The effectiveness of international environmental cooperation is a theoretical and methodological challenge that has captured the interest of scholars and students of international relations in the recent years. This article is an evaluation of international environmental cooperation in northwest Russia by applying an approach developed in the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) research programme of the International Human Dimension Programme (IHDP). The IDGEC approach emphasises the importance of complex diagnostics of institutional environmental arrangements in terms of performance. The approach relates to the effects of international environmental cooperation in terms of sustainability, efficiency, fairness, and robustness. The article focuses on Russian and Nordic experiences of international environmental cooperation, and the assessment of performance has been done by the participants themselves. According to the results of interviews and questionnaires, the cooperation is considered institutionally effective and robust in general. However, views about the environmental effects vary. Some problems exist that are related to sustainability and fairness, but the most critical issue is the lack of domestic environmental capacity in Russia.

This article demonstrates that, similar to the many cases of self-regulation of local commons, it is in certain conditions also possible to manage an international ocean-fishery without the use of direct coercion. The case study from the Svalbard Zone supports the argument of cooperative action theory: that a limited number of participants, rules at least partly designed by the users themselves, and a system of graduated punishment contribute to compliance with established rules. Based on observational data as well as in-depth interviews with Norwegian and Russian fishermen in the area, it seems particularly fruitful to conceive of the Norwegian Coast Guard not only as a state enforcement body in the Svalbard Zone, but its representatives also as constituent parts of a social system, a ‘seafaring community,’ in the area. When, due to jurisdictional dispute, it has been impossible to rely fully on external regulation in the area, the Coast Guard has taken upon itself the role of the mediator, admittedly representing state interests, but nevertheless aimed at achieving consensus with the fishing fleet on important regulation issues. Hence, the internal authority of this Arctic Ocean fisheries lies above all in the interface between fishermen's and inspector's arguments, and in the social relations accompanying the exchange of professional opinions.

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.

On the right bank of the Thames, outside Greenwich Hospital, stands an obelisk of red granite bearing the single word “BELLOT”. For those (and they must be the vast majority) to whom this means nothing, a bronze tablet at the back provides a little more light:

To the intrepid young/BELLOT,/Of the French Navy,/Who, in the endeavour to rescue/Franklin,/Shared the fate and the glory of that/Illustrious navigator./(From his British admirers.)/1853.

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.

Cutcliffe Hyne, a popular late-nineteenth-century writer, and his artist friend Cecil Hayter travelled overland from Varanger Fjord in Arctic Norway to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia in the summer of 1896. The ostensible aim of the trip was to observe the Sami in their own habitat, but it also had an element of adventure for its own sake. Approximately half of the distance was accomplished on foot and the rest by canoe or post cart. They were ill-prepared for the journey and experienced considerable problems in securing food at various farms and villages at which they stopped en route. Hyne wrote a travel book based upon the trip entitled Through Arctic Lapland, and this is of interest today as providing a first-hand account of the way of life of the inhabitants of the region through which they passed and also as an example of a style of travel writing that was then common but is now extinct.

One of the biggest problems facing those who seek to exploit the natural riches of the north is the attraction and retention of a labour force. This problem is sometimes more intractable even than those posed more directly by the remoteness of the locality and the harshness of the environment. No easy or simple solution has been found, but it may be of interest to record some of the recent steps taken by the Soviet Government towards its solution.

The popular narrative of Arctic development continues to dwell on melting sea ice, untapped oil and gas reserves, an icebreaker arms race and the perils and potential of rapid industrialisation. Rarely is the welfare of Arctic populations considered in a holistic sense and with a precise call for policy change. The recently released Arctic human development report II, echoing the more widely distributed human development reports generated by the United Nations, does just this. Unfortunately, despite the laudable efforts of the authors to embrace the more systemic drivers of poverty and marginalisation, the report fails to account for governmental and policy shortcomings which continue to limit health and opportunity, while obscuring tangible pathways to prosperity for Arctic populations. This comment is intended as a call, amongst the fervour of Arctic exploitation, to refocus attention on the unmistakable disparities in public health and well-being that persist in the Arctic regions of otherwise wealthy countries, and to incorporate globally practised perceptions of human development, including the role of social and political marginalisation in explaining health and prosperity discrepancies, which have been largely lacking in Arctic development discourse, and practice.

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.

The most ambitious field project of the 1979–80 austral summer season in Antarctica was conducted in the Ellsworth Mountains (Fig 1), when 42 scientists and technicians studied a variety of geological problems in an area which included both the Sentinel Range to the north and the Heritage Range to the south (Fig 2), from about 77°15'S to 80°30'S and 80°W to 87°30'W.

The Norwegian polar heroes Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen, and to a lesser extent Otto Sverdrup, have been profiled and their deeds described in countless publications. They were, however, not the only Norwegians to travel on and use the polar seas. A significant section of the Norwegian population used to make its living in Arctic and/or Antarctic waters, and such activities led both to new discoveries of land and knowledge of natural conditions, and to an extra occupation as support for polar scientists and explorers. Some of these lesser-known individuals and their deeds are described here in an attempt to put the expeditions of the great heroes into a broader context and to give more substance to some names that may perhaps have been noted only ‘in passing.’

During the period of approximately forty years after 1898, a small number of Norwegian women chose to over-winter with their men folk who were trappers in Svalbard. Some were primarily engaged in a housekeeping role, while some were actively involved in hunting and trapping activities. Diaries and contemporary newspaper accounts provide interesting insights into the experiences and the perceptions of these women. This paper provides brief, but illustrative, examples drawn from transcripts of original material. Translations are by the author.

There has been no time since the end of the Second World War when it could not have been said that the Canadian Eskimos were at a critical point in their history. The north has become a part of the world as a whole, and the Eskimos, caught in the course of world events, have become subject to changes that affect every aspect of their lives. This is inevitable, and all concerned recognize it as an inescapable fact. Some writers have simplified the current situation among the Canadian Eskimos as a struggle between the old and the new. They have pointed to the privation that was so often an unavoidable accompaniment to primitive life and have argued that there can be no return to such conditions. This approach does not lead anywhere, for nobody has seriously suggested a return to the primitive. It is true that the Eskimos may not be any happier now than they were in former times; in outward appearance they seem in fact to be markedly less happy. A return to the old days might therefore be appealing, but nobody, and least of all the Eskimos themselves, considers it to be either possible or desirable. To suggest the contrary is to set up snowmen only in order to knock them down.