Interdisciplinary workshop: The Svalbard Consensus?

Discussions about Svalbard often emphasize emerging great-power competition, including Russian ambitions, Chinese assertiveness, and the appeal of valuable minerals. The workshop, which was hosted by Loughborough University, the Royal Navy, and Cornell University and took place at Loughborough University London campus, looked beyond geopolitics to examine the vulnerabilities and structural challenges that shape everyday life in this remote community. Vulnerabilities that include energy supply, communication, food and water could be (indeed have been) exploited in the past.

We contributed to this full-day interdisciplinary workshop and strategic simulation on Arctic security with a lecture titled “Climate Change and Svalbard.” The lecture examined why large-scale oceanographic currents transport heat to the Svalbard Archipelago, sustaining largely ice-free conditions, and explored the implications of these dynamics for access, operations, and strategic interests in this high-Arctic region of significant geopolitical importance.

A special thanks to Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe and Dr. James Patton Rogers for their kind invitation to participate.