Extractivism is damaging Arctic ecosystems and warming the global climate

The Arctic region is facing down a mineral and fossil fuel exploration and extraction bonanza. If these plans go ahead, they will have devastating impacts on Indigenous and local communities, pristine Arctic ecosystems, and the global climate.

As a concept, “extractivism” has gained attention recently as mining and mineral exploration companies eye frontiers that were once inaccessible: the ocean seabed, the marine offshore, areas of the high north and more. Naomi Klein, the prominent Canadian environmental author who wrote This Changes Everything—a book about the climate crisis—describes extractivism as “a dominance-based relationship with the earth” and connects it to what she calls sacrifice zones: “places that, to their extractors, somehow don’t count and can therefore be poisoned, drained or otherwise destroyed.”

The fossil fuel projects across the Arctic region—in Russia, Norway and Alaska (the US)—are exactly that: sacrifice zones. Once extracted, hydrocarbons are exported over long distances for use in other parts of the world, where they contribute to the increase of global carbon emissions and exacerbate the climate crisis. As discussed in a research brief recently published by the WWF Global Arctic Programme, this increasing interest in Arctic fossil fuel production is completely out of touch with the Paris Agreement to hold global warming to 1.5°C or less. By 2030, the volume of fossil fuels produced in the Arctic will be double the amount that is consistent with that goal. By 2050, the gap may reach 700 percent.

The lack of reciprocity in the economy of oil and gas production is obvious: the mass-scale removal of resources for export creates an accumulation of financial benefits far away from the sites of their extraction, enriching distant shareholders, investment funds and oil CEOs. But locally, these projects pollute rivers, marine coastal environments, landscapes and the air. An oil spill in the Arctic would also devastate ecosystems and Indigenous ways of life. The impacts could be irreversible, wiping out wildlife populations and destroying traditional food systems and livelihoods.

Marine mammals are particularly undermined by Arctic extractivism: they suffer from underwater noise caused by an increasing number of offshore seismic surveys and growing shipping traffic as the sea ice melts and makes the Arctic Ocean easier to navigate. In fact, the fossil fuel, mining and shipping industries are the biggest drivers and beneficiaries of ice melt in the Arctic. A 10-fold increase in shipping traffic through the Northern Sea Route is expected from now to 2035, and negative impacts on pristine and sensitive marine and coastal environments will be unavoidable.

Given that the Arctic will only continue to attract more industrial development in the years to come, it is important to find a balance between creating jobs and protecting natural environments. To ensure a healthy future for all, the Arctic economy needs to foster investments in human capital, renewable energy and the sustainable blue economy and apply ecosystem-based management. The agreement reached at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) to transition away from fossil fuels—and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030—is a good first step. But ensuring that governments step up and phase out fossil fuels will be critical to the Arctic’s future—and the world’s.