 Okay, good morning. Welcome. My name is Andy Cuchins. I'm director of the Russia and Eurasia program here and it's a great pleasure to be chairing this panel and to be involved in this in this conference. You know I'm at a stage in life where now in my mid fifties were one sort of reviews sort of things and thinks about success or failure. When I was younger and I was training as a sovietologist and people had asked me what my job was I would say well I'm a training to save the world from Armageddon and so every day I could clearly identify success or failure is that I was still alive. As I got a little bit older and now as I look back at things what has been the what has been sort of the common theme throughout my career and it's been trying to build mutual understanding and cooperation between the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation and the United States of America and I'm afraid while I've been pretty successful on saving the world from Armageddon I haven't done so well on that on that second task but as the discussion suggested I think on the first panel we do believe there is a lot of a lot of area for cooperation here on the set of issues around the Arctic between our between our two countries. I'd like to express my thanks to to Heather Conley for really taking the lead and is the pioneer I think in the Washington area in the policy community on work on the Arctic going back five years in these hallowed halls of the house that Henry built as I refer to our new building. Heather is a familiarly known as the polar princess and most of most of most of most of what I have learned I have learned from from Heather and very grateful to be working with her together on this on this project. I'd also like to express a special thanks to Andrei Andrei Zagorsky an old friend of more than more than 20 years working together in various various different modalities and probably Andrei is the second person that I've learned the most from about about the Arctic and particularly in a couple of conferences that were held last fall the one in December that we in the Pew Charitable Trust did together with the the Russian International Affairs Council in in early December has already been referred to but there was also a very useful and important conference that was held jointly by Sipri and Imamo in which in Moscow in end of the end of September in which Andrei was also the well as I think the Russians would say the motor the motor which if anyone needs a translation that's the motor okay behind. You know last summer and the fall of the fall of last year the U.S. Russia relationship was not in very good shape I mean I know with what's happened in the last few months things are much are much bleaker but things were pretty bleak then but it was clear to us then that this area of work is one in which we share a lot of common interests just parenthetically a lot of people now are talking about you know Russia's pivot to Asia and the and the great potential for the Sino-Russian the Sino-Russian relationship you know let's not forget that I think a year or so ago at the last time the Arctic Council Council met I don't think that our Russian colleagues were that enthusiastic about China's application for observer status within the Council they were very very enthusiastic however about about about Japan and it's important to keep things like this in in context and somehow we must find a way to actually to walk and chew gum at the at the same time those common interests that we share on the Arctic they have not gone away they are there and it would seem rather silly but this happens all the time on policy issues in Washington and not only in Washington this spillover effect were unfortunately we seem to cut off our nose despite our face by failing to move forward in one area of one area of cooperation when the overall relationship is spoiled by by by something else so hopefully with this effort today in our continued efforts we can try to overcome this this problem and a great place to start with this is in the area of scientific research and and cooperation at this you know a clear database clear understanding of what the actual facts are on the ground or in the water as this may be is or under the under the water is something that everybody is going to is going to to benefit on and that is the the topic for our panel right right now I'm going to we're going to change the order somewhat and we're going to start to start with Ray are now dope I've just probably massacred your last name Ray but Ray is currently a senior scholar at the Center for Science Diplomacy and after working for many years in the US government with a tremendous amount of experience in environmental and science policy affairs most recently served as the head of the US Antarctic Treaty Secretariat in prior to this he was the senior advisor for nuclear energy or multilateral nuclear cooperation with the Department of Energy at the American Embassy in Moscow from 2006 to 2008 he had previously served as acting or deputy director of the Office of Ocean Affairs and has also served as the science and environment counselor of the American Embassy in London and US permanent representative at the UN International Maritime Organization and Ray is going to kick things off and kind of set the table by talking about the history I think of scientific cooperation and research in this area thanks Andy actually pronunciation of my name is Italian and that was very good it was perfect I'm now though but very similar okay go there well I'm happy to be here I'm delighted to see so many people paying attention to the Arctic and he mentioned I have a somewhat long history working on environment science affairs for the State Department but I was also there at the beginnings of cooperation in the Arctic and I would have been happy to have just a tenth of this kind of audience at a meeting on the Arctic in the late 80s when simply no one was paying attention to Arctic cooperation and that made my job sort of easy in a way because if you don't have to consult with tons of people you can get things done more easily and we were able to put together the beginnings of the of the Arctic environmental protection group which then became the Arctic Council so what I'd like to do if those of you wondering why retired diplomats here on the science panel I did take a couple of courses in biology and physics in college but no I think my purpose here is really to sketch a little bit about the history of the Council and the importance of science to getting to the point where the Council is now and I think it's you know it's it's a general conclusion that science is at the at the foundations of both the beginnings of the Council and the cooperation and certainly activities it has now so just to begin the process in the 80s there really was no international cooperation forum no group that could address the issues of cooperation there was a French organization that did some science and come take a peek but it was fairly dormant and this was when Scandinavians essentially the Finns began the process by pushing for some type of Arctic convention or cooperation I think the main purpose was to make sure that we could work with the Soviets at the time on questions about pollution and development in the Arctic Scandinavian countries more concerned air pollution river-borne pollution coming out into the Arctic Ocean United States initially was wary of yet another international organization and I spent the first year or so of this discussion saying no to prospects of cooperation but at the point it became apparent that the eight Arctic countries had a lot to talk about and that they really needed to be a forum that we could do this in the response of the Russians or the Soviets at the time was was not very enthusiastic but it came as there was more and more dialogue and I would mention sort of as a tip of the hat to CSIS and other NGO groups it was because of a lot of discussions that were that were pushed by non-governmental organizations to get us policy discussions together and that prompted some responses from the Russians and eventually in this famous speech by Gorbachev in the mid 80s in which he talked about a number of things and then talked about cooperation in the Arctic and his speech came up with lines that were really mirroring things we were talking about so as a parent there was something to something to do the Canadians too were very very helpful in this process I mean if they and the Russians have huge portions of the Arctic coastline and we're anxious to get cooperation together and so they pushed a lot of the initial formulations and this gets to the part of science because the the formative discussions we had about cooperation were started by a number of research papers and discussions about things such as airborne pollution protection of wildlife fawn and flora questions of emergency reaction to accidents and pollution spills etc and that became the foundation for the for the organization we have today which is working groups address those issues but but the initial formulation was to bring our scientists together to talk right papers on and discuss these issues and keep it I think a little bit less than political that is to say the purpose of this is to get the people of the north together and talk about problems that affect them all and that was successful and we put together the Arctic environmental protection strategy which lasted for a few years when it became apparent that a stronger and more let's say political or more national organization was necessary and that morphed into the Arctic Council first meeting was held in in Canada followed by us but one of the in all parts of this I'd say the delegations of the teams were made up of of with strong science backgrounds because it was apparent that's where the strength of the cooperation lie and in this regard one of the first things the United States did as we've morphed into the Arctic Council was to kick off a discussion about climate and that was led by NSF Bob Carell took the lead on discussions about how we might do more to address the issue of climate impact and especially significant in the Arctic and and in that regard on the science front underpinning these discussions virtually the same time and concluding earlier was the International Arctic Science Committee and those that again initiated by science groups some government some non-government I think was NSF who had to lead for United States and it talked about the need for an organization that could get better cooperation between science science community scientists in the Arctic. There was a pretty heated debate and took quite a while to resolve the question of whether this was to be just Arctic eight countries five countries talking about things Arctic or whether to include all the scientists of the world an international group and the solution of course was a typical diplomatic solution it did both things there was a regional board that that had the eight and then there was it was open to all which of course was all the always the US position which is to be as open and and inclusive as you can on the science front. So as a result I asked was formed it began doing its research cooperation and I think that led led to a path of greater cooperation and that led where we are today of of them working as a science support group for the Arctic Council all of which I think has been has been helpful and and if anything and it'll be talked about I think with my collaborators here is the need for the ongoing cooperation and continued work that you know turned to today where we are on this I think you'll find that all the major working groups of the council are based on participation by our national science groups that's the way it works and that's I think the best part of this you really have internationalized the cooperation of the council through the fact that it's science based and that's one of the major goals council did morph into discussions about sustainable development and that gets to our questions from some of the past discussions the previous panel about the need for more consideration about economic growth sustainable development which has become the second pillar of of the council's efforts all to the good but all those discussions too are are hinged on the support out by the research and the science that's done by the national delegations. The last point I'd make is that and I think two of the panelists are going to discuss some of this but there is a specific task force within the Arctic Council that is looking at these questions of how to improve cooperation on the science front whether it's logistics access to scientific regions or just simply a better understanding of what all of us are doing I think there's great transparency in the science world about who's doing what research but with regards to the council I think there's probably some improvements that can be made on the question of cooperation between the two and I think that's going to that that will be a result of the task force discussions and that's that's being shared by the US and Russia and Norway all those things should improve the cooperation it's already pretty good. So I think that's a quick overview of how we started this and how we got to where we are and I think my other panelists are going to talk about specific US interests in this but if not I'm happy to recap that at the point if there's time thanks. Ray thank you very much that was a perfect table setter and we will now segue into some presentations of some of the current activities and programs. Our first our next panelist to speak will be Dr. Kelly Faulkner who is the director of the National Science Foundation's division of polar programs a position she's held since 2012 she's a professor at Oregon State University's College of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences and from 2007 to 2009 she has served at the NSF as the founding program director of the Antarctic Integrated System Science Program. She served in the NFS division of polar programs in many capacities since 1998. Her own research focuses on chemical oceanography particular in the polar regions and as part of her research she's participated in two dozen major expeditions so Kelly welcome to the CSIS delighted to have you here today. And I'm delighted to be here and I thank CSIS for organizing this event it's timely and a very interesting one so I would like to just comment on Ray's nice summary of the history I was on the other side of the politics behind finding these bodies but there was in the 80s recognition growing among the science community that we were seeing very dramatic change and we weren't quite sure what to do about it but we were sure we needed to do something about it and I want to say that some of what he just described has been extremely important for giving voice to the issues that we were we're seeing early on and science continues to be a very important player in in informing all domains of of interest in the Arctic of course. What I'd like to do is just make three points today now the first thing I'm going to do is hopefully run a quick film here what you're going to see in a moment is a summary on a year-by-year basis of where we have investigators supported by National Science Foundation and sometimes in partnership with other nations and other agencies research activities going on in the Arctic over the time frame you see I'm going to show you both stations on land and ship tracks I want to point out before we get going that science in the Arctic has inherently been international for a very long time and as you'll see in a moment and whoever's running this can go ahead and start it we have activities covering all domains of science it's a regionally defined program at the science foundation we go all the way from microbiology to astrophysics and and other things but you start off seeing what are relatively permanent stations flagged in blue around the Arctic that are maintained and then as the years roll through starting 2007 the ship tracks it's a little hard to see but it looks like measles throughout the entire Arctic and those are our locations of activities that are supported and I hope you notice that it really covers the entire Arctic but you can take a good look at that picture and realize that we really need to partner with all of the Arctic nations and others in order to cover that domain so as we come to the end it's just going to give you a composite of that five-year period so one thing I do want to stress having spent two decades working in the Arctic is that it's a really hard place to work the the combination of things you heard about earlier storms sea ice conditions just the difficulty of making equipment work under the extreme conditions you encounter there are inherently challenging for all scientists so I think although we've been working together internationally for a while we all recognize that given the inherent challenges to successful science in the Arctic we really need to do our best to minimize other obstacles and so in the spirit of that I'd like to call your attention to and I and my presentation visuals are over but a couple of things going on that are cause for optimism in this regard one and this isn't a council related activity and I'm purposefully highlighting it because under something called the Belmont Forum which is an outgrowth of G8 activity we have just released an international opportunities fund call for the Arctic it's specifically calling for proposals on Arctic observing and science for sustainability 13 countries are involved in that many of the players would be familiar to you of course the US is Canada many European countries and Russia are among the partners in this particular endeavor the way this kind of competition works was set up so that we could encourage international collaboration because people could be ensured that the review process for proposals took place all at the same time under the same rules so that people would know the outcome of the competition in an international context we've had issues in the past where independently agencies in different countries would like to study something similar but it was difficult to take advantage of making synergies because there would be different timings or or different priorities and so forth so this mechanism is allowing us to push out on coordinating at an international level these particular proposals require at least three countries to be involved and each of the countries ends up funding its successful proposals and this particular project also requires people address the nexus of the natural sciences with economic and social sciences in the Arctic so we're really trying to push out on getting the best ideas going forward in the realm of sustainability fully informed by a range of considerations so that is actually going to close on July 31st there's about a 20 million euro equivalent investment in this program and it will be exciting to see what does come out of that so it's actually just in passing we've done the Belmont Forum approach in different areas of the world for research three times before the global interest in the Arctic pushed it to the top as a priority topic so that it's the fourth topic out of the chute in that particular forum that's not an Arctic Council activity but many of the Arctic all of the Arctic nations are involved and many of the observers are involved so and the one other thing I'd like to highlight is something that Ray already mentioned he talked about activity under the Arctic Council it to also enhance science cooperation that activity has been underway it's an ad hoc task force to enhance science science cooperation and so the that came out of the Karuna Accord and it was agreed that cooperation and scientific research across the circumpolar Arctic is of great importance to the work of the Arctic Council and the task force was established to work towards an arrangement on improved research cooperation among the eight Arctic States so we started last September meeting and our first meeting was in Sweden and by the way the the chairs of this task force include the US under Evan Blum at State Department Sweden with Gustav Lind and Russia and that leadership is changing out as Russia is transitioning its senior Arctic official capacity right now so we are making good progress I think John Farrell is going to address shortly some more specifics regarding the situation with Russia and other things so I'll I'll keep my comments at a high level what I'd like to say is that as a group we recognize that there are many very active science bodies that are non-political who are out there trying to arrange for better cooperation coordination among scientists in the current budget climate which challenging a number of nations it's incumbent on all of us to actually coordinate better to leverage what we can and particularly since you see on the map we have in order to understand Arctic change we have to address the entire Arctic region so the group the task force agreed right away that its job wasn't to set new science priorities but was to take full advantage of ones that are being set by these bodies and do what we can to best facilitate that we've heard from a number of these bodies as part of our process the international Arctic science committee that Ray mentioned from the world meteorological organization which has a strong Arctic focus right now from the University of the Arctic which is a consortium of universities and colleges throughout the Arctic who just recently had a 10-year review of their their consortium and came to the conclusion they were doing a good job connecting on the education level but that going forward they really needed to connect better for purposes of facilitating research of all sorts there's an international Arctic social science association there are working groups of the council there's the forum for Arctic research operators there's a whole alphabet soup of acronyms of people who are involved one way or another in trying to look at important problems and how we make good traction on them in the Arctic so I think the good thing about this right now is that there was a time because it is hard to work in the Arctic you tend to attract a scrappy bunch that people would would been a bit territorial as they set up committees to do things and argued for funds or what have you but I think it's very much the spirit these days that we know we can't go it alone we can't tackle the big questions alone and it doesn't make sense to fight over them but to align where we can and so I think this ad hoc task force very much is working in that spirit we have come to a by-and-large agreement on a non-politically binding text but at our last meeting in Reykjavík just a short while ago after much deliberation we decided that we would try by September 1st to get all of the nations to get negotiating authority to enter into a legally binding arrangement to facilitate cooperation for science this is a big order and I don't know at this point we're guaranteed to succeed but the will is there to try and everybody's pushing out in that direction I think it's safe to say that Russia was an impetus in part for going in this direction because they were arguing that it would have much more clout and help them in terms of aligning resources towards research and important research problems and so as I said we're all marching towards that so we have an our next meeting and it'll be a juncture there whether we're negotiating that binding text or not having achieved the authorities for all nations whether we continue on our agreement so some of the issues just to just to give it to you in a nutshell are that we think there are things we can do to enhance the exchange of people samples equipment and and make sure that they can transition borders more readily so that that isn't an obstacle to efficiency and getting science done we also feel particularly in the marine area that there are things we can do to enhance the pace at which we're able to get appropriate permits and so forth to to work in throughout the entire Arctic so with that I'm I'm hoping we can build on many successes that we have and in various areas of cooperation with all of the arctic eight nations and and spread that success to more domains of science and and better efficiency of science thank you amen no no pushback for me on that on that conclusion Kelly thanks so much for a terrific overview of NSF activities the task force and also the the Belmont forum something I was not not not aware of for the next presentation let me now turn to my right to an old friend Dr Maria Leventova who is the international health program officer at the national institutes of of health where she has held the position of program officer for Russia Eurasia and Arctic Affairs since 2006 she directs and coordinates research on biomedical and behavioral health before joining NIH Dr Leventova worked at the alcohol research group at UC Berkeley School of Public Health studying the impact of alcohol control policies in the Russian Federation and she's also researched Russian health and demographics particularly non-communicable diseases at the University of California at San Francisco yay my hometown and the University of Hawaii yay pretty nice place to visit Maria for a number of years at CSIS working with the global health initiative we had a very active program looking at US and Russian cooperation on health health issues that Maria was a very active and productive and constructive member of so it's a real pleasure to see you again here this morning thank you very much Andrew thank you very much to the to the organizers to to have NIH participate in this conference and it gives me a special pleasure because health is being recognized as part of important not just research issue but an important topic of concern for the Arctic because as all of you know if we don't have a healthy population of individuals living above the circumpolar all of the different business and fisheries every single topic that you're interested in discussing here will be adversely affected if we actually do not look at the health of the individuals living in that part of the world with that being said it's important to recognize that research in health and you can look at health in the broadest sense every topic in the biomedical and behavioral fields is very limited in the Arctic it is limited to such a point that I did a search just recently you know specifically for this meeting to look at what NIH is currently supporting in the Arctic there's not a single project that comes up that is international okay with that out of 19 million dollars that were spent in fiscal year 2013 majority of it is not in Alaska majority of it is in other states Colorado Minnesota you know you name it Massachusetts what does that mean I mean if you think about what does that actually mean to the research in the Arctic and how is the U.S. federal government supporting this mission so what makes us one point that I want to make before I kind of explain how the NIH thinks and funds research is to explain how we're different from the NSF programs so NIH is able to support any scientist anywhere in the world in a direct award meaning you can be in any country in the world you have a great idea you submit your project to the NIH for consideration the NIH goes through its review which takes about nine months then you finally might have a baby to do your work with and none of these projects are regionally focused so that also makes us very different from a lot of other agencies interested in the Arctic in the U.S. federal government all of our work is disease specific so out of the 27 institutes and centers at the NIH if you look at their names you'll know exactly what they're interested in so cancer institute they're interested in cancer they're not interested in regional issues that might affect they're interested in cancer and they will focus their research support on cancer so you have to figure out how to market your project to fit with their priorities same goes for all of the institutes so that makes us very different from NSF in our funding priorities so with that said with Arctic not being a recognized area of priority for the NIH how do the scientists actually get funded and why is it so many grants go to other states or to scientists in other states besides Alaska and why there isn't a single project that is coded as Arctic that is international scientists apply there's thousands and thousands of individuals that submit about six to ten percent get a grant so if you are not a top-notch scientist with a top-notch research program the chances are you will not get a grant this is one of the reasons why Alaska scientists are not as successful in obtaining these funding so they have to form some kind of a collaborative relationship with someone that already has NIH grants that already has proven that they are worthy that they are top-notch to obtain NIH funding and many people as people go you know our psychology is pretty much the same you fail once or twice you don't go back again right I mean why would you keep knocking on the same door that never opens so people don't continue going back to request funding from the NIH they go to other entities they go to the Canadian funding agencies and this is one of the pathways we've been trying to to look at at the NIH specifically for looking at issues that are relevant to Arctic health can we cooperate or develop some kind of a collaborative relationships partnerships with other countries above the circumpolar where we can develop these special programs that would be specifically focused on the Arctic during my tenure which has been a little long a little short depends on your timeframe we have not been successful in developing anything of that nature and the reason again goes back to the fact that NIH institutes are interested in diseases not regions the only movement that we've had and John and I have been beating our heads against many walls on this is that finally we're seeing some movement in the three institutes at the NIH National Institute of Mental Health National Institute on Drug Abuse and Alcohol Institute at least a consideration to develop something that would look specifically at behavioral and mental health issues in the Arctic which is one of the biggest burdens for individuals living above the circumpolar I'm sure many of you have seen many articles in in the newspapers about the suicide rates in that part of the world which is a big issue so if if these institutes are able to persevere through all the different priority areas of their institutes that might interfere with developing an initiative that is specifically focused on the Arctic populations if they're able to persevere then we will have an initiative then we will have a grant program that will specifically look at a regional health issue until that point the scientists have to push I mean it's a bottom-up approach the scientists have to come up with good topics good proposals strong methods and they have to put them forward to the NIH so if you're interested in kind of the general layout of what is currently being supported by the NIH in Alaska very few projects are focused on behavioral mental health if we if we try to rate the different priority issues that is probably priority number one and there's three projects that are focused on behavioral mental health and according to the to many different scientists they're not very strong projects so there is a lot more work that needs to be done and this really has to be a bottom-up approach so because the NIH can't really dictate to the scientists what they are to study they have to come up with their own research we we have to listen to them and if they're asking if there is a continuous flood of inquiries and requests and questions about the topics then there will be a shift but if the scientists don't come knocking on the doors of individuals at the NIH that determine which grant programs will go forward it's not going to change which i think has been kind of the perpetuating problem is that when when i talk to the scientists in alaska they say well i submitted my grant and it didn't get funded okay well did you go back to the program officer did you tell them how important it is are you are you continuing to do your advocacy basically it's advocacy no i'm not so this is where some of these some of these bottlenecks occur is that even though the need is there the individuals that could be helpful are not being pursued to move this need forward so so that's kind of on the NIH front as far as looking outside of the NIH the sustainable working group of the Arctic Council has been very active in trying to move some of the areas of health cooperation forward Alan Parkinson at the CDC in Alaska has been the the leader the leader on this for the Arctic human health initiative majority of their work is focused on surveillance which NIH does not consider to be research so it it is it is important work but it doesn't very well mesh with what the NIH is mandated to support so it becomes a a siloed activity and Alan and i have tried for many years to figure out how we can combine these align them make them more friendly but i think because the federal agencies are so separately and individually mandated guided determined it's been difficult so the the one major opportunity i see is to actually develop some kind of collaborations with foreign countries and Canada being really one of the most potentially fruitful at this point thank you thank you Maria i'm not a trained psychologist but i do detect a certain degree of frustration and it it does seem striking that with your job title as the international health program officer for Russia Eurasia and Arctic affairs now that's a regional title yet regions are not the on the basis upon which decisions and about allocations of funding funding are made hmm maybe we'll get more get to that more in the discussion let me now turn to our our our final speaker our cleanup batter dr john ferrell who is the executive director of the u.s arctic research commission independent federal agency of presidential appointees that advises the white house and congress on arctic research matters and works with executive branch agencies to enact a national arctic research plan previously dr ferrell served as associate dean of research at administration at the graduate school of oceanography at the university of Rhode Island and he was also director of the international ocean drilling program aimed towards advancing a deeper scientific understanding of the earth dr ferrell helped organize and conduct the first successful international scientific ocean drilling expedition to the high arctic in 2004 he was also instrumental in facilitating a u.s ocean mapping effort aboard the u.s icebreaker u.s cgc healy in 2012 and he also has a terrific cartoon which will start his presentation uh which i hope he did not take out of his present presentation uh dr ferrell it's a great pleasure to welcome you here to csis today thank you very much andrew and thank you to heather for inviting me here today and i must say i really like your new digs uh and i don't know why gsa when they when they renegotiated our lease didn't give this as one of our options well and the and the collection basket will be coming around shortly okay um i'll give you a minute to look at this i'm a scientist and so i'm in a room full of people much smarter and much more skilled in diplomacy and geopolitics so i thought i would try to ease my way in with something along your lines some some great canadian cartoons uh and this is one um and the second one sort of speaks to dav balton's issue and for those of you in the crowd i see a lot of gray hair so you'll remember who these characters are richard nixon and pierre trudeau and this was based on a a right guard commercial back in the 70s but you see the sovereignty you see the boundaries you see between the two nations so i just thought that these issues are nothing new this goes back 40 years now so i thought i'd start with that before jumping into my science yeah we know where she was okay this is one of my favorite pictures of uh international scientific cooperation and it for the non-mariners in the room it may be uh hard to figure out what this actually is this is a picture looking down from a helicopter way up high near the north pole and you see these little trails there's actually three ships in this slide there's a russian nuclear icebreaker there's a swedish ship and then there's a little drill ship in the back and you can see big chunks of ice to the top and bottom in a sort of a stream in the middle of finer ice that's all because it's been broken up by these ships and the little ship there on the very right hand side you can hardly see a trail behind it that's actually drilling into the seafloor there so it's stuck in the seafloor while the ships in front of it are defending and breaking ice in advance of it so here's a look at that there's the three ships from left to right the sovietsoy is the middle one the odin from sweden and on the right the norwegian i mean our viking that's the drill ship so this is a perfect example of scientific cooperation in the Arctic in that it represents 22 countries coming together co-mingling funds to conduct uh at this point it was a 13 million dollar expedition in 2004 all there was there was international input in developing the science plan and and in conducting the expedition itself and even in terms of icebreaker captains typically like on the upper left hand picture that's sort of how you see icebreakers often transiting they're in a row they're going through some place from point x to point y but on the right you see them in a very different mode that's where the ship on the bottom left is actually drilling into the seafloor and the two ships out in front are are defending and are breaking up ice and there's a complicated ice management system in order for this to happen so it's an exquisite example of different countries coming together to work on a scientific problem issue it's more than just ships it's people fundamentally in the upper left you have this ice management crew a lot of these people now are working in industry like in soccaline in the upper right you've got a russian skipper on the left and a swedish skipper on the right they were almost like the comradors of this fleet training a lot of people in how to work together to do this very complicated situation you even have mundane things like holding up the propeller while you're trying to get your helicopter assembled to start flying around and the bottom right a typical arctic research picture shows all the flags and all the participants in this particular expedition it was very highly successful and talk about outside arctic characters here's a drilling crew they're from cornwall uk they'd never been in the arctic but they really knew their way around a drill rig and they were quite happy to they thought they were near the north pole not quite but close enough and so they were very happy and proud of their effort to help advance the scientific team so you've got teams of people from cornwall whose english I could barely understand given their dialect and accent you had representatives from at least 12 15 different countries on this actual expedition very successful the whole purpose was to drill into the seafloor to understand the geologic evolution of this arctic ocean basin had never been done before because of technical cost challenges well they were quite successful and we published the results a couple years later in nature so it was a first look at the whole 65 million year history of the evolution of the arctic ocean basin so a lot of applied information that comes out of this such as location distribution of oil and gas resources history of the basin which also helps inform things like the limitation of extended continental shelves also on climate change we find out during the eocene 35 million years ago this was a very very warm ice free ocean what were the natural causes of this so a whole wealth of information came out from this first expedition which is the first look at the deep time history of the arctic basin so that's that's one example that I want to talk about also I'll talk about a couple other examples of successful international cooperation in the arctic and then I also want to talk about a few challenges that we still have I'd like to call attention to Norway's great efforts and in addition to Norway I should also mention in town in particular Finland I think has been a big champion as has Canada on having these dialogues on fostering discussion on not just scientific cooperation but also on a variety of fronts in the arctic all three have been very strong and Russia too but in particular like to call attention to two things about Norway I've found interesting is they host a regular transit Atlantic Science Week this year it'll be in Toronto in October so they work very hard to bring scientists and communities together to foster collaboration to foster cooperation by hosting these kinds of conferences they also have on Svalbard the island way up north a little I call it a sort of a research village there if you will many many countries including a lot of non-arctic nations have little research stations there and it's an opportunity for them to collaborate and cooperate on in dip their toes in some cases in arctic research and in the upper right you see a Norwegian in the middle flanked by some Chinese scientists who have opened a research station in that's their arctic research station on land there was supposed to be and there certainly is a focus on working with Russia so I'd like to give a couple real specific examples of how there's been good scientific and research cooperation in the Arctic with Russia on an international basis this is a bilateral two examples of bilateral efforts one is the Beringia Heritage Program so Beringia is the fabled land between Alaska and Russia and the National Park Service actually has a program they put in a little over half a million dollars a year to help work on cultural and scientific issues and on the upper left is one of those called so-called stinky gray whales that has been of common interest so Russia and U.S. work very closely because these peoples are connected they're only separated by a 50 mile straight here and so there's a lot of common heritage a lot of common interest and I think there's been a lot of good work that the Department of Interior has supported here and this actually was kicked off when and George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev had made a commitment towards this way back when and this still continues to today in the Park Service on the right is an example of an arctic observing network project sponsored by Kelly's organization the National Science Foundation it's called the Bering Sea Subnetwork and these scientists have identified five six seven eight communities half on the Alaskan side and half on the Russian side and this group is is working very hard and this speaks to Caitlyn Antrim's issue about regional networks and regional emphasis and they're looking at to understand the interest of the local communities they're looking at harvest intensity for example of marine mammals you see on the lower right St. Lawrence Island it shows a snapshot of where there's heavy subsistence hunting going on so this is looking at local interest looking at local understandings of climate change and what their impacts have been and also how are they responding to some of these changes so it's a it's a good example of an arctic observing network project on a regional scale I would say in terms of challenges I'm very pleased about the Belmont Forum opportunity for funding of arctic observing network but I would I think we have a lot further to go to do truly pan arctic arctic observing efforts and this has been an activity that's been in the arctic council the sustaining arctic observing networks there's been I would say this is an area that we have not made as much progress as we should it's been called out there's been a lot of planning meetings a lot of interest but it has not really matured to the point of a strong international program commingled funds common science plan like say that international ocean drilling expedition that I showed earlier I think this is just for lack of leadership will and of course resources but I think that's what's going to take to really amp this up into a truly circumpolar arctic observing network this is a good example of a regional bilateral effort but we need to do better another example of a nice bilateral effort is the Rizalka the Russian American long-term census of the Arctic and it's nice to see John Calder here who helped get this going when he was at NOAA this is a long-term marine program you can see it was signed off on the left there's Connie Lautenbacher from NOAA signing with his counterpart this activity of marine research is conducted under some S&T agreements and an MOU there are Russian entities the Russian Academy of Sciences is leadership on the right the U.S. entities on the sorry on the left on the right is U.S. interestingly in this case there has actually been engagement with a private public partnership entity called group alliance and that's interesting to see because a lot of times when it's U.S. or bilateral efforts it's just nation-to-nation so in this case this partnership has been engaged with this group alliance to actually facilitate access and coordination and that has helped now some naysayers might say well that's a pay-to-play type of organization uh how how are they really part of the scientific enterprise so it's an interesting discussion it's an interesting model in terms of how bilateral work is done but it's very active it's very engaged and i would say it's been a extremely successful enterprise they have found things like the amount of warm water flowing in the Arctic is increased significantly the amount of fresh water flowing into the Arctic this may have some significant impact on the diminishment of Arctic sea ice not just air temperature but warm water flowing through the straits a lot of fresh warm water fascinating results and this very summer in fact in another couple weeks they will be embarking out of Anandir on that some ship tracks between Alaska and Russia showing where they will be doing marine sampling programs of water biology chemistry all kinds of physical properties a very nice program i'd very much like to see this continue when this program is up for renewal in 2015 i think NOAA deserves a lot of credit for this and Kathy Crane in particular as well as John there are this summer there's going to be seven non-us ships operating in the US Arctic uh and let's see if i can rattle them off there's two canadian vessels the Amundsen and the Laurier there is the Chinese Shulong there's the Aaron from Korea there's the Marae from Japan there's the Odin from Sweden and there's the Kromov there will be seven vessels US investigators will be on many of those vessels in a collaborative type of effort which is very good to see the Healy is doing three expeditions in the Arctic this summer i'm not quite sure if there are actually more US investigators total on all the foreign vessels combined compared to the three legs on the Healy but it would be fun to run the numbers uh but i think that's something that's probably underappreciated how many US investigators are actually sailing on foreign flag vessels doing research in the US Arctic so here's China Shulong uh it's again leaving it'll be there in a couple weeks and you see an extensive number of sites in the Arctic in the Bering Sea Chukchi even up into the Beaufort way up onto the the cap there they're going to be taking water samples and taking sediment cores they'll be doing no ports of call but the other non-us vessels will the Japanese ships coming in so there's a lot of activity this summer from research vessels domestic and foreign now i'm going to close with two final slides one of the challenges and this is a challenge that we face is that we request permission to conduct research in foreign EEZs exclusive economic zones and this chart here is data that i've uh worked with People's State Department to collect which shows the number of times over since 1990 almost a 25 year history that the US has requested permission to enter the EEZ to do marine scientific research and every time that request has been approved it's green and every time it's been denied it's in red and so you can see that over this almost 25 year period there's been about 48 requests for permission to enter for marine scientific research a little over 40 percent of the time that request has been denied and that's an obstacle to international scientific cooperation uh i won't get into the reasons why because sometimes it's not very well known uh i think in some cases there's been significant improvements initial Pollock surveys for example a lot of them were denied earlier but now they are being routinely approved which is a good news story but this can be very deleterious for science we've had a drill ship sailing towards the site waiting for permission not getting it having to turn back costs us at 1.5 million dollars of wasted money because we can't get that permission this is where i'd like to see our two nations work better to try to reduce these number of times that there is denials some people have looked at this and said well you know is there any pattern to this i mean i do notice during the 90s which is a golden decade of cooperation uh we certainly had a lot more activity you see there's even many more times we were requesting permission and a lot of approvals so if you overlay time periods you know here's uh i don't know if you make too much of something like this but this is just a historical time marker and we've certainly had many successes in more recent years and some in the past too but it was just interesting to compare so i'll close with this slide which i've been talking up to now about government funding of research in the Arctic but i think it's very important to recognize in industries funding in the Arctic as well and last year at a conference we organized called impacts of an ice diminished Arctic on naval and maritime operations Gary Isaacson from Exxon showed this very slide which was fascinating to me because what this speaks to is the joint venture between Exxon Mobile and Rosneft part of that agreement was to invest in a research center and uh if you see those numbers at the bottom there that's well over half a billion dollars and that's not chump change in the Arctic research funding uh area that's walking that's real walking around money in my business um so a lot of this is very applied type of research compared to say basic research but it's still research nonetheless and it's now that said a year has gone by and i can find very precious little information on what's actually materialized so you know gary showed this slide i reached out to him haven't heard back recently but this is a provocative and intriguing opportunity given not only this joint venture but the one between uh shell and um and gas prom too so there's going to be a lot of plays a lot of exploration maybe even a little bit of exploration off chakshi this summer uh to keep your eyes on and i think it will also impact in terms of scientific research and i'll end with that thank you now thanks john just one quick follow-up question uh on the the slide previous to that one striking thing is that the number of requests has fallen off so much in recent years you have an explanation for that well it's a couple interesting things one i think there's just less funding to try to do this type of work the second thing the rizalka cruises are not included here because those are actually done through group alliance through russia so that wasn't a us vessel trying to get into the russian easy it was a russian ship already so you didn't need to include it here uh so those are two quick responses well thanks so much to uh to all four panelists we're very very concise and informative uh presentations before we turn to start the discussion let me turn to uh the bellissima princessa to clarify how long we have to go heather on this on this session about 15 20 minutes okay okay terrific okay so there is one fundamental ground rule for the discussion no biting while the fifa position on biting seems to be rather unclear to date the position of csis is absolutely clear no biting is allowed but seriously when we turn to you and we'll collect questions a few at a time please identify yourself for the for the panelists i'd like to ask the the first question if i may exercise the prerogative of the of the chair and that is uh i did learn a couple of things at the particularly in the conference i went to in moscow in in september one of them had to do with the the volume of shipping on the northern sea route a question that came up in the first the first session and i was it was interesting to me to learn that the northern sea route was actually established in 1932 i mean this was a stalin era era project and the the amount of tonnage that was carried on the northern sea route peaked in about 1987 1988 and this is before significant ice melt began began to take place now with the collapse of the soviet union the the amount of tonnage on shipped on the northern sea route shrank to almost almost zero and it began to rise in more recent in more recent years but even in the peak year in the last few in the last few years that shipping level was at about 40 percent of what the peak level was back in 1987 88 so uh the question which was i was surprised to learn that now i think the answer as to why that is the case is likely that uh during the soviet period the northern sea route sea route was used i think in non under non non commercial conditions which i think gets to a point will be highlighted later on in the discussion today about you know how the commercial viability of the northern sea route and other arctic arctic transit transit quarters has to be has to be viable now tied to that was something else that that i learned that i'd like to put this question to all of all of the all of the panelists and it was interesting to learn that there was a debate in the russian the russian scientific community about the uh the pace and more importantly the possible reversibility of the the melting of the of the polar ice the polar ice cap and that if i correctly understood i think in 2011 and possibly 2012 uh rather than a greater amount of ice melting there was a lesser amount of ice ice that had melted for a year or two i might have don't have my facts exactly exactly right you know i'm a i'm just a poor political scientist and we all know that's a complete oxymoronic term um i.e not a real scientist but if in fact that is i was wondering what is there any debate here in this country about the pace and and possibly the irreversibility of the of the the melting of the ice cap now the explanation if i that i was put to me as to why there might have been more ice for a year or or two is that actually getting to the point that john mentioned about that the flows of water from the the gulf stream had been cooler and that was one possible explanation anyway i'd like to just put that open to the panel for some clarification if possible i'll give one one tack on this this question so there's been research to try and discover where there are not as we proceed towards the melting trajectory we're going to hit some threshold beyond which it won't be readily reversible um to date for what we know about the sea ice cover it doesn't look like there is such a threshold looming um so if we were able to do something to to change the forcings that are putting us on the warming trajectory not always lost so that's been the message from people doing modeling and so forth so then the question turns to well what can we do what should we be doing what kind of research do we really need in order to inform what we could think about doing then we move into a pretty controversial area but i think we all understand that we need to go there because we may find given you know a lack of action in general across the world in the the climate arena that we may have our backs up against the wall with with certain surprises and we're going to want to be able to turn to tools um i personally hope we don't go there but we we may so so i think there has to be investment in the geoengineering or or even some of the mitigation uh factors that could be at play um there's some very interesting research for example and anybody can find this online um through the we have a interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee and they've sponsored a lot of collaborative work across the agencies trying to do better synergy at attacking certain issues but there's several presentations regarding black carbon out there which i think you may find interesting but in this case and i i'm sorry i've forgotten his name there's someone at Stanford who's actually combined economics and systems engineering with aerosol scattering in clouds fundamental research for contrails and and noted that you know if you if you wanted to you could divert which are now over the pole flights and there are many uh from and over the pole trajectory at a certain cost you'd be increasing the lengths of the flights in order to avoid putting black carbon into the atmosphere in the Arctic and trapping it in the polar vortex um so so there's more research to be done i would say i wouldn't jump out based on that that one study but there were indications that you could have a net benefit by by changing practices there for example and there are plenty of other things people have talked about in the geo engineering realm they don't all take place in the Arctic necessarily but they may uh so i think this is an area very ripe for investment in research to be sure that uh we do understand our our possibilities and it's controversial because you mean we may well not be able to engineer our way out of this uh quickly or at all but but i think we should be pushing to understand what we can and can't do i'll just make two short points one uh the warm is going to continue i mean i there's not going to be a reversal and we were just going to be you know a significant cooling and that speaks to the second point climate change is a long-term thing weather is short-term thing and so what we see is noise on a trend so if you have a particularly cold year don't mistake that for the overall trend i i would say um so i think you know and you can talk to people like brooks i mean i the the the cake is baked i think to a great extent and so i don't yeah i think we will see trends but the overall is going to be there it's going to be continuing to warm the ice is going to continue to diminish and i think that's clearly the scientific consensus let me open up the uh the floor i see marjorie bolzer first first hand up others marjorie mandelsten bolzer georgetown university uh i noticed that on the uh second on the last slide uh from the exxon mobile ross neff cooperation that there was a priority orientation towards engaging indigenous peoples my question is whether there is our specific efforts to engage indigenous scientists and by this i mean not only indigenous uh peoples who have folk knowledge of their own environments but actually people who are themselves trained as scientists and are indigenous because it's a direction that could uh be productive thank you okay um others yes sir uh i have a question for kelly it's very simple question really but on this uh belmont forum activity that you're working on um that you mentioned i'm wondering if you have any insight as to whether there are a number of russian science any russian scientists who are participating in this process in any way since we're focused here on us russian cooperation can we tell if this process is going to be helpful in getting russian participation in some way thank you okay thank you uh hold that i think we'll collect a number of questions and give each panelist an opportunity to to respond yes sir uh steve winter's local researcher uh on this uh issue that was mentioned about the need to be able to transit borders uh more freely in order to get science done uh in the case of antarctica i understand there's some controversy that's arisen because of the fact that each nation is able to set up scientific research stations in any sector of antarctica and the chinese have set up for example several uh more than several stations in the in the australian claimed sector and this is upset the australians and so forth and so on so is there any downside to the uh total freedom of scientific investigation such as appears in antarctica okay good question uh one more going going gone well i don't know we have i think we were the only punch let's uh maybe start uh maybe in reverse order uh with uh with john okay on the indigenous question uh yeah there are some real specific examples uh not only with indigenous scientists but the indigenous communities in general and when you talk about scientists you have to respect that the indigenous knowledge that people have so they may not have a formal degree per se but they certainly have a lot of experience so some specifics uh shell for example has a agreement with the north slope burrow that enables the north slope burrow to do baseline studies program five million dollars a year uh and they also have another one with the northwest arctic burrow so these are opportunities where energy companies are uh providing funds to alaska natives including scientists in those communities to pursue scientific research um and i'll throw out a name on the kush karlo uh phd scientist nathabaskin who is the executive lead staffer on the alaska arctic policy commission so yes um and i won't address the other two um NIH actually has specific programs that are intended to engage individuals that are of minority groups which includes alaska natives and uh there are a number of uh alaska natives that currently have grants from the NIH um spiro manson one of them um he's in colorado and he uh does research focused on indigenous populations um and also majority of the programs projects that are to involve any kind of a human in alaska has to go through a community participatory approach which means that usually the tribal groups are involved somebody in the tribal community has to approve the project and um without that none of them would occur well i'll take on two of those um the question about indigenous uh people's participation um is really a good softball question for discussions about their council because it was the council in its initial formulations so well in the arctic environmental protection strategy that set aside a special role for permanent participants as they were called which is to say representatives of native groups and at the time there were four of them you know what um circumpolar conference the peoples of russia etc um and they have a different role than in most international organizations and that is they stand at sort of on par or a step above the observer countries as well as the NGO groups that are there so the the role of the indigenous participants to access the decision-making process is pretty clearly specified in the arctic council structure which i think is a really good idea um i know the last meeting of the arctic council had a specific discussion about um a role of traditional knowledge and cooperation with scientists in this regard so i think that's all certainly the right approach um the success depends on on a longer look i think um on the question about antarctica and and international cooperation um this is pretty straightforward under the antarctic treaty countries um maintain claims there's seven of them that say they claim parts of it um the other participants and there's 50 signatories to the treaty um do not acknowledge those claims i mean they they note that they're there but we don't show passports or visas when we go into the so-called argentine zone etc um and the same goes for placement of stations um you're required under the treaty to notify the treaty of which you're constructing and where you're going to place it but there's no uh regard given to someone saying well this is the austrian zone in this case and we object it's more the emphasis is on is this well placed will it be environmentally um rigorous environmental controls in its in its establishment and maintenance and what's the cooperation between um i think the antarctic treaty many differences between antarctica and the arctic continent versus ocean but um but the treaty has done extremely well in maintaining cooperation among countries and uh i think there's a little there has been a little buzz about recent chinese research efforts they've been on the rise there's an after station here another there broadly those of us who work in antarctic areas are always happy when there's new research and new funding for research it's always cooperative interactions are good um kelly maybe you want to speak a little bit to that but that's my thought thank you yeah so just just uh echo what what ray said but um i sort of i took short note of your question said there is there a problem with too much cooperation or something um so maybe i'm misphrasing it but uh i think that um since the claims are in abeyance while the treaty is in force we certainly don't look at anybody owning anything in antarctica which is a really good thing but obviously from time to time it can be a challenging thing um so and i do think the status of science cooperation under the treaty structure is quite healthy um trying to see how that might give us some kind of lesson for the arctic is hard just for the reasons raised because there are sovereign territories in the arctic um and i don't think there can be too much science cooperation in the arctic either so in getting to the indigenous participation it's a very important uh priority uh in the interagency uh context but in and in this stuff in particular we're uh committed to continuing efforts to make those kind of interactions more robust i think we've gone through phases of trying to understand how to engage across communities and have evolved from original days where scientists showed up and told people what they were doing and that was good enough um we really need it to be a two-way dialogue we understand that i personally participated in that two-way dialogue that canada set up for its nation when i was working throughout the canadian arctic and in my research and uh learned a lot in the process adapted my science as a result of what i learned so i feel like um we are seeing progress there it is in fact on the table for the binding agreement that we're talking about um for the science cooperation and then john uh your question about the belmont forum we won't know until the uh competition closes but uh in july but uh the the russian funding agency has committed uh dollars to fund people from russia to participate in successful proposals um and and i'm very hopeful there but everybody should understand that russia is also undergoing you know interesting times for its scientists as it reorganizes the academy structure and puts a lot of emphasis on some of the more active universities and establishing new university practices and policies i think they're trying to infuse rather than concentrate research in the academy and do education universities there's an effort to make things go more across uh in order to to up the ante and that the game in science and you know university of arctic is playing an important role in in that um and keeping everybody apprised of developments in that regard so we'll see after july 31st whether things materialize but i'm hopeful that they will thanks kelly and uh and and all of the the panelists of the last point about uh bringing together uh scientific research and training was something one of my previous incarnations at the when i worked with the macarthur foundation we were working with the russian ministry of education and a number of universities and took quite quite successfully um back in the 1990s and that the program continued quite a long time beyond beyond that i recall that our work here at csis on us and russian cooperation on health care we were senator william frist a board member at csis was very actively involved with us and he had a very good metaphor for it he called it an occurrence a currency of peace and i think that that metaphor is very much applicable to the the scientific and research cooperation that we've been talking about this morning and that i think there was a clear consensus that uh there there cannot be too much or we'd have to go an awfully long way for the first to be in the position to be considering about whether there would be be too much so on that positive note let me thank the panelists for their brilliant uh participations and thoughts and coming to share them today with us this morning uh and turn the floor over to heather who i think has a very important announcement very important lunchtime uh but let me echo thank you that was a wonderful discussion uh great depth so please join me in thanking our panelists