Partnership in the Arctic: searching for a new model of international cooperation in the era of global instability

In the middle of January, the Russian Academy of the People’s Economy and State Services under t e President of t e Russian Federation eld

Gaidar Forum — international scientific and practical conference on economics that has attracted leading experts — politicians, scientists and businessmen. The second day of the Forum was the most important due to the 30 meetings of the leading Russian and foreign specialists in economics, politics and social services held that day. The Arctic issues were represented there for the first time. On the 15th of January the discussion “Partnership in the Arctic: searching for a new model of international cooperation in the era of global instability”1 took place. New priorities of the state policy in the Arctic, the ecological security, perspectives for the resource use and extraction in the Arctic, the industrial balance and preserving the Arctic civilization were discussed there. Speaking at the Forum, A.N. Chilingarov pointed out a number of urgent problems for the Arctic.

The Yamal--‐Nenets Autonomous District’s Governor Dmitry Kobilkin came out with the speech that the fundamental ideas for all the states represented in the Arctic were to establish the common rules and to use the resource extracting technologies rationally. New push for the development of the area, in his opinion, is the development of the infrastructure. The NSR, that includes not only the North of the Pacific Ocean but the North of Europe, would help the Yamal--‐ Nenets Autonomous District to create 20 thousand jobs, — admitted the Governor. In his speech he also mentioned that it was necessary to change the model of using the Arctic resources from the resource model to the model focused on people.

Marina Kovtun, Governor of the Murmansk Region, is convinced that the Arctic regions need the state supports or “people will leave the North”. The only motivation to stay in the Arctic is to use its resources. The Governor admitted that the Federal authorities had to compensate

Northerners the rise of the prices due to their hard economic situation.

Governor of the Arkhangelsk Region I.A. Orlov told the participant of the Forum about the regional experience of cooperation aimed at solving the problems specific to the Arctic. He pointed out that we were in need to combine the education, training and practice to solve the Arctic problems. Arkhangelsk has such experience: Northern (Arctic) Federal university and companies working in polar conditions and providing services for the resource extraction industry. Also, Igor

Orlov mentioned the role of the Association of the Arctic municipalities, established in Arkhangelsk:

it is aimed at solving various problems of ordinary people, who are living in the Polar areas.

In order to make the Arctic comfortable for living, it is necessary to have cheap prices for heating and to decide the problems of logistics and transport availability, — said Roman Kopin,

Governor of the Chykotsky Autonomous District. We need to make amendments to the existing legislation. “500 legal acts regulate the relations of the Arctic regions. Only 6 of them are specially designed to solve concrete problems of indigenous rights”, — said the director of the Institute of law and comparative law under the Government of the RF Anatoly Kapustin 2.

So, these were the key speeches of the Forum, reflected in the mass media and hardly could be called a discussion aimed at searching a new model of the intergovernmental cooperation at the age of global instability. Everyone was speaking about the most important problems he or she has been facing for a long time: living conditions in the Polar areas, local problems of the social and economic development of the land territories included in RFAZ. We could say that the governors just got a chance to speak out all they wanted on the Arctic conferences in 2014. Probably some issues had no reflection in the mass media.

Key meeting on the second day of the Forum was the discussion “Real sector of economy:

way to efficiency”, related to the economy of the Arctic micro--‐region. The moderator, the Head of the Russian State Duma, Sergey Narishkin admitted that the crisis was one of the natural things for economy; the differences were only in the methods of the anti--‐crisis policy; the most important method was the support of the real sector of economy. According to Vladimir Yakunin, President of the JSC “Russian Railways”, the economic growth with the help of out sorting is hard now due to the number of methodological mistakes. “Russia can’t be critical for itself, but t can be politically correct. Under the influence of political correctness we often hide such things as inadequate behavior and absence of professionalism. The Ministry of Finance speaks about cutting the budget but it doesn’t clarify what to cut. If they will cut the financing support for the innovations and technological development, the crisis is going to be even harder”, — admitted the expert and said that in order to maintain the stability and progress there had to be some risk short--‐term investments 3. The Minister of the industry and trade of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov spoke about the transfer of technologies from the civil sector to DIC, but it was the opposite.

It might be interesting to say some words about the speech of a famous economist and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and his words about jobs. He shocked the economists at the Forum by visiting it the same way as the fall of the oil prices. Sociologist and Marxist looked unusual at t e Mecca of t e Russian liberals. At t e Forum Immanuel Wallerstein said: “It seems to be too many discussions about the growth. I’m a radical dissident when it comes to the issues of growth. I think that growth is not the most important indicator. For the majority of people, the only important indicator of the world economic development is the unemployment rate and the rate is too scary, because it is growing everywhere. This tendency has been going up for the past 30 years and we are not precise in evaluating the unemployment. So, we do not count the not enough employment that has really horrible scales. We do not account people who do not work not because they don’t want to do it, but because they have no place to work. …I think we are experiencing a period of high growth fluctuations, unpredictable changes. We see huge changes and the growth of unemployment everywhere. If countries would not recognize it, if they would not defend themselves from the growth of unemployment, the consequences had to be very hard, so now, what ever happened, unemployment, if we take in account the world average, does not decrease… Now we see the fastening fall of the US and I’m not expecting this tendency to change in opposite way 4.

In the interview on the 19th of January 2015 for “Lenta.ru” Wallerstein said that the growth of unemployment meant the fall of the demand able to be paid, a loss of income and damage for investments. Businessmen are in the situation, when it is not possible to predict what would happen to their investments. Investments are usually stopped and this makes the situation even worse, because it makes the unemployment grow. Answering the question about the unemployment in Russia, the famous scientist said that he did not trust the statistics. “It is not only the case of Russia but the other countries as well. It should be considered skeptically”5.

Issues of employment, new jobs, professional training, labor mobility, investments and the increase of the human capital are extremely important and relevant for all the Arctic 4 units of the