The Evolution of Environmental and Climate Issues in International Arctic Cooperation

The issues of environmental protection and climate change mitigation are objectively significant for the Arctic, as they directly affect the security of the countries in the region. As a result, cooperation on these issues has traditionally occupied an important part of international cooperation agenda in the region, both through multilateral institutions and on a bilateral basis. Nevertheless, the dynamics of environmental and climatic cooperation in the Arctic is contradictory and unstable. In particular, in the period 2014–2022 cooperation in this area has been actively developing, and environmental protection issues have become key on the agenda of international cooperation. However, in the context of the international political crisis of 2022, it was the ecological and climatic international institutions that found themselves in the most vulnerable position: some ceased to exist and some were deformed, becoming less effective tools for ensuring environmental and climate security in the region. In the article, a logic behind the transformation of cooperation in the field of environment and climate change in the Arctic following the international political crises of 2014 and 2022 is proposed. This proposal is based on the analysis of the global and regional context with the use of the interest-based approach. It was found that in the period 2014–2022 the observed increase in the role of environmental protection issues is due, firstly, to the intensification of global efforts to combat climate change and, secondly, to an attempt to preserve the institutional structure of international cooperation in the Arctic, replacing those areas of cooperation in which interaction turned out to be complicated during the international crisis of 2014. Vulnerability of environmental and climatic institutions under the influence of the international political crisis of 2022 bases on the fact that Western countries were no longer interested in maintaining a system of international cooperation in the region.