Environmental Audit Committee 

Oral evidence: The Changing Arctic, HC 842

Wednesday 11 July 2018

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 11 July 2018.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Mary Creagh (Chair); Colin Clark; Mr Philip Dunne; Mr Robert Goodwill; James Gray; Caroline Lucas; Kerry McCarthy; Anna McMorrin; Dr Matthew Offord; Joan Ryan; Alex Sobel.

Questions 110 - 200

Witnesses

I: Henry Burgess, Head of the Arctic Office, British Antarctic Survey; Professor Duncan Wingham, NERC Executive Chair, Natural Environment Research Council;  and Richard Powell, University Lecturer and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.

II: Edda Falk, Communications Manager, Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators; Michael Kingston, Lawyer, Specialist Advisor to the Arctic Council, Advisor to Lloyd’s of London; and Dr Dmitry Yumashev, Senior Research Associate, Lancaster University Management School.

Written evidence from witnesses:

• British Antarctic Survey - written evidence | PDF version (78 KB) 
• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) - written evidence | PDF version (180 KB) 
  

Examination of witnesses

Henry Burgess, Professor Duncan Wingham and Richard Powell.

Q110       Chair: Can I bring the Committee to attention and welcome our witnesses and visitors today? It is always nice to see some young people at the back of the room. We hope you will be staying for the full two hours to get right to the end of it. This is our second public hearing on the Changing Arctic Inquiry. On 19 July we are going to have a public meeting to take evidence from Ministers.

Can I ask our witnesses to give their names and job titles for the purposes of Hansard, please?

Dr Powell: I am Dr Richard Powell. I am a university lecturer and Director of MPhil in Polar Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge.

Henry Burgess: Good afternoon. My name is Henry Burgess. I am the Head of the National Environment Research Council, Arctic Office, which is hosted by the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge.

Professor Wingham: Good afternoon. I am Duncan Wingham. I am the Executive Chair of NERC.

Q111       Chair: Many thanks for being with us today. Professor Wingham, could you start? How does your Arctic research directly inform the UK’s Arctic policy?

Professor Wingham: I would prefer to ask Henry to address that question. He is more knowledgeable.

Henry Burgess: Thank you. Perhaps I could start with three main areas. The UK has been extremely effective at investing in strategic research in the Arctic over the period of the last eight years or so. From the first Arctic research programme, which started in 2010, there have been over 70 publications in scientific journals as a result of those nine projects and that £50 million of NERC investment. Therefore, we are feeding into some of the best science there is through those projects.

Secondly, there are specific examples coming from that piece of work where the findings have related directly to policy consequences and actions. Richard Wood, who appeared before your Committee last week, was talking about the work that was funded through that programme looking at wind drag on top of ice feeding into the Met Office’s models. That is one way in which that NERC investment in science in the Arctic is feeding through to better understanding and models and system approaches.

Also through that £50 million project we have had work looking at submarine landslides in the Arctic. There is evidence there were landslides 8,000 or so years ago that affected the UK, so we invested in looking at whether those will be more likely under changing Arctic conditions. We found out that they would not necessarily but that the period in which those could happen may be more unpredictable than we suspected in the past. Colleagues there have been working with the Cabinet Office and the National Risk Register to think about whether those should be included in that work.

As a third example, we have had people working from Reading and the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling looking at the future of shipping in the Arctic. We had a team looking at the predictability and likelihood of ships transiting across the top of the Arctic and using the Northern Sea Route. That fed into work that the Government Office for Science was leading on the foresight future of the sea.

We are conscious it is important that—with what funds this work—we make proper connections with policymakers. Therefore, we linked up with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. We had an event in September 2017 where we brought together some of the key findings from that programme and described them in this report here, which was a short document that was written specifically for policymakers. I provided some of these to the Committee earlier on. This is a way in which we can translate the findings directly through to policymakers in Whitehall and beyond.

Q112       Chair: Thank you. Can you tell us how those different research strands were fed into the Government during their 2018 publication of “Beyond the Ice”?

Henry Burgess: Absolutely. That is very much a Government-written document. During the writing of that document they sent drafts to us and said, “Would you like to contribute to the research elements of this?” We took the opportunity to provide examples of work that is being done in the UK, and examples internationally, and fed those into the report. Other than those research areas that report is a Government report. It is not one that we contributed to in terms of the values, principles and other content. In terms of research, the work we are doing and funding, that was contributed to and partly drafted by us.

Q113       Chair: Thank you. What difference has the creation of the NERC Arctic Office made to Arctic research since 2009?

Henry Burgess: It is important to say it is a small office. It is one and a half people: me and a colleague. We try to concentrate on three main areas. First, to make sure that, where we have researchers in the High North, we support them as effectively as we can. Secondly, to make sure that where we can provide advice to policymakers, nationally and internationally, we do that in a way that is appropriate and right. Thirdly, that where we can we build international connections, new collaborations and connect UK-based researchers to other opportunities. I can talk about some examples of how we have done that, if that is helpful.

Q114       Chair: No, we have a lot to get through and have a drop-dead time of 4.00 pm because there is going to be a Division. My follow-up is: what are the plans for the future? Is it a steady-state operation or is it going to expand?

Henry Burgess: The important thing to say is that the NERC Arctic Office does not fund programmes directly. We are not a co-ordination organisation. What we do is try to maximise the impact of the research and the spend that happens and find new opportunities. Where we can look for those new opportunities in the future, then we will do that. However, we do not have a dramatic plan to expand; that is not the position we are in.

Q115       Chair: We know NERC’s activities and funding decisions are separate from Government. Do the Government ever request research to aid its policymaking or would that go against the Haldane principle?

Professor Wingham: I do not see it going against the Haldane principle for Government to make clear what areas of research they would like to see done.

Q116       Chair: Like they have done on plastics and micro-plastics, for example?

Professor Wingham: Or neonicotinoid, or whatever the issue happens to be. I see no difficulty with that and NERC over the years has put on many programmes in response to a research need that arises from policy. On the other hand, this is merely one source of the factors that we consider in making judgments about scientific priorities, which remains an independent decision at arm’s length from the Government.

Q117       Chair: Have the Government asked you to do any particular Arctic research that you have agreed, or not agreed, to?

Henry Burgess: There are processes that NERC is involved in that support the decisions that are taken within Government. However, that is not the same as conducting research directly on instruction from Government. One of the things that we have done recently is worked with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to find opportunities to partner UK-based researchers with a new German-led programme, MOSAiC. That was an area of opportunity that we identified through the work of the Arctic Office.

Then we discussed with officials and others in BEIS about how we could potentially engage UK researchers in this. It made some funding available through that programme, about £0.5 million, to invest in UK researchers being on this expedition that is in the Arctic Ocean in 2019. NERC has then partnered up with some science money to make a combined fund that will support that work in total.

Q118       Chair: That fund is £1 million?

Henry Burgess: £2.3 million in total, with Government and NERC funding together.

Q119       Chair: Thank you for that. On these submarine landslides, would anyone like to explain why they might need to be put on the National Risk Register?

Henry Burgess: There was some thought that the changes happening in the Arctic—the warming of the seas and potentially increased deposition rates of sediment flowing out of the big rivers in the north—might contribute to an increased likelihood of submarine landslides, which is where there is a slip in sediment that can affect coastal areas. There was a project, called Tsunami, which looked at this.

Q120       Chair: Tsunami; not very reassuring.

Henry Burgess: That is the technical terms for these events.

Q121       Chair: I know, but we do not think of ourselves as being in a tsunami zone, do we?

Henry Burgess: There was something called a Storegga Slide, which happened about 8,000 years ago off the north-Norwegian coast. You can find sediment deposits from this slide in northern parts of Scotland apparently about six metres above the current sea level. The science question was whether the changing Arctic conditions that we are seeing might make this more likely. The results were that they are not linked to glacial periods but can occur at intervals of less than 100,000 years. This is not something that will be directly related to the change we are seeing in the Arctic. That is an area where the science we funded has shown there is potentially less risk from the changing Arctic in this area than we might have thought.

Q122       Chair: It is an epochal risk rather than a generational risk?

Henry Burgess: Yes.

Q123       Chair: When it did happen 8,000 years ago what happened to Britain? Is that when we got cut off from Europe?

Henry Burgess: That is a separate issue. That is about the end of the Ice Age, the ice melting and the sea levels rising.

Q124       Chair: What happened when it did happen 8,000 years ago?

Henry Burgess: I will have to get back to you on the exact detail but, essentially, there was a wave that affected northern parts of the country and deposited sediment up to six metres above the current sea level.

Q125       Chair: It was a very big wave. I think we would like to read that so we know what we are getting into on our visit. Thank you very much. That is very helpful.

Q126       James Gray: We will move on to general UK-Arctic relations and policy. First of all, there are two reports, five years apart. Why was it necessary to have two reports? What is the difference between them? Henry, am I right in thinking you were involved in writing the first one when were in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office? I cannot remember when you moved. What is the purpose behind these reports and what is the difference between them?

Henry Burgess: Yes, my previous role was as Deputy Head of the Polar Regions Department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. At the time of the writing of the first report in 2013 I was partly involved in doing that.

Our role as the research council is to make sure that where these documents exist, and that we have a true and accurate reflection of the work that NERC and other funds are carrying out in the Arctic. That is our primary responsibility. When it came to the opportunity to contribute examples in the latest report that is what we did, to make sure our new ship, satellite capability, AUV capability and all the great things we are able to fund and do in the Arctic were properly reflected.

Q127       James Gray: Why was the update necessary? What is the difference between the reports?

Henry Burgess: That is probably a question we are not best equipped to answer.

Q128       James Gray: Let me switch it around a little in that case, if I may? You are all scientists. One argument that could be advanced is that Britain does not do enough in forming Arctic policy; we are too hands off, we leave it all to the Arctic Council and all that. Would you not agree with that general thesis?

Henry Burgess: From what I have seen in my two years as Head of the Arctic Office is that the UK is incredibly strongly engaged in events in the Arctic. Over the course of the last year, I have had the opportunity to travel to Russia three times to make connections there and we have been at the Arctic Circle Assembly. At the Arctic Circle Assembly this year, UK speakers spoke and organised events on 23 separate occasions, and the year before we had events on 17 separate occasions. From what I see, we are at these events and we are there within the Arctic Council working group structures as well.

From our perspective, the important thing we need to remember all the time is that the Arctic Council is not a regulatory body. It does not have power to regulate in the Arctic. It is a body where people can discuss environmental and sustainability issues, but it is not a body that regulates in the Arctic. It provides guidance reports, best practice and assessments. We are contributing to those where the research dictates it is right to do so.

Q129       James Gray: Let me put it another way then. In the Antarctic BAS dominates scientific research and, indeed, all areas of life in the Antarctic. Is there not some slight feeling that we stand back a bit far with regard to the Arctic, we feel nervous about cutting across the Arctic Council and we are nationally modest about our ambitions in the Arctic?

Professor Wingham: Maybe I will comment on that. From a scientific point of view, if one looks at the balance between the Antarctic and the Arctic generally, you have to recognise a number of asymmetries. There is a geopolitical asymmetry in the Antarctic. The UK is responsible for an area of the sheet under the Antarctic Treaty. NERC has taken the responsibility from the UK Government since 1965 to maintain that activity.

That activity is now the subject of a particular partition of our budget that is dedicated for that purpose. The activities we pursue under that dedicated budget of logistics are explicitly agreed with Government at each spending review and so on. Therefore, there is no equivalent of the need to maintain that territorial-related activity in the Arctic. From a logistic point of view, there are also strong contrasts. There is roughly speaking a factor of 10—

Q130       James Gray: I am so sorry, I will be very rude. I know my Chairman is very worried about time so forgive me interrupting.

Let’s talk about it in a different way, perhaps. In the “Beyond the Ice” paper—the new research paper—it says a great deal about the British interest in the Arctic with regard to science and lays out what our passage will be in the Arctic until 2045, if I remember rightly. Do you view that as being a reasonable approach, is it right? Does the new paper understand British scientific contribution in the Arctic?

Henry Burgess: I do not think it is for us to comment on the direction of a Government document.

James Gray: You are such a cautious fellow, Henry.

Henry Burgess: The foreword of this document is from the Minister for the Polar Regions. We understand that and this is a Government document. Therefore, it is not for us to comment on the approach or tone of that. I was very pleased and proud we could get such a strong—

Q131       James Gray: Sorry, we will be seeing Sir Alan Duncan in front of the Committee, at some stage or other, and we will cross-examine him then. However, what we are asking you, as scientists, is: do you think what the Government is saying is right? I am sure you would not but let’s imagine you answer my question by saying, “No, we think the document is completely wrong, completely opaque and ridiculous”. That would be something we would then put to the Minister later on. However, I am sure you will not say that. It is a little bit too cautious to say that it is not your document and, therefore, you cannot comment on it.

Henry Burgess: It is certainly true to say we were pleased to see such a strong science story in that document. The fact the science story flows through all the three categories of the document that are represented there—in terms of economic prosperity, social engagement, sustainability and the UK’s place in the world—is a fantastic story for the UK science community to be part of and to tell.

At the moment we have our ship, the James Clark Ross, in the Arctic as part of our new £16 million Changing Arctic Ocean programme. It is not a direct successor programme to the previous one but is looking at a similar area, the changing biogeochemistry of the Arctic. Our ship is now in the Arctic. She will be in the Arctic for 90 days this year carrying out some real high-quality science.

Dr Powell: I guess I can be slightly less cautious as an academic social scientist. I would add that personally I think—and I guess it would be the view more widely of Arctic social scientists—it maybe downplays some elements of the UK’s strengths in Arctic social science and, also, issues of importance to Arctic social science more generally. That is a fair point one could make.

There are some elements of the policy framework that seem slightly surprising to me as an analyst, but that is the nature of being an academic. It does not say as much as it could about defence and security, and certainly geopolitics. I don’t think it says as much as it could about some aspects of governance. As Henry and colleagues were saying, there are other elements in which the UK is quite active in the Arctic through the University of the Arctic, various scholarly associations and things like the International Arctic Social Sciences Association. With respect to the people who live in the Arctic, there is content and mention.

Obviously, the nature of the United Kingdom’s role as a near-Arctic state means some of its opportunities for intervention and things are obviously politically complicated. However, there is certainly research about the lives of indigenous peoples and the implications of change—which it does mention but could say more about—which would support that sense of UK research success stories as part of the UK’s involvement in the Arctic more widely.

Q132       Kerry McCarthy: How has Arctic research by the UK contributed to the IPCC’s report? It has a special report out for consultation at the moment, which is due to be finalised by next September, on the “Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”.

Henry Burgess: There is a special report on the “Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”. We have six UK-based authors out of 103 that are contributing to that report. The co-ordinating lead author is Professor Mike Meredith from British Antarctic Survey; there are two authors for that. They will look at a range of issues that are bang on point when it comes to the changing Arctic. They will be looking at the atmospheric and ocean circulations, the Greenland ice sheets—which I know you have heard about—snow cover, freshwater, thawing permafrost, sea ice and the polar ocean.

They will also be looking at the economic and cultural consequences of change in the Arctic. Therefore, it is not just the purely natural environment science aspects. They are looking at social science aspects too. By September 2019, they will be producing a summary for policymakers and acceptance of the special report for the 51st session of the IPCC.

Q133       Kerry McCarthy: If you have 103 authors of a report, it sounds like a mammoth task to pull it all together. Is it divvied up so the experts you mentioned do sections on particular Polar Regions? Do they have authorship over those sections or is it in consultation with people from other countries, there are arguments and eventually a consensus reached, or do they write that bit themselves?

Henry Burgess: That is right. There is a process of looking at the best available evidence that is out there in those specific areas. The Polar Regions are part of this special report on ocean and cryosphere. There will be other ocean areas in that report.

Q134       Kerry McCarthy: It is not just UK experts doing the Polar Region section, it is other people?

Henry Burgess: It is very much an international effort.

Q135       Kerry McCarthy: Is the consultation internally between the experts and then it goes out for wider consultation?

Henry Burgess: I am not aware of the exact process of consultation. However, this process of having lead authors looking into the literature and finding the best and most robust evidence, bringing that forward and combining it with evidence from other areas, is the kind of thing that these people who lead these processes are used to.

Q136       Kerry McCarthy: Do they look to us to do that, because we are known as being particular proficient in that field?

Henry Burgess: It is fair to say there is a level of expertise and skill in polar science within the UK that is recognised. The UK is fourth when it comes to the number of peer-reviewed publications in Arctic science. We are only behind the US, Canada and Russia when it comes to that level of skill, because acceptance of a piece of research for publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the quality control of that.

Q137       Kerry McCarthy: Does that help us when it comes to Observer status on the Arctic Council? Is the fact we have this expertise something that will smooth the path when it comes to renewing our Observer status? Does it help in terms of our position and influence as Observer?

Henry Burgess: Having that dedication, skill and quality within the UK polar community is something that certainly opens doors. However, it does not come for free. It comes because of investment and because of people’s dedication to their craft.

The renewal of the Observer status is something that is worth unpacking a little bit. It happened two years ago and was a process led by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We had the chance to contribute evidence of where UK researchers had been involved in Arctic Council working groups and elsewhere. However, it is not so much a renewal of the Observer status but more a mid-term report card on what the Observer has been doing, how it has been contributing to science to the Arctic and particularly to the work of the working groups.

Q138       Kerry McCarthy: You have to earn your position by showing you are putting something into it?

Henry Burgess: It is not put as bluntly as earning your position. However, yes, the eight Arctic states want to see those people, who have been given observer status, maintaining a strong engagement in the work of the working groups and that they are contributing rather than just sitting there. The UK has a good story to tell there among a lot of the working groups.

Q139       Anna McMorrin: As the daughter of a pioneer in exploration in Antarctica—my father spent two years in Antarctica 50 years ago and, in fact, has a glacier named after him there—I am aware of the work that has been done and the changes in Antarctica since then.

What does the UK now need to do to maintain leadership in the Arctic? With other states—particularly China and other Asian states—taking an interest, what does the UK need to do to maintain that position?

Dr Powell: To almost comment on UK policy, the UK does lots of excellent natural science, social science and humanity research in the Arctic. It has a great tradition in the scholarly history of exploration, the history of indigenous peoples and the growth of political self-determination of indigenous peoples. Continuing to fund that research and that activity is definitely key to supporting the UK being taken seriously as a science player in the region and, therefore, as an observer state on the Arctic Council and things like that.

The subtext of your question seems to be that maybe we know more in the UK about the Antarctic than the Arctic. Yes, that is probably true. As a university teacher there is certainly a lot of confusion between them, in children’s literature and things, and more widely in terms of the wider public imagination. Knowing about the distinctions is important but, as has already been said, there are lots of historical and geopolitical reasons why the UK invests in a certain way in Antarctica in terms of science infrastructure, logistics and things compared to the Arctic because of the long-standing Treaty obligations.

Q140       Anna McMorrin: What is your view on the impact that other states—China or Asian states—might have?

Dr Powell: A key aspect of the 2013 and 2018 policy frameworks is the idea of the UK as the nearest Arctic state. Obviously, Scotland and the Scottish Government have made exactly the same case, that it is Scotland that is the nearest neighbour and not the United Kingdom. There is a whole set of issues going on there. The People's Republic of China is making the same argument about being a near neighbour. The spatial geographical link argument is very similar but the UK's investment in science and wider activities is dwarfed by China in terms of funding, economy and things.

The argument that the United Kingdom is the closest neighbour and, therefore, we should be always at the table—we have always been in the room listening to the discussion since the first meeting of the Arctic Council back in 1996—has inevitably been disrupted by new actors. That is not just China but lots of other Asian states are increasingly interested in the region. There are definitely lots of issues about global responsibilities and particular state national interests in the region.

Henry Burgess: I would add that this is very much not a zero-sum game when it comes to science in the Arctic. There is no shortage of enormously difficult and complicated questions in the Arctic. The need to work together internationally to solve those is very prominent. China has a genuine interest in the climate of the Arctic and its effect on the mid-latitudes. There is evidence the changes in the Arctic are causing changes to the Siberian High and seeing outbreaks of cold air into East Asia. Therefore, there is a genuine reason for China to be especially interested in science in the Arctic. The Director-General of their Polar Research Institute of China is part of the International Arctic Science Committee steering committee, if you like—its executive committee—along with the UK. It is contributing its icebreaker, the Xue Long, to support the US, German and Russian MOSAiC mission in the Arctic. There are all kinds of connections we could potentially have with China in the future.

Q141       Dr Matthew Offord: UK Arctic research is spread across different institutions. Some of the projects are funded by NERC. I am keen to understand how you decide what research to fund and what criteria or method you use to establish that?

Professor Wingham: I am going to oversimplify slightly: we are spending money under three large headings. One is essentially infrastructure and institutes. All of our infrastructure and our support of up to six institutes are inside those budget lines. We then have a block of money of the order of £60 million a year that is entirely responsive. In other words, the choice of topic is chosen entirely by the bidders across the domain. These are sent to panels and it is simply a question of the panels deciding which has the most-excellent science. In the middle we have a similar block of funding of the same order that we label “strategic”. That is more top-down in as much as the Council, or subcommittees of it, do make choices about the subject matter that is being funded. For example, two successive Arctic programmes were funded through that line. Nonetheless, these are still balanced decisions between various demands on the portfolio and nor are they completely top-down.

In other words, we have processes to gather proposals from our community to bring to us proposals for programmes of some number between £4 million, £10 million or even £15 million. The Arctic ones have been historically bigger. Then we decide, at any given time, which are the most appropriate programmes for us to choose. For example, one—I will not go so strong as to say “criteria”—part of that judgment is the contribution a given programme might make to a policy need across Government, which is one consideration, along with scientific excellence, wider impact and all of those considerations around the programme.

Q142       Dr Matthew Offord: We have had evidence to say you fund more projects in the Antarctic than the Arctic. Why is that?

Professor Wingham: I was remarking before on the commitment to the infrastructure. Let’s remove the commitment to the infrastructure and just talk about science funding, then it is very closely balanced. To illustrate, over the last five years we have spent £40.5 million on the Arctic, £47.5 million on the Antarctic and £13.1 on both, in other words problems that are not peculiar to one Pole or the other. Within the fluctuation of the numbers, I would say that is pretty balanced. Those are a combination of responses to our completely bottom-up funding as well as the funding that has gone out through our more top-down strategic lines.

We looked to see whether some of the earlier evidence you had was true or not. For example, there was one claim that it was becoming harder to get funding. In fact, the data we have suggests slightly the opposite, namely, that the success rate for proposals concerned with polar science have a slightly higher success rate than our average. That reflects the high quality of the proposed science community. Broadly speaking, that is the way in which we make these decisions.

Q143       Dr Matthew Offord: Do you have any plans to expand any of your remit of works in the Arctic? For example, you have a permafrost thaw, glacier loss, vegetation change and carbon balance.

Professor Wingham: The very short answer to that would be no. However, I would not want anybody to interpret that as a statement we are not interested in funding the Arctic. The point being, we have to retain our sense of balance across a very broad environmental science portfolio and many topics that I am sure would be of interest to this Committee on another day. There is a high risk in focusing funding around a particular geographic area because you lock it in and there is, therefore, an opportunity cost.

What I can say is that we have sustained Antarctic and Arctic funding at very reasonable levels. It is of the order of 12% of the total portfolio of science; I am knocking out infrastructure. Given the magnitude of the changes that are happening in the Arctic and the potential importance of them—Henry mentioned, for example, growing uncertainties about the impact on climate change—I would be very surprised if there was any diminishing of our commitment to Arctic research.

Q144       Dr Matthew Offord: I understand your research programme is about five years in length. Is that the only programme you have?

Professor Wingham: No, in fact there are many. I am not sure I am capable to bring them all to memory, but it would be quite wrong to imagine these single programmes are our only activity. I don’t know if, Henry, you could briefly point to other examples of the many things we are involved in?

Henry Burgess: Not part of the strategic investment but, nonetheless, a NERC investment in science is a project called “Black and Bloom” that has been running for a couple of years. It has £1.5 million from NERC and is led by the University of Bristol and others. They are looking at the changing albedo in the Greenland icecap. This is the snow algae and the cryoconite that are darkening the surface of the Greenland ice sheet.

Q145       Chair: Our specialist adviser is in that project so we are going to cut you off there, if that is okay, because we can get a lot of detail on the albedo effect from her at great length.

James Gray: You raised the point that the spending on science is not that dissimilar between the north and south. However, you did say that was not including the infrastructure. Her Majesty’s Government’s expenditure through BAS in the Antarctic is vast, whereas in the Arctic it is relatively small.

Professor Wingham: That is true. The partitioned budget that is for logistics and infrastructure in the Antarctic is around £34 million per year. The expenditure in the Arctic is of the order of £2.3 million on ship commitments, and the Arctic Office is £500,000 or less?

Henry Burgess: About £300,000, if you include the Arctic Office and the station together.

Q146       James Gray: Britain’s commitment, in terms of infrastructure, is extremely large in the Antarctic but relatively modest in the Arctic, but the science is more roughly equivalent.

Henry Burgess: That is right, yes.

Q147       Chair: One of the things we heard from the professors who came last week—we have had a blessing of professors over the last couple of weeks—was about the necessary scientific infrastructure in the Arctic. Obviously, there are geopolitical reasons about the British Antarctic Survey but what about the Arctic Survey; is infrastructure investment a new geopolitical reality and pressure?

Henry Burgess: The thing to remember is that the UK is pretty much a full-spectrum player when it comes to Arctic infrastructure. We contribute to European Space Agency programmes, CyroSat’s and Sentinel, in the upper atmosphere. We are looking into the ionosphere with the icecap programme. We have ships that operate in the Arctic. We have planes that operate in the Arctic. We have UAVs that can go down to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, 6,000 metres for auto-sub. We have a station in Svalbard. Pretty much we cover most areas. Not everyone can do everything in the Arctic; not even the US, Canada or Russia. People take different chunks where they have their expertise and where they have their skill.

Increasingly we are seeing people partnering together, like with the MOSAiC programme and the UK-Canada programmes that we have been able to fund. We will see a lot more of that. The focus from the International Arctic Science Committee and the focus from the International Committee of Arctic Research Planning, which did a 10-year survey on what the really big questions will be in the Arctic, are all about looking at the kinds of connections that can only be answered by big players working together with other partners in the Arctic. That is increasingly the way things are going.

Chair: We are going to need to move on. We are really short of time. We have another panel coming in, in 15 minutes. Questions from Colin, please?

Q148       Colin Clark: I will go through as quickly as I can. We have heard that of the 500-plus papers per year by Arctic researchers in the UK fewer than 10 are from the social sciences. The question is whether there is scope, or a need, to improve social science history in the Arctic.

Dr Powell: First of all, the fact you have just recited is incorrect. Depending on how one defines social sciences, and, assuming you mean social sciences and humanities, I could start naming many more papers than that as a proportion.

The wider question has to be about the nature of Arctic social science and humanities research and its funding. There is excellence all over the United Kingdom; in the University of Aberdeen in Arctic anthropology, the University of Highlands and Islands, Durham University, University of Leeds, Cambridge, Oxford, Royal Holloway and University College London. There are excellent social sciences or humanities people all over the UK.

The issue is that much of the research funding is coming from either European Research Council grants or from Leverhulme and the British Academy. The ESRC and AHRC—the Economic and Social or Arts and Humanities Research Councils—that are the equivalents of NERC in social studies and humanities are not particularly big players in funding Arctic social science or humanities research, and have not been over the past eight to 10 years for various reasons. That could be part of the reason why some of the correspondence and evidence you have been hearing is skewed by that picture. ESRC and AHRC are big players in funding doctoral students, but, in terms of research funding for research projects, they are not significant funders proportionately when you look at who is funding Arctic natural sciences.

Q149       Colin Clark: On that point, do the Government have to do anything to promote collaboration for Arctic research between the research councils or is the collaboration very effective already?

Dr Powell: Obviously, the move to UKRI provides different opportunities for that. At a meta-level, there are lots of important interdisciplinary questions about the Arctic; the impacts of climate change on people, on governance, on shipping, and the idea of opening up for resource extraction that changes the geopolitics. There lots of social science of-climate-change questions that emerge, definitely.

Whether there are other ways in which research funding could be organised to provide more rich opportunities, yes, as a social scientist, there definitely could be. If there was more money, I am sure we could have many more initiatives and things. However, in terms of fostering collaboration as it already exists, there is some but there could be a lot more. Inevitably, there are still ways in which there is not as much communication as there could be but the NERC Arctic Office has definitely helped that over recent years.

Henry Burgess: The observation I make is that ESRC, for example, has its own priorities and is working on a smaller budget than we have available to us. In some ways, one can think of it as having a broader canvas in some respects. We do quite a large number of cross-programmes with ESRC. Therefore, a note of caution about zeroing in on the Arctic and—somehow or other—trying to pressurise the Councils to respond, particularly, on the Arctic. We do work well together in areas where the edge of uncertainty coincides. Therefore, I make that balancing remark.

The picture of weight of dependence on, for example, ERC on QR—which one should not overlook—and on sources like Leverhulme is again in the social sciences and humanities not peculiar to the Arctic, it is a broader pattern.

Q150       Colin Clark: Do you anticipate that the G7 Academies research focus on improving livelihoods in the Arctic will help swing the balance towards social science?

Dr Powell: Not particularly, because the G7 academy that is involved in the UK is the Royal Society not the British Academy. The Royal Society of Canada, for example, sends everything where obviously other academies are different and in the UK it is less so. It definitely could lead to that globally but maybe not so much through the UK because of the way in which our research funding and organisations operate.

Q151       Colin Clark: What research expertise will the UK contribute to the G7 project?

Dr Powell: The Royal Society leads so it is basically much more Arctic natural science.

Q152       Colin Clark: For example, the offers we have of technology, renewable energy, climate change adaption, will it contribute?

Dr Powell: Some of those basically, but I do not think climate change adaptation of peoples and households will be a particular leader.

Henry Burgess: A lot of what we think of as natural sciences in the Arctic has a very strong social sciences link. If we are studying sea ice in the Arctic and the potential for that to affect mid-latitude weather—as we are with EU-funded projects, APPLICATE and Blue-Action—then we are also looking at the social effects of that. If we are looking at the thawing of the permafrost in the Arctic, we are also looking at the social effects because we are looking at how that will affect buildings, roads and communities in the Arctic.

It may seem like a straight division between natural sciences and social sciences, but there are very few of those natural sciences—apart from incredibly esoteric areas—that do not have a very strong social connection to those 4 million people that live north of the Arctic Circle.

Q153       Colin Clark: Lastly, as I am conscious of time, has any research been done on how UK laws, such as the proposed ivory sales ban, will affect local Arctic communities and their capacity to adapt? Will it affect the UK’s position as an Arctic Council Observer?

Henry Burgess: I am not aware of any research that is being funded through NERC on that issue at the moment.

Q154       Colin Clark: Is it going to be a problem and is it going to cause a further problem?

Dr Powell: I don’t think there is any UK-funded or UK-based research on that. Daniele Lafrance in Canada has done work on Canadian seal harvesting and there is work out of the Law Department of the University of Oregon in the States about Alaska. However, how that affects the UK specifically—as opposed to more widely—about interests in seal harvesting by indigenous communities, there has been no particular research that I know of.

Q155       Caroline Lucas: I want to ask you about what risks and opportunities, if any, there are if we do go ahead and leave the EU in terms of our involvement in Arctic research.

Professor Wingham: It is clear that the EU contribution to science and innovation in the UK is tremendously important. We win about 15% a year from Horizon 2020, about £4 billion a year. It is very clear this is important to us. Whatever the future holds, we need to find a way of ensuring we can maintain all of the benefits that arise from that funding.

If I tighten the question to whether there are particular risks arising to our science contribution in connection with the EU, the round answer to that question is no. The proportion of funding coming into the environmental sciences generally from the EU is about the same as the proportion that comes from the national budget. The contribution from the EU to Arctic programmes also goes in the same ratio. In other words, it is—roughly speaking—12% to 13% of NERC’s commitment. That means that it is similar to most of environmental science. I would say that Arctic research is no more important or—equivalent statement—is as important when considering the effect of EU funding.

Q156       Caroline Lucas: We have heard a lot of evidence citing uncertainty over funding and whether the UK will continue to contribute itself to large programmes, like the European Research Council. We have heard concerns around whether or not we will be able to attract the best researchers to academic positions at all levels. We have had written evidence from the Methane in the Arctic: a measurements and modelling project saying that, already, a substantial amount of work at Royal Holloway analysing carbon isotypes has been stopped. It feels like there is a lot of concern out there.

Professor Wingham: There is no doubt there is a lot of concern out there. I cannot comment on whether a particular activity was stopped or not.

Caroline Lucas: I am telling you that it has because that is what our evidence is telling us.

Professor Wingham: There is no question there is concern out there. Nor is there any question about the importance of the contribution of the EU, as I commented upon. As we go through this transition, what is important is that we find ways of ensuring that the contributions presently made by EU funding to the UK science base are somehow sustained.

Q157       Caroline Lucas: How would you imagine that is going to happen?

Professor Wingham: We are working with BEIS to consider almost any scenario that may arise. We will have to see what comes out of the negotiations with the EU. However, I repeat, clearly we are working to ensure the benefits—

Q158       Caroline Lucas: How much of a priority is it for you to be pressing BEIS to say, “We need to be part of the following joint research projects and please make that a major priority”? I don’t get a sense from you of the priority or urgency of this.

Professor Wingham: The comment I made is that the EU contribution to environmental sciences is as important—but not particularly more important—than for most other sciences too, which the data supports. There are particular activities that are supported by EU programmes that are important to the environmental sciences, notably, the ability to be involved in or lead large-scale experiments that would be beyond national capability.

I can assure you that we are in very close contact with BEIS and we are making a very strong case around the need to ensure that, whatever the outcome is from these negotiations, we continue to sustain that contribution.

Q159       Caroline Lucas: What happens if that lobbying is not successful and we do not magically find some way of being part of these processes, what will be the impact then on our involvement in Arctic research?

Professor Wingham: We will lose an important part of our ability to work with other partners internationally. As I say, if I look at the environmental sciences, we could find it difficult to have the same ability to involve ourselves in these large-scale experiments that are beyond the national budget.

Q160       Caroline Lucas: How important is it that we remain a member of the European Polar Board?

Henry Burgess: The European Polar Board is 19 different countries. Switzerland and Norway are members of the European Polar Board and are not European Union states. Our membership of the European Polar Board, which has been in existence since 1995, as I understand it, is not subject to European Union status. It is a wider organisation.

Q161       Caroline Lucas: Norway and Switzerland are quite specific countries with specific relationships with the EU that we may or may not have if we leave the EU. The fact that Norway and Switzerland are there does not necessarily give us the reassurance that we would automatically be there if we are out of the single market, for example, and are not subject to the ECJ and all these other things.

Henry Burgess: The European Polar Board is not a funding body. It is a representative body of the institutions that work in the Arctic and the Antarctic. What they are doing is coming together and combining their expertise. They produced recently a database of infrastructure, north and south, funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 project, EU-PolarNet, which provides better access to those systems.

One of the things the UK has joined most recently is a programme called ARICE, which is providing access to research icebreakers in the Arctic. Our new ship—the Sir David Attenborough—will be part of that programme, which is an EU transnational-access programme that provides capacity for researchers to work on another country’s research vessel. The US, Germany, Canada, Norway and the UK are part of that system. That was a decision that was taken in early 2018, so we are still joining these programmes and there is a lot of positivity there.

Dr Powell: The picture on social sciences and humanities is slightly more dependent because of the nature of who the funders are. The European Research Council is a big funder of big grants and, because Arctic research is expensive, they are slightly more exposed. The British Academy published a report last month about the importance of European Research Council grants to wider social sciences and humanities funding. The grants that have been gained over the past seven years, via the European Research Council, are up to about 24% of the entire AHRC and ESRC annual budget combined.

If you pull out the funding of doctoral students, it is about 80% annually of the combined AHRC and ESRC research budget. That is generally an issue for social sciences and humanities; the nature of the funding, less funding and so on. That is more acute in Arctic social sciences. Because ESRC and AHRC are not big funders of research in Arctic social sciences, the wider community are more dependent on these big grants to do expensive research that involves fieldwork in places like Canada, Greenland or Russia. Therefore, there is a bit of difference between the relative fields.

Q162       Caroline Lucas: I have one last question: might there be any barriers to physical access to the Arctic for research purposes if the UK leaves the EU?

Henry Burgess: If you want to do a research cruise in the Arctic then, under part 13 of UNCLOS, it is the state that applies for that access rather than the EU. If our research ship is going into Norwegian waters it is the UK that requests permission from the Norwegian Government, not an EU responsibility.

Chair: I am afraid we have to draw it to a close there. It is shorter than we would have liked, and certainly shorter than the subject merits. However, we do have another panel and, as I say, we are leaving at 4.00 pm to go and vote. Thank you all very much indeed.

Examination of witnesses

Edda Falk, Michael Kingston and Dr Dmitry Yumashev.

Q163       Chair: Can I welcome our guests? For the purposes of Hansard, can you introduce yourself from my left, please?

Dr Yumashev: Thanks very much. I am Dmitry Yumashev. I am a researcher at the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, Lancaster University. I work on climate policy and electronic waste management.

Edda Falk: My name is Edda Falk. I am the communications manager for AECO, the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators.

Michael Kingston: Michael Kingston. I am a lawyer here in London and help to advise Lloyds of London on guidelines for operation of ships. I have also represented the International Union of Marine Insurance on the finalisation of the Polar Code and I am a special adviser to the Arctic Council PAME group on their new forum for the implementation of the Polar Code.

Q164       Chair: Lovely. You are all very welcome. As I say, we have about 40 minutes so we will try to whizz through our questions.

I wonder if you could set out a general picture of what is happening to commercial activity in the Arctic, including shipping and tourism. What trends are we seeing and what predictions can we make about the future?

Edda Falk: I can start for Arctic cruising. Over the past decade we have seen an increase in Arctic cruising, from approximately 50,000 passengers going to the Arctic in 2005 to around 80,000 in 2016. Of that total number of 80,000, around one-quarter will travel with our members so we had around 20,000 passengers. We do expect to see an increase. The increase will be from 20,000 to around 38,000 in 2020, which will be nearly a doubling in a period of five years.

Q165       Chair: Very dramatic changes. How many ships a year go through the Arctic?

Michael Kingston: To give an overall commercial perspective, in 2010 four ships went through the Northern Sea Route. That increased to 34 in 2011 and 67 in 2012. I am not sure of the exact figure at the moment, but, in terms of tonnage, it has increased from 2.8 million tonnes in 2013 to 10.2 million tonnes in 2017.

Of course, from the perspective that I come from, working with Lloyd’s of London and having carried out reviews into Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico and, also, the Costa Concordia disaster, that obviously raised concerns about the risk factor of shipping. Therefore, Lloyd’s carried out a report because of these increased activities. At the same time, there was also, with record ice melt, a lot of activity in the oil industry. Of course, that has since fallen away because of the fall in the oil price. Nevertheless, it set in train work in progress to address these risks here in London in the insurance industry working with the IMO on the Polar Code and, also, with the Arctic states on a forum for best practice because of the alert of increased risk because of these increased figures.

Q166       Chair: Would you say that is an exponential increase from 2.8 million to 10.2 million? Is it growing exponentially? What is your prediction about the curve in shipping? Is it going to grow exponentially or do you think it will get to a certain point and then it will tip off? What does your ruler say?

Michael Kingston: We know how we have developed as a human race and where there is opportunity people will take advantage of that opportunity. From my experience over the last number of years, you have two factors that come to bear. First, you have the ice melting at record rates, but you also have the increase in technology, the ability of ships to deal with ice.

If you look at the Yamal project in Russia, specialist ships were built to beast their way through these ice conditions. When you have that combination coupled with the fact that the routes are so much shorter than going through the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal—you are talking about saving 13 or 14 days in transit time and carrying extra cargo—it is inevitable that man will find a way to take advantage of that. Listening to some of the questions earlier about the increase in interest of the Asian countries in the Arctic Council, it is very much part of the reasoning of their involvement that they are looking at these routes. I think that in the future the figures will increase massively.

Q167       Chair: What is an uninsurable risk in the Arctic?

Michael Kingston: You will have to ask an underwriter and it depends when you ask the underwriter. If he is short of target on a Friday evening, he might insure a risk that is uninsurable. That is part of the problem here.

Strictly speaking, a risk is uninsurable if the underwriter does not understand the risk and, therefore, cannot make an informed decision. It works both ways, but if a risk is perfectly reasonable to take for the operator, but the underwriter does not understand it because the knowledge is not there to understand how this operation is going to take place in the insurance market here in London, then it will be an uninsurable risk. The computer will say no, they have a lot more lucrative areas with many, many more business opportunities to look at than a one-off risk in the Arctic. An uninsurable risk should strictly be something where you cannot analyse the risk, so you should say no to under-writing the risk.

Q168       Chair: Do you understand the risks?

Michael Kingston: Let’s just say I know a lot more now about the risk, having been involved in the train of inquiry because of the issues that I have just mentioned and the worries about what happened with the Costa Concordia, Deepwater Horizon and working with Lloyd’s of London in their 2012 Arctic report. We were set on a train of inquiry as to what the risks are, how operators approach shipping operations in the Arctic, and how the cruise line industry approach their operations with these increased figures.

While I cannot definitively say I understand every risk, I know the process now for being able to approach the analysis of a risk, which is the work that we have been working on here in London both through the harmonised approach to the Polar Code for shipping, which came into force last year, but also, very importantly, through a very important development of a forum with the Arctic Council, the Arctic Shipping Best Practice Information Forum. That harnesses information from all the stakeholders as to how to approach risk in the Arctic and how to carry out operations. Therefore, to answer your question the long way around, I am confident that there is a process in place.

Q169       Chair: The sister ship of the Costa Concordia was in the Arctic in May when I was there. Were you aware of that?

Michael Kingston: I was not aware that it was there in May, recently, but I am very much aware that it was there back in 2011 or 2012 because I brought it to the attention of the International Maritime Organisation.

Q170       Chair: Why?

Michael Kingston: Because during the development of the Polar Code, there was a complete lack of understanding of risk in the Arctic, which I have already mentioned. Under the rules under the institute hull clauses, a ship that goes above 70 degrees north is not insured. You have to get the express permission of the underwriter. That is for the hull of the ship.

For the liability that is incurred due to the consequence of a ship sinking somewhere—so the wrecked removal costs and everything that flowed from the Costa Concordia, 1.5 billion for its removal—that is insured in a mutual in a protection and indemnity club. Under those rules, the ship is not allowed to go outside normal trading patterns without the permission of the protection and indemnity club. A ship like the sister ship of the Costa Concordia off Greenland is outside normal trading patterns, so we were all wondering did that ship get permission from the insurers. If it did, because of the risks and the remoteness of where it was, the insurers that insured it could not have understood the risk.

Q171       Chair: You think it should not have been there?

Michael Kingston: I think that it should not have been there.

Q172       Chair: It should not be there now?

Michael Kingston: If it was there without seeking the permission of the insurers, that ship was uninsured.

Q173       Chair: So all the passengers on it have no right of redress if it goes down and they die in the polar ocean?

Michael Kingston: Correct.

Q174       Chair: Thank you. That is very helpful. Dr Yumashev, you want to come in. I want to follow that line. Are there limits to the growth of tourism in and around places like Svalbard?

Dr Yumashev: Yes. I just want to address that. I think that most of the shipping so far, as far as we know, was destinational in the Arctic and is to do with the extraction industry and tourism. The transit routes are still some way away, and obviously it depends on what sort of climate scenario the world pursues how much ice is going to disappear in the coming 10 or 20 years. At the moment, the transit shipping between Europe and East Asia—particularly through the Northern Sea Route above the Russian Arctic—is not viable. It is too uncertain and the season is too narrow for the navigation. Further down the line, if the climate target, for example, the 2 degree target, is not met, then shipping might pick up in the 2030s.

Chair: Thank you. It is very interesting.

Q175       Mr Robert Goodwill: We have heard, obviously, about the massive increase in shipping in the Arctic area. Mr Kingston, you have mentioned the Polar Code, which finally got agreed at the IMO. Could you explain a little bit what the Polar Code does in terms of environmental protection?

Michael Kingston: Yes. To give a summary of the Polar Code, it is quite a significant achievement by the international community. What happens very often is we have an aspiration to have a regulation and it is agreed just across the river here at the International Maritime Organisation headquarters. The convention is agreed by the state delegates and then—as I am sure you all know—it comes back to each Parliament for ratification. You need a threshold of countries to ratify a convention that has been agreed by the experts, and not until a certain threshold is reached does it become enforceable. If the United Kingdom ratifies a convention and a number of other parties don’t and the threshold is not reached, it is still not enforceable.

History has shown us that there are a number of conventions, like the Torremolinos International Convention for the Safety of Fishing Vessels, which has been lying on Government shelves since 1977, and also the convention on pollution from fixed structures in incidents such as Deepwater Horizon.

The Polar Code is different in that it has been brought into force by amendments to the three cornerstone conventions of the International Maritime Organisation, the Convention for Safety of Life at Sea, the MARPOL Convention for the Prevention of Pollution, and the ship training and watch-keeping convention. There is a tacit acceptance procedure that was put in place in the 1970s where, if there was a future amendment to any of those three cornerstone conventions, it would automatically become law 12 months after a period of six months if half the world’s tonnage had not objected.

The first part of the Polar Code is for safety and limitation of ships and all lifesaving equipment, which comes in under the Convention for Safety of Life at Sea. The second part is the ship training and watch-keeping, so all the additional crew requirements that you require for operating in polar water, significant additions and qualifications. Then part 2 of the Polar Code comes in under the MARPOL convention, and that is the environmental provisions. You have environmental provisions under part 2 for more increased requirements for oil and discharge of noxious substances. You have a complete prohibition of sewage and also garbage.

Q176       Mr Robert Goodwill: Would a cruise liner in the Arctic have to comply with the same sort of annex 6 regulation as, say, in the Baltic or other sensitive areas? Is it at that level?

Michael Kingston: Yes. The international regulations of MARPOL apply in the Arctic, but, because it is such a sensitive area, it was thought that additional requirements would be needed. That is why there are additional requirements under the Polar Code. They do not cover everything, but they are more stringent than elsewhere in the world in the general provisions under the MARPOL convention.

Q177       Mr Robert Goodwill: How is that enforced then? Presumably, nobody is up there boarding vessels and doing—

Michael Kingston: Actually, yes, it is enforced under normal national procedures. For example, the United States, because it comes in as an extension to the convention—so normal checks for certificates, logs and manuals for sewage and garbage and so on that are checked by the United States Coastguard in conjunction with port state control, who they work closely with—will now check for these additional requirements, and check what is known as the polar water operational manual that you now have to carry in order to get a polar ship certificate. Having worked closely with the United States Coastguard, their approach is to check all of this when they carry out their normal inspections for the port state inspections. That is the same for all the other Arctic countries.

Q178       Mr Robert Goodwill: What is the role of the Arctic Shipping Best Practice Information Forum? Does that go over and above? Are they some sort of “like to have” on top of the “must haves”?

Michael Kingston: International regulation is one thing but, as we all know in this Parliament, rules are one thing, enforcement is another. The Polar Code was developed but—going back to the question that I was asked about understanding in the insurance industry and so on—the operator needs to understand what they are supposed to be doing and how to fill out a polar water operational manual, which effectively goes through all the chapters of the Polar Code drawing on lots of information for search and rescue, hydrographic information and meteorological information, where you effectively have to demonstrate that you have catered for a worst-case scenario in the conditions that may occur. Only then should you get a polar ship certificate from the flag state.

The insurer then needs to look at it, and then port state control—as we have just discussed—needs to check what is happening. It is all very good having this regulation, but there is information all over the place. We need to know what the best information is in hydrography and meteorology. We need to know what the best places are for crew training, for example. We need to know what the best standards are for avoidance of and use of equipment for avoiding discharge of oil and noxious substances, and so on.

When it is all over the place it needs to be collected, so, in a parallel approach driven by the insurance industry here in London, we pushed for the Arctic Council of states to establish a forum for best practice—the Arctic Shipping Best Practice Information Forum—so that we could harness all this information. They agreed to establish this and it met for the first time last year in London.

It was declared at the end of the United States chairmanship in Fairbanks and it is a collaboration of all the stakeholders: the research community; Henry Burgess, who you have just heard from, represents the International Arctic Science Committee. You have the International Ice Charting Working Group, the Arctic Regional Hydrographic Commission, and the International Chamber of Shipping; all the classification societies; the IMO are members; the who’s who of stakeholders in Arctic shipping all feeding in information about what they think should be relied on for each chapter of the Polar Code.

A public web portal has been launched. You can go on to the web portal and see all the information that has been submitted so that, when you are applying for a polar ship certificate from a flag state and you are an operator, you can see in a harmonised way all the information that everyone is relying on. That was established and driven by the shipping industry here in London. Just to reflect very quickly on a question that was asked—

Q179       Chair: I am really sorry; I am going to have to cut you off. We have 20 minutes left and we have three more questions, so we are going to have to move on, if that is okay. If there are things that we have not asked you that you think it is important for us to know about, if you could submit them in writing that would be great.

Michael Kingston: Sure.

Q180       Mr Robert Goodwill: Could that develop into a kitemark, so that people booking cruises in the Arctic could see that they were adhering to that code? Would that be something that we could do as the UK unilaterally?

Michael Kingston: Completely.

Chair: Ms Falk, please.

Edda Falk: Our association sets higher standards than what is already established in national laws. We are also part of this best practice shipping forum. For the cruise sector specifically—especially for expedition cruising—AECO would be a good seal of approval if you want higher standards. For example, that is something that could be a recommendation to UK citizens travelling on cruises.

Q181       Mr Robert Goodwill: Would that also extend to the environment and local communities who may be impacted by—

Edda Falk: Yes, absolutely. Our guidelines cover all aspects of Arctic cruise operations. If I may also comment on the Costa Concordia sister ship, conventional or large cruise ships go to the Arctic regularly. For example, in Svalbard this season you will have approximately 15 ships calling. All these ships have to go through a rigorous permitting process in order to be able to go there. Whereas I do not know the specifics of this ship, I see no reason to assume that they would not be insured because there are ships going regularly to Arctic ports that have all papers in order.

Q182       Chair: You assume they are insured. Do you have any checks to make sure they are insured?

Edda Falk: That would be the port state’s responsibility, I believe.

Q183       Chair: You have best practice guidelines, but it is somebody else’s job to enforce them?

Edda Falk: The legal requirements would be the legal framework that is in force, but we have our own guidelines that come in addition to the legal framework. Those are enforced by us.

Mr Robert Goodwill: You may recall with the Costa Concordia, it had more to do with the nut in the wheelhouse than the physical condition of the boat.

Chair: I am not worried about the condition of the boat. I am worried about them meeting unexpected objects in the Arctic ocean with 1,000 people on board. We are going to move on to a question from Joan.

Q184       Joan Ryan: What additional safety precautions need to be taken for shipping and tourism in the Arctic? How do ships plan for challenging environments? For example, do they have access to real-time sea ice and icebergs forecasting and that kind of information?

Edda Falk: I can speak for our members. You have everything that is outlined in the Polar Code, which gives detailed instructions on how to plan and carry through Arctic shipping or safe voyages. In addition, our members have several other safeguards and risk mitigations that we put in place. At the beginning of each cruise season, our members share their sailing plans with us, with search and rescue authorities and with each other.

We also have a contact list of all ships so that ships can contact each other and give each other information. For example, if they encounter ice, they can notify other close-by vessels. We have a live vessel tracker, where ships can see the position of other AECO vessels. Of course, the ships are also reliant on meteorological and ice forecasts and live imaging from satellites. For example, the Danish and Norwegian meteorological institutes will provide that in close to real time. We are also working with the met and ice services to ensure that the services actually cover the areas where operators go.

Michael Kingston: To follow up on that very quickly, in order to get your polar ship certificate you need to fill out your polar water operational manual, which I have explained. That means that you have to explain in a pre-planning how you are going to deal with the extremities of the conditions that may occur in significant detail. That requires a significant investigation and analysis of the conditions. That means working with the meteorological organisations, working with the International Ice Charting Working Group, which is why they are members of this best practice forum so that we can harness their information.

It also means having live data that can be accessed in real time for the execution of that plan. Like any pre-plan in the shipping world, you then need to execute it and the navigator on board, who has the qualifications, needs to interpret the data as it is coming through. There are requirements under the Polar Code for important receipt of meteorological information in real time and extra equipment for that purpose.

Q185       Joan Ryan: What are the current search and rescue procedures in the Arctic? I am asking this because it all sounds like there is a lot of information and everybody can do a lot of planning and it will all be fine. However, there are an awful lot of organisations who seem to be involved and some of it seems to be informal. We have had Professor Ford suggest to us that the increasing tourism and Arctic shipping provides the potential for a marine emergency, that search and rescue is a big issue in the Arctic, and that we are seeing increasing cruise tours in the polar north in a lot of regions where there is limited search and rescue capability if a ship goes down. Are they doing everything they need to do and what happens in terms of search and rescue if all that does not work?

Edda Falk: In the Arctic there are treaties that outline the search and rescue areas of responsibility. You have a joint rescue co-ordination centre that has responsibility over a certain region. There is a system in place for distributing the responsibility and for responding. The ships have their own procedures in place and they work with the search and rescue entities, both in planning and in exchanging information. If anything happens, there are procedures in place.

Q186       Chair: If you have people in polar water at 4 and 6 degrees and you are a four-hour helicopter ride away from the nearest coastguard station, I know NATO has assets up there but you are not going to get rescued by an F16, are you? They do use those assets, but you are not going to be rescued. A cruise ship of 1,000 going down in the Arctic is not going to be rescued. There is going to be mass loss of life, isn’t there?

Edda Falk: That is why the Polar Code has provisions for life-saving appliances that have to withstand polar environments.

Chair: The Norwegian coastguard, when I visited—

Joan Ryan: The risk changes according to where they are.

Michael Kingston: To be very clear here, from a legal point of view and an enforcement point of view of the Polar Code, if the ship is not able to deal with a worst-case scenario in the conditions that may occur, which includes a total loss of the vessel, then it should not be getting a polar ship certificate.

Q187       Chair: What are the rescue capabilities on the ship? Inflatable dinghies?

Michael Kingston: I cannot talk about any specific ship but—

Q188       Chair: Okay. Ms Falk, what are your cruise ships carrying? Are they carrying rigid-bottomed life vessels or inflatable ones?

Edda Falk: Both. It depends. I do not have a full overview of what they all carry, but, in order to get a Polar Code certificate, their polar water operational manual has to satisfy certain requirements that are outlined in the Polar Code.

Michael Kingston: If you cannot mitigate or cannot comply with a suggestion, then lifesaving equipment under the Polar Code must be able to cater for people to survive for five days. That is the rule but—

Q189       Chair: The Norwegian coastguard did an exercise when I was up there and the fit, young Norwegian students that did this had to be pulled out of the inflatables after two hours.

Michael Kingston: Correct, which is what I was about to say. If that cannot happen—which it cannot at the moment—you must mitigate it in another way. If that means that you are in a tracking system—for example, AECO I think have a tracking system with other ships in the vicinity—

Edda Falk: We do.

Michael Kingston: —so that the rescue period is going to be a maximum of three hours, then that mitigates that problem. If you cannot mitigate it, you should not be getting a polar ship certificate because you cannot prove that you can deal with a worst-case scenario in the conditions that may occur.

Q190       Joan Ryan: You actually check where other boats are? We were told that, for example, the Canadian capability is very limited. Canada is providing air support where it takes a good four to five hours for a plane to reach the Northwest Passage. Would they be checking that there would be another ship in the vicinity? Would that be part of how they are covering their risk?

Michael Kingston: Without a doubt. I will give you an example specifically in the Northwest Passage. Fednav, the company in northern Canada, took the Nunavik through the Northwest Passage in 2014. That was the first unassisted transit of a vessel. They did not come back through the Northwest Passage for exactly that reason. In October, all the other ships had retreated south, including the Canadian icebreaker vessel. Therefore, it was too big a risk for exactly that reason.

Chair: Thank you very much. We are going to have to move on.

Q191       Alex Sobel: One of the things that we track is the UN SDGs. How can the UK ensure that the UN SDGs, such as the emission targets, are met in the Arctic?

Dr Yumashev: I can only come in about the growth in the shipping, particularly the transit shipping, which is potentially further down the line depending on the climate success globally. I think that it is important to mitigate emissions from heavy fossil fuel oils that are currently being used in shipping. It applies to the entire global shipping, particularly the Arctic shipping. There are issues with the black carbon deposition, oil spills as well, that are unique to the Arctic.

Research also suggests that the transfer of the large-scale commercial shipping from the Suez Canal route to the Arctic—which is further down the line but if it happens—could create extra climate acceleration if you combine all the factors. For both local reasons and global reasons as well, we need to make sure that there are cleaner technologies in place.

Q192       Alex Sobel: Is it about the technology that is driving the ships rather than the fact that the ships will change their global shipping routes?

Dr Yumashev: The biggest pull is the economic one. If the business conditions are right for the operators, if the navigable seasons are long enough, inevitably—as Michael said earlier—there will be a transfer of significant traffic from the Suez Canal route. It is up to the policymakers to make sure that the negative effects are mitigated. If there is indeed a transfer of the traffic, there have to be norms, like banning HFOs and heavy fuel oils completely in the Arctic or in the Polar Regions.

Q193       Alex Sobel: Is technology part of the answer in terms of moving to low-carbon technology in propulsion systems?

Dr Yumashev: Yes, correct.

Q194       James Gray: There are about 120,000 bulk carriers in the world at the moment, of which virtually none are LPG or other forms of propulsion. In other words, unless there are significant changes to the way our ships are driven, they are not going to be allowed to go through the Northern Sea Route.

Dr Yumashev: It is also the way the shipping sector operates, their very business model. I think that there has to be some policy driver for all the players to collectively transition fuels to cleaner technologies. It does not seem to be in place at the moment.

James Gray: Therefore, the point is that, until such time as an inordinate amount of money is spent on converting existing shipping or building new ships with LPG capacity—that will cost billions across the fleet—the likelihood of there being a real increase in the number of bulk carriers through the Northeast Passage is extremely remote.

Q195       Alex Sobel: Norway is a leader in many areas around climate emissions. We talk a lot here about the car ban in 2025 and the aviation emissions plan, but the Norwegian central bank has recommended a halt to investment in oil and gas stocks. The Norwegian Government are currently facing a legal challenge over their continuing oil drilling in the Arctic. What do you think the UK needs to do in terms of Arctic drilling to meet our Paris obligations?

Dr Yumashev: The latest research suggests that, depending on the climate target the world commits to pursue or ends up pursuing, there are different types of fossil fuel reserves that are still likely to be extracted. You know that the marginal costs of extraction are very different across the world. The Arctic fuels, if we want to pursue the 2 degree target—or even more ambitious—appear to be too expensive.

To meet the residual demand, for which we will have given ambitious mitigation actions globally, it means we have a very limited budget of fossil fuels to be used in order not to exceed those targets. It means the world is likely to choose the cheapest deposits of those fossil fuels that are not happening to be in the Arctic. That is not even accounting for the risks of oil spills. It is purely the world fuel market considerations.

Q196       Alex Sobel: In terms of extraction, the cheapest reserves are not in the Arctic so the UK should, if they want to meet their Paris obligations, not be drilling in the Arctic, is that correct?

Dr Yumashev: Yes. It sounds like stranded assets.

Alex Sobel: Yes, it should be considered stranded assets.

Chair: We have a final question from Philip.

Q197       Mr Philip Dunne: We heard from previous witnesses about the impact of changes of weather patterns within the Arctic. Dr Yumashev, can you explain how changes in Arctic weather pose global economic risk?

Dr Yumashev: Yes, of course. I think there are two stages here. The first thing we need to understand is that the Arctic is part of the global climate system. There are certain processes called feedbacks or tipping points that are to do with the loss of the sea ice, the thawing of the permafrost and melting of the ice sheets there and those processes usually tend to accelerate the warming further. They are driven by the climate change, by the warming globally, but they further inject carbon from the permafrost or increase the solar absorption as the ice declines.

These tipping points add to the climate change. They reduce the budgets for us to stay under the targets that we choose and they cause extra economic impacts globally, impacts through just rising temperatures in all the continents everywhere in every country. In some places of the world, like North Europe particularly or perhaps Canada and some parts of Russia, we are set to benefit perhaps in the very short-term because there might be slightly more climatically optimal conditions but, overall, the world is going to be getting worse off economically. That is the first order effect.

The second order effect is the extra connections between the Arctic and the mid-latitude climate and weather patterns, and I think that is what you mentioned particularly in your question. The very specific connections to do with the jet stream oscillations, persistent weather patterns. We had the Beast from the East earlier this year. We had a warm patch, a heatwave recently. Those events are happening anyway but the research is suggesting that they are getting more likely in the mid-latitude regions. There are very unusual patterns of weather happening in the Arctic itself. Svalbard in March, at the time the Beast from the East, for example, was 20 degrees warmer. It was a plus-8, like New York or London at the time of year, so that is causing very weird patterns of the weather in the mid-latitudes so that an extra layer of impact.

The research is still emerging on the exact magnitude of those connections for the weather patterns but current indications are that every player, every continent, North America, Europe, East Asia, are set to get extra events and hence extra losses, both insured and uninsured.

Q198       Mr Philip Dunne: Different effects in different continents and equally different effects in different sectors of the economy, and you touched on insurance, tourism, agriculture, transportation today. Are there any sectors that are particularly at risk from these impacts?

Michael Kingston: Sorry, I was just going to say a perspective from Lloyds of London. Obviously flooding and property insurance is a huge risk; all the food supply chain issues, the effect of the Arctic weather systems on the mid-latitudes and further south, so long-term liability issues in relation to all these areas. If you have rising sea levels and more rain and more floods and railways being washed away—the Great Western Railway in southern England—you have increased risk, so it is a huge issue for the insurance sector here in London.

Q199       Mr Philip Dunne: Chairman, I am conscious we are going to get a bell going in two minutes so I am going to ask you, Mr Kingston, specifically about whether you support the recommendation for an Arctic Super Fund for global risk analysis? Is this a good idea?

Chair: That was recommended by the World Economic Forum, yes.

Michael Kingston: Who are you asking?

Mr Philip Dunne: I was asking you because I thought it was to do with insurance but it may be—

Michael Kingston: I had a view on this when it was mentioned. If it is focused on assisting public/private partnership in bringing together a collaboration of all the stakeholders addressing specific issues, so we have created a forum for addressing the harmonised implementation of the Polar Code. The plastics’ issue is a huge issue that we have not touched on but the Arctic Council are working on a regional strategy at the moment. If business could work with Government and international regulators on a regional basis and then more broadly and that fund could help bring that together, that would be a great thing for the UK to support in the same way that they have supported and led in the establishment of the Arctic Shipping Best Practices Information Forum for exactly this purpose.

Q200       Chair: Dr Yumashev, final word.

Dr Yumashev: Just a quick thing to add. I do think it is very important. Some of the current research, the funding structures particularly, do not appear to be catching up enough with the nature of the research that needs to be done. We recently tried to get a project going with the National Science Foundation in the US, which was not funded from the UK side because it was not exactly a disciplinary match. There are bilateral and trilateral meteorological agreements between different countries but we still have too many barriers. Our networks are international both in science and our business in Government partners, so we need to have international funding structure so they just work.

Chair: That is very helpful. I am sorry it was such a gallop but thank you all. Very well done for talking at speed through that and if there is anything you feel that we have not asked you about, particularly on plastics, do please write to us separately on that if it is not already in your evidence.