Blue Visions: Ordering a Changing Arctic Ocean
2025-08-01
This essay explores how the prospect of a “blue” Arctic Ocean—no longer covered continuously with sea ice—has shaped, supported, and challenged different visions for and prospective ways of ordering relations in the Arctic. Three examples of regional ordering projects initiated in anticipation of a changing Arctic Ocean are discussed: reinforcing club governance through the 2008 Ilulissat Agreement, a more inclusive approach through the Central Arctic Ocean precautionary fisheries agreement, and an Inuit-led governance project in a uniquely valued sea area (the Pikialasorsuaq) meant to (re)introduce a different form of socioecological order. These different illustrations highlight the varied ordering effects that the prospect of an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean has precipitated. In conclusion, the essay considers how geopolitical tensions have ushered in a period in which efforts to configure authority and order relations around the Arctic Ocean are increasingly enmeshed with and challenged by broader security and political orders and logics.