Recent years have shown that international science dialogue exists at the edge of turbulence and is disturbed by different geopolitical events. The notion of science diplomacy has taken the critical discourse to different levels of actors. Such a discourse exposes the epistemological ambivalence and methodological imbalance of both science and diplomacy in this phenomenon. Current geopolitical conditions have revealed new edges of science diplomacy instruments that spread from “soft” to “hard” practices. Different levels of dialogue and cooperation have shown different examples of resilience and adaptability (or the opposite) to the external turbulence. The phenomenon of regionalisation in science diplomacy is facing criticism from the science community while the current geopolitical situation has dramatically influenced the Arctic science dialogue, as well as governance practices. This commentary discusses particular examples of existing Arctic science diplomacy practices in current geopolitical conditions which are reflected in the Arctic theoretical and practical discourse.

In recent years, two soft law instruments have emerged to promote sustainable development in the Arctic, namely the Arctic Investment Protocol by the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Arctic and the Arctic Economic Council’s Code of Ethics. These instruments seek to foster sustainable development through responsible investment and good business practices. The emergence of these soft law instruments by non-State actors demonstrates an interest from the business sector and Arctic stakeholders to develop business norms and standards of sustainable development that are specific to the region. In understanding the potential and scope of these instruments, this paper considers the role of both instruments in driving sustainable development in the Arctic.

Several engineering schemes are now planned or are in various stages of completion to dam, divert, regulate, or otherwise control the flow of several major waterways in the Canadian sub-Arctic. This region, which contains many large river systems (Map 1), is viewed by a number of federal and provincial government departments as a source of reliable and relatively inexpensive electricity to satisfy the energy-deficient markets of southern Canada and northern United States. However, opposition to these hydroelectric schemes is being voiced across Canada by critics who view them as having or likely to have negative effects on the environment and on the native peoples who inhabit the region. This review examines some of the alleged benefits and costs of four of the most controversial and best publicized of these projects. The information has come from a variety of sources: published literature and press reports, unpublished government documents and consultants' reports, notes taken at public hearings in 1972 and 1973, discussions with government officials, consultants, and other investigators between 1969 and 1974, and research by the senior author between 1968 and 1973 on the effects of hydroelectric developments on the northern environment (Gill, 1971; 1972a, 1972b; 1973a, 1973b, 1973c, 1973d; 1974; Kellerhals and Gill, 1973).

The Three-Power Conference on Aid to Russia between Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union opened in Moscow on 29 September 1941. The British and American missions, headed respectively by Lord Beaverbrook and Averill Harriman, travelled in H.M.S. London which left Scapa Flow on 22 September and arrived at Arkhangel'sk five days later.

The northern part of Canada is probably the most isolated, sparsely populated, and inaccessible land mass in the northern hemisphere. The Yukon and Northwest Territories comprise an area of 1½ million sq. miles and contain only 34,000 people, 8,300 of whom are Eskimo. Into this vast area only one navigable river penetrates, and the sea lanes around its perimeter are open for only three months in the year. This isolation and scarcity of people are reflected in the following comments of the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects: “In the whole of the Northwest Territories…the military bases, mining camps, trading posts and administrative centres are hardly more than pin-pricks in the surrounding bush and muskeg and barrens. There will be important economic development in this area in the years to come. But it would take the ruthlessness of a Peter the Great to plant any large centres of population there.”

Previously unpublished information from John Ross's expedition of 1829–33 to the Canadian Arctic indicates that Netsilik Inuit at that time manufactured and used clay-based ceramic pots. Additional published ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources indicate that the Sadlermiut Inuit, and probably the Utkuhikjalik and Qaernerimiut Inuit, also possessed ceramic technology. Considered in conjunction with survival characteristics of pottery, this suggests that the Thule ceramic complex was not restricted to early stages of Thule culture (AD 1000–1200) in the Eastern Arctic, but, at least in some areas, continued through to the early Historic period.

In a botanical field survey of Ile de Croy, Iles Kerguelen, from 17 November to 14 December 1984, 14 of the 29 species of vascular plants known from the archipelago were recorded. None of the eight Kerguelen species of pteridophytes and no introduced species were present. Four major natural plant associations were identified. Notes are given on the habitats, distribution and ecology of each species, and comparisons are made with mainland Kerguelen and neighbouring subantarctic islands. The significance for conservation of this relatively undisturbed island is discussed.

Of the sixty-two sledge dogs helonging to the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, twenty-eight dogs came from Jakobshavn and Christianshåb in West Greenland, twelve from Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen and twenty two (including nine bitches) from the Falkland Islands Dependencies. The dogs from Spitsbergen had originated in Canada in 1945; those from the Falkland Islands Dependencies had been bred from dogs originally brought from Labrador in 1945 and 1946. The dogs from Spitsbergen were larger than the others, and several weighed considerably more than 50 kg. The dogs from West Greenland and the Falkland Islands Dependencies were smaller, averaging 40 to 50 kg. At the time when they were acquired by the expedition, the dogs from Spitsbergen and the Falkland Islands Dependencies were in much better condition than those from West Greenland.

The article Could Captain Scott have been saved? Cecil Meares and the second journey that failed, by Karen May and Sarah Airriess, first published in Polar Record in 2014 (May & Airriess, 2015), builds a case against Cecil Meares for a failure to restock One Ton Depot in accordance with Scott's instructions. The authors claim that Meares was guilty of disobedience, neglect of duty and ‘obfuscation’. However, their case is diminished – in my view – by three significant mistakes that undermine their charges against Meares. In the three sections below, I identify those mistakes and consider whether the strong claims May and Airriess make about Meares are justified.

In ’Why didn't they ask Evans?’ (Turney, 2017), I draw together previously unpublished sources and new analyses of published material to cast further light on the circumstances that led to the fatal events surrounding the return of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Polar Party on the British Antarctic Expedition (BAE, 1911–1913). Of particular importance are the notes on the meeting between the Royal Geographical Society's President Lord Curzon and the widows Kathleen Scott and Oriana Wilson in April 1913, which explicitly identify Lieutenant Edward ‘Teddy’ Evans as having removed food that exceeded his allocation as a member of the Last Supporting Party (Curzon, 1913), the establishment and almost immediate closure of a ‘Committee of Enquiry’ chaired by Lord Curzon (Beaumont, 1913a, b, c; Cherry-Garrard, 1913a; Darwin, 1913; Goldie, 1913), the recognition of missing food at key depots by the returning Polar Party on the 7, 24 and 27 February 1912 (Scott, 1913a; Wilson, 1912), Evans’ anger at not being selected as a member of the Polar Party and his early departure home (Evans, 1912), the revised timeline of when Evans fell down with scurvy on the Ross Ice Shelf to apparently align with when and where the food was removed (The Advertiser, 3 April 1912, Adelaide: 10) (Cherry-Garrard, 1922; Ellis, 1969; Evans, 1912, 1913a, 1943; Lashly, 1912; Scott, 1913a, 1913b), Evans’ failure to ensure Scott's orders regarding the return of the dog sledging teams had been acted on (Cherry-Garrard, 1922; Gran, 1961; Hattersley-Smith & McGhie, 1984) and the misunderstanding amongst senior Royal Geographical Society members during Evans’ recuperation in the UK that Apsley Cherry-Garrard ‘was to meet the South Pole party, with two teams of dogs, at the foot of the [Beardmore] glacier’ (Markham, 1913). I would like to thank May (2018) for her comment and acknowledge that Edward Wilson's sketchbooks of the expedition's logistics, scientific priorities, sketches and notes on the BAE comprise entries from 1911–1912 and not solely from 1912, which Turney (2017) used to denote the year of the last entry.

There are places in the Soviet Arctic which on English maps and in English literature are called by three or four quite different names. The confusion to which this state of affairs leads is obvious. Yet it is not too difficult to establish a set of principles which might be generally used as a guide in putting Russian Arctic place-names on English maps.

My short note in an earlier issue of Polar Record [21(133): 394–95 (1983)] outlined events in the Falkland Islands Dependencies arising from the Argentinian attack and occupation of April 1982, with a brief summary of the political exchanges preceding the Argentinian action. This article chronicles some of the events that precipitated the dispute, and the military activities leading to the occupation and subsequent recovery of King Edward Point, the administrative centre and principal station of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) on South Georgia.