Arctic Yearbook 2015 | Page 56

56 Arctic Yearbook 2015 participation in a number of industry- and academia-based conferences and forums, and the networking opportunities provided therein. These events included the Arctic Shipping Forums held in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Helsinki, the MASS conference held in St. John’s, and the Canadian Marine Advisory Committee - Prairie and Northern Region Meeting in Iqaluit.3 In addition, formal and informal interviews were conducted to collect expert knowledge of the groups involved, as well as to better understand the interests of the stakeholders and their interactions. Once the stakeholders, their inputs, and their roles were identified the data needed to be analyzed. Based on the information gathered during interviews and from the mandates provided on the official websites of stakeholders, we determined three criteria for our evaluation: a) the scale at which a stakeholder operates, b) their interests, and c) their interactions. Scale refers to the geographic level at which the stakeholder focuses: international (including circumpolar), national (Canada-wide), local (limited to a specific region in the Canadian Arctic), or any combination of the three. These three scales reflect the governance regimes: international conventions, national legislation, and local regulations. Figure 2. A screenshot of the tool for understanding the legal aspects relevant to shipping in the Arctic. The tool is available at http://passages.ie.dal.ca/Legal_Aspects_Tool.html. The user needs to enable the scripts into the browser used to run the tool. The categories of interest were derived from the working groups of the Arctic Council. We decided to mirror the approach of this intergovernmental organization because of the Council’s influential role Maritime Activities in the Canadian Arctic