 Well, good morning, you hearty souls. Thank you for joining us on a snowy day, although I must admit it's the perfect setting for a conversation about the Arctic. Good morning, my name is Heather Conley. I'm Senior Vice President here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and I have the great privilege of looking after Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic. This in some ways has been a bit of an Arctic week for us here at CSIS. Yesterday, we had the privilege of hosting the Norwegian Foreign Minister in a conversation about finding that Arctic balance between economic opportunities and environmental protection, and of course we talked about a range of geopolitical issues that are impacting the Arctic. But today is a conversation that we're gonna focus in on the United States and the development of our policy as we look forward in two very short months to assuming the chairmanship of the Arctic Council. I can't imagine that we have any three officials that can help us understand some very new developments in U.S. Arctic policy formation and coordination at the end of January. The White House released an executive order that provided a new framework, a new structure, an Arctic Executive Steering Committee, and we're here to learn more about that very, not even barely a month old executive order, what it will mean, the impact it will have on U.S. Arctic policy. With us this morning we have and are delighted to welcome Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He's served as the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology since 2009 and co-chairs the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. And as of end of January he has a very new title, Chair Arctic Executive Steering Committee. So he is the leader of this new entity. And Dr. Holdren, we're grateful that you're here and we look forward to your presentation to help give us a little bit more understanding of this new steering committee. And then with us Tommy Boudreau to my left, Chief of Staff to Secretary Sally Joule at the Department of Interior prior to becoming Chief of Staff in March of last year. Mr. Boudreau was the Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management from 2010 to 2014. He has done a lot of work looking at the Department of Interior's engagement with the drilling activities and the Chutky and the Beaufort and we're delighted. Secretary Joule was just in Alaska, just had a very tough hearing on Tuesday with Senator Murkowski. So we're looking forward to hearing. And we'll do it again next week because it was so much fun again. And we look forward to thank you so much. We really look forward to your insights. And then last but not least, we have Gary Rasecott, Director of Marine Transportation Systems at the Coast Guard. Admiral Pete Nefinger was to be with us, the Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard, but had to be pulled away for another assignment. So we are delighted that Mr. Rasecott could be with us. Gary has responsibilities for waterways management, coastal and marine spatial planning and polar ice operations. Yes, I fear you're going to get a question about an icebreaker and prior to his work as director, he served as the Director of Global Maritime Operational Threat Response Coordination Center from 2010 to 2013. So I wasn't kidding, we have great minds here to help us tease out a little bit more on U.S. domestic policy as it evolves towards the Arctic. And with that, we welcome you all and we turn it over to Dr. Holder for his presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Heather. And thanks to all of you for showing up on a snowy morning. And thanks to those who are watching the webcast. I want to start by mentioning that I'm accompanied by Dr. Simon Stevenson, who is OSTP's Assistant Director for Polar Science. He's right down here. And if I get any really hard questions, of course, I'll just refer them to him. So let me start this tour of the terrain as it were with a look at the geographic terrain, what we consider officially to be the Arctic within the framework of the Arctic Council and our other Arctic activities. All United States and foreign territory north of the Arctic Circle and all U.S. territory north and west of the boundary that is shown there extending below the Arctic Circle. Maybe this page down works better. Good, I just have to get the right page down key. So we have, as I think everybody in this room probably already knows, a large variety of national interests in the Arctic. Defense, sovereign rights and responsibilities, maritime safety, the economic issues, including particularly those around energy development, environmental stewardship, scientific research, extremely important, indigenous peoples and their rights and cultures. And of course, preservation of the rights, freedoms and uses of the sea as reflected in international law. Change is happening rapidly in the Arctic and complicating many of these national interests, but also opening up new opportunities with respect to others. The temperature in the Arctic has been increasing more than twice as fast as a global average temperature increase. That's for well understood scientific reasons. And this simply illustrates that the 2014 temperature anomaly compared to a 1951 to 80 average, and the browner the shading, the faster the rate of temperature rise. As I've already noted, that rapid warming is presenting both challenges and opportunities. Shrinking sea ice extent and thickness mean of course expanded maritime navigation possibilities. We'll doubtless hear more about that from Gary. That expansion means of course, economic benefits including much shorter shipping routes in many circumstances, but also some jurisdictional issues increasing ship traffic and the need to manage that and the possibility of pollution and accidents from that additional shipping. Expanded access to seabed resources in the Arctic. Again, economic benefits, but again also jurisdictional issues and increasing industrial activity resulting from those opportunities. And again, a set of pollution and accident possibilities. Those first two sub-bullets imply increasing requirements for the Coast Guard, for the Navy, for other oversight management and regulatory functions in the region. Another challenge is existential threats to creatures that depend on the rapidly shrinking sea ice and the indigenous communities that utilize those creatures as important parts of their livelihoods. Increased risk to coastal communities and infrastructure from the combination of sea level rise and the loss of shoreline protection by sea ice, which when it's in place keeps big waves from storms, from impacting shoreline settlements and infrastructure. Another issue, thawing permafrost threatens land transport and a variety of kinds of infrastructure, including pipelines. And warming is altering plant cover, increasing vulnerability to wildfires and affecting other aspects of ecosystem dynamics. Just to give you a picture of the extent of the shrinkage of the sea ice, you can barely see, I think, the magenta line. But the magenta line is the average sea ice extent at its September minimum during the period 79 to 2000. And you look at the 2005 extent, already much smaller than that, 2007, smaller still, and the record low sea ice extent since satellite observations began, giving us really accurate measurements occurred in September, 2012. And you see the enormous opening compared to that magenta line, the enormous opening of maritime possibilities and seabed access. This shows both the history of Arctic sea ice extent at its September minimum and the projections under various scenarios of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. And one sees that under the red projection, which is really continuation of business as usual, the world decides to do essentially nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The summer sea ice actually disappears entirely by the end of the century. And under the other scenarios, the scenario where we take really forward leaning measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world gives you the green scenario and even there one ends up with less sea ice than we have now for at least a period of time. Give you a quick chronology of milestones in the history of Arctic policy and coordination. Starting with the Arctic Research and Policy Act of 1984, which was amended in 1990, it was that act that created the US Arctic Research Commission and the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Commission. The Arctic Research Commission makes recommendations. The Arctic Research Policy Commission coordinates the responses to those recommendations across federal agencies. The Eight Nation Arctic Council international effort to coordinate and cooperate was established in 1996. And we'll come back to the Arctic Council at the end because the United States is assuming the chairmanship of the Arctic Council for two years starting this spring. Arctic Region Policy established by the National Security Policy Directive 66 and Homeland Security Policy Directive 25 in January 2009. The National Ocean Council, which was established in July 2010 as part of the National Ocean Policy announced at that time by President Obama has as one of its two major geographic focuses, the Arctic, the other one is the Caribbean, the Gulf. Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement, that's another international agreement that was fomented under the auspices of the Arctic Council in January 2013, an agreement to collaborate on search and rescue in the Arctic. The Interagency Report on Arctic Management, this was a committee chaired by then Deputy Secretary of Interior David Hayes focused primarily on the intersection of energy development and conservation but involved a strong interagency component and produced a wide-ranging report. The National Strategy for the Arctic Region was first rolled out under the leadership of the National Security Council in May 2013 and implementation plan for it the following January and a report on implementation of that strategy, National Strategy for the Arctic Region was just issued last month. And finally, as Heather has already mentioned, just last month the President issued an executive order on enhancing coordination of national efforts in the Arctic and that included the creation of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee which I now share. The 2009 Arctic Policy listed a number of aims and you see them here again underscoring the diversity and complexity of our national interests in the Arctic, the national security issues, the environmental and conservation issues, resource management and economic development, international cooperation among the eight Arctic nations involving the Arctic's indigenous communities and decisions that affect them and enhancing scientific monitoring and research on local, regional and global environmental issues as they are playing out in the Arctic. The 2013 strategy consolidated those aims under three large headings, Protect US National and Homeland Security Interests, Promote Responsible Stewardship and Foster International Cooperation. That's not a change, it's just a binning of the different goals listed under the 2009 strategy. Reports are coming out at a great rate. Here are three of them. The National Strategy for the Arctic Region is on the right, Managing for the Future in a Rapidly Changing Arctic Report to the President and on the left Arctic Research Plan 2013 to 2017, these five year plans come out at intervals from the National Science and Technology Council which I also chair on behalf of the President. Complicated terrain, this Venn diagram is indicative of how many different entities are involved in these major bins of science and stewardship, energy development and transportation, security and international relations and of course they overlap and intersect which is one of the reasons that we need a systematic and comprehensive approach to coordination. This amazing diagram which if you stare at it too long may cause your heads to explode is a visualization of who's talking to whom just in the domain of research coordination and by the way we will post this PowerPoint on the OSTP website. I suspect you folks may post it as well and so any of you who want to stare at these in more detail and at this one in particular risk your head exploding it will be available but again what this basically illustrates is there is a tremendous amount of interaction that goes on among the various departments and agencies in the federal government that have equities, responsibilities and activities in the Arctic. The executive order came out on January 21st enhancing coordination of national efforts in the Arctic and again reiterates the strategic ecological, cultural and economic issues that constitute our national interest in the region and creates this Arctic Executive Steering Committee and this is what we hope to do with the Arctic Executive Steering Committee. One, help shape and reconcile priorities across all of these complicated interests and intersections, promote the coordinated implementation and evaluation of all of our activities in the Arctic, improve the coherence of our engagement as a federal government with both the state of Alaska and the Alaska Native communities and finally support the US chairmanship of the Arctic Council. So I'll close with that the Arctic Council again established in 1996 will be chaired by the United States in the period from this spring until the spring of 2017. The Arctic Council has the indicated working groups which correspond in substantial measure to the different categories of national interests of the United States that I've already described. US departments and agencies are already actively engaged in all of these working groups and indeed in their leadership for the most part but when we become the chair we really have the opportunity to steer the focus and the emphasis in the Arctic Council in the directions that we think best. The current chair is Canada by the way and we will succeed Canada in this role and with that I will stop and let my fellow panelists tell us more about some of the interesting details. Thanks Dr. Holdner that was super and yes we will definitely make those slides available on our website as well with the video of the presentation. Mr. Bajor, please. Thank you, thanks Heather. Got it, thanks. Thank you very much and thank you Dr. Holdren and Gary. It is a pleasure to appear with you this morning. A little bit about me, I'm actually an Alaskan and as everyone here is aware the reason we're engaged in this discussion is that we're an Arctic nation because of Alaska and so this is, I'll try not to be too much of a Homer throughout all of these remarks but as folks know me I can't help myself. As Heather described a little bit about my background I joined the Interior Department in 2010 to help the administration respond to the spill in the golf and to lead sweeping reforms both with respect to oversight of offshore oil and gas activity as well as raising standards under which that activity takes place. I was told it would be a six month assignment and it'll be five years, yeah it'll be five years in April. Part of the reason why I stayed involved though and this goes to my homerism is the opportunities that are present with respect to Alaska and the Arctic and the Interior Department's role in all of that and I am excited that there is an unprecedented level of coordination within the federal family and with the state of Alaska as well as the people who live there. That's been the result of a very focused effort that Dr. Holdren described over several years culminating in the recent executive order which is really intended to bring additional levels of focus, coherence and coordination on our role in the international community as an Arctic nation and so it is an exciting development and I'm very proud of it. I also chair the Interagency Working Group on coordination of federal energy permitting that was established, that working group was established in 2011 through executive order and it continues to this day and it is really designed to bring the federal family together to coordinate environmental reviews as well as permitting processes related to energy projects in Alaska. As an Alaskan I can tell you in case you don't already know, energy issues are the lifeblood of the state. Everyone in Alaska is focused on energy and resource development because of the economic opportunities but everyone in the state values the environmental resources as well. It's part of the reason why folks choose to live there and so getting that balance right has been something that the administration and the Interior Department has been quite focused on and I'll spend a little time describing some of our recent decisions. I'm sure folks have or may have questions about that. It was obviously a large part of the subject matter of Secretary Jules' hearing earlier this week as well as a large area of conversation when we were in Kotzebue last week as well and so I'll talk a little bit about those recent decisions and I'm happy to answer questions about them as well. The first of these recent decisions was in December the President withdrew from future oil and gas leasing Bristol Bay or as my former agency, bone would call it the North Aleutian Basin but it's really that decision which folks had been talking about for quite some time including in particular Alaska natives in Western Alaska and fishing interests in that part of the state have been advocating for a long period of time and so the President took action under section 12A of the Honor Continental Shelf Lands Act to remove from consideration for future offshore oil and gas leasing that area. Essentially to protect one of the richest fisheries in the entire world and a major economic driver for the state of Alaska. That's an open ended withdrawal and future President could elect to reverse that. Obviously we think that would be unwise. Part of the reason why we left it open is to give some certainty to the people Alaska natives who subsist from the fishing resources as well as the commercial interests there. Give them some certainty about the potential for offshore oil and gas leasing in the fishery. Under Bohm's process we go through a five year planning process as many of you may know. I didn't before I joined the Interior Department and I thought only Bolsheviks planned on a five year cycle but it turns out we do it too. And so we had to, we had the experience of having to revisit this question every five years and it caused a lot of anxiety for fishermen, both Alaska native and commercial fishermen and so I think the President quite wisely chose hey oil and gas as we'll talk about some more is entirely appropriate in certain areas but in other areas there's higher or different values to be protected including in this case the fishing interests or paramount. And so hopefully through that action we relieve some of the recurring anxiety and give folks some certainty about the fishery. More controversially in January the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Interior Department published its final CCP comprehensive conservation plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge which is sort of the northeast corner of the state. That I'll tell you again as an Alaskan this has been a controversial and emotional issue for Alaskans for more than 30 years. I remember in sixth grade debate class having the resolve to be the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be open to oil and gas drilling, pro and con. And so it is literally from grade schools all the way up to Washington DC in a subjected debate ever since Inilka, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act was passed in 1980. And what Inilka says is with respect to the refuge the coastal plain and that's really what the conversation is about is interest or opposition to oil and gas development on the coastal plain of the refuge which sometimes gets referred to as the 1002 area. Again a reference to Inilka. There is the most current which is largely out of date actually but the most current resource estimate for the coastal plain is about 10 billion barrels of potentially recoverable, technically recoverable oil. As Alaskans will tell you with concern over declining production from Prudhoe Bay and concern about keeping the trans Alaska pipeline system flowing, a lot of folks for a long time have looked to the coastal plain as the next potential big field. That obviously has caused a lot of controversy with the coastal plain. A lot of controversy with environmental interests and concern about the preservation of what is truly one of the last large intact ecosystems in the world and particularly the Arctic. And so you can see sort of where the controversy lies and it's embedded in the underlying statute of Inilka. And so what the CCP really does is it is the Fish and Wildlife Services Plan for managing the refuge. Under Inilka and there's history here but the current posture under Inilka is it would take an act of Congress to open the coastal plain to oil and gas drilling. In 1995 or 96 a bill passed to Congress to do that. President Clinton vetoed it at that time and since then there's been this kind of equipoise. Congress would have to act in order to open the coastal plain to drilling. Congress would have to act in order to establish it as wilderness and the protections that go along with that. In the absence of congressional action over the last 30 years the Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for continuing to manage the refuge. And so what the CCP really does if you drain away some of the emotion and rhetoric around it it says we're gonna continue managing the refuge the way we have which under Inilka calls for minimal management. The president if he saw the YouTube video put out on this said he would make a recommendation to Congress to establish wilderness not a monument make a recommendation to Congress to take action in favor of wilderness. Again, Congress would have to act one way or another but what that announcement did is establish the administration's position with respect to the refuge. And that's obviously become a heated issue especially with the delegation from my home state. Near and time to that announcement my former agency the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management put out its draft five year program. We're doing that again. That cycle has started again for the 2017 to 2022 period. That program included the two Arctic planning areas the Beaufort Sea and the Chukchi Sea for potential lease sales during that period as well as cook inlet which is the area in South Central Alaska near Anchorage which has some state production but no federal production yet. Accompanying that the publication of the draft proposed program was another decision by the president under section 12a of OXLA to withdraw again open ended withdrawal from perspective offshore oil and gas leasing certain areas that have been long established as deferred from leasing in order to protect subsistence activity. So this includes a 25 mile corridor on the coast of the Chukchi Sea to protect welling migration where welling activity by Alaska natives takes place. An area north of Barrow called Barrow's Canyon again where barrel whalers conduct their hunts and a small area off of cactovic in the Beaufort Sea again to protect an area that that cactovic whalers use for subsistence. These areas have been deferred from leasing. Another way to put it, there's been sort of agreement that they're not appropriate for leasing spanning administrations. And so what this decision did was again try to relieve folks from the anxiety that goes along with having to revisit this issue every five years. In my mind sort of not especially controversial the areas of existing leases especially in the Chukchi Sea but also in the Beaufort are largely unaffected by the decision. All of the existing leases are valid existing rights. What this and most of the perspective areas in the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort where there's industry interest and potential development are still on the table for future leasing. We really focused on those areas that are either important to subsistence well-established as such or the area known as Hanashol which is defined by shallow bathymetry and is sort of a driver of the ecosystem in the Chukchi Sea and is sort of an aggregation point for a lot of species including walrus. Again, an area important to the ecosystem in my mind shouldn't be particularly controversial. There's some nine or 10 existing leases within the Hanashol area. Those leases are still valid. It just won't be considered for future leasing but the most perspective areas in the Chukchi Sea including where the vast majority of the current leases aren't affected by the decision at all. But again because of the controversy around the CCP some of that emotion and concern has carried over into the decision related to potential future oil and gas leasing. Couple other points with respect to the Chukchi Sea. Last week, BOM, my former agency, completed its supplemental environmental impact statement related to sale 193 which was conducted back in 2008. All of the current offshore oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea were issued pursuant to sale 193. It has been plagued by litigation essentially ever since then. The Ninth Circuit last January found specific defects in the original EIS that was conducted back in or completed back in 2007. Remanded to BOM for curative NEPA work. Shell essentially lost a drilling season. As a result of that we had to suspend the leases, conduct the curative NEPA. We completed that. It was a very aggressive timetable for completion of the work. BOM put in a lot of resources, a lot of manpower into that effort. I think did a fantastic job with the SCIS and now the posture is the secretary will make a decision in the coming weeks about whether to affirm that sale. Shell is moving forward with its plans for exploration this drilling season. We've been working with Shell while also completing the environmental impact statement on their plans and providing feedback with respect to those including lessons learned from Shell's 2012 exploration program. And we continue doing that work. With respect to the onshore, the Bureau of Land Management in the Interior Department recently issued its recorded decision with respect to the Greater Mooses Tooth onshore development project in the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska. It will be the first production from federal lands onshore going into taps once it is developed. The decision allows for a road to connect the development and support the development. It also provides for a robust mitigation package because of potential impacts to subsistence, particularly subsistence activity from a adjacent village of New Wixit. What is, I think, forward-looking about how that mitigation package will work? You know, mitigation's well-established concept for federal permitting in the lower 48 on renewable conventional energy projects. But what's unique here is there will be a mitigation fund but decision-making about where to put those dollars will be driven by local communities. And so the first step in consistent with what Dr. Holdern was describing as our commitment to engaging local communities on resource development that could impact or benefit them is the development of a regional mitigation strategy that will be coordinated among the federal family, Alaska Natives in the MPRA, including folks from New Wixit and the State of Alaska to decide, okay, we have a fund. Where do we make best use of those dollars? Finally, last Friday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement put out a draft joint proposed rule related to Arctic-specific standards for offshore oil and gas exploration in the U.S. Arctic. Those are largely, they largely codify and further develop Arctic-specific standards that we applied with respect to Shell's 2012 program. They also incorporate lessons learned from that program and are really the first regionally tailored offshore regulations that have been proposed. It won't surprise any of you that many of our standards were designed decades ago for the shallow water Gulf of Mexico and don't fit especially well with the unique operating conditions and challenges of working offshore in the Arctic. And so this is an effort to codify those standards, apply them to any operator who had proposed activity in the Arctic and also consistent with our leadership on the Arctic Council, really put down a marker for the international community on the appropriate way and the appropriate standards under which offshore oil and gas exploration activity should go forward. And so we're very supportive of offshore oil and gas. The potential especially in the Chukchi is enormous, but there's very little margin for air there. And there are people who in a very real way rely on the Arctic Ocean to put food on the table. Alaska Natives will tell you, the ocean is our garden and it's true, they literally go there for sustenance. And so that is something that is a value that is reflected in these standards. And I'm happy to say one, I think Shell embraces completely. As their activity goes forward in the future, they will literally be working in folks' gardens. And we hope that Shell and we hope that the standards that we put out carry that with them every day during the operation. So that's an overview. And again, I'd be happy to answer a question. Tommy, thank you so much. For those of us who aren't an expert in this area, we've seen a lot of these decisions they've been coming at. It's been hard to understand them. So we really appreciate you putting them in a very clear and concise context. Thank you so much. So if there is a drilling season, we know that there will be an enhanced Coast Guard presence for that drilling season. So over to you, Gary. Thank you. Absolutely. What I'd like, I'm Gary Raskot as Heather indicated. I've worked most of the waterways policy for all the waterways in America, but I'm also retired Coast Guard officer, ship captain who sailed in the Bering Sea in the Gulf of Alaska. So have a good sense for what's up there, but all those things aren't why I'm here. I'm also, as one of my other duties, the coordinator for the implementation of the Coast Guard's Arctic policy. And it might seem a little strange that we've got all these people working on the Arctic policy. Why would we need a sort of a senior level coordinator? But I think that drives right to the value of the executive order and the structure that that set up. We determined early on as we published the Coast Guard's Arctic strategy right after the national strategy was published. And I'll touch and review a couple of our driving lines of effort in a minute, but I wanted to sort of touch on sort of the agency and the department perspective on the executive order and the structure that it brings to the federal process. And why I think that it will be very helpful in sort of furthering the efforts laid out in the implementation plan. I think it's very telling, your one slide that I think was so germane to the whole discussion here was that one with the spaghetti diagram with all those. There are a lot, I mean, make no mistake, both federally, state, local, every, there are a lot of people working hard to do the right thing for the Arctic. And unfortunately, some of the coordination probably wasn't as good as it could be. And this is not a new problem. I was actually on the national security staff in 2004, and we looked at maritime security at the time. And we saw since 2001 that we had a lot of departments and agencies working very hard on maritime security, but they weren't working together. And there were probably a lot of redundancies and gaps. And I think we see or we feel the same way about the Arctic right now, that there's a lot of folks out there trying to do the right thing, but we don't have that, we have the strategy, we have the implementation plan, but you're reading the implementation plan maybe a little different than mine. And there's a lot of Arctic working groups out there. And what I think the value from a department and agency perspective of what the executive order brings to this is an executive steering committee to tell us what's the number one of all the number ones that are out there. And how do we prioritize our efforts in, what I think everyone will admit is probably a constrained federal budget, but what is the most important of the important? And one of the key elements of the executive order is that the first thing that we have to do, and I had the pleasure of working on a group that was able to put that together and there's several others in the room that had that same experience, is to do a gaps and redundancies analysis of all the efforts ongoing right now. And I think what that will show us is to where there might be a little bit of slack in the system where we can maybe apply it to other issues. I think you'll know, and many of you participate in these things, there's certainly a lot of Arctic working groups out there right now. And maybe we can centralize some of the focus there because it's the same people. I've seen several of you here at CSIS events and it's all the same people working on it and they just go to different meetings and say sort of the same thing. So what we're trying to do is figure out how to streamline that effort under the executive officer that will be appointed by the White House to sort of manage that implementation. And why we think that's important is because there are limited resources. I mean, one of the things that was center point in our discussions and Tommy and Dr. Holm both alluded to it is I don't get the sense, and I'm certain that most people in this room don't get the sense that the American public realizes that the United States is an Arctic nation, we are not a nation with an Arctic state. And we are up there and we need to understand that but there just isn't that galvanizing event there. And so as we try to bring attention to the many issues that are going on with increasing ship transits and other things, it's just hard to sort of muster all the resources that are required to address such a complex and demanding environment to operate. We see from the Coast Guard perspective, there's more water than ice ever was. And we don't take a formal position on why that is but there's more water there. So that means there'll be more human activity. We see that human activity divided into really from a maritime perspective four areas. There'll be more transits be at the North and Sea Rout or the Northwest Passage. There will be more energy exploration. There will be more ecotourism and there will be more fishing. And I think the jury's still out a little bit as to how far north the fish stocks will go but there's clearly further north activity than we see. And all four of those levels of activity or sort of buckets of activity demand Coast Guard action. You know, we are hearing of and they're selling tickets for a thousand person cruise ship to make a cruise up there. Think about what a mass at sea rescue looks like up there and then think about, now that's one thing to think about in the Caribbean when you have sort of all the infrastructure there. Now think about it up in the high North where there's no deep water port. There's, it's three, four days sail to get anything up there. And we're thinking about it. Trust me, we are thinking about it every day but there's just a really complex issues here. And so in recognizing that the Coast Guard put together its Arctic strategy and we're sort of right on the heels with the national strategy. And in that strategy, we really focus on three lines of effort. One is improving awareness. We need to know what's going on up there on the water and in our ports. Modernizing governance, sort of bringing together a 21st century look at how we do things up there. And because of the demanding environment, the limited resources, the last one, the last two are very closely linked. The last line of effort is broadening partnerships but no one can do it alone. I mean, I said, Heather alluded to my last job which was much more security related. And I used to say, in today's world there's very single, very few single agency problems and even fewer single agency solutions. Well, I think the Arctic has that in spades because there are very few things that we can do alone as a Coast Guard or alone as Boehmer or Bessie or any of us. We all have to work together and we need to have that coordination well sort of well greased and well connected. And we really believe that is what the executive order brings to this. It brings a sort of a focus. It brings a senior level look at where we're at and it demands federal attention to where we're going. And the other piece of it, and Tommy alluded to this a little bit, it also calls out very clearly a responsibility for engagement at the local level and we're working hard to develop that program and see what the best practices are. And I know my colleagues are looking from the local level all the way to the DC level as to what's worked out there, what hasn't worked and how do we give a consistent federal message to regardless of who's visiting you, whether it's someone from the Coast Guard or someone from the Department of Interior because on the other side of the story, the folks that we're working with and for out there, they have limited resources as well and they need to know what our priorities are because I think they're willing to match them because we all want to move this whole thing forward. But if they're getting different stories from different agencies as to what is the most important thing we need to work on in the near term, it's very one confusing and it just slows everything down. So I think the piece of the executive order that demands the sort of unified plan for tribal engagement is a critical element that we will all reap benefits from. We've got a couple of, I'd like to just highlight a couple of, so we've given you the three main lines of effort in the Coast Guard strategy. We've got about 12 areas of emphasis that we're working on and I just want to, I won't go through all 12, but I do want to touch on a couple of them. One is to enhance our operations up there and I think some of you are familiar with our Operation Arctic Shield up there where we work offshore. Yeah, and we are anxiously awaiting the finalization of Shell's plans to figure out exactly how much Coast Guard we need up there because we are committed to making sure that this is done safely and effectively. So we are looking very much forward to that and we continue to use those operations to learn how to operate up there, to establish, right now we're mobile and seasonal, which means we're there when the people are there. We haven't built any big infrastructure up there, but we're trying to figure out what the best way to go is on that. I think we saw the high water mark, no pun intended, in vessel traffic in 2012 when Shell was up there last, seen a little dip in that, but that it's still well above the average norms and we are reacting to that. The other piece that we're putting together and this really goes to this broadening partnerships piece is, Dr. Holdren alluded to the Arctic Council. Underneath the Arctic Council as a sort of independent but complementary body, we're putting together, along with all of the eight Arctic Council nations, what we're calling the Arctic Coast Guard Forum. We have a model for this. We have an Atlantic Coast Guard Forum and a Pacific Coast Guard Forum and it's really a body to come together with the eight Arctic nations such that we can learn from each other on best practices as how best to conduct these complex maritime operations in a demanding environment. And how do we, as Coast Guards, work maritime issues in the most effective way and we look forward to learning to folks. And this is real. We've got eight nations coming, March 25th and 26th to DC to finalize the terms of reference. It's what we call the experts meeting. So it's at a little lower level and we're planning for the initial Arctic Coast Guard Forum meeting with the heads of the Coast Guards in the fall, September, October timeframe and we've got all eight nations committed to that. And we just see it as a first stepping point to really sort of, I get sort of in trouble from my folks when I say we're operationalizing what's going on but it really is. These are the people that are on the water and this is how we sort of operationalize some of those things that the Arctic Council has put together and other folks and this is how we move forward on this. And the other thing I wanted to mention is our Center for Arctic Studies and Policy at the Coast Guard Academy. We're just hanging out the shingle on that but we see it as a way to centralize we are not gonna do climate study. We think we have enough people doing that but what we need to understand is how does that climate change is affect the way you do Coast Guard operations. So we see this as the academic arm of the Arctic Coast Guard Forum and we're looking forward to, we've got a couple folks up there right now. We just got it going this fall with Admiral Neffinger went up and cut the ribbon on it in October and we look forward to sort of making that a center of thought for Coast Guard and Maritime. Coast Guard with a little CG, all Coast Guards work in their operations and learning from each other. And with that, I think I've said enough. Gary, thank you. That was terrific. Really fantastic presentations. There's a lot to dive into. We've got a nice amount of time for some Q&A. With your permission, I'd like to throw out a few questions and then turn our audience over and have them ask you tough questions. Just a reminder, this is an on-the-record discussion, of course. And when we get ready to turn to our audience, please, if you could identify yourself as well as your affiliation and then if you direct your question to a particular speaker, that would be great. I have to say as a watcher of US Arctic policy, I think this executive order is really important. We had written a report a few years ago and I thought it was gonna be an easy task. Just go ahead and describe all the US at the federal level, agencies that have a hand in Arctic policy. 80 pages later, my brain looked like that diagram. It was amazing. And in some ways, the policy has been very continuous for many, many decades. It's the coordination that has just been the Achilles heel of this effort. So I think what's so vital is this is now at a very senior level. It is galvanized agencies at the sub-cabinet level, which is great. And so I think this is an important step, but I do have some questions. So if I may fire away. I think that the ingredient, the missing ingredient and all of the really wonderful richness of the Arctic strategies that have come forward, the national, the White House and the different agencies, they've been great. They've described the problem accurately. They have been absolutely silent on budget. Absolutely silent. And I think Washington hands that follow policy. That's great. That strategy is great. Show me where it is in the budget. Show me who's got that. And that to me is the frustration here. And as I poured over the EO, I love the prioritization. Love it, love it, love it. But I didn't see money. I didn't see, and I'm very concerned, particularly with the U.S. Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, which is a wonderful way for us to get our leadership and our engagement strategy going. There's no new money in that either. So maybe more to Dr. Holdren, but to Gary and Tommy as well. Where are we focusing our resources, our budget, because we're talking a lot. We're not putting that budget forward. And I'll put that over there a few more, but I'll start with that one. Okay, well, I'm happy to start with that one. And something that Gary said a few minutes ago is certainly germane, which is that in terms of the understanding of the American public of the existence and importance of these issues, that is lacking, and we need to boost it as part of the solution to the question of the budget. Because until you have widespread public support, getting budget increases in this very constrained environment will continue to be a challenge. With that said, there are budgets across the participating departments and agencies that are already addressing the many, many questions and interests that were identified here. It's not that there is no money for this. There's money for it in interior. There's money for it in DHS and the Coast Guard. There's money for it in the US Global Change Research Program, which has 13 agencies and an overall budget in excess of two and a half billion dollars a year. So while we are not flush, all of these entities have a lot of other competing demands on the money. It is not as if we are unfunded. The second thing I would say, and this relates to the question that some people have is why is OSTP, reading this, I will maybe answer that in some detail, but relevant to the budget part of the question, OSTP collaborates very closely with the Office of Management and Budget in addressing the budgets of every single department and agency, which is a participant in the Arctic domain. So we have a voice at the innermost table. In fact, at the end of the budget process, the head of OMB and I meet with the president and the chief of staff to assist the president in making the final decisions on what's going into his budget. And so OSTP is in a very good position together with OMB to help with the budget issue. Just to answer the other implicit question. If you think about where in the executive branch is it possible effectively to coordinate among cabinet departments and agencies? Has to be in the White House. Has to be in the executive office of the president. You then ask where in the executive office of the president the options are the National Security Council. If they chair it, it looks like security is the principal issue. The National Economic Council, if they chair it, it looks like economic development is the principal issue. Domestic Policy Council has a big chunk of energy and climate change. If they chair it, it looks like it's all about energy and climate change. If CEQ chairs it, Council on Environmental Equality, looks like it's all about conservation and environment. OSTP has a piece of every one of those issues. We have the science and technology dimensions of the national security issue, the environmental conservation issue, the energy and climate issue. And so it is in fact quite logical for OSTP to chair it because if any of the other entities did it, it would send a message about the primacy of their particular thing. And our view is that this is a wide array of national interests which need to be protected and nurtured and advanced and that we don't wanna send a message that one particular one is above all the others. That is always my first question I'm asked. I'm so glad you answered that question on Y-O-S-T-P. Tommy Gary, I just wanna turn to you on any budget issues and maybe Gary, I'll be a little bit of a rascal and say does the Coast Guard feel well resourced to handle the increased presence? And I'm so sorry, I'm being naughty. Well, I will suggest that the Coast Guard is appropriately resourced for the current human activity in there. We are always looking towards the future and I think we talked about that and we see that increasing. And I failed to mention when I talked about our strategy, our strategy is a 10 year strategy. So we see the Arctic as a real opportunity to maybe get it right for once from a federal perspective because we have a little bit of time to sort of contemplate what's going on. Now, of course, we're all gonna be looking to see what the level of activity is and what the right level of assets are for the drilling this summer, if that goes as planned. But there's some internal adjustments to be made there. But I think we're on a longer plane than some other, and that's exactly where I think we are having a hard time getting people's attention because, and I'm really bad here, but people say it all, we're on a glacial pace in the Arctic as we grow here. It really is not, you're not going, when you say there's a 50% increase in shipping, it's 20 to 40. It's not 1,000 to 5,000 transits and so it's hard to get that attention. But I think the other piece here is that the executive order and its demand to look at these gaps and redundancy also provides an avenue perhaps for a relook at the prioritization of existing funding. And if we find out that we have two or three agencies sort of doing the same thing, maybe we don't call it the same thing, but we are doing the same thing, there may be a way to reassign through the federal process and through the executive order of the president just to look at some efficiencies there and maybe be able to put money towards some higher priority issues. So I know I didn't exactly answer your question, Heather, but I got as close as I can. Heather, can I say one quick thing? I just have to comment on the glacial pace. The good news, Gary, is that the pace of movement of glaciers is speeding up. Fair enough? Good to hear. That's also bad news, by the way. And we do appreciate good Arctic humor here at CSIS. Tommy, before I turn to you, I want to add a question so after you respond to the budget issue, my next question is really, I think one of the critical elements of the executive order was about the state federal coordination and welcome thoughts on, I think it's to be determined or still being worked out, the presence of the state of Alaska on this steering committee, but clearly whenever the federal government visits, whether that's Secretary Jewell before that other state department colleagues, they've really gotten blasted. They feel like the state isn't being well coordinated. They feel that their interests aren't being heard. This could be unfair of me characterizing it. Feel free to push back on that. But this is really, I feel like the state is in one place on the economic development. I feel like Washington's much more on the conservation stewardship element of it. There's a balance to be found. How does getting a stronger Alaskan voice here in this process, what's the vision? So let me just amplify one point about the budget and Gary sort of alluded to it and give you one concrete example of what the opportunity is under the executive order. The steering committee established by the executive order met just last Friday and Dr. Holdren chaired that meeting. And a big part of the conversation was going back to each agency and saying, okay, what are you working on? What are the synergies? Who should be at the table? And what resources can you bring to bear? Folks may have seen the front page of the Washington Post article yesterday on Kivalina. Kivalina is, for those of you who didn't see the article, Kivalina is a village of about 400 people north of Katzabue on the Chuck G.C. And they are on the point of the spear with respect to climate change. And under very real threat of being literally an undated and wiped out by the increasing intensity of storms due in part to a lot of factors but also related to retreating sea ice. As the sea ice moves out, there's just a lot more space for the ocean to develop energy that impacts the coastal communities. A big part of the conversation we had was, all right, everybody who has across the federal family who has equities in this area, what can you do about it? And how are we gonna marshal resources across the agencies for it? And I'll tell you, and that's just one example, across all of these topics, there is a lot of enthusiasm for that type of exercise. And so I don't disagree with you. I don't think we've done a good job explaining to the American people how much federal resource goes into the Arctic. And that's part of what I think the exercise is gonna be is making clear and looking for those opportunities where we can bring resources in. And I think the executive order finally gives us an opportunity and an avenue through which to do that to sort of take a real look at what's going on and where there may need to be additional resources brought to bear avenues for thinking about that. With respect to state and federal coordination, again, just to sort of bring a little Alaskan perspective on it, this is not a unique issue to Alaskan. This is a common issue across the United States and especially in the West where the Interior Department does a lot of business. There's always concern, some of it quite legitimate, that decisions are being made in Washington, D.C. without a real understanding of the effects that they could have in out West or in Alaska. I can tell you that is very intentionally part of what the executive order is designed to help with to bring Alaska into that conversation. I'll tell you with Governor Walker, I think we'll have a fantastic partner in this conversation. He is very interested in working constructively with the state. He's one of the many voices there who hasn't been pleased to say the least with some of these decisions, but he's willing to be at the table and he's willing to work with us on decision making going forward. And so that's a commitment that this administration's made. It's an opportunity presented by the executive order and it's an important thing that has to happen, especially in Alaska, but across the U.S. too. Can I add one quick point on that? Just to emphasize something that Tommy just said, we just had a few days ago, the annual meeting of the National Governors Association, Governor Walker was there. There was an interaction between the governor and the president about exactly this issue. It is absolutely right that this issue arises with many states, not just with Alaska. President Obama is very focused on addressing that with better communication with the governors and did a lot of that over the several days of the National Governors Association. But additionally about Alaska, I would say, we are actually in quite a good position to address this problem. Number one, the Arctic Executive Steering Committee has the explicit responsibility of fomenting a better and more coordinated communication strategy with the state. Secondly, we've got a number of Alaskans in crucial positions. We've got Tommy in the Department of Interior. We have Fran Olmer as head of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, former Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, former Chancellor of the University of Alaska in Anchorage, and now in addition to her role as chairman of the Arctic Research Commission, a special advisor to the Secretary of State on Arctic issues. And I would also add that while I'm not an Alaskan, my daughter was an Alaskan for 15 years. So, we're everywhere. Yeah, exactly. No, thank you. Thank you so much. My last question before I turn the questions over to the audience. Actually, it's a nice segue into the Arctic Council and the upcoming U.S. chairmanship. So help me understand how the Arctic Executive Steering Group will work in cooperation with Admiral Papp, the new U.S. special representative to the Arctic region, and sort of help me know, because while the U.S. agenda that has been laid out to climate change, a lot of renewable energy issues for indigenous peoples, how does this effort coordinate with that, just more of a general nature, and then just to touch on the geopolitics of the Arctic, Russia. There have been some press reports and some concerns because our bilateral relationship has been so deeply impacted by the events in Ukraine, that there could be some preventing very senior, we've stopped military to military cooperation. This could maybe hamper Gary, the Arctic Coast Guard forums, eventual evolution. It may prevent our scientists from collaborating together. We are neighbors, and the Bering Strait is going to be a busy place in the coming years and needing that bilateral coordination. So if I can push us out a little bit from the domestic to the international, getting the panelist thoughts on the impact of Russian relations into U.S. Arctic policy. Let me start with the issue of the Arctic Council and how the Arctic Executive's During Committee will interact with it, and then I'll pass the difficult Russia question to my colleague, the colleague to my right. First of all, Admiral Papp and Fran Ulmer, both of whom are going to be deeply engaged through the State Department in the U.S. and the Arctic Council, both sit on the Arctic Executive's During Committee. And Admiral Papp was at the first meeting last Friday. Fran Ulmer was only able to join by telephone, which he did join and participate. I think of these activities as joined at the hip and that one of the major functions, as I indicated in my talk, one of the major functions of the Arctic Executive's During Committee is to support the U.S. chairmanship in the Arctic Council. So I don't see any problem there. I see a facilitation through the interagency engagement with the Arctic Council effort through the State Department as being a big plus. I might have some things to say about Russia, but I'm going to turn to Gary Rassigoff. I have a question for you, Dr. Holdren, at the end, so I'll... No, I think that it's been my observation as we've put together the Arctic Coast Guard Forum that you need all eight Arctic nations and there is Russia's a major player there and in fact, other nations have told us that unless the Russians are an active participant without what's the point, we need to get everybody or we won't be able to move forward in the way we want to. And I think it's been my observation that we as a country, while we have differences with the Russian government, we continue to seek opportunities to engage them in things that we agree with. And I think that it's... And I'm not going to quote it, but I think there's an Arctic Council resolution that we all agree that we need to protect people in the Arctic, we need to protect the Arctic itself and we need to look for the right type of exploitation. That's probably the wrong word, of resources and how to do that correctly. And I think that manifests itself in the recent SAR, Search and Rescue Agreement, as well as the oil spill response agreements that came out of the Arctic Council over the last few years. And clearly the Russians were full partners in working through those agreements. And we have invited a Russian, their version of the Coast Guard to attend and they have accepted at the experts meeting. Of course it's day by day, and right now we're receiving full support of the U.S. government to do that and we look forward to engaging in the discussions for our common interests in the Arctic, which are really people in the environment. So I think if you focus on those sort of things on a regional basis, I think the cooperation will continue. I'm with the Interior Department. Oh, but you have international activities, absolutely. Well, great. Well, I'm sorry, I have many more questions, but I have to stop myself. Let me open it up for the audience if they have any questions or comments or I'll keep going on my list. I'm gonna keep going on my list. Okay, well, you keep thinking of those. I do have one in the back, my apologies, thank you. Thank you, good spot. I don't wanna block the camera. I'm Paul Caderio from the Mung School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Thank you, this has been a very interesting panel. I wonder though, if there's a broader architecture that you should be looking at, like even when you got down to all the interests and then all the actors on that, and then the three bold points, does it not all relate back to climate change? Something on which the United States has had some difficulty coming to a sort of national consensus about and which clearly may be globally or from a worldwide basis, the only thing on which one might be able to agree about the Arctic, including maybe freezing the petroleum exploration there because these are gonna say there's gonna be law, these are locked up assets by the time we spend to invest, by the time we comply with all the requirements about safety, and by the time we get it to market, there's gonna be laws, carbon taxes. So I'm just wondering whether there's a broader architecture that perhaps involves the State Department and other agencies of the US government that might be more compelling and might in fact provide a better organizational framework for what clearly like many other aspects of US government organization and policy is sort of a nest of interests within the executive branch and then of course on the hill, just because traditionally that's the way things get done in the US government. Not to say that isn't wrong or isn't right, but at the same time, I'm just thinking that a broader focus might provide a better organizing principle for the important work that we've heard about today. Yeah, I will take a crack at that. Obviously, as I indicated in my remarks, climate change and particularly rapid climate change in the Arctic is an influence on virtually every other one of the national interests we talked about. But it is only an influence, it's not the whole story and there would be some liability in trying to argue that climate change needs to be the principal prism through which we view Arctic issues. One of those liabilities as part of your comment suggested would be in the US political system, there are many things we might get agreement on that we would lose agreement on if we insisted that everything be seen through the prism of climate change. I think most folks understand and accept that the climate is changing and it's changing rapidly, particularly in the Arctic. When the Senate voted on this matter, it voted 98 to one in favor of the proposition that climate change is real and not a hoax. The argument comes with some of the members of the Congress on the question of what's causing it. But if you simply accept that the climate is changing and observe that it's changing and look at the effects it's having on your other interests, that certainly provides insight into what kinds of resources are going to be needed, what kinds of adjustments in policy are going to be needed. But again, it's never going to be the only factor. And so I would not embrace the notion that we should somehow make an overarching climate framework the essential part of our Arctic policy. It's an indispensable part and it influences everything else, but I wouldn't use it as the principle prism. If I can sort of pull that question a little further, one of the terms of art that came out with the national strategy was integrated Arctic management, meaning how the science and really that whole-of-government approach can implement as policy decisions are made, whether that's sectioning off portions of the Chutky and the Boatford, Dr. Haldred and our panelists, I have to say I understand the term, I don't understand how it works in practice and how would you be bringing integrated Arctic management into the work of the steering committee? How does science and our resources, which I always explain them, the United States is an Arctic science power, that is where our resources, our depth really is. But I don't know if whether all that wonderful science is having a greater impact on our long-term policy decisions when it comes to development or infrastructure requirements of the future. I will try to be briefer than I've been in answering previous questions. I think science is playing a major role in informing U.S. policy in the Arctic. I think you see that all across the board, across the national interests that we've talked about, ranging from the interests of indigenous peoples whose lifestyles and communities are at risk from climate change, to how we think about conservation in the Arctic, to how we think about economic and energy development in the Arctic, to how we think about our maritime opportunities and responsibilities. Again, I think that one of the functions of this new Arctic Executive Steering Committee is to make sure that continues to happen. You saw on the diagram, that spaghetti diagram that makes your head explode, that there is a tremendous amount of coordination within the bodies that are doing Arctic science, and those bodies are virtually all connected to other aspects of our Arctic policy. So I see this as something we really do have our arms around and will continue to with the help of this new Executive Steering Committee. Hello, I'm Larry Aminert, Head of the Mental Resources Program with the United States Geological Survey. My question in a nutshell is about the role of China and the context for this question is that even though China isn't an Arctic nation, technically, they are certainly one of the larger drivers for much of what's going on in the world scene. And in particular, the area that I'm involved in mental resources, we're working with the Geological Surveys for all the other Arctic countries to produce a map of the mental resources of the circum-artic area. And one of the drivers for that is the increased utilization by China of resources in Northern Arctic areas, particularly Norway, Sweden, and Finland, being transported across the Northern Passage to China, and that may well become one of the more significant transportation issues for the Coast Guard and otherwise. So my question again comes back to how do we engage China in this internationally when they're not technically an Arctic nation? Well, China has asked for and been granted observer status in the Arctic Council. So they are present in the meetings of the Arctic Council as observers as opposed to voting members. So that is one connection. There are also connections through the science dimension where we have a bilateral science and technology cooperation agreement with China, which is overseen by a joint commission at the ministerial level, which means I co-chair it on the US side with the Minister of Science and Technology on the Chinese side. And we engage in those meetings, again, pretty much the same array of departments and agencies that you saw on that diagram. And that is another forum in which we can exchange views, notes, and even develop where appropriate cooperative activities in relation to the science dimension of the Arctic. But I think the other dimensions might better be commented on by others here. I have nothing to offer on that. One last question, Rob, in the back. I'm Rob Hammett. I'm a student at Seiss across the street. And I wanted to ask, it seems that there is, especially in building US government capabilities in the Arctic, there's a kind of chicken and the egg problem because the capabilities are being developed largely to enable the private sector to move into this region. But the private sector is not gonna move into this region until those capabilities are fully developed, apart from a couple, you know, vanguard operations like shells. And so how do we determine what pace that the government, you know, how fast we need to get Coast Guard ships up into the Arctic if there's not a demand for them yet, but we anticipate it in the future? And I think just to broaden that question out a little bit, again, getting back to that, finding the balance. There may be, it's an incorrect perception, but there's a perception that while other Arctic nations are very focused on economic development, the United States is hesitant, it's reluctant, it's not sure, it's more of a protective stewardship crouch. Again, that may be an incorrect characterization. Will the steering committee have an even balance on economic development as it will on obviously preserving and protecting this pristine environment? Well, if you look at the membership of the steering committee, you see that the answer is yes, basically all of the relevant departments and agencies, including those focused on economic development, energy resources, and so on are represented. Treasury is represented, the energy department is represented, and they're represented at a very high level. Again, we're not picking and choosing and saying one thing is more important than all the others. Our task is to reconcile the priorities. I also wanna add one point that I should have mentioned before about the China issue. We also have with China something called the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which meets every year and it is led on the US side by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, State Department responsible for the strategic part of the dialogue, Treasury responsible for the economic part. Again, all the key departments and agencies from both countries participate in that, and given the State Department's particular role in the US chairmanship of the Arctic Council, that forum is also a very viable one for engaging China on their activities in the Arctic and the intersection with our interests. And I can say a couple words about sort of the balance issue, kind of shorthand economic development relative to conservation. Part of the reason why I wanted to describe some of the recent decisions made by the Interior Department is because I really think if you look at them sort of one by one, but then sort of put them together, I think it is a reflection of this administration taking very seriously the need for balance and having an understanding of both the unique opportunities that the Arctic presents in terms of conservation, but also the unique opportunities that the Arctic this region presents for the United States and State of Alaska in terms of economic development. And so this administration in 2012 permitted the first offshore exploration activity in the Arctic Ocean in well over two decades. This administration did this. And so any perception that there's hostility in the administration writ large to economic development in the Arctic, I think is a misperception. There is a strong concern, and I believe this is appropriate, that activity, economic activity, oil and gas activity, offshore and onshore in the Arctic, as it goes forward be done the right way. And that is really your point about integrated Arctic management, for example, that's sort of at the heart of it. What is special about the Arctic and part of why I love being in government at this moment in time is it presents a real opportunity, not only for coordination, but for vision, right? There's an opportunity in the Arctic to transcend project by project considerations and look at the landscape in a way that is true in the lower 48, but doesn't present quite the same, quite the same opportunity. And it's with that spirit, honestly, that we go into these decisions. And I think there's a reason why you've seen sort of a presentation of these decisions grouped the way that you have, because I think they help tell that story. With the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, you have a special unique intact ecosystem that frankly doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. In the offshore areas and in MPRA, you see some opportunities for economic development and we wanna encourage that and we wanna make sure it goes forward in the right way. And with the standards that the Interior Department recently put out with respect to offshore oil and gas exploration, I think, as I said before, you see this administration seizing the opportunity to show leadership on not only supporting that activity, but articulating the right way in our view to go about it. And so where others see sort of ping-ponging or whatever, I actually think there's real coherence and real strategic thought being given to it. Thank you so much. We have 30 seconds, literally. And in the implementation plan, there was mention of perhaps a White House, a summit, a bigger conversation about the Arctic. I think all of you have really underscored the need for education, public awareness, conversation about the United States as an Arctic nation. Dr. Holdren, any thinking because the U.S. chairmanship actually stretches to administrations. We will finish in the spring of 2017 will be a new administration. What is the thinking to sort of the conclusion of the Obama administration, hosting some sort of a broader conversation about the Arctic? The short answer is yes, we are thinking about that. The notion of communicating very broadly about the Arctic is certainly part of our assignment and we're on it. Well, great for start, if I may say so, because we had such great colleagues here who are extremely busy but gave very generously of their time to really give us a really interesting picture. We will follow this story and we wish all of you the very best of luck and the Arctic Executive Steering Committee. Please join me in thanking our panelists.