White House issues plan to implement its Arctic strategy

The White House released a plan last week to implement its 10year National Strategy for the Arctic Region.

The 58-page document lists more than 30 objectives and 200 recommended actions, which include supporting the Port of Nome’s development, expanding the U.S. Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet and improving its observations of sea ice, weather and ship traffic.

All of these actions are in service of the National Strategy for the Arctic Region, which was updated last year from the Obama administration’s strategy published in 2013.

“The basic objectives of at least the federal government in the Arctic have not varied significantly, administration to administration,” said David Balton, executive director of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Three previous administrations have published Arctic strategies. Balton was involved in two of those previous efforts. However, Balton thinks there are at least two ways in which the Biden administration’s strategy and its implementation plan are different from the ones that came before.

First, Balton sees greater urgency in this strategy and plan when it comes to the climate crisis.

“I think that is part and parcel of this administration’s approach,” Balton told the Nugget. “It feels the climate crisis more acutely, and wants to do things at home, including in the U.S. Arctic, as a way to spur others globally to take meaningful action.”

The second difference is the approach to relations with Russia now that the conflict in Ukraine has put most cooperation on ice.

“Until a year and a half ago, the Arctic was characterized by a high level of cooperation among the Arctic states, including Russia, despite tensions with Russia,” Balton said. “And now, that’s changed pretty fundamentally. There is some limited work through the Arctic Council. Most bilateral efforts between the U.S. and Russia are on hold, with some limited exceptions for search and rescue and other emergency things, and the space station is still flying. So the strategy and the implementation plan reflect the state of affairs.”

The plan lists several objectives around national security in the Arctic. One of these has to do with improving remote sensing and weather observation. As part of this effort, NOAA is supposed to work on upgrading existing weather observing stations and equipment and installing new weather observing stations in Alaska “to support more robust and consistent climate records, weather forecasting models, and weather model verification and validation efforts to enhance forecasting capabilities.” As on press time on Tuesday afternoon, NOAA had not responded to a request for comment about whether any of these improvements might be destined for Nome.

The security objectives include potentially expanding the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker fleet “to support persistent presence in the U.S. Arctic and additional presence as needed in the European Arctic.” Currently, USCG only has two polar icebreakers in operation, the Polar Star and the Healy.

The White House additionally says it plans to work with the State of Alaska and Alaska Native and rural communities “on activities such as combined exercises and training on cold weather operations and interoperability.”

Many of the other objectives involve building resilience to climate change and supporting development.

These include an objective to expand support for the production of critical minerals, such as graphite, though graphite is never specifically named. Under this objective, the

White House says one of its recommended actions to conduct “effective consultations with local communities in considering the potential for sustainable development of critical minerals in Alaska.”

The plan also includes an objective to fight the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people and another to renew efforts to get climate-resilient water and sanitation infrastructure into the 31 Alaska Native communities still without it.

The White House says it “will support development of a deep draft harbor in Nome, as well as development of smaller ports, airfields, and other infrastructure, in consultation with the State of Alaska and Alaska Native communities, to tackle the high cost of living, facilitate responsible development, and improve incident response and recovery while minimizing impacts to the surrounding environment and local communities.”

As part of this next steps of this objective, the plan recommends that the federal government coordinate with the City of Nome “to identify the needs that will come from increased investment in the port within one year.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the port expansion project, did not responded to a request for comment about how it might be working on this.

In theory a new administration could toss the strategy and the implementation plan after that. The Trump administration did not update the Obama administration’s Arctic strategy.

Balton noted that while the Arctic strategy is meant to guide the next decade of policy, the implementation plan has a much shorter time horizon.

“It’s really looking ahead about a year or two,” he said. “At a minimum, this administration intends to do these things through the end of January 2025.”