Hands Across the Melting Ice (The New York Times)

In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Dartmouth’s Ross Virginia and Kenneth Yalowitz and a third colleague write that an organization of Arctic states will face urgent issues at a meeting this week in Sweden.

The Arctic Council, an intergovernmental organization for the eight Arctic states (the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden), will face questions about shipping, governance, and the environment, the authors write.

Virginia is the Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science and director of the Institute of Arctic Studies at The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and Yalowitz is a former director of the Dickey Center.

“Dangerous conflict in the region over valuable resources remains a remote possibility,” they write, “but the council must take constructive steps to ensure that the Arctic continues to develop as a venue for cooperation among Russia and the Arctic states of Europe and North America.”

Read the full opinion piece, published 5/13/13 by The New York Times.