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history of struggle to gain recognition and respect as an Arctic indigenous people having the right to
exercise self-determination over our lives, territories, cultures and languages.”
The ICC requires that Inuit be partners of states, industry and other actors, and also requires that Inuit
land claims and self-government agreements be respected. In accordance with this goal, the ICC
launched in May 2011 a Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit
Nunaat (Inuit Circumpolar Council 2011), defined in an official communication as “Inuit homeland”
(Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami 2011). This declaration mentions the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples as the basis for further progress. With these declarations, the ICC is contributing
to the formation and diffusion of norms and values that are expected to compete with the traditional
conception of state sovereignty, characterising a situation of legal pluralism. Through its status of
Permanent Participant at the Arctic Council, the ICC also enjoys a strong position in an intergovernmental forum that results in the chance to form better coalitions with all the policy actors in
the Arctic and to influence the projects conducted in the working groups of the Arctic Council, as
well as the design of the Arctic Offshore Oil and Gas Guidelines (PAME 2014, Koivurova 2011).
As an Observer to the Arctic Council, the WWF is an environmental organisation that also contributes
to the formation and diffusion of norms in order to have an impact on the outcomes of policy-making.
The WWF constitutes a science-policy interface through the commission of scientific reports on issues
such as the management of the Arctic Ocean, or (very recently) on marine fuel alternatives for use in
the Canadian Arctic, in order to promote new norms for government and industry to consider and to
contribute to higher and stricter standards than those included in the Polar Code, which has just been
adopted without banning the use of heavy fuel in the Arctic (Vard 2015). As an Observer of the Arctic
Council, and the only circumpolar environmental NGO, the WWF actively takes part in working
groups meetings to promote the protection of Arctic biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural
resources to influence governmental policies.
Conclusion
This article has analysed the governance of offshore oil and gas activities in the Arctic with an
approach relying on the concepts of multi-level governance and legal pluralism. It shows that in order
to identify paths to increase efficiency in environmental management and public participation, it is
useful to take into account the interactions of the various levels of governance involving actors with
diverse interests, authorities and cultures.
First, the interactions between the international and national levels show that if the current state of
governance of offshore oil and gas activities in the Arctic is characterised by an expansion of
international law leading to fragmentation and problems of consistency, more issues are at stake which
also hinder the efficiency of environment management and public participation and which pertain to
the interpretation of law. States can manoeuver with the regulation of various aspects such as air
pollution or pollution at sea (e.g. the use of heavy fuel in the Polar Code, or in the regulations in the
North Atlantic), safety and liability rules (incorporation of Directives in national legislation),
indigenous peoples rights (UNDRIP), and access to information (Aarhus convention). In this context,
the Agreement on Co-operation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response, a binding
Cécile Pelaudeix