Discursive, material, vertical, and extensive dimensions of post-Cold War Arctic resource extraction

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper proposes an integrated framework for rethinking the Arctic resource frontier that involves consideration of its discursive, material, vertical, and extensive dimensions. Such a model enables more rigorous analysis of the drivers of Arctic natural resource extraction in the post-Cold War era than contemporary pronouncements about the region as pristine, unexploited, and newly opened by climate change. Indeed, despite five centuries of extraction, state and corporate discourses position the Arctic as on the brink of unprecedented development. Yet in fact, the development of the Arctic resource frontier represents a place-based, cumulative process that builds on previous rounds of degradation, extraction, and export of commodities ranging from furs to oil. The post-Cold War Arctic resource frontier is a globally networked space of extraction that exemplifies three characteristics of resource frontiers worldwide: existing histories of environmental degradation that legitimize further extraction, vertical intensification fueled by technological and spatio-legal innovations, and a growing array of lateral, fixed connections like pipelines and roads with cities that are increasingly concentrating capital and commodities. I argue that the Arctic’s concretizing links with the world’s urban core are possibly peripheralizing the region within the global economy by creating a path dependency towards deepened resource extraction.