Keep the Fires Going: What the Kingdom of Denmark’s Leadership Means for the Arctic Council
The MOC
By
Ava Moore
May 6, 2025
In a ceremony on May 12th, 2025, the Kingdom of Denmark will assume the chairship [sic.] of the Arctic Council. This transition is routine, occurring every two years as the responsibility rotates through the eight Arctic states. However, this month the change also comes at a time when the region—and especially the Kingdom’s territory of Greenland—is mired in fresh geopolitical tensions. What will the next two years bring? A chairship with Greenland in the lead could strengthen the position of Arctic Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic Council, but the war in Ukraine and foreign policy upheaval in the U.S. will restrict the council’s activities and add uncertainty to its future.
BACKGROUND
Prior to the Arctic Council’s creation in 1996, state leaders and Indigenous organizations advocated for an international forum to enhance Arctic cooperation. Not least of these champions was Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary-General of the Soviet Communist Party, who in a 1987 speech in Murmansk called for the Arctic to become a zone of peace. To support the zone of peace, he proposed activities including the organization of an international conference on Arctic scientific research coordination and cooperation in environmental protection and management.
In 1991, circumpolar states and Indigenous groups approved an Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) and established working groups for conservation of flora and fauna, emergency preparedness, marine environmental protection, and monitoring and assessment. AEPS and the working groups would form the backbone of the new international organization.
The Arctic Council was formally established in 1996 when representatives of the Governments of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States signed the Ottawa Declaration. The council today has eight Member States, six Indigenous Permanent Participant Organizations, and numerous Observers.
Through the Permanent Participant Organizations, Arctic Indigenous peoples are entitled to “active participation and full consultation” within Arctic Council deliberations, making the body unique among international fora. Another feature of note is the council’s mandate, which specifies that it “should not deal with matters related to military security,” but instead focus on sustainable development and environmental protection. A final important feature is the council charter’s seventh article: “Decisions of the Arctic Council are to be by consensus of the Members.” In effect, establishing decision-making only by consensus affords each of the eight Member States veto power in the council. These features are important to remember when considering the current state of the council’s affairs.
THE NEW
This month, the Kingdom of Denmark assumes leadership of the Arctic Council. However, for the first time since the organization’s creation, a Greenlander rather than a Dane will hold the chairship on behalf of the Danish realm. Vivian Modzfelt, the territorial government’s Minister of Independence and Foreign Affairs, will take over the chair from Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide during the May 12th handover ceremony. Modzfelt will preside over Ministerial Meetings, which only happen at the open and close of the term and set the council’s high-level political direction.
On April 11th, Modzfelt appointed Kenneth Hoegh, the current head of Greenland’s diplomatic representation in Washington D.C., as the Kingdom of Denmark’s Arctic Ambassador. In this role, Hoegh will serve as Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials (SAOs) when they meet biannually to manage the council’s plenary activities and implement ministerial direction.
This term’s leadership structure is a marked departure from Denmark’s previous practice, which was to fill the position of Arctic Ambassador without any input from its autonomous territories. In a decision broadly criticized in Greenland, its last appointee to the Arctic Council was Tobias Elling Rehfeld, its former ambassador to South Africa.
The change in practice, acknowledged by Danish Foreign Affairs Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, is not an implication of ethnicity as a qualification for foreign service. Rather, it is an explicit acknowledgement that Arctic cooperation is best led from the Arctic by Greenlanders with exceptional experience dealing with the region’s environmental challenges and strong relationships with other Indigenous Peoples across the circumpolar north. It reflects the changing relationship between Denmark and its autonomous territory, a dynamic moving slowly yet steadily towards Greenlandic independence. In the years since the Kingdom of Denmark’s previous chairmanship from 2009 to 2011, Greenland has assumed increased decision-making power, including the right to negotiate and conclude international agreements on behalf of the Realm.
A Fridtjof Nansen Institute report from 2024 questioned whether Greenland will be able to handle running the chairship amid the Russia-Ukraine crisis, which impacts the Arctic Council significantly because of Russia’s presence in the forum, especially with comparatively fewer people in the Greenlandic Ministry. While the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has 27 staff working exclusively on Arctic issues, the Greenlandic Ministry has only 13 staff in Nuuk and an additional 10 posted elsewhere, including Washington, D.C. and Beijing. The enormity of Greenland’s task as Arctic Council Chair is one reason that Ambassador Hoegh will lead via a tripartite political steering group, supported by a Faroese Deputy SAO and a Danish National SAO. This structure represents Greenland, Denmark, and the Faroe Islands (Copenhagen’s other autonomous territory) as equals within the Kingdom and reflects the fact that the scale of diplomatic work the ambassador faces will require close involvement and cooperation with Denmark, which continues to handle much of Greenland’s foreign policy.
After the Kingdom of Denmark’s last Arctic Strategy expired in 2020, Greenland requested a chance to prepare and publish its own strategy before a new Kingdom-wide strategy was released. After significant delay, perhaps due to the human resource constraints in Nuuk, its strategy Greenland in the World: Nothing About Us Without Us was released in 2024. The document emphasizes a vision and desire for international collaboration, an eventual goal of independence, and strong support for the work of the Arctic Council. As for Greenland’s plan for its chairship, the official program released this April 11th named five thematic priorities: Indigenous Peoples and communities of the Arctic, sustainable economic development and energy transition solutions, oceans, climate change in the Arctic, and biodiversity.
THE CONTINUED
What will this five-prong agenda look like in action? In all likelihood, the dominant characteristic of the next chairship will be continued support for in-progress council activities, not the initiation of new projects. While any new chairship would be expected to build off the work of its predecessors, Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark have particularly limited options because of a crisis happening outside the Arctic region.
When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th 2022, Moscow also happened to be halfway through its term chairing the Arctic Council. On March 3rd 2022, the other seven Member States met to condemn Moscow’s “unprovoked invasion” and the “grave impediments to international cooperation” caused by its actions. They agreed to boycott meetings planned for that May in Arkhangelsk and temporarily suspended all work of the Arctic Council and its subsidiary bodies. This disruption relates back to the council’s structure, which mandates that decisions must be made by consensus of the states. Any working group activity involving Russia simply could not move forward in the absence of diplomatic relations.
Russia carried out the remainder of its term in isolation, pursuing a largely domestic agenda and hosting a conference in St. Petersburg that none of the other Arctic states attended. When the chairship passed to Norway in May 2023 in a low-level online meeting, the Norwegian Arctic Ambassador took on the task of resuming the council’s stalled work. The Arctic Council has returned in a limited capacity, first communicating via written procedure and then virtual working group meetings, guided by the Strategic Plan 2021-2030 adopted at the 12th Ministerial Meeting in Reykjavik before the war in Ukraine. During its chairship, Norway has led the council in work on projects that align with the Strategic Plan 2021-2030; projects that had already been started and which have the support of all eight Arctic states.
While it has been restricted by the circumstances, Norway has shown that it can also be productive. Accomplishments from its chairship include: sustaining the work of the Black Carbon and Methane Expert Group, which produces reports on countries’ actions to reduce black carbon and methane, pollutant inventories, and projected emissions since 2015; launching a Wildland Fires Initiative that draws from expertise across Working Groups to enhance knowledge on a regional scale, improve access to research data, monitor patterns, and assess impacts of wildland fires as they relate to climate change, Arctic biodiversity, and people living in the circumpolar Arctic; and putting on the Arctic Emergency Management Conference in Bodø, Norway, in March 2025.
Building off Norway’s success, the Kingdom of Denmark’s Chairship Program indicates that it intends to continue supporting projects run by the Expert Group on Black Carbon and Methane. It also commits to assessing capabilities, identifying research gaps, and incorporating Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge into updated emergency preparedness recommendations. It is likely that this year’s Emergency Management Conference will not be the last.
The chairship program also references specific projects, all led or co-led by the Kingdom of Denmark, which may see renewed attention: in the Convention on Arctic Flora and Fauna Working Group, the Biodiversity Monitoring Program and implementation of recommendations from the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment; in the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment Working Group, the Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures project and implementation of the Marine Litter in the Arctic Regional Action Plan; and in the Sustainable Development Working Group, the next iteration of the Local2Global project on suicide prevention and support for the mental wellbeing of Arctic youth.
Finally, the program plans for at least three major events: a workshop/conference on economic development from a “North-to-North perspective,” an international Ocean conference dedicated to “Sub Arctic and High Arctic connectivity” aligned with the Ocean Decade agenda, and an event series addressing the “triple planetary crisis” culminating in a 2027 conference.
The chairship program contains additional points of advocacy, and importantly, resolves to strengthen the role of Indigenous Permanent Participants and engage Arctic youth in Arctic Council work across the board. Overall, however, it is careful to reference specific ongoing projects and tie them directly to provisions of the 2021-2030 Strategic Plan and Reykjavik Declaration. The 2021 chair transition from Iceland to Russia was the last opportunity for ministerial-level agreements before the Russia-Ukraine war; it therefore remains the primary authority for the Arctic Council’s operations in the present. It will retain this status, barring major reversals in states’ diplomatic relations with Russia.
THE UNKNOWN
Marc Jacobsen of the Royal Danish Defense College wrote in a 2023 article for the Arctic Institute that with two years of Norwegian chairship followed by the Kingdom of Denmark and then Sweden’s chairship in 2027, the Nordic Arctic states have an opportunity to powerfully influence the council over their combined six years if they can agree on a shared agenda. He argues that a common priority could be societal security; not military security, which is stipulated against in the council’s founding Ottawa Declaration, but topics like disaster response or the restoration of contact in Inuit and Sami communities that were cleaved in two when Russia’s borders closed in 2022.
As something to work towards over the course of the next chairships, Jacobsen suggests a binding agreement for the protection of the rights of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. This topic is certainly important to the Kingdom of Denmark, with Greenlandic Inuit, or Kalaallit, making up 89 percent of its Arctic population. The Kingdom of Denmark’s Deputy Head of Representation of Greenland in Washington, D.C. stated in 2024 that strengthening the Inuit Circumpolar Council, a powerful Indigenous Participant Organization that connects Inuit across Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Chukotka will be an important goal for the Kingdom during its chairship. This sentiment is reflected in its chairship program, which lists “Indigenous Peoples and Communities of the Arctic” as their first thematic priority.
It is clear, then, that there are opportunities for longer-term cooperation and achievement during the coming chairships. However, it is important to consider also that the possibility of another landmark agreement is slim until Russia ends its aggression in Ukraine. The status of negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war is the biggest unknown factor in the immediate future of the Arctic Council. As of late April, iterations of ceasefire agreements circulate between the White House, the Kremlin, and Kyiv without attaining a consensus. Whether the war halts during the next Arctic Council chairship will certainly impact the scope of the work that the Kingdom of Denmark is able to accomplish. It is also possible that an end to the war with unfavorable terms for Ukraine could lead some Arctic states but not others to resume full communication with Russia.
The United States is the other major variable in the future of the Arctic Council. Former President Biden created the U.S. Arctic Ambassador position via executive order in 2022. Since the customary resignation of his appointee Mike Sfraga in January 2025, President Trump has not yet filled the post. During its first months, the Trump administration has maintained an aggressive posture towards Greenland and a keen interest in the strategic value of the Arctic region. It is not clear, however, that it recognizes the Arctic Council for its key role in regional human security. Furthermore, the council’s strong commitment to the protection of the Arctic environment, including maintaining ecosystem health, is antithetical to the administration’s attacks on climate science both domestically and internationally.
Rob Huebert of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies in Calgary predicts disaster should the Trump administration train its eye on the Arctic Council. Beyond conflicting priorities on climate and the Arctic environment, he points to President Trump’s gutting of U.S. Agency for International Development programs and open criticism of NATO as evidence of Trump’s disinclination towards international cooperation: “he seems intent on either ending American participation or upending [multilateral] agreements solely for American benefit.”
A considerable low point for the Arctic Council, even before the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War, occurred in 2019 when Trump administration Envoy Mike Pompeo held up the issuance of a joint declaration from the council because it mentioned the word “climate.” It was the first time since its inception in 1996 that the council was not able to put forth a joint declaration during the chair transition. The second time? During the transition from Russia to Norway in 2023.
CONCLUSION
The Kingdom of Denmark, led by a Greenlandic Arctic Ambassador, will receive its chairship in a closed-door online meeting on May 12th. The Kingdom’s agenda to strengthen Arctic Indigenous representation and achieve progress on projects across working groups will contend with the ongoing challenge of work with Russia amid the war in Ukraine and the increasingly isolationist United States. The Arctic has seen conflict and militarization before; it has also seen impressive feats of international cooperation. As a forum for sustainable development, for maritime rescue and pollution control, and for community and environmental health, the Arctic Council cannot lose its relevancy. The Kingdom of Denmark’s critical task will be to keep the fires going.
Ava Moore is an intern at the Center for Maritime Strategy and a graduate from the University of Washington, where she received a B.A. in International Studies with a minor in Arctic Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Ava Moore
In a ceremony on May 12th, 2025, the Kingdom of Denmark will assume the chairship [sic.] of the Arctic Council. This transition is routine, occurring every two years as the responsibility rotates through the eight Arctic states. However, this month the change also comes at a time when the region—and especially the Kingdom’s territory of Greenland—is mired in fresh geopolitical tensions. What will the next two years bring? A chairship with Greenland in the lead could strengthen the position of Arctic Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic Council, but the war in Ukraine and foreign policy upheaval in the U.S. will restrict the council’s activities and add uncertainty to its future.
BACKGROUND
Prior to the Arctic Council’s creation in 1996, state leaders and Indigenous organizations advocated for an international forum to enhance Arctic cooperation. Not least of these champions was Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary-General of the Soviet Communist Party, who in a 1987 speech in Murmansk called for the Arctic to become a zone of peace. To support the zone of peace, he proposed activities including the organization of an international conference on Arctic scientific research coordination and cooperation in environmental protection and management.
In 1991, circumpolar states and Indigenous groups approved an Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) and established working groups for conservation of flora and fauna, emergency preparedness, marine environmental protection, and monitoring and assessment. AEPS and the working groups would form the backbone of the new international organization.
The Arctic Council was formally established in 1996 when representatives of the Governments of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States signed the Ottawa Declaration. The council today has eight Member States, six Indigenous Permanent Participant Organizations, and numerous Observers.
Through the Permanent Participant Organizations, Arctic Indigenous peoples are entitled to “active participation and full consultation” within Arctic Council deliberations, making the body unique among international fora. Another feature of note is the council’s mandate, which specifies that it “should not deal with matters related to military security,” but instead focus on sustainable development and environmental protection. A final important feature is the council charter’s seventh article: “Decisions of the Arctic Council are to be by consensus of the Members.” In effect, establishing decision-making only by consensus affords each of the eight Member States veto power in the council. These features are important to remember when considering the current state of the council’s affairs.
THE NEW
This month, the Kingdom of Denmark assumes leadership of the Arctic Council. However, for the first time since the organization’s creation, a Greenlander rather than a Dane will hold the chairship on behalf of the Danish realm. Vivian Modzfelt, the territorial government’s Minister of Independence and Foreign Affairs, will take over the chair from Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide during the May 12th handover ceremony. Modzfelt will preside over Ministerial Meetings, which only happen at the open and close of the term and set the council’s high-level political direction.
On April 11th, Modzfelt appointed Kenneth Hoegh, the current head of Greenland’s diplomatic representation in Washington D.C., as the Kingdom of Denmark’s Arctic Ambassador. In this role, Hoegh will serve as Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials (SAOs) when they meet biannually to manage the council’s plenary activities and implement ministerial direction.
This term’s leadership structure is a marked departure from Denmark’s previous practice, which was to fill the position of Arctic Ambassador without any input from its autonomous territories. In a decision broadly criticized in Greenland, its last appointee to the Arctic Council was Tobias Elling Rehfeld, its former ambassador to South Africa.
The change in practice, acknowledged by Danish Foreign Affairs Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, is not an implication of ethnicity as a qualification for foreign service. Rather, it is an explicit acknowledgement that Arctic cooperation is best led from the Arctic by Greenlanders with exceptional experience dealing with the region’s environmental challenges and strong relationships with other Indigenous Peoples across the circumpolar north. It reflects the changing relationship between Denmark and its autonomous territory, a dynamic moving slowly yet steadily towards Greenlandic independence. In the years since the Kingdom of Denmark’s previous chairmanship from 2009 to 2011, Greenland has assumed increased decision-making power, including the right to negotiate and conclude international agreements on behalf of the Realm.
A Fridtjof Nansen Institute report from 2024 questioned whether Greenland will be able to handle running the chairship amid the Russia-Ukraine crisis, which impacts the Arctic Council significantly because of Russia’s presence in the forum, especially with comparatively fewer people in the Greenlandic Ministry. While the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has 27 staff working exclusively on Arctic issues, the Greenlandic Ministry has only 13 staff in Nuuk and an additional 10 posted elsewhere, including Washington, D.C. and Beijing. The enormity of Greenland’s task as Arctic Council Chair is one reason that Ambassador Hoegh will lead via a tripartite political steering group, supported by a Faroese Deputy SAO and a Danish National SAO. This structure represents Greenland, Denmark, and the Faroe Islands (Copenhagen’s other autonomous territory) as equals within the Kingdom and reflects the fact that the scale of diplomatic work the ambassador faces will require close involvement and cooperation with Denmark, which continues to handle much of Greenland’s foreign policy.
After the Kingdom of Denmark’s last Arctic Strategy expired in 2020, Greenland requested a chance to prepare and publish its own strategy before a new Kingdom-wide strategy was released. After significant delay, perhaps due to the human resource constraints in Nuuk, its strategy Greenland in the World: Nothing About Us Without Us was released in 2024. The document emphasizes a vision and desire for international collaboration, an eventual goal of independence, and strong support for the work of the Arctic Council. As for Greenland’s plan for its chairship, the official program released this April 11th named five thematic priorities: Indigenous Peoples and communities of the Arctic, sustainable economic development and energy transition solutions, oceans, climate change in the Arctic, and biodiversity.
THE CONTINUED
What will this five-prong agenda look like in action? In all likelihood, the dominant characteristic of the next chairship will be continued support for in-progress council activities, not the initiation of new projects. While any new chairship would be expected to build off the work of its predecessors, Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark have particularly limited options because of a crisis happening outside the Arctic region.
When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th 2022, Moscow also happened to be halfway through its term chairing the Arctic Council. On March 3rd 2022, the other seven Member States met to condemn Moscow’s “unprovoked invasion” and the “grave impediments to international cooperation” caused by its actions. They agreed to boycott meetings planned for that May in Arkhangelsk and temporarily suspended all work of the Arctic Council and its subsidiary bodies. This disruption relates back to the council’s structure, which mandates that decisions must be made by consensus of the states. Any working group activity involving Russia simply could not move forward in the absence of diplomatic relations.
Russia carried out the remainder of its term in isolation, pursuing a largely domestic agenda and hosting a conference in St. Petersburg that none of the other Arctic states attended. When the chairship passed to Norway in May 2023 in a low-level online meeting, the Norwegian Arctic Ambassador took on the task of resuming the council’s stalled work. The Arctic Council has returned in a limited capacity, first communicating via written procedure and then virtual working group meetings, guided by the Strategic Plan 2021-2030 adopted at the 12th Ministerial Meeting in Reykjavik before the war in Ukraine. During its chairship, Norway has led the council in work on projects that align with the Strategic Plan 2021-2030; projects that had already been started and which have the support of all eight Arctic states.
While it has been restricted by the circumstances, Norway has shown that it can also be productive. Accomplishments from its chairship include: sustaining the work of the Black Carbon and Methane Expert Group, which produces reports on countries’ actions to reduce black carbon and methane, pollutant inventories, and projected emissions since 2015; launching a Wildland Fires Initiative that draws from expertise across Working Groups to enhance knowledge on a regional scale, improve access to research data, monitor patterns, and assess impacts of wildland fires as they relate to climate change, Arctic biodiversity, and people living in the circumpolar Arctic; and putting on the Arctic Emergency Management Conference in Bodø, Norway, in March 2025.
Building off Norway’s success, the Kingdom of Denmark’s Chairship Program indicates that it intends to continue supporting projects run by the Expert Group on Black Carbon and Methane. It also commits to assessing capabilities, identifying research gaps, and incorporating Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge into updated emergency preparedness recommendations. It is likely that this year’s Emergency Management Conference will not be the last.
The chairship program also references specific projects, all led or co-led by the Kingdom of Denmark, which may see renewed attention: in the Convention on Arctic Flora and Fauna Working Group, the Biodiversity Monitoring Program and implementation of recommendations from the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment; in the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment Working Group, the Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures project and implementation of the Marine Litter in the Arctic Regional Action Plan; and in the Sustainable Development Working Group, the next iteration of the Local2Global project on suicide prevention and support for the mental wellbeing of Arctic youth.
Finally, the program plans for at least three major events: a workshop/conference on economic development from a “North-to-North perspective,” an international Ocean conference dedicated to “Sub Arctic and High Arctic connectivity” aligned with the Ocean Decade agenda, and an event series addressing the “triple planetary crisis” culminating in a 2027 conference.
The chairship program contains additional points of advocacy, and importantly, resolves to strengthen the role of Indigenous Permanent Participants and engage Arctic youth in Arctic Council work across the board. Overall, however, it is careful to reference specific ongoing projects and tie them directly to provisions of the 2021-2030 Strategic Plan and Reykjavik Declaration. The 2021 chair transition from Iceland to Russia was the last opportunity for ministerial-level agreements before the Russia-Ukraine war; it therefore remains the primary authority for the Arctic Council’s operations in the present. It will retain this status, barring major reversals in states’ diplomatic relations with Russia.
THE UNKNOWN
Marc Jacobsen of the Royal Danish Defense College wrote in a 2023 article for the Arctic Institute that with two years of Norwegian chairship followed by the Kingdom of Denmark and then Sweden’s chairship in 2027, the Nordic Arctic states have an opportunity to powerfully influence the council over their combined six years if they can agree on a shared agenda. He argues that a common priority could be societal security; not military security, which is stipulated against in the council’s founding Ottawa Declaration, but topics like disaster response or the restoration of contact in Inuit and Sami communities that were cleaved in two when Russia’s borders closed in 2022.
During the last Kingdom of Denmark and Swedish chairmanships spanning 2009-2013, two binding agreements were signed: the Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic in 2011 and the Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Spill Preparedness and Response in the Arctic in 2013. The agreements are a testament to the potential of the next four years, beginning with the Kingdom of Denmark’s term this May.
As something to work towards over the course of the next chairships, Jacobsen suggests a binding agreement for the protection of the rights of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. This topic is certainly important to the Kingdom of Denmark, with Greenlandic Inuit, or Kalaallit, making up 89 percent of its Arctic population. The Kingdom of Denmark’s Deputy Head of Representation of Greenland in Washington, D.C. stated in 2024 that strengthening the Inuit Circumpolar Council, a powerful Indigenous Participant Organization that connects Inuit across Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Chukotka will be an important goal for the Kingdom during its chairship. This sentiment is reflected in its chairship program, which lists “Indigenous Peoples and Communities of the Arctic” as their first thematic priority.
It is clear, then, that there are opportunities for longer-term cooperation and achievement during the coming chairships. However, it is important to consider also that the possibility of another landmark agreement is slim until Russia ends its aggression in Ukraine. The status of negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war is the biggest unknown factor in the immediate future of the Arctic Council. As of late April, iterations of ceasefire agreements circulate between the White House, the Kremlin, and Kyiv without attaining a consensus. Whether the war halts during the next Arctic Council chairship will certainly impact the scope of the work that the Kingdom of Denmark is able to accomplish. It is also possible that an end to the war with unfavorable terms for Ukraine could lead some Arctic states but not others to resume full communication with Russia.
The United States is the other major variable in the future of the Arctic Council. Former President Biden created the U.S. Arctic Ambassador position via executive order in 2022. Since the customary resignation of his appointee Mike Sfraga in January 2025, President Trump has not yet filled the post. During its first months, the Trump administration has maintained an aggressive posture towards Greenland and a keen interest in the strategic value of the Arctic region. It is not clear, however, that it recognizes the Arctic Council for its key role in regional human security. Furthermore, the council’s strong commitment to the protection of the Arctic environment, including maintaining ecosystem health, is antithetical to the administration’s attacks on climate science both domestically and internationally.
Rob Huebert of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies in Calgary predicts disaster should the Trump administration train its eye on the Arctic Council. Beyond conflicting priorities on climate and the Arctic environment, he points to President Trump’s gutting of U.S. Agency for International Development programs and open criticism of NATO as evidence of Trump’s disinclination towards international cooperation: “he seems intent on either ending American participation or upending [multilateral] agreements solely for American benefit.”
A considerable low point for the Arctic Council, even before the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War, occurred in 2019 when Trump administration Envoy Mike Pompeo held up the issuance of a joint declaration from the council because it mentioned the word “climate.” It was the first time since its inception in 1996 that the council was not able to put forth a joint declaration during the chair transition. The second time? During the transition from Russia to Norway in 2023.
CONCLUSION
The Kingdom of Denmark, led by a Greenlandic Arctic Ambassador, will receive its chairship in a closed-door online meeting on May 12th. The Kingdom’s agenda to strengthen Arctic Indigenous representation and achieve progress on projects across working groups will contend with the ongoing challenge of work with Russia amid the war in Ukraine and the increasingly isolationist United States. The Arctic has seen conflict and militarization before; it has also seen impressive feats of international cooperation. As a forum for sustainable development, for maritime rescue and pollution control, and for community and environmental health, the Arctic Council cannot lose its relevancy. The Kingdom of Denmark’s critical task will be to keep the fires going.
Ava Moore is an intern at the Center for Maritime Strategy and a graduate from the University of Washington, where she received a B.A. in International Studies with a minor in Arctic Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.