Focusing on both Polar Regions, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of political processes related to the rapidly changing Arctic and Antarctic, where the environmental impacts of human activities are extremely visible. Environmental changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic are increasingly seen as barometers of the global impact of human activities, while newly arising economic opportunities in both Polar Regions prompt predictions that they will be the site of future conflicts. This book maps and analyses the different actors involved in the politics of the Polar Regions to explain why similar patterns of interpretation of such major issues have become dominant in practical, popular and formal geopolitical discourses. Disentangling the politics, the author illustrates how the ordering principles have evolved, explains recent dynamics in political processes and provides the groundwork needed to better forecast future trends. By focusing on the Americas, the only continent that borders both Polar Regions, the author shows how geographic proximity inspires interaction and cooperation among state and non-state actors in very different ways. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, political geography, international relations, global governance and cultural studies. It will have an international appeal particularly in the Americas, and other countries with growing interests in the Polar Regions.

Arctic Geopolitics, Media and Power provides a fresh way of looking at the potential and limitations of regional international governance in the Arctic region. Far-reaching impacts of climate change, its wealth of resources and potential for new commercial activities have placed the Arctic region into the political limelight. In an era of rapid environmental change, the Arctic provides a complex and challenging case of geopolitical interplay. Based on analyses of how actors from within and outside the Arctic region assert their interests and how such discourses travel in the media, this book scrutinizes the social and material contexts within which new imaginaries, spatial constructs and scalar preferences emerge. It places ground-breaking attention to shifting media landscapes as a critical component of the social, environmental and technological change. It also reflects on the fundamental dilemmas inherent in democratic decision making at a time when an urgent need for addressing climate change is challenged by conflicting interests and growing geopolitical tensions. This book will be of great interest to geography academics, media and communication studies and students focusing on policy, climate change and geopolitics, as well as policy-makers and NGOs working within the environmental sector or with the Arctic region. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9780367189822 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Arctic is a region that has seen exponential growth as a space of geopolitical interest over the past decade. This insightful book is the first to analyse the European Union’s Arctic policy endeavours of the early 21st Century from a critical geopolitical perspective.

The polar regions (the Arctic and Antarctic) have enjoyed widespread public attention in recent years, as issues of conservation, sustainability, resource speculation and geopolitical manoeuvring have all garnered considerable international media inter

In August 2007 a Russian flag was planted under the North Pole during a scientific expedition triggering speculation about a new scramble for resources beneath the thawing ice. But is there really a global grab for Polar territory and resources? Or are these activities vastly exaggerated? In this rich and wide-ranging book, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall look behind the headlines and hyperbole to reveal a complex picture of the so-called scramble for the poles. Whilst anxieties over the potential for conflict and the destruction of what is often perceived as the world's last wildernesses have come to dominate Polar debates and are, to some extent, justified, their study also highlights longer historical and geographical patterns and processes of human activity in these remote territories. Over the past century, Polar landscapes have been probed, drilled, fished, tested on and dug up, as their indigenous populations have struggled to protect their rights and interests. No longer remote places, or themselves 'poles apart' from one another, the contemporary geopolitics of the Polar regions has lessons for us all as we confront a warming world where access to resources is a concern for states, big and small.

The Polar Regions is a systematic investigation of both the geopolitical commonalties and the differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic. It is the first book to integrate polar studies of this nature with teaching and research on political geography and geopolitics. Based on the premise that geopolitical isolation of the polar regions stands substantially eroded today, the book argues that the contemporary polar scene should be approached and understood in terms of its broader regional as well as global context. It also argues that in the 21st century the two polar regions will be increasingly valued not only for their intrinsic polar merits, but also for their contribution to an understanding of global problems. A critical evaluation of the promise and the performance of the Antarctic Treaty System is provided. The book also examines the ongoing debate about Antarctica, which underlines the need to look beyond the present agreement on the Antarctic and to address the geopolitical implications of it. By presenting studies of both polar regions, this book seeks to test assumptions about the new geopolitics and to evaluate the prospects of it in these regions. The text will be of particular interest to political geographers and specialists in international relations, but will also be an important text for students and researchers in political geography, environmental management and environmental politics.

Written by a group of leading experts on Artic affairs, this book offers a historically informed and comprehensive study of the geopolitics and security challenges of the Arctic. The key aim of the work is to identify the conditions for cooperation, stability and peace in the Arctic and to reach beyond simple description and expectation in order to explore in depth some of the main factors that will determine the future of international relations in the region. Furthermore, it addresses key topics such as the geopolitical significance of the Arctic and the importance of oil and gas resources in the Arctic. The book also investigates what the main characteristics of governance in the Arctic are, and how institutions and regimes can promote stability and security in the region. The volume maintains two layers of focus. The first relates to the dynamics within the Arctic and the second to developments outside the region, highlighting that we cannot understand the Arctic in isolation from global developments such as energy markets, security conflicts and NATO-Russian antagonism. This book will be of much interest to students of Arctic politics, security studies, geopolitics, Russian and Scandinavian politics, and international relations in general.