[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
115 Congress Printed for the use of the
1st Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
A New Ocean in the North:Perils and Possibilities
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
October 5, 2017
Briefing of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Washington: 2018
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
@HelsinkiComm
Legislative Branch Commissioners
HOUSE SENATE
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ROGER WICKER, Mississippi,
Co-Chairman Chairman
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida BENJAMIN L. CARDIN. Maryland
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas CORY GARDNER, Colorado
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee MARCO RUBIO, Florida
RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TOM UDALL, New Mexico
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
Executive Branch Commissioners
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
(II)
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Helsinki process, formally titled the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe, traces its origin to the signing of the
Helsinki Final Act in Finland on August 1, 1975, by the leaders of 33
European countries, the United States and Canada. As of January 1,
1995, the Helsinki process was renamed the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The membership of the OSCE has
expanded to 56 participating States, reflecting the breakup of the
Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
The OSCE Secretariat is in Vienna, Austria, where weekly meetings
of the participating States' permanent representatives are held. In
addition, specialized seminars and meetings are convened in various
locations. Periodic consultations are held among Senior Officials,
Ministers and Heads of State or Government.
Although the OSCE continues to engage in standard setting in the
fields of military security, economic and environmental cooperation,
and human rights and humanitarian concerns, the Organization is
primarily focused on initiatives designed to prevent, manage and
resolve conflict within and among the participating States. The
Organization deploys numerous missions and field activities located in
Southeastern and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The
website of the OSCE is: .
ABOUT THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as
the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to
monitor and encourage compliance by the participating States with their
OSCE commitments, with a particular emphasis on human rights.
The Commission consists of nine members from the United States
Senate, nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member
each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce. The positions
of Chair and Co-Chair rotate between the Senate and House every two
years, when a new Congress convenes. A professional staff assists the
Commissioners in their work.
In fulfilling its mandate, the Commission gathers and disseminates
relevant information to the U.S. Congress and the public by convening
hearings, issuing reports that reflect the views of Members of the
Commission and/or its staff, and providing details about the activities
of the Helsinki process and developments in OSCE participating States.
The Commission also contributes to the formulation and execution of
U.S. policy regarding the OSCE, including through Member and staff
participation on U.S. Delegations to OSCE meetings. Members of the
Commission have regular contact with parliamentarians, government
officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and
private individuals from participating States. The website of the
Commission is: .
A New Ocean in the North:
Perils and Possibilities
__________________
October 5, 2017
Page
PARTICIPANTS
Paul Massaro, Policy Advisor, Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe ......... 1
Julie Gourley, Senior Arctic Official, U.S. Department of State ......................... 2
Iina Peltonen, Embassy of Finland in the United States .................................. 5
Rear Admiral Michael F. McAllister, Commander, 17th Coast Guard
District, U.S. Coast Guard .............................................................. 7
Melanie Bahnke, President and CEO, Kawerak, Inc. ........................................ 10
Mark Smith, CEO, Vitus Energy ........................................................... 14
(IV)
A New Ocean in the North:
Perils and Possibilities
----------
October 5, 2017
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Washington, DC
The briefing was held at 3:32 p.m. in Room G11, Dirksen Senate
Office Building, Washington, DC, Paul Massaro, Policy Advisor,
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, moderating.
Panelists present: Paul Massaro III, Policy Advisor, Commission on
Security and Cooperation in Europe; Julie Gourley, Senior Arctic
Official, U.S. Department of State; Iina Peltonen, Embassy of Finland
in the United States; Rear Admiral Michael F. McAllister, Commander,
17th Coast Guard District, U.S. Coast Guard; Melanie Bahnke, President
and CEO, Kawerak, Inc.; and Mark Smith, CEO, Vitus Energy.
Mr. Massaro. Well, thank you all for coming today. Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's briefing on Arctic
infrastructure and environment. My name is Paul Massaro, and I am the
policy advisor for economic and environmental issues at the Helsinki
Commission. I'd like to thank the Senate Arctic Caucus, Senate Oceans
Caucus and Congressional Arctic Working Group for co-hosting this event
with the commission today.
The Arctic is a topic of increasing interest to the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or the OSCE. This organization
has a mandate to monitor economic and environmental issues within this
region, which includes all eight of the Arctic nations that make up the
Arctic Council, the primary international forum for discussion of
Arctic issues. It is the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, however, that has
been most active on the Arctic and the OSCE context. This assembly has
a special representative on Arctic issues and has passed resolutions
dealing with the Arctic in the past at a number of its summer meetings.
The Arctic is clearly a region of growing global importance. It is
resource rich and looks to become a route through which goods can be
transported more efficiently. It is also a region of enormous
biodiversity and environmental importance. As the Arctic gradually
becomes more accessible, so do our opportunities to reap the benefits
of its sustainable development. Our briefing today will examine the
importance of the Arctic to U.S. policymakers both for its economic
viability and environmental implications. In addition, it will analyze
the challenges we face in playing a leading role in the region and
unlocking its economic potential.
We are grateful to have such distinguished panelists with us today.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this developing issue.
First, we have Julie Gourley, who was at our last briefing as well, who
joins us from the State Department. Julie is the current United States
senior Arctic official, a position she has held since 2005. She is also
the primary U.S. representative to the Arctic Council, where she
manages the State Department's Arctic Council portfolio and helps
forward U.S. foreign policy interests in the region.
Following Julie, we have Iina Peltonen who joins us from the
Finnish Embassy to the United States, where she is an external
economics officer. In her current position, she works on Arctic issues,
focusing specifically on the environmental and energy issues.
We'll then hear from Admiral Michael McAllister, who is the
Commander of the 17th Coast Guard District. He is responsible for Coast
Guard operations throughout Alaska, which include protecting life and
property, enforcing federal laws and treaties, and preserving living
marine resources. His knowledge of the U.S. Government's engagement in
the Arctic will be beneficial to hear.
Next we have Melanie Bahnke, who joins us from Alaska. Melanie is
the president and CEO of Kawerak Inc. She is a tribal member of the
native village of Savoonga and is a passionate advocate for Native
American rights in Alaska.
Finally, we will hear from Mark Smith, the CEO of Vitus Energy and
a third-generation Alaska resident. He began as a deckhand with Smith
Lighterage in 1973 and eventually purchased the family business in
1987. Since selling the original company, Mark has been active in
Alaska's energy and transportation industry. We will conclude with Q&A
session.
I'd like now to give the floor to our first panelist, Julie
Gourley, who will discuss the State Department's outlook on the Arctic
and our role in the region's development. Julie, the floor is yours.
Ms. Gourley. Thank you, Paul, for inviting me back to the Helsinki
Commission. It's nice to be here.
This is a great topic, and it's a nice time to talk about it a
little more in-depth now that the United States has passed the Arctic
Council chairmanship on to Finland, and we have a little more space to
think and breathe now and think deeper thoughts about the Arctic.
So about infrastructure, which is a particularly interesting topic
in that region--a hot topic right now--it's getting a lot of attention
in the Arctic Ocean, frankly, as everyone in this room probably knows,
because the ocean is much less frozen than it used to be, and the ice
that is there is thinner, and it's easier to break with ice-
strengthened ships. So that means there's more stuff going on in the
Arctic Ocean than in modern human history.
When any of us would sit around talking about infrastructure, you
would normally think of roads and bridges and telephone lines, and the
electricity grid, and pipelines and so forth. And that's stuff we take
for granted. But the state of infrastructure in the Arctic is very
different from that, and very much less robust.
So, for example, with diminishing sea ice, shipping in the Arctic
Ocean is starting a little bit of an uptick. Which does not mean that
the Arctic Ocean, which has a couple of very famous shipping routes--
the northern sea route over Russia and the northwest passage over
Canada--are seeing anywhere near the level of shipping that the rest of
the world is. But with respect to past shipping patterns, especially in
the northern sea route, there is quite a bit more activity.
But there's very little infrastructure in many parts of the
Arctic--in Alaska, in northern Canada, in the northern Arctic regions
of Russia and in Greenland--to actually support large-scale commercial
shipping in the Arctic. For example, there are very few deep-water
ports. And there's certainly a lot of talk about developing one in
Alaska, possibly in Nome. I think our Kawerak will probably talk about
that a little bit more. The main one that is the most familiar to
people is the one in Murmansk, Russia. And the rest are the bulk of the
deep-water shipping capacity and port capacity is along the Arctic
coast in Russia.
For another thing, highway and railroad infrastructure is sparse in
those same areas. Now, I'm not talking about the five Nordic countries,
which are a completely different situation. But certainly in Alaska,
Canada, and Russia, again, there's not a lot of road or highway or
railway infrastructure to support deep-water ports, which means that
there's not really any ability to support commercial-scale container
shipping. So the shipping that is going up a little bit, certainly a
lot for the northern sea route but not a lot compared to the rest of
the world, is mostly bulk shipping--for example, gas hydrates going
from the Barents Sea around over to China.
Russia is actively marketing the northern sea route, north of its
Arctic coastline, as both a shorter route between Europe and Asia, and
a safer one that's free of piracy and, at least for now, the
traditional kinds of criminal activity, like human smuggling and arms
trafficking and drug trafficking, and so forth. Although the number of
voyages in the northern sea route has actually increased quite a bit in
the last decade, the shipping activity is still very insignificant
compared to the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal, which are sort of the
main shipping lanes that the northern sea route is sometimes compared
to, and that people are looking to as a model for the future of
shipping in the northern sea route. But I think people like Caitlyn
Antrim in the audience know that that's way in the future.
So the infrastructure situation is quite a bit different in the
Nordic states, the five Nordic states, where just this week, actually,
there's been new interest in building an Arctic Corridor Railway that
would connect Northern Europe with Russia's Arctic deep-water ports,
and it would eventually connect to the China Belt and Road initiative
that you may have heard about. But the idea--and maybe Iina will know
something about this--is that it would connect Rovaniemi, Finland with
Kirkenes, Norway, a port city on the Barents Sea, and then tie into
other deep-water ports along the Russian coast, and then eventually tie
in with China, which would give China much more direct economic ties to
the Arctic than it has now.
So with respect to economic development, in recent years there's
been a lot of focus on that in the Arctic region, again, because the
sea ice is melting and the permafrost is thawing and things are opening
up in that part of the world. Things like offshore oil and gas
development, cruise tourism, deep seabed mining, perhaps commercial
fishing one day, in addition to deep-water port development and
commercial shipping, which is why plans like the Arctic Corridor
Railway are starting to be made.
Another critical area of infrastructure in the Arctic is intel
communications, and that's not something people normally think about
when you think about infrastructure, especially in the Arctic where
you're immediately thinking about ports and ships and roads. The lack
of telecommunications infrastructure in the Arctic is why we, in the
United States, initiated new work in that area in the Arctic Council
during our recent two-year chairmanship period for the Arctic Council.
And Finland has taken it over. So it's continuing on these next two
years under Finnish leadership.
I'll say just a little bit about that. Many telecom technologies
are already in use today in southern parts of the Arctic. And those
kinds of technologies vary based on the user needs. The communications
over the northernmost part of the Arctic north--way north, way up and
into and over the ocean--are only possible with limited capabilities,
such as radio and satellite technologies. But that's kind of all there
is up there now.
So as a result, it's important to note that no single technology
alone will meet all the telecommunications needs in the Arctic. The
solutions to the connectivity gaps around the Arctic will vary along
with the needs of the end-user community. And that is exactly what's
going on right now in the Arctic Council--our two years looked at sort
of the whole infrastructure picture and the enormous gap that is in the
Arctic. And now we're looking more at who the end-user community is,
who the individual end-users might be and what their actual needs are.
For example, there are fiber optic cables being laid in parts of
the Arctic. I think people in this room probably have heard about the
Quintillion Project that's, I think, going from Japan over to England
and around through the Bering Strait and over the northern part of
Alaska, which is allowing Alaskans to tap into this fiber optic cable
and, for the first time ever, be able to have broadband in the northern
areas, in Barrow, for example. It's pretty exciting. It's a real game
changer for northern Alaska that fiber is actually now being laid in
the water and they'll be able to tap into it.
The purpose of the Quintillion Project is mainly to link the
financial markets in Europe and Asia through the much shorter route,
which will--even though it's in milliseconds of time that are saved--
the timeliness of connectivity between the markets is huge for
financial markets. So that's the main purpose for this cable being
laid. But of course, it has this added benefit of being able to provide
a lot more connectivity in the Arctic.
But as they're installed, opportunities like that will happen. The
satellite industry is doing the same thing, and looking similarly to
the Arctic for new constellations. I think the Iridium constellation,
which is quite old and has been up there for a long time is one of the
companies that is looking to the Arctic and I believe is also working
with the IMO on search and rescue capability through satellite
technology. So there's broadband, and there's satellite all being built
up on the Arctic now.
With the increase in shipping traffic, there's also a demand for
on-board telecommunications services for business needs, such as
navigation aids and data transfer and vessel tracking. There are also
customer needs onboard ships, such as for email and internet access. So
with increasing ship traffic, there will continue to be increasing
demands, not just for commercial capabilities, but for search and
rescue backup and support to offshore development activities.
Search and rescues, in particular, is another area the Arctic
Council focuses on, and the needs therein. And not only in Coast Guards
practicing and keeping fresh in how to operate in that environment, but
also how to take advantage of existing telecommunications, which are
pretty thin up there, but which will be improving as time goes on and
as this task force and the Arctic Council continues.
So I'll stop, but the bottom line is really that economic
development can't happen in any significant way without supporting
infrastructure. And that's really why it's one of the very main topics,
one of the top, top topics being talked about in the Arctic right now.
And infrastructure itself is a form of economic development. So it sort
of has this double benefit in the Arctic. And in a region like that in
the world, where there's very little infrastructure now, of creating
jobs by its very creation and also creating jobs by being in place and
supporting other kinds of human activity.
Thank you.
Mr. Massaro. Great. Thank you very much, Julie. It's always so
exciting to hear you speak. I love this idea of an Arctic Corridor
Railway, especially how it connects with the One Belt One Road
initiative of China. One of the things I also focus on at the
commission are the OSCE Asian partners. And all of the Asian partners
are very concerned, to say the least, about China's project. At least,
they're paying very close attention to it. And also this idea of the
milliseconds saved for financial markets. This is the kind of thing
that really got me into Arctic issues to begin with, is these exciting
types of projects.
On another note, I wanted to let everyone know that we are
expecting Senator Sullivan to drop by at some point and make a few
remarks. I'd ask that panelists take a short pause when he comes in.
He's running a very tight schedule and we'd be very excited to have him
come speak shortly. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Iina.
Ms. Peltonen. Great. Thank you for the invitation to this event.
And this is a great opportunity to contribute to this discussion as a
representative of the current chairmanship of the Arctic Council. I'm
just so happy that you are keeping the Arctic on the agenda, because we
think that the Arctic is, nowadays, more important than ever for all of
us, because what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic, as
our president says.
Well, first, I would like to say a couple of words about the
background of Finland and the Arctic. Well, of course, because Finland
is located in the Arctic region, the Arctic is obviously an important
region for us. And it's not only regional issue, but it's a mindset of
viewing for all of us. And about the Arctic Council, the whole genesis
of the Arctic Council goes back to Rovaniemi, a city on the Arctic
Circle in Finland. Almost 30 years ago the first ministerial meeting of
the Arctic countries, focusing on environmental protection in the
Arctic led to the Rovaniemi process, and eventually the establishment
of the Arctic Council 1996.
Well, in Finland we have been actively working on our national
Arctic strategy in the past few years. And the key areas in that
strategy, they are ranging from foreign and the EU policies, Arctic
know-how and business, of course, sustainable development and
infrastructure, for instance. Finland is, at the moment, the chair of
the Arctic Council, but also of the Arctic Economic Council. But I'm
going to focus on our chairmanship in the Arctic Council.
Well, now having assumed the chairmanship of the Arctic Council
from the U.S. in Fairbanks in May, our mindset and minds are even more
concentrated on the Arctic, more than usual. And we appreciate a lot
the achievements of the U.S. chairmanship. And we are happy with the
very smooth transition. And continuity is the key word in the work of
the Arctic Council. And we would say that a Finish chairmanship is like
a continuation of the U.S. chairmanship. Of course, not in every
detail, but in many issues.
But now we are doing our best to guide the Arctic cooperation
forward as a region of peace, stability, and constructive cooperation.
And that spirit is also reflected in the title of our chairmanship
program: Exploring Common Solutions. And as I said, for us, the Arctic
is not only a regional issue, but something that is very intimately
linked with the fundamental questions of global order, common
challenges and solutions. This is why our chairmanship program also
refers to two major international milestones of the past years--the
Paris climate agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. And they
form an umbrella under which therefore stated priorities of our
chairmanship. And now I'm going to tell you a little bit about them,
one by one.
First, there's environmental protection. That's our first priority.
And environmental protection has been the core of Arctic cooperation
from the very beginning. It is directly reflected in the health of the
ecosystem and human well being. And if you will allow a clumsy idiom in
this context, the Arctic is very much like the canary in the coal mine
of climate change, like an early indicator of where we are headed
globally. We have, of course, now the current discussion on the Paris
agreement here in the U.S. But for us Finns, and also the EU, the
implementation of the Paris agreement remains extremely important. We
think urgent action on mitigation and adaptation is really needed. And
all common solutions we are able to find in the Arctic. They really are
going to be helpful. If I mention one concrete example of this work,
Finland is currently exploring practical ways to reduce especially
black carbon emissions.
And another priority is connectivity. This is directly a
continuation from the U.S. chairmanship. And the same priorities are
also in the work of the Arctic Economic Council. And as Julie said,
well-functioning communication networks and services are a lifeline for
human activities. And it is also needed for economic development. The
Arctic is no exception in this. As I said, we continue the Arctic
Council's work on this and explore ways to enhance the connectivity and
availability of program services in the Arctic, together with the
indigenous peoples, local communities, the private sector, and
researchers. Of course, this includes all technologies, meaning
satellite connections and cables, for example.
And our third priority is meteorological cooperation. And this is
something really under the auspices of the Arctic Council. We think
improved cooperation in meteorological research, observation and
services are highly valuable in many sectors, not least in maritime
transportation and public safety. Getting better data coverage and
better forecasts will improve our ability to manage climate and water-
related risks and benefit us all. And of course, we work closely with
the World Meteorological Organization with this. And it will probably
not hurt that the director-general of WMO is currently a fellow Finn.
And then our fourth priority is education. And education is
something we Finns value very highly. It is also an essential building
block in sustainable development, and also local involvement. We find
creating fair educational opportunities improve the resilience of local
communities and the region as a whole. We want to make sure that all
children in the Arctic have access to and will receive a quality
education. In this work, we emphasize teachers and their work.
Therefore, Finland already proposes to strengthen the network of
educational specialists, in cooperation with the University of the
Arctic. Developing modern teaching methods will be at the core of this
effort.
And in addition, it has something to do also with Julie and you,
colleagues, when you go to the Arctic Council meetings. I just want to
mention that Finland also decided to arrange all the Arctic Council
meetings in an environmentally friendly way. And that means in practice
that Julie and her colleagues, they don't have any paper meeting
material, for example. They just have to eat or they also have some
local food, as much as possible. And there's no unnecessary transport.
And actually, in Finland these environment-friendly meeting
arrangements are not so familiar either. So the ministry for foreign
affairs of Finland and WWF Finland, they developed together guidelines
for this. And this is something new also for us.
But in the end, as I said, those four priorities are our themes.
And if you want to read our chairmanship program, this is also an
environmental-friendly thing that we don't have paper copies, but you
can scan the QR code here and download it from the internet. And you
can find it in Finnish, Swedish, English of course, and Russian, and
Sami
language.
Thank you.
Mr. Massaro. Thank you very much, Iina. And I too am a huge fan of
low paper events. I know our communications director is here. Perhaps
we can try out a barcode thing in the Helsinki Commission in the
future. It's very exciting technology. Well, thank you so much for
going through your priorities, Finland's priorities, for the Arctic
Council chairmanship. And very happy to hear that we have so much in
common. Should be an exciting chairmanship.
Admiral McAllister, the floor is yours. Thank you.
Adm. McAllister. All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. I'm
going to talk a little bit on infrastructure needs from the perspective
of the U.S. Coast Guard and how we work in the international or global
environment to address civil Coast Guard-related missions, given
infrastructure constraints.
So just as a quick introduction, I'm honored to lead about 2,500
Coast Guard men and women in Alaska that work in the U.S. Arctic
providing safety and security and environmental protection, of what we
call stewardship operations, really around the clock, every day of the
year.
And I'm going to continue this theme of discussion about
infrastructure, but I'm going to stretch the definition a little bit,
because when I looked it up in Dictionary.com the definition I got was
underlying foundation or basic framework as of a system or
organization. That's pretty broad. But it gives me an opportunity to
talk about things beyond just traditional physical infrastructure and
public works. So I'm going to talk a little bit about things like
informational infrastructure, mobile infrastructure, shared and
collective infrastructure, and governance and policy as infrastructure
concerns. To try to keep it within bounds, I'm going to talk
specifically about infrastructure as it relates to increased maritime
traffic, which Julie described in her remarks.
Let me start with the strategic perspective a little bit. There
have actually been a lot of strategic-level studies that list
infrastructure needs, things like the White House's national strategy
for the Arctic region. The Committee on Maritime Transportation and
Security did a 10-year prioritization of infrastructure, which was a
very good work. The Coast Guard has its own Arctic strategy, which
lists infrastructure needs that are relevant to an organization like
the Coast Guard. And then the Council on Foreign Relations put out a
bit recently on Arctic imperatives reinforcing U.S. strategy on
America's fourth coast, which talks a lot about infrastructure needs as
well. So this is not necessarily a new body of work. We've been
thinking about these things for a long period of time.
And there's some commonality amongst all these different strategic
works, things like deep water or safe harbors, search and rescue
capabilities, oil spill capabilities, communications, what we call
maritime domain awareness, navigation and bottom mapping or
hydrography. But if you put all together, it's a very long list of
national needs. And it will come at great national expense. So it's
important for us to prioritize, to identify what needs to be done first
in order to provide for safe and secure uses of the Arctic. I was at an
event recently, and I believe it was Senator King from Maine who said,
this is necessary work as the Bering Strait--you know, that is the
narrow waterway between Alaska and Russia--becomes one of the most
strategic places on Earth with the increasing traffic through the
northern sea route and northwest passage. I think it'll be many years
before we see that come to fruition, but certainly the trends are all
in that direction.
So what are our infrastructure needs in the U.S.? What should our
priorities be? And how do we work across nations to get there? I'm
going to provide you my thoughts as an operator, a practitioner, using
the Coast Guard's Arctic strategy framework.
The first thing that we need and are working on trying to get is
informational infrastructure. And primarily from a Coast Guard
perspective, that's what we call maritime domain awareness, knowing
what's going on out there. And our general model for gaining and using
maritime domain awareness is we collect it, we fuse it, we analyze it,
and we disseminate it. And there are shortfalls, really, in all of
those.
Julie has already mentioned things like satellite shortfalls. And
there's some great work being done out there, both on the government
side and on the commercial side, to put additional satellite capability
into polar orbits. And you know, just as an example, we, the Coast
Guard, are now working through our Department of Homeland Security to
put small satellites into space to help improve the detection of
emergency position indicators for search and rescue, as an example. And
so it's an exciting world ahead, but there's very little capability
there today. About 4.7 percent of the U.S. Arctic bottom--the ocean
bottom--is mapped to today's standards. And so the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Association [NOAA] is using all of its resources, along
with Coast Guard resources, commercial resources, to try to get them on
a path where they can do accurate mapping for more of the U.S. Arctic.
As Iina said, environmental sensors are a big issue for us. Just as
a kind of a data point, the weather and ice forecasts that we get in
the U.S. Arctic typically are good for about two to three days, whereas
in the lower 48, Washington, D.C. as an example, they're accurate for
about five to seven days. Just the lack of sensors in the region makes
it more difficult for us. And I would certainly tell you that weather
is more important in the U.S. Arctic, where everybody attempts to work
around the weather constraints in order to operate.
Vessel tracking: We use automated identification systems, but those
only apply to large vessels, so we can't necessarily track well small
vessels. And that's a gap that we need to fix in our maritime domain
awareness. And then there's human sensors as well, trying to gain the
traditional knowledge of members of coastal communities and include
that in our work. We need to be able to fuse that through some sort of
common operating picture. And we need decision support tools in order
to take all this information--a vast amount of information--and make
good decisions from it.
But it doesn't end with decision making at a government level. We
need to be able to disseminate that information and tailor it to
individual users. And I think Iina had mentioned that as well. You
know, I can share it with Coast Guard ships, but it really needs to be
shared with commercial fishermen. It needs to be shared with masters of
vessels who are on long voyage routes. It needs to be shared with
subsistence hunters so that they can use this information in a way that
helps them perform their missions, their duties, their activities in a
safe and secure manner. I'll argue that governance is an important part
of infrastructure as well. There's been some progress made on
commercial vessel safety, as an example, with the release of the polar
code recently. And frankly, we already work pretty well across nations
to harmonize some different rulesets that we have.
So as an example, when the cruise ship Crystal Serenity, which was
the first really large cruise ship to go through the northwest pass,
first proposed their route, we worked side-by-side with the Canadian
Coast Guard and with Transport Canada, their equivalents to the U.S.
Coast Guard--to ensure that the rules that we were going to apply to
ensure that that ship made that transit safely were harmonized between
the two countries. And at the end of the day, it was frankly Canada
that had the more conservative or more stringent requirements that led
to all of the safety features--or many of the safety features that the
Crystal Serenity put in place in order to ensure that that inaugural
cruise was going to be as safe as it possibly could be. So that's how
we work across governments to take the highest level of safety and
security that we can manage together.
We're doing a variety of other things. I know Melanie is probably
aware of this, as is Mark, but we're trying to manage our waterways in
a smart manner as well, because only a small percentage of waterways
are mapped accurately. For example, we recently set up a safe transit
route through the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait, and into the Chukchi
Sea. It's a route that has been surveyed. And we told folks: If you
stay inside this route you can be assured that you will have good, safe
water, and that you are avoiding conflicts with subsistence activities,
with migrating marine mammals, as an example. And so it's a route that
addresses many different concerns in the best possible way. We're about
to present that through the International Maritime Organization for
their consideration, and then it will become a global set of
recommendations.
There was some mention of fisheries. Actually, there is viable
commercial fishing going on in the U.S. Arctic. It's actually at the
state level. Salmon is a commercial fishing--it was exempt from that
particular moratorium. But it just demonstrates how commercial fishing
is a sustainable activity in the Arctic. And so we need to bring the
right governance structures to ensure that that can be managed in a
sustainable way.
It's good to have good governance, to have good policies, but you
also need effective presence. And this is where the kind of traditional
infrastructure and hardware comes in. We in the Coast Guard use a
mobile infrastructure approach. We send ships, we send aircraft, we
send people during open water seasons into the Arctic to ensure that we
have a good presence. They are providing the nation's sovereign
presence. They're visible and they're out there and they have law
enforcement capability, they have defense capability. And they're the
United States flag in our exclusive economic zone, on our extended
continental shelf and our territorial seas.
With the recent discussion on ice breakers and recapitalization of
ice breakers, those ships will allow us to conduct Coast Guard missions
throughout the year in any ice conditions. So that's an important
capability for us to have. Unmanned systems are being tested and offer
great promise as well. And then there's the supporting infrastructure.
Communications was something that Julie mentioned. The ability to stage
and receive ships, even if it's on an emergency basis, speaks to the
need for ports. Don't necessarily need to be transshipment ports, but
they need to provide some level of services.
And then let me finish up with partnerships. And Iina mentioned
this as constructive cooperation. And for the Coast Guard, partnerships
are important. We need to be able to pool our resources to respond to
significant events. So as an example, recently we conducted an exercise
called Arctic Chinook. It was done under the Arctic Council Search and
Rescue Agreement. And it focused on a cruise ship incident where the
cruise ship was many hundreds of miles from the nearest hub city. And
it involved transporting people from the water to shore, taking care of
them on shore, moving them to a hub community where they could get some
level of first aid, and then onward movement to a metropolitan area
where hospitals would be able to get the advanced aid.
One of the capabilities that we demonstrated there was something
called an Arctic Sustainment Package. Again, in a remote area you might
not have landing strips. You might not have anybody there. The
Department of Defense dropped tents, pararescuemen with EMT or first
aid capability, vehicles, on the beach. And they were able to provide
the first level of care for people who were in an exercise term,
injured during this particular event. Canada has these Arctic packages.
The U.S. has some of them. And really, if there's a cruise ship event
out there, we're going to need all of them working together. And so it
was actually a pleasure to have the Canadian Air Force participate in
that exercise with us. We had observers from Russia. I believe we had
some from Finland, Norway, and, of course, Canada.
And I would be remiss if I didn't say an important part of our
partnerships is about tribal engagement. Anything that we do in terms
of infrastructure needs to be respectful of our tribal interests. And,
as Julie had said, it needs to provide an opportunity for sustainable
economic development from a local perspective as well.
In closing, I'll offer that infrastructure is necessary. We do need
to think more broadly about it. It's not just about the public works.
And we need to establish this infrastructure, particularly for maritime
safety, security, and environmental protection, in advance of need. And
that may be hard. That's a catch-22 because a lot of people are
reluctant to do it until they see the traffic. So the catch-22 is the
traffic--it needs to precede the traffic. And that partnerships will
remain critical to our achieving our collective goals.
Thanks very much.
Mr. Massaro. Well, thank you very much, Admiral McAllister. I
particularly like you quoting Senator King. It's for those reasons, the
Bering Strait becoming the most strategic area in the world, things
like that, that the commission staff felt it necessary to hold a
briefing like this. It seems like this issue is emerging very, very
quickly. And in fact, although you say--and I completely agree--that we
need to establish this sort of thing in advance of need, we're already
behind in many aspects on what is needed.
So with that said, I'd like to turn it over to Melanie Bahnke.
Thanks so much, Melanie.
Ms. Bahnke. Thank you, Paul.
Distinguished leaders and guests, thank you for the opportunity to
join you today. It is an honor to share our people's infrastructure
priorities in the Arctic. I am Melanie Bahnke, originally from St.
Lawrence Island, located in the center of the Bering Strait, where you
really can see Russia from our houses. I serve as a president and CEO
of Kawerak, a consortium of 20 Federally recognized tribes representing
our region's 15 communities. Kawerak has twice convened leaders from
our communities to identify priorities related to a changing climate
and the increase of shipping through the Bering Strait. That input is
what informs my testimony today.
The U.S. is an Arctic nation. And for us, the Arctic is our
homeland. The ocean's abundance of marine life has sustained our
communities for thousands of years, and we intend to be here for the
next 10,000 years and beyond. We are witness to one of the largest
marine mammal migrations on Earth. The well-being of our communities as
we live our native ways of life is entirely dependent on our marine
ecosystem. Change for us is constant. The impacts of colonization have
had lasting impacts on our communities. The reality of our climate and
ecosystem changing and increased shipping in the Arctic adds another
layer of urgency to ensure that we native people do not become an
endangered species.
For the U.S. to ensure that our value system as a nation and the
rule of law drive the future of the Arctic, it is imperative for the
U.S. to prioritize and prepare for engagement with the people of the
Arctic in a very real and meaningful way. I would like to remind this
commission of the U.S.'s special relationship with its indigenous
communities, as defined by our history as a nation and the body of
Federal Indian law that makes up our relationship as Federally
recognized Indian tribes. It is the responsibility of our leaders in
Washington honor and uphold that government-to-government relationship
that we share.
With that in mind, I have several recommendations and thoughts for
your consideration. Number one is basic human needs. Our hearts go out
to the states and the territory of Puerto Rico whose communities were
devastated by natural disasters. We all understand the Federal
Government's role in repairing infrastructure when this occurs. This
same level of responsibility exists for government to bring
infrastructure to areas of the U.S. in places where it is nonexistent.
Some of our communities are, just like people in Puerto Rico, obtaining
drinking water from streams. Many indigenous communities in the Arctic
still lack the most basic infrastructure that is enjoyed throughout the
rest of the U.S., namely water and sewer and adequate housing stock.
I would like to express appreciation to the agenda that Finland has
outlined as it takes over chairmanship of the Arctic Council. The focus
on the implementation of the Polar Code, as well as the well being of
our Arctic communities in the areas of health, water, energy, and
infrastructure is good news to us. Let me shed some light on the very
real human issues with the lack of community infrastructure that we
face in our region. The population in the Bering Strait region is
roughly 10,000, with continued growth at 10 to 20 percent every decade.
Over 20 percent of the homes in the region are overcrowded, with
multiple generations or multiple families living under one roof. Some
families sleep in shifts due to the limited floor space and overcrowded
homes.
Too many homes are dilapidated, substandard and unfit for the
Arctic environment. My home community of Savoonga faces the highest
overcrowding rates of any census area in Alaska, 61 percent. These are
statistics that we are not proud to share, because for us these are not
statistics. They are our family members and extended family. Five
communities in the Bering Strait region remain unconnected to running
water and sewer. One in three infants require hospitalization in
communities without running water and sewer. As a developed nation in
the world, this reality in the United States Arctic is, for us,
unacceptable. It is where the rubber meets the road.
President Trump has zeroed out funding to address what we call a
silent sanitation crisis in rural Alaska. We have requested a
congressional hearing to examine water and sewer regulatory issues
through the Alaska Federation of Natives, and look forward to working
with members of our delegation on that front. We also look forward to
engaging in knowledge sharing across the Arctic to address our common
challenges.
Number two, erosion, natural disaster preparedness mitigation and
response. The Governor of Alaska has on more than one occasion declared
disasters in our region due to extreme weather events. The lack of
shore ice protection, compounded by changes in the weather that brings
extreme winds, is resulting in erosion of our coastal communities. Five
communities in our region are listed as being in imminent danger.
Infrastructure is needed to protect these communities from literally
falling into the sea. Disaster preparedness mitigation and response
mechanisms are needed. And this requires investments in infrastructure.
For some communities, relocation is the only option.
Number three, oil spill preparedness and response. While I would
like to commend the Arctic Council's work on oil spill preparedness and
response, we remain very concerned at the community level that we have
yet to prepare and train for such an event. Commandant Zukunft of the
United States Coast Guard clearly expressed at an Arctic naval
conference this summer that it would be impossible to recover from an
oil spill in the Arctic environment. His words are very concerning to
us, and we appreciate his honesty, as we are aware that oil exploration
will continue under Russian waters and as the Trump Administration
explores opening U.S. offshore exploration.
Our communities are on the frontlines. And in the event of an
accident happening--whether it's a shipping accident from a tanker
transporting petroleum materials or the risks that may occur with
exploration--we urge the United States to make an investment in
preparing our communities to respond. During the Cold War, the Alaska
Territorial Guard served as the eyes and ears of the United States,
ready to serve when asked. Men from our rural communities in Alaska
continue to serve in the U.S. military at higher rates than any other
ethnicity in America.
I would like to suggest the establishment of an Arctic Territorial
Guard that perhaps is embedded with the U.S. Coast Guard with a
specific mission to ensure ship to shore communications occurs and that
our local community members are training and prepared for oil spills
and other disaster response. We can no longer be in a position just
hoping nothing goes wrong, given the nearest Coast Guard assets are
several thousand miles away. We need an ongoing commitment to work with
and ensure that we're prepared at the community level.
Number four, transportation systems. The Arctic is in need of a
deep-draft port and harbor system. The increased shipping through the
Bering Strait is a reality, not just a projection. We lack a deep-draft
port that has been developed. Our communities are accessible only by
small aircraft and summer barges. We lack a ferry system. The U.S. used
to provide a barge, the North Star, to provide basic necessities to
rural Arctic communities. A supplement to the Bypass mail system is
needed to provide equity in the cost of living and doing business for
Arctic communities, one that takes into consideration reducing the cost
of shipping heating oil, gasoline, and building materials, for example.
Intermodal transportation systems must be funded.
Number five, hunter safety and access. Among our primary concerns
with an increased presence of commercial traffic through the strait is
the safety of our hunters, as well as the safety of our marine mammals.
While the Coast Guard and NOAA have identified necessary improvements
that the U.S. must take, it is imperative that these systems are funded
and developed to facilitate real-time communication between vessels,
our communities, and hunters. Internet connectivity will be enhanced
with the upcoming Quintillion fiber optic cable implementation through
the Bering Strait region. But current plans only include connecting a
few hub communities, such as Nome. Our other coastal communities are in
need of enhancement to allow connectivity with the rest of the globe.
Ship-to-shore communication infrastructure from the Bering Strait
to the Canadian border is needed. An investment in our local
communities to provide information to passing traffic on ice and for
information sharing between hunters and larger vessels is needed. The
use of drones, managed by our communities, can inform both communities
and ship traffic to reduce the potential of conflicts. Ultimately, we
must continue to work with the shipping industry, with regulators and
our Russian neighbors to establish marine mammal avoidance protocol
during the fall and spring migrations. Kawerak has published
subsistence-use maps as a first step. However, additional research is
needed to develop baseline information about the natural resources in
the Arctic. We recommend establishing an Arctic research facility
located in the Bering Strait region so that development in the Arctic
is informed by science and local knowledge.
Number six, economic development opportunities. The increased
shipping in the Arctic brings with it the opportunities for economic
development. Our rich natural resources and culture can provide a
window to jobs and a path out of poverty. As people who bear the most
risk, our people should also stand to benefit from economic development
opportunities in the Arctic. Government can help by providing the
startup resources and technical expertise to facilitate sustainable
development opportunities, including tribal enterprises that create eco
tourism facilities and other economic development opportunities. The
cruise ship Crystal Serenity has twice voyaged through the Arctic. Our
tribes could benefit from a hand up, not a hand out, to boost economic
development in this poverty-stricken region. We want to be participants
in the global economy, but this will require investment by both the
public and private sectors.
In closing, while the Bering Strait is considered an international
strait, which all ships and aircraft enjoy the right of transit passage
which shall not be impeded, the region is our homeland where Inupiat,
Siberian Yupik and Central Yupik communities have lived for thousands
of years. We inherently have the right to live our way of life and urge
that this shall not be impeded. President Trump revoked President
Obama's executive order, 13754, that provided for a level of protection
and formalizing engagement with our communities in the Bering Strait on
the issues of natural resources protection, erosion, and preparing for
increased shipping and the need for infrastructure in our remote
communities. We urge this Congress to take action, restoring Executive
Order 13754. And if this is not possible, at least be informed by our
work on the order as you prepare for policymaking in the Arctic region.
The Arctic is our homeland. In the Bering Strait, the U.S. and
Russia are neighbors. We are family, separated by national borders and
the international dateline. It is my hope that leaders of the Arctic
nations that define the boundaries of the Arctic remember that. We are
communities that neighbor each other in an extreme environment. And if
Arctic infrastructure is to be responsibly developed, it will take
partnerships internationally and locally. The First People of the
Arctic must be afforded participation in this process.
Thank you, again, for the opportunity to share infrastructure
priorities from the perspective of indigenous people whose homeland is
the Arctic. [Speaks in a native language.]
Mr. Massaro. Well, thank you very much, Melanie, for coming all the
way here from Alaska today and for a very real picture of what's going
on in these Arctic communities.
I'd like now to hand the floor of to Mark.
Mr. Smith. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. I'd like to have
some good provocative discussion here in the Q&A, so I'm going to rush
through my points because here at the tail end a lot of folks have
touched on the points that were also in my remarks.
Just a brief background; my great uncle was in the original gold
rush, and from there, followed the economy down to the red gold in
Bristol Bay, and was part of the salmon industry. And that's where I
grew up, in the family homestead in Bristol Bay, part of a tug and
barge company that really got its start in the fisheries business, and
then as the Federal Government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs
specifically started investing in basic schools and other village
services, the U.S. Post Office came in, that was the origin of the
family company. So a lot of the transportation businesses that got
started really were through a Federal infrastructure investment.
So from the private sector, you know, my punch line and my remarks
will basically be driven down to the fact that as a pioneer state we
really look to the Federal Government to help us provide a lot of the
basic infrastructure that provides safety and economy. And that economy
is with better ports and with sharing infrastructure development that
is done on a sustainable and local business.
Just starting off with some of the needs, the Arctic does need
basic shipping services, as relates specifically to the private sector
and international shipping. There is very little that we see coming
across the northern route and the northwest passage that has anyplace
to stop. Even the Crystal Serenity that you mentioned does not have a
port it can go to. It has to anchor offshore. So if there is any true
trouble or any needs for repairs or anything in an emergency basis,
that ship actually has nowhere to go. Literally, once it gets up to
Barrow it's 1,000 miles from the nearest place where it can tie to a
dock. So that's sobering, as I think everyone looks at the
international aspect of shipping.
From a more local level, my company serves the communities that
Melanie was referencing. And it is, it's--I'm going to say--a third-
world situation, where there are no improvements. We literally hit the
beach with tank barges to offload fuel and other vitals. And I'm sure
that Admiral McAllister knows that if you talk to anyone in the
civilized world about running a tank barge ashore, they'll scream and
say how that can be. But in Alaska, that's a necessity. And we have to
build and accommodate, and we have to watch the weather, and we have to
have very specific local knowledge in our captains to be able to do
that safely.
Another point is that just as far as seeing any other repair
services for us, again, we're literally 1,000 miles. So if we have a
major repair that we need to do to any of our vessels, it is about a
20-day round trip out of the arena. So we're looking for the Federal
Government to possibly put in a major port where we can get a cluster
of services that will ultimately reduce our costs of operating in the
environment and reduce, in turn, the cost that the villagers in the
Bering Sea area have to pay for such services.
The second topic I wanted to touch on is how these projects happen.
And typically, in contracting, a project will be put out and bidders
will bid on it, and we'll have what we would call an outside
contracting firm come in, provide the infrastructure, bring in all of
the parts, the pieces and the labor to do that infrastructure, and then
leave. And ultimately, that's probably the most cost-effective way of
doing infrastructure development, but it's probably not the best way
for Alaska, because we want to include those people that provide
services on a local level to participate at a higher level. So if we
can do infrastructure development in more of a slow-motion and
ultimately get to the point where we have a satisfactory product, it
will have a much more impactful benefit on the local level than we do
when we go through traditional contracting routes.
This ties into the second point I have as far as being sustainable.
And as a private sector individual, I want to see healthy communities,
communities that have growth, communities that have hope, and where
investment is made. And again, that only is going to happen if we have
improvements in infrastructure--even maintenance of infrastructure that
has been put in historically and yet still needs improvement.
This is also part of the oil and gas experience. We saw Shell come
in and put nearly $7 billion into northwest Alaska. And the truth is,
my company literally didn't see a dollar of that and that's, to me,
quite remarkable because everything that happened with Shell that came
in, and that tremendous amount invested, as Melanie mentioned, there's
10,000 people in the Bering Straits area, how many people, again,
didn't see a dollar of that development. I think that there is a
variety of things that we can do as a government that can help make
sure that when we do have infrastructure development, that we do have
resource extraction, that there's some way for more benefit to the
local communities.
A final point--again, mainly addressed to the Polar Code and the
other vessels that will transit our area and our Arctic--we need
infrastructure to just comply with the Polar Code. A couple of the
items that are notable is just making sure that there's no waste
discharged overboard in the Arctic, that we have a place to pump slop
tanks--again, things that are usual for port services in the civilized
or developed world are not available in Alaska. So we see vessels that
come into port and they have an expectation of what those port services
are and they just literally don't exist.
One of the things that both public, private, state and
municipalities can do is to start developing those basic
infrastructures that allow vessels transiting there to comply with some
of the regulations that are currently being adopted for the Arctic.
A final note on charting. I appreciate the admiral hitting on
charting. I love to get on a soapbox and talk about NOAA. NOAA does a
good job of doing very high-definition charting, but what they tend to
avoid is actually the most critical part of Alaska navigation, and that
is the transit between the ocean and the coastal communities. So we
have good ocean charting, but very poor charting at the interface
between the coast and the ocean. So river entrances, those areas where
we need to transit, where we need good data when we deliver fuel to
Savoonga, for example, we need to get as close as we possibly can to
literally float hose across the surf line and into the community. And
those are the areas that NOAA tends to avoid. They have actually said
they don't care about anything less than 4 meters in depth. And my
response is, I don't care about anything greater than 4 meters of depth
because we operate shallow-draft equipment.
There's a lot of things that we would like to communicate from
Alaska to the folks here in Washington and others that make decisions
about how money gets spent and what it's focused on in Alaska. I,
again, look forward to questions.
Thank you.
Mr. Massaro. Well, thank you so much, Mark.
And Mark and Melanie, thanks a lot for bringing a local perspective
in here. Obviously, the Helsinki Commission generally sees things from
a foreign policy direction and that's the impetus for me behind this as
a foreign policy guy. But I think one thing that I definitely got out
of both of your testimonies is that the foreign policy and the domestic
policy are very much intertwined in this case in a huge way in that
Bering Strait area.
With that in mind, let's enter that robust Q&A question that you
talked about, Mark. Let me begin with a question and then we'll open it
to the audience. That question is about something that has been
mentioned by all of you as sort of a side entity and something, of
course, that is very central to the commission's work, and that is the
Russian Federation and their investment in the Arctic.
I guess we all know, from a Coast Guard perspective, that Russia
has an enormous fleet of icebreakers. We know about the Northern Sea
Route Administration which escorts vessels in that area, sometimes
without really giving them a choice, and all sorts of other stuff.
They've made major investment in that area. And I was wondering, and
maybe let's start with Julia and anybody else that would like to
comment on this--what implications does that have for U.S.
infrastructure development in the Arctic and for the infrastructure
development in the Arctic of other Arctic nations?
Ms. Gourley. Well, that's a good question, Paul. I can't help but
think that the more activity is happening in Russia, the more it will
sort of incentivize the other Arctic coastal states to invest in the
region, too.
But it's not always, I guess, clear, so Russia puts out its
intentions and how far it's actually going to be able to go. I mean,
investing in the Arctic is extremely expensive and the Russian economy
is not as great as it once was. So there are great intentions and great
plans, but I guess we'll see how far Russia can actually go with it.
They certainly do have a much larger icebreaker fleet than we do. And
Admiral McAllister knows that better than anyone.
I think it's probably a good thing on the economic development
side that Russia is investing a lot and it'll probably end up helping
the other countries along and sort of moving the ball forward. But on
other fronts, geopolitically speaking and militarily speaking, I
wouldn't even venture a guess.
Admiral McAllister may be able to speak to that more.
Mr. Massaro. Iina, would you like to say anything to that? We'll
just move down the line. You can so no, by the way. [Laughter.]
Ms. Peltonen. I'm not going to say no.
Mr. Massaro. That's what I like to hear.
Ms. Peltonen. As you know, Finland is located next to Russia.
Mr. Massaro. Right.
Ms. Peltonen. And we are used to living with our neighbors the last
more than 70 years also peacefully, and hopefully the next years are
going to be even more peaceful. Well, we are seeing that any economic
investments in the Arctic areas in Russia are, of course, very good
investments. And as Julia said, it is very expensive and we all know
the Russian economy is not in the best position at the moment. And the
Arctic Council is still doing some projects in Russia because the
infrastructure in the Arctic areas in Russia, they are quite old and
they are also not so environmentally friendly. So we are not worried.
Mr. Massaro. Well, if Finland is not worried, then it must not be
that big of a problem.
Ms. Peltonen. Yes, we are absolutely going to continue our
constructive cooperation in the Arctic Council with Russians because
while the Arctic Council has been the international forum where all the
Arctic states have done very constructive cooperation all these 21
years now. And we are going to continue, hopefully continue and try to
explore solutions to continue that cooperation.
Mr. Massaro. Fantastic.
Admiral McAllister, would you like to comment?
Adm. McAllister. Russia has actually been making investments in a
variety of different areas that are of interest to us. As an example,
they've been investing in LNG ships that are ice class, capable of
moving LNG year-round in any ice condition. And they've obviously been
investing in military capabilities. They've already got an extensive
ice breaking fleet and they're expanding that fleet. They've been
investing in research. We see research vessels not only from Russia,
but from a variety of countries that are in the Arctic. Many of those
the Department of State permits because they cooperate and research to
do work in the U.S. exclusive economic zone.
We should look at this activity for its opportunities, not
necessarily any threats that it might pose. As an example, with the
increasing Arctic traffic of all types, the Coast Guard recently
reached out to our Russian counterparts in the Marine Rescue Service
that does oil spill response and we asked them if they'd like to update
the 1990 agreement that we have between the United States and Russia
called our Joint Contingency Plan, and they jumped at the opportunity,
said yes, we should update it and we should exercise it. And so we're
on a track to be able to exercise that. It's a bilateral agreement
between the United States and Russia, because as more traffic moves
through, whether it's on the Russian side or the U.S. side, the oil
doesn't care. If spilled, it's going to end up in both our nation's
waters and we need to be able to work cooperatively to both prevent
that from happening in the first place, and if it does happen to be
able to respond.
So we look at a lot of the things that are happening there as
opportunities to leverage the cooperative relationship we have with
Russia and many of our civil missions.
Mr. Massaro. Great, thanks so much.
Melanie, would you like to say anything to that?
Ms. Bahnke. From an Alaska Native perspective, where we're totally
reliant on our marine mammals, the marine mammals and the currents also
don't care about our geopolitical boundaries. And we need to find the
balance between development with disregard to the environment versus
locking everything up.
And on the U.S. side, we might develop all of these wonderful
regulations to protect our environment, but we have no control over
what's happening on the Russian side. And so as tensions between the
United States and Russia heighten, we're concerned that opportunities
for cooperation become diminished. We saw an international Search and
Rescue Agreement developed. With the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Paris
agreement, it's concerning because we're unsure of how we're going to
make sure that the marine mammals that cross the geopolitical
boundaries are protected, the natural resources are protected, but also
that we develop responsibly.
I think joint investment in infrastructure in the Arctic by the
Arctic nations is an avenue that should be explored. We talk about how
many icebreakers Russia has like we have to make sure that we're
competing with them, but why not cooperate in the shared use of these
icebreakers, for example? I think that's an avenue where there's
potential for the Arctic nations to come together and talk about co-
investment in infrastructure in the Arctic.
Mr. Massaro. Thank you.
Mark, you got anything for that?
Mr. Smith. I do. But again, not to spend too much time, I have the
pleasure actually of leasing a couple of Russian tankers, of bunkering
in the Russian Far East. And I have to say that my dealings with the
Russian companies have been very straightforward. And as we look right
across, and I'm delighted to hear Melanie's perspective as well, there
literally are divided families. The Bering Sea is actually a community,
and if it wouldn't have been for the Cold War, I'm sure we'd be much
closer. I'd love to see more open trade with our folks and much more
open communication.
We have an entire market there where we do much of the same thing.
The Russians actually do a few things better perhaps than we do in
serving some of their ports. They certainly are more supportive with
their icebreaker fleet. So I'll just echo there that there is a reason
behind some of the icebreaker fleet along with the fact there's a very
material part of our entire energy reserves that are above the Arctic
Circle. And as we continue to consume petroleum over the decades, we're
certainly going to see a lot more development and ice breaking and
Arctic experience are going to play heavily in that.
Mr. Massaro. Yes, go ahead, Admiral.
Adm. McAllister. I did want to add in, I think all of us have
talked about the Arctic as a place of cooperation, and I certainly
think that's true. I will tell you, from a regional Coast Guard
perspective, I actually meet with my Russian counterparts routinely on
fisheries management, particularly high-seas illegal fishing, oil spill
response, search and rescue--the Arctic Council sponsored an exercise,
Russia participated in that as well--and on managing our waterways, as
Melanie mentioned. The submission that we'll have to the International
Maritime Organization on our waterways suggestions may actually be
jointly sponsored by the United States and Russia. So there's actually
good cooperation.
But with the global political situation as it is, the U.S. needs to
be able to protect its sovereign rights. I think that's where this
icebreaker issue comes in; you can't protect your sovereign rights
during an era of cooperation or an era of conflict if you don't have
access to the region, and icebreakers provide you that access. And
whether that access is for civil missions or defense missions or
research or some other future need, it provides you the critical access
that the mission needs.
Mr. Massaro. Thank you.
Oh, Iina.
Ms. Peltonen. Well, now I'm speaking as a representative of
Finland, not a representative of the chairmanship of the Arctic
Council, but we are taking all these arctic issues very seriously. And
we have actually a couple of solutions with the icebreakers.
[Laughter.] I just want to mention we need this LNG-powered icebreaker
in two years. It costs $150 million. And we are ready to cooperate with
the U.S.
Mr. Massaro. Is this a sales pitch? [Laughter.] Right here before
your eyes! Great, great, well, thank you so much, Iina.
Questions?
Go ahead, please.
Questioner. My name is Caitlyn Antrim. I'm with the Rule of Law
Committee for the Ocean, and I got interested in the Arctic because we
wanted to know who owns what and who has to negotiate with who.
I've had a particular interest in the Russian development of their
Arctic bases. I'm not talking from a security perspective, but being
able to put 125 people throughout the winter in a place where they
aren't crowded together, where they can actually live an isolated but
normal life, whether something like that could provide a needed
presence on the Arctic coast, provide service for helicopters if
they're needed, a staging area for emergencies, public health, other
government services, and a place for situs from NSF projects. I haven't
heard anything of that concept being discussed in the United States,
but looking at what Russia did makes me think maybe we should.
And I'd like to hear more about that possibility from an American
infrastructure point of view, starting as a government operation, but
it might expand far beyond that. It's a long way from Anchorage to the
north coast of Alaska and only takes a little bad weather to keep you
from being able to get there. I'd like to see if you've heard any talk
of that, if you think it's a good idea, bad idea, too expensive?
Mr. Massaro. Anyone you'd like to direct your question to?
Questioner. Potentially the admiral and Melanie, because I see some
of the opportunities for some of the things you raised by having a
presence there.
Mr. Massaro. Great.
Let's go ahead and start with Admiral McAllister then. Thank you.
Adm. McAllister. We actually run an annual Arctic operation called
Arctic Shields. We've been running that for about eight years now,
where I press forward helicopters and ships and people on land to be
able to carry out Coast Guard missions when there's open water or ice-
congested, but not totally ice-covered water. We actually have a fair
amount of experience doing that. As an example this last summer, I put
about 25 people and 2 helicopters in Kotzebue and they conduct search
and rescue missions throughout the region.
We haven't necessarily found the need to be there during the winter
when the ice prevents movement on the water. So from a Coast Guard
perspective, maybe that's a future need, but it's not necessarily a
current need. But what you describe is certainly possible. In fact,
industry is doing it right now. If you went up to Prudhoe Bay,
Deadhorse, that's an industry-led, year-round operation which we could
draw a lot of lessons from in terms of how to have the appropriate
infrastructure for future operations that demand it.
Mr. Massaro. Melanie?
Ms. Bahnke. Not too sure I really understood what you were saying
is happening over in Russia other than that they've put in place a
remote station where 125 people are. Is that correct? So I guess I
would argue that in the Bering Strait we have 16 such staging areas:
Nome, which has a population of 4,000, and 15 outlying communities
ranging down to little Diomede in the middle of the Bering Strait with
a population of 80. I would prefer that we look at those as staging
areas and invest in infrastructure in those communities.
We have advocated for and continue to advocate for the U.S. Coast
Guard to have more of a presence and establish a station in our region.
And we support their Arctic Strategic Plan, and it's just a matter of
funding them. Their presence is needed year round. Just because
international vessels aren't traveling through the Bering Strait during
the winter doesn't mean that there isn't activity out there during the
winter months. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I think
there are 16 staging areas in the Bering Strait region that we could
look at and a Coast Guard station is very welcome.
Mr. Massaro. Can we take other questions?
Questioner. Hi. My name is Mary Harrington. I'm with the State
Department and I work on the Russia Desk. And this question is directed
towards Julia and Admiral McAllister.
I was wondering if you could comment on the Law of the Sea Treaty
and whether the fact that the United States hasn't signed it holds us
back in terms of our engagement in the Arctic.
Thank you.
Adm. McAllister. You want to take a shot at that first? You've
probably got the more in-depth experience with it.
Ms. Gourley. It's the other half of my office. [Laughter.]
Well, as far as I know, I don't know that the position of the U.S.
Government has changed, although I'm walking on thin ice here. But as
far as I know, we still support the accession to the treaty. I'm
looking at Teresa Hobgood, who's our congressional liaison and knows
everything, to make sure I'm not saying anything wrong. But I guess it
still remains to be seen--there hasn't been an official pronouncement
made yet.
Adm. McAllister. I'll simply offer, the Coast Guard's position is
that we should accede to the treaty. We think it's important from a
variety of perspectives. It is the framework that allows us the types
of freedom of navigation that we enjoy on a routine basis. It allows us
to be at the table when other nations submit claims for the Extended
Continental Shelf. If and when we want to submit our own claim from a
U.S. perspective, we'll need to be a signatory to the treaty to do
that.
And I understand that concerning a lot of this and other
provisions, we follow them under customary international law to begin
with, so that's been the argument that we don't necessarily have to
sign on for this. But I think the more global conflicts in the maritime
realm we see, the more important it becomes for us to have the
credibility of being a signatory to the treaty when we try to uphold
its provisions.
Mr. Massaro. Other questions, please.
Questioner. Hi. Alyson Azzara from the Maritime Administration.
This question is for Mark.
You talked about federal investment in infrastructure. Is there an
appetite from the private sector to also invest in your needed
components and the structures or to co-invest in things that you think
are critical for the region?
Mr. Smith. Yes, but I have to say the appetite is small, and that
relates to another comment that Melanie made. So, 10,000 residents in
the Bering Straits area, perhaps 50,000 in the arena. You may have
heard folks gently and sometimes stridently complain about the cost of
fuel in the Arctic, and that's directly related to the expense. And so
to put the burden of developing very expensive infrastructure on the
private sector that I operate in, you're really putting it on a very
small base of consumers. These consumers also happen to be some of the
poorest demographic in the United States. So there absolutely is not
the appetite or even the capacity for me to charge my consumers enough
to build important infrastructure. It has to be 99 percent based on
something greater.
Mr. Massaro. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Yes, please, Melanie.
Ms. Bahnke. Alyson, not that I represent industry, but as a person
that lives in a region where infrastructure investment is needed, I
think the Federal Government could play a role in enticing the appetite
of industry by way of tax credits. There are other mechanisms such as
disadvantaged business zone, investment enticement. Within the native
community, Alaska Native corporations when provided a hand up, not a
handout, have risen to the top. There's a list of top 49 businesses in
Alaska and a big portion of that is made up from Alaska Native
corporations. And I think ANCs should be considered as a potential
partner in any public/private investments that will improve
infrastructure in our region.
I mentioned earlier that our hearts go out to Puerto Rico, for
example, right now, and we all get government's role in responding to
repairing infrastructure when it comes to natural disaster. But I think
we do really need to take a look at that responsibility. The U.S. has
claimed authority over our region. We're part of the U.S. Alaska is not
a territory, we're a state, not that that makes it any better than
Puerto Rico, but there is an obligation for government to create
infrastructure where it's absent, not just to play a role in repairing
it when it's been devastated.
So that's my comment to your question. There might not be an
appetite right now by industry, but I sure think that the government
could invite them to dinner.
Mr. Smith. Just to follow on, too, Alaska really is a pioneer
state. If you think about the American West 150 years ago, that's where
we are. We have a bunch of island economies that are not connected with
roads. We don't have electrical interties. We live a very isolated
existence and there's just not a possibility, even if industry did have
the appetite. It's just the scale isn't appropriate at this time.
And it truly is that once you have a transportation infrastructure
it allows any economic opportunity to be amplified. When you have a way
of getting your goods, your services, and your resources that you're
extracting or harvesting to market, you're going to stimulate economic
activity. So it's something that's going to have to see a national
investment on.
Mr. Massaro. Great, thank you.
OK, I have one more question. As a guy that's coming from outside
the Arctic bubble and having just begun working on these issues, I
guess working on them for almost about one year now, I was hoping maybe
Julia or Admiral McAllister could take this on, maybe somebody else.
It seems to me like there are just so many different federal
agencies working on this issue, just so many have a piece of it. I was
wondering, is the approach integrated? Are there better ways to go
about this? To what extent is it a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen issue,
if at all?
Ms. Gourley. You've asked one of the most important and common
questions asked, Paul, by lots of people out there. And actually, the
last administration did attempt, a couple of the agencies who play in
the Arctic, the Arctic Research Commission and I'm trying to remember
who else, to put together an organogram of all of the agencies. There
are at least half-a-dozen executive branch departments and all of their
subagencies, together it's 25 to 30. To piece it all together and
connect all the dots was very challenging. And it's a fascinating-
looking chart, actually.
I don't know that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, because
the fact that there are so many agencies actually doesn't equate to too
many bodies or too much disruption. We actually function amazingly well
at the working level. We have monthly collaboration, and the last
administration had a higher-level similar interagency body at the
political level. And it's all worked amazingly well for as many cooks
as there are in the kitchen here.
Personally--and I'm not saying this with any bias, but just purely
from observation through the Arctic Council and working with the other
Arctic states--I feel like the U.S. Government weirdly enough hangs
together better and has more coordination than most of the other
states. Which is odd, given how big we are, but we actually do
collaborate quite well. That's not to say we couldn't do it better. We
certainly could always do things better, but it's a pretty small
federal community, even though it's a large number of agencies. And
it's pretty well-integrated. We'll have to see how it continues.
Mr. Massaro. Great to hear.
Admiral, do you have anything to add?
Adm. McAllister. I'll just add, from a regional or a local level,
because that's where I spend more of my time, that we look to have the
collaboration bodies as well, because that's the point of delivery of
various services. Just as one example, we were able to set up not too
long ago an Arctic Waterways Safety Commission that brings together a
variety of Alaska Native communities to advise not only the Coast
Guard, but all federal agencies on issues as they relate to this
increase in traffic and maritime issues.
And Julia's right. I mean, even at the regional or local level,
some agencies are more engaged than others. But we, at least within the
Coast Guard, make it a point to work collaboratively with our other
federal agencies, with our state equivalents and with the tribal
interests to ensure that we're not duplicating effort and that we're
closing the most important gaps first. And that's sometimes the best we
can do.
Mr. Massaro. Great. Well, thank you all so much. We'll conclude the
briefing there and thank you all for coming. [Applause.]
[Whereupon, at 5:01 p.m., the briefing ended
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