportunities there's new attempts to claim sovereignty over larger parts of the of the ocean and as mentioned the best publicized stunt was the placing of these of this russian flag at the north pole using a small submarine something something finished in this story was that the submarine was built in finland in 1980s we got the permission from the americans to to deliver that kind of ship to the soviets because the americans did not believe that we could make it when we made it and sold it they were not so happy about it but you know that was a that was a done deal they actually two of them and they played an important role when when filming titanic because they can go really deep and they are not many of them in the world because again that was not the market economy you could pay anything for that kind of thing and develop that kind of thing with no no costs thought about and so probably was a good good deal for this company as well but that russia is not only country claiming territory there both danmark and russia and russia and canada have over overlapping claims around the north pole not big but clearly overlapping claims danmark thinks that this belongs to them canada thinks this belongs to them and russia thinks this belongs to them but luckily it's very far in the north and using that area for any economic activity in the coming years even with the climate change is very unlikely most likely it will be covered by ice for next 20 years anyway all your own and what is positive is that all the countries coastal countries have agreed to the un convention on the law of the sea and to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims so sounds much better than in many other parts of the world where this orderly settlement is not really very orderly. Norway has got this recommendation from the UN body responsible for this convention danmark russia and canada are still waiting for their responses they have submitted their their cases and they are now waiting for the recommendations and then on basis of these recommendations the countries have the delimit their exclusive economic zones and and then agree with others because the same place cannot be in in two exclusive zones but i don't think that is very likely i don't think it's very likely that this will lead to major territorial issues between the parties a few words about the military side of the of the region because it tends to be a kind of fashionable theme to talk about you know raising military tension all over the world including the Arctic the EU strategy i mentioned at the beginning says that sets as a goal that the Arctic region region should remain a low tension area so i think they implied that it's it is a low tension area and it should remain the Arctic cooperation which we are handling in the side of the uh in the in the Arctic Council we are not talking about politics we try to concentrate on the on the research on the environmental questions on sustainable development region but this growing tension in Europe between the United States European Union and Russia has not led so far to any problems in the functioning of these bodies working in the north interesting interestingly enough last year in August and in October we found it together in the framework of the Arctic Council Coast Guard Arctic Coast Guard Forum where the Russian FSB is the Coast Guard for Russia so why this because we have two binding agreements concerning search and rescue and oil spills fighting oil spills and without the work of the Coast Guard this is meaningless you need the Coast Guard to work on these matters otherwise these problems cannot be solved and in a way as i said it's good that we have been able to continue this cooperation because it's needed as said earlier Russia has by far the largest military presence in the area but the military buildup has not been so massive as people think and as at least if you compare to the to the presence of Soviet military we are still far from that some new installments have been built and some old bases have been bought back to life but generally we are very far from the cold war time cold war times also the other countries have increased their interest on on the military side or at least start stopped decline in the region but we are not really talking about the major investments i think more kind of the we can we can state that the countries have stopped cutting the military capabilities in the north and of course these other forces are not comparable to the Russian capabilities but as i said you know the Russian interest in the region is by far bigger because it's the heart of their economic strength maybe at the end few few words about Finland we will be taking over the chair of the Arctic Council from the United States and will be in our hands for two two years 2017 2019 spring we will we will be continuing the work started by the Americans environment sustainable development and research continue to be continue to be in focus there will be some new additions we are at the moment discussing with other parties of the council what should be the priorities the next two years why it's important region for us because our industries are much involved Arctic business is not a mega business but for Finland is probably relatively more important than for any other EU country because we are a major provider of technology for all those things you need in the north for example those lng carriers transporting the gas all the propeller systems are made in Finland and all the engines are made in Finland and they have been designed in Finland and they've been built in in north in in south korea our research community is heavily involved in both climates ice and meteorological work in the Arctic we want to know how people could work there because with increased economic activity there will be more people working there and we want to secure their safety and well-being when they are working in these tough conditions because tough conditions they will be even if it's going to be less ice in the region and paradoxically the less ice there is in the region the more capabilities and competencies you need to work in these conditions because that will lead to increased activity so in a way people have to know more about ice and those very difficult conditions we are rather confident that this positive kind of cooperative mood will prevail in the north and in spite of the tensions in other parts of the Europe we don't see a major prospect for confrontation in this region so thank you very much and I'm more than ready to answer for questions