As a shareholder of oil company Royal Dutch Shell, commonly known as
Shell, I have a special interest in its activities1.
One of its activities takes place in the Arctic2.
Shell sees this region as a potential source to secure the World from
energy supply in the future; “It is estimated that the Arctic
holds around 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of
its yet-to-find oil”. Due to global warming, the icecaps are
decreasing. In the next few decades it becomes possible to extract
natural gas and oil from the North Pole in the coming decades.
Although it can be very profitable for the company to have activities
in this region, Shell admits that there are still many economic,
environmental and social challenges ahead. Ostroms framework of
analysing social-ecological systems (SESs) might help to
overcome these challenges.
Fig. 1. Decreasing amount
of ice during summer at the North Pool (source: NASA Earth
Observatory)
Because of the multi-disciplinary complexity of these systems, Nobel
prize-winner Elinor Ostrom describes a general framework for
analysing the sustainability of social-ecological systems where each
of these aspects will be taken into account 3.
She stated that like natural gas “all humanly used resources are
embedded in complex SESs”. Natural gas and oil can be described
as common pool resources. These kind of resources are freely
available but have a limited quantity. Her framework consists of
several subsystems of an SES. Figure 2 gives an overview how the four
subsystems at the first level are related. Resources systems
describes in which ecological system the activity takes place. In
this the case of Shell these are Arctic’s oil and gas fields.
Resources units describes what kind of resources are extracted
from the resource system. In this case it will be natural gas and oil
reserves.
Fig. 2. The core subsystems
in a framework for analysing social-ecological systems
The governance system describes if the government or other
organizations plays a part in managing and setting rules for the use
of the resources. It dependents if the industry itself or
governmental interference is needed when it is for the industry
cheaper to set out own rules than implementing law given topdown.
The North Pole is a unique situation since it is officially no-man’s
land. In the last part of this blog, I will elaborate more on that.
The user are the actors who are involved in the extraction of
oil and natural gas in the Arctic region. Oil companies like Shell
and neighbouring states who claim parts as their national territory
of the North Pole. But also actors who use the region for other
purposes like the native people who might live there. All of these
subsystems are interlinked with each other. If Users extract
resources from the environment it will have an impact on the resource
stock of the resource system.
The most interesting part of the North Pole is that it is officially
no-man’s land although several states are try to prove that the
North Pole belongs to their territory. Russia planted a flag of the
Russian Federation on the arctic seafloor to claim the North Pole
during an expedition in 20074.
Today the debate is still going on whether which country has the
right to claim the North Pole5.
So that it can exploit the resources or the right to license oil and
gas companies like Shell. Not only Russia but also Denmark, Canada,
the United States and Norway are taking part in this debate. Because
state are sovereign, no higher authority exists who can decide which
of these state is the legitimate owner of the North Pole. The state
have to come to a mutual agreement. But that is very unlikely that
will happen. Therefore the United Nation can play a role to mitigate
between these states. Especially the commission of the Convention of
the law of the Sea6.This
commission has the task to designate the legitimate owner. But the
problem is that the United States do not recognise this commission as
a legally binding body due to its sovereign-state principle.
Fig. 3. A Russian submarine
plants a flag on the Artic seabed (Source: Reuters)
Therefore, It is unlikely this debate will be solved in the near
future. Hopefully the need for extra fossil fuels will compensated by
renewable energy so that the Artcic region be saved form extraction
of its resources. Because of the poor institutionalisation due Arctic
issues, the framework of Ostrom is more or less a utopian ideal the
practice in the real world. On the other hand, it still gives a good
overview what role governance should take in common pool resources in
SESs.
1 Low
revenues on
deposit accounts encouraged me to buy stocks with low-risk but with
a high-dividend. Royal Dutch Shell was in my opinion the best option
for me.
3
Ostrom,
E. 2009. A General Framework for analyzing sustainability of
social-ecological system. In Science.
24 July. Vol 325: 419-422.
4
National
Geographic. 2007.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070802-russia-pole.html
(8 October 2014)
5
Johnson.
J. 2014.Who Own the North Pole? Debate Heats Up as Climate Change
Transforms Artic. 4 April.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-04/who-owns-the-north-pole-debate-heats-up-as-climate-change-transforms-arctic.html
(8 October 2014)
6
UN
Convention on the Law of the Sea.
http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/closindx.htm
(8 October 2014)
Hi Jason,
BeantwoordenVerwijderenThis is a very significant example, and I'm really interested in it. You gave really completed explanation of it, and these graphs make it more visual. In addition, with all the documents supporting your article, you managed to make your post rather persuasive. But, I'm not sure if it's advisable, I think you could address a little bit more about how these four subsystems interact and coordinate with each other. I mean you gave clear explanations of each of them, but not enough analysis of their relations, like in the graph, their interactions that make the final outcomes.
Hope it's useful.