Arctic council ministerial preparations

The United States is working with seven other countries to prepare recommendations for the Ministers under the Arctic Council to consider at their biennial meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland on November 24, 2004. The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum that provides a mechanism to address the common concerns and challenges faced by the Arctic governments and the people of the Arctic ranging from oil and gas development to the prevention of infectious disease and biodiversity conservation. Arctic Council Ministers make policy recommendations on the basis of consensus.

Climate change recommendations are among the recommendations under discussion. The United States supports a number of the draft policy recommendations and is considering other proposals. We support those recommendations that are both consistent with the Administration’s broader climate change policy, and that are appropriate for the unique attributes of the Arctic Council as a regional forum. Formal global climate change negotiations occur through the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The United States considers climate change in the Arctic to be an important issue. The United States is involved in a number of activities to address climate change in the Arctic, both domestically and in coordination with other nations. We funded $2 million for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a significant effort to characterize the current state of scientific and technical knowledge in the Arctic. The report will be a valuable contribution to the literature on potential regional impacts of climate change, and the United States government will take its findings into account as it continues to review the science on climate change, as with other scientific assessments and information. The full scientific report will be released next year. An overview summary will be released on November 8, 2004.

The United States is committed to ensuring that its policies are informed by the best information that science can provide. The United States has been guided by the June 2001 review of the National Academy of Sciences on the science of climate that President Bush requested. It laid out both the extent and limitations of our current knowledge. The United States is committed to working within the United Nations framework and elsewhere to develop an effective and science-based global approach to climate change that ensures continued economic growth and prosperity for our citizens and for citizens throughout the world.