Polar bear jumping on floating ice at Svalbard, CC BY-SA 4.0
Anna Swedin | Apil 5, 2026
“To overcome the deadlock, science diplomacy can create a ‘bridge’ for finding a reasonable compromise in Arctic policy, despite the Ukraine crisis.” – Valery Konyshev
The sanctions imposed on scientific cooperation with the Russian Federation have negative implications for the future of Arctic scientific diplomacy, especially given the threat posed by climate change. In particular, excluding Russia from scientific cooperation hinders the ability of Arctic States to comprehensively respond to the need for renewed polar bear conservation policy.
Science Diplomacy & “Soft Law”
Science diplomacy is commonly defined as “applying scientific expertise to an international effort … to solve international problems collectively.” As a subfield, diplomacy is concerned with advising, shaping and implementing foreign policy, while policy-making is informed by geographical knowledge and, more broadly, science, which have retained their critical role in diplomacy. The Royal Society launched the recent trend in a more formalized study of science diplomacy in 2010, describing scientists and diplomats as “not obvious bedfellows.”
Science diplomacy has three aspects: (1) science in diplomacy, referring to the use of science to inform foreign policy objectives (exhibited by International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports informing climate negotiations), (2) science for diplomacy, which entails using science to facilitate cooperation in international relations (demonstrated in the Arctic Council working groups) and (3) diplomacy for science, which occurs when science facilitates international cooperation through science cooperation (illustrated by the 2017 Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation). Incorporating science into diplomatic agreements helps countries achieve environmental policy goals, such as protections for polar bears.
International cooperative agreements are often “soft law” instruments: quasi-legal documents such as political declarations, guidelines, manuals, and codes of conduct, which possess no binding legal force or coercive mechanism. While they might seem unstable due to their nonlegal nature, they serve as a corrective force to overcome paralyzing, obsolete, or discriminatory laws. When international regimes are seen as legitimate, legality is strengthened and authoritative power is attached to norms existing in treaties and customs. This legitimacy can be invoked to address claims of environmental security amongst others. Appropriating soft law to frame global environmental governance, not in regulatory terms, but rather in ethical terms, places the focus on implicit value judgements about appropriate practices, justice, rights, and duties. Science diplomacy gives force to soft law.
Polar Bear Conservation
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are the largest land predator on earth, and the only species of land mammals whose life depends on the thinning and receding sea ice of the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas for critical aspects of their life history, such as access to pinniped prey like seals and sealions. There are 20 relatively discrete subpopulations of polar bears throughout the Arctic region, from Franz Josef Land in the west to the Bering Strait in the east, with some residing within one country’s jurisdiction and others spanning multiple territories.
The modern polar bear policy regime began in 1965, when the five circumpolar states of Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, and Norway met to discuss the future of polar bears, whose numbers were dwindling due to hunting and the expansion of human activities in general. This led to the creation of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG), an example of diplomacy for science (diplomacy facilitating science). The thirty-five PBSG members collaborate across international and institutional borders to generate and verify knowledge on polar bears, performing science in diplomacy (science informing policy) by providing scientific and technical information to policymakers. The PBSG was an essential contributor to the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears (ACPB). This Agreement was the first conservation treaty between Cold War adversaries, bringing together the five “Polar Bear Range States.” It represents the most significant international measure for polar bear conservation to date.
The ACPB has three objectives: (1) to encourage cooperative research programs, (2) to restrict the killing and capture of polar bears and prohibit certain hunting methods, and (3) to protect the ecosystem of which polar bears are a part. In this last respect, the provisions of the Article are quite progressive for the time, listing denning, feeding sites, and migration patterns as key habitat components for consideration. The ACPB also prohibits trade in polar bears or any part or product thereof. Reinforcing this provision, all five polar bear range States are also parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which lists polar bear in Appendix II, limiting exports of polar bear parts to a level that is not detrimental to the survival of the species. However, the US, with Russia’s support, has called for their listing in Appendix I in order to provide stronger protections. Additionally, the US/Russia Bilateral Agreement for Conservation and Management of the Alaska/Chukotka Polar Bear Population (Alaska/Chukotka Agreement) was concluded in 2000. It was designed to facilitate long-term conservation of the Chukchi/Bering polar bear population and is linked with the ACPB through its enforcement provisions.
Progress and ‘Climactic’ Stalemate
The PBSG and Alaska/Chutotka Agreement successfully allowed the range states to engage with one another, share scientific information, and implement scientific management strategies to curtail commercial hunting. Most threats to polar bears, including disease, parasites, contaminants, pollution, human encounters, and resource extraction, were initially manageable during the first couple decades of the Agreement. However, these threats have since become so intertwined with climate change that they have become virtually impossible for any single nation to tackle independently. Climate change exacerbates many other ecological issues, acting as a “threat multiplier.” Arctic climate has been warming at nearly four times the rate of the global average, resulting in the long-term shriveling of the Arctic’s floating lid of sea ice, suggesting that existing measures are largely unfit to address its accumulating effects on polar bears.
Arctic Scientists such as Dr. Amstrup explains the incompatibility of old policy frameworks to fit new circumstances stating that, “[w]e used to always think that ‘. . . we can build a fence, we can hire some game wardens, we can tighten up the hunting regulations.’ But we can’t build a fence to protect the sea ice from rising temperatures.”
Due to this elusive atmospheric threat, Charlotte Gehrke has advanced the notion that polar bear conservation today “no longer fit[s] the criteria of Arctic science diplomacy, since climate change moves the issue from a localized arctic matter to a global one.” She predicts that this may generate a shift in which actors are involved in science diplomacy processes—reallocating authority from Arctic states to international ones that participate in climate negotiations. However, the seriousness of climate change also recements the continued importance of the range states, which serve as the main regional actors tasked with setting policy, addressing fast-moving threats, and monitoring and researching climate-related threats. The lack of predictability and destabilizing potential of climate change will require major changes in policy, and demands a comprehensive, collective, global response. The international community’s exclusion of Russia places polar bears in peril.
Including Russia in Science Diplomacy
“For decades the Arctic was a rare, low-tension region where international cooperation prevailed,” Canada’s Governor General, Mary Simon, said at the Arctic Frontiers conference held at the start of February in Tromsø, Norway. This historically has manifested in cooperation over resources and borders, becoming known as “Arctic exceptionalism.” However, recent signs have indicated that Arctic exceptionalism is eroding. Cooperation with the Russian Federation in the Arctic Council (AC), an intergovernmental forum focused on scientific and environmental cooperation, was indefinitely paused after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Due to geopolitical tension and enmity in the Arctic, scientific cooperation with Russia was suspended in most other regional international organizations as well. For example, the 2017 Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation (2017 Agreement), intended to overcome jurisdictional barriers for foreign scientists, was also halted. At this point, perhaps the most realistic area for actual engagement with Russia is through environmental science. However, even in this arena, serious obstacles remain, especially since the AC has become more geopolitically fraught by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, which has left Russia as the lone non-NATO state. Vesselin Popovski posits that ignoring ecological priority de facto eliminates a crucial unifier from the agenda, and is likely to strengthen and rigidify old geopolitics, boost intolerance, and, consequently, make it more difficult to negotiate future cooperative arrangements. In the face of ecological uncertainty and danger, history reveals that societies which spurn cooperation opt for competition, confrontation, and violence, which would deepen the very dangers that need to be addressed.
To adequately address the ever-increasing threats facing polar bears, Russia should be included in science diplomacy surrounding their conservation. For one, Russia has the largest polar territory, stretching over 53 percent of the Arctic Ocean coastline. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Russian Arctic is host to four polar bear subpopulations, each named after the seas they inhabit: Barents, Kara, Laptev and Chukchi. These subpopulations are included in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation and the Red Data Books of seven Russian administrative regions. Bilateral cooperative arrangements, such as the Alaska/Chukotka Agreement, and others between Russia and Canada or Norway, protect those subpopulations which transcend national boundaries. Russia also has many state, scientific, and educational organizations dedicated to studying the Arctic. Russia’s Polar Bear Programme gathers data about polar bears’ migrations and distribution and analyzes changes in the polar bear habitat caused by climate change. Finally, the outbreak of a military conflict should not affect the activities of the AC and the 2017 Agreement. The AC charter clearly excludes any military-related issues, nor does the 2017 Agreement include any explicit provision for its termination, withdrawal, or suspension because of armed conflict.
Many experts believe ruptured relations with Russia will have dramatic consequences for the Arctic region’s people and ecosystems if the impasse is prolonged. However, the declines in sea ice are seen by many as good for business. Retreating glaciers are exposing long-inaccessible mineral deposits, while longer periods of reduced ice cover are making Arctic trade routes more viable. In light of these trade opportunities, Russia acknowledges climate change mostly in terms of the benefits it brings as opposed to the environmental constraints it presents. This lackadaisical attitude toward the hazards of climate change also militates in favor of cooperation with Russia, if only to protect and preserve the drifting frozen world that polar bears rely upon.