Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sea Ice and Sociolegal Dynamics in a Changing Arctic Ocean Environment

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This doctoral dissertation research project will examine how the changing nature of sea ice influences marine sociolegal dynamics, with special attention given to disputes regarding maritime boundaries and resources in the Beaufort and Bering Seas. The doctoral student will explore how the law could potentially recognize sea ice as a flexible entity that is incorporated into multiple legal spaces and systems. The project will broaden theoretical understandings of linkages among human systems, climate and environmental change, and spatial dimensions of the ocean and law in the greater Arctic region. The project will advance conceptualizations of sea ice in a way that recognizes that sea ice is not a stationary object, because it moves through time and space in response to the physical forces of wind, ocean currents, and heating. Furthermore, sea ice is neither terrestrial nor marine, just as it is neither purely solid nor liquid. Project findings will expand knowledge about the relationships between this dynamic physical element and the political powers that govern a complex ocean environment. The project will provide new insights regarding how the law can recognize sea ice as a flexible entity that is attached to and integrated into multiple legal spaces and systems. These insights will be of value to those charged with overseeing activities in regions where sea ice occurs. Among those organizations is the multinational Arctic Council, which the United States chairs from 2015 to 2017. Project findings will help address two of the focus areas of the U.S. chairmanship (the impacts of changing climate and environmental conditions and Arctic Ocean safety, security, and stewardship) by expanding knowledge about the role that changing spatial sea ice patterns have in the many political debates of this region. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.Changes to the spatial extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean simultaneously permit and endanger maritime operations, and those changes impact current debates over maritime boundaries, presenting an interesting challenge for international law. In conducting this project, the doctoral student will combine perspectives from the fields of legal geography and ocean-space studies to assess how dynamic and changing sea ice shapes the marine social-environment, particularly in terms of legal and political contestations in ocean-spaces of the greater Arctic region. The student will use three data-collection strategies: legal archival analysis to gain a base understanding of all relevant laws and agreements; document analysis of reports and other official documents to understand and contextualize the broader environmental, social, political and economic issues in each of these regions; and semi-structured interviews with policy experts, operational experts that work in sea-ice areas, and sea-ice researchers. The interviews will focus on participants' experiences with boundary issues in sea-ice waters, their perceptions of sovereignty, their experience with resource extractive operations in sea-ice waters, and their perceptions of change in an already dynamic Arctic marine environment.