How Climate Change Amplifies Arctic Tensions, But Does Not Drive It

Accelerating ice loss in the Arctic alters patterns of access and activity, creating new strategic conditions that magnify existing geopolitical tensions. Photo: Juho Karhu

The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, significantly changing the region’s environment and geopolitical landscape. As melting sea ice and thawing permafrost open access to untapped resources and new maritime routes, climate change is increasingly discussed as a driver of strategic competition and insecurity.¹⁾Keil K (2014) The Arctic: A New Region of Conflict? The Case of Oil and Gas. Cooperation and Conflict 49(2): 162–163. Yet, while climate change alters what is possible in the Arctic, it does not, by itself, explain why states are more anxious, assertive, and competitive. Instead, environmental change acts as an amplifier, increasing ambiguity about intentions and utility, thus magnifying existing geopolitical tensions. This article explores how climate change has challenged soft, economic, and technological power dynamics; yet it has not been the primary challenger to Arctic security. Instead, it amplifies ambiguity between offensive and defensive postures, with geopolitical tensions and state behaviour acting within these conditions remaining the predominant forces challenging Arctic security.

The Arctic has emerged as a strategic site in which climate change reshapes power and perception. Past cooperation in the Arctic shows how shared norms once managed disputes, but those mechanisms are now under strain as competition over resources and infrastructure intensifies. Climate change has blurred the line between development and defence, intensifying, rather than causing, Arctic security dilemmas. Climate change does not deterministically cause conflict; instead, it changes the terrain on which states pursue power, increasing the operational tempo and the attractiveness of dual-use investments and, in turn, the likelihood of misperception.

Climate Change Increases Soft Power Challenges

Climate change challenges Arctic security by rising soft power pressures that strain institutional cooperation and governance. Melting sea ice has opened new sea routes and extractive zones, inviting a surge of civilian activity, from cruise tourism around Svalbard to cargo shipments along Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) tied to its LNG projects.²⁾Sending O J, Hansen V V & Winther I N (2021) Climate Change and Security in the Arctic. Washington DC: The Center for Climate and Security, the Council on Strategic Risks, and The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs: 11. These ventures expand economic opportunity but also raise the risk of accidents, jurisdictional confusion, and misinterpretation between civilian and military activities. Institutions such as the Arctic Council and the Arctic Coast Guard Forum, built to manage coordination in calmer times, now face a far greater operational load.³⁾Sydnes A K, Sydnes M & Antonsen Y (2017) International Cooperation on Search and Rescue in the Arctic. Arctic Review on Law and Politics 8(1): 110.

At the same time, warming deepens internal frictions. Thawing permafrost exposes rare-earth deposits to Indigenous lands, reviving long-standing disputes over extraction, consultation, and environmental protection.⁴⁾Zentner E, Kecinski M, Letourneau A & Davidson D (2019) Ignoring Indigenous Peoples – Climate Change, Oil Development, and Indigenous Rights Clash in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Climatic Change 155(4): 533. While Indigenous Peoples hold formal status as Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council, their influence is often limited within national policymaking structures where key decisions on extraction and development are made.⁵⁾Cambou D & Koivurova T (2020) Indigenous Peoples and Self-Determination in the Arctic. In Koivurova T et al (eds) Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group: 251. This disconnect is critical, as it highlights the Arctic Council’s lack of binding authority over natural resource governance, leaving Indigenous priorities vulnerable to marginalization by domestic actors.

These developments reveal how climate change amplifies soft power pressures that Arctic institutions were not designed to respond to.⁶⁾Werrell C E & Femia F (2015) Climate Change as a ‘Threat Multiplier’: Understanding the Broader Nature of the Risk. Washington DC: Center for Climate and Security: 2. The surge in civilian activity, the contest over resource governance, and the weakening authority of regional bodies expose a widening gap between the Arctic’s cooperative identity and its geopolitical reality. Climate change does not generate conflict on its own, but it stretches governance to its limits, forcing states and communities to navigate overlapping economic, environmental, and security demands with tools built for a cooler era. The result is a more congested, ambiguous Arctic, where a warming climate tests regional institutions and exposes their weaknesses, turning existing uncertainties between states into a growing risk to stability.

Climate Change Increases Economic and Technological Power Competition

Climate change has challenged Arctic security by intensifying strategic competition over economic and technological advantage. As melting sea ice and thawing permafrost expand access to untapped resources and transport routes, states are investing in infrastructure that blurs the line between commerce and strategy.⁷⁾Middleton A (2025) Militarization of the Nordic Arctic: Demographic, Economic and Environmental Implications. The Arctic Institute, 2 September, https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/militarization-nordic-arctic-demographic-economic-environmental-implications/. Accessed on 23 December 2025 Russia’s Yamal LNG projects, backed by Chinese investment and state subsidies, have transformed the NSR into a zone of destination cargo critical to Russian energy exports and strategic reach. Ports, pipelines, and research vessels now serve dual purposes, creating uncertainty about whether new developments are driven by economic and technological interests or by military ambition.

Further, shifting geography has reignited sovereignty disputes among Arctic states. Increased activity around Svalbard and competing claims over maritime zones like the Fisheries Protection Zone have heightened tensions between Russia, Norway, and the EU.⁸⁾Stensrud C J & Østhagen A (2024) Hybrid Warfare at Sea? Russia, Svalbard and the Arctic. Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies 7(1): 118. As climate change reshapes the Arctic’s geography, states are reinforcing infrastructure, expanding surveillance, and asserting jurisdiction over internal waters.⁹⁾Sending O J, Hansen V V & Winther I N (2021) Climate Change and Security in the Arctic. Washington DC: The Center for Climate and Security, the Council on Strategic Risks, and The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs: 10. Additionally, Canada’s longstanding designation of the Northwest Passage as an internal waterway has sustained legal disagreement with the United States, a dispute that climate change is making increasingly salient while also strengthening Russia’s justification for treating the NSR similarly.¹⁰⁾Lajeunesse A & Huebert R (2019) Preparing for the Next Arctic Sovereignty Crisis: The Northwest Passage in the Age of Donald Trump. International Journal 74(2): 225.

These developments reveal how economic and security interests in the Arctic are now inseparable, and show how climate change facilitates the projection of state power rather than directly driving conflict. Climate change does not directly cause conflict, but it enables states to convert environmental shifts into strategic advantage. It is not warming itself but the ways states exploit its effects that accelerate securitisation. By making economic development and defence interdependent, climate change blurs the boundary between offensive and defensive postures and deepens mistrust. It amplifies existing geopolitical tensions, not as a trigger, but as the stage on which power is increasingly contested.

Climate Change Amplifies Ambiguity, but Geopolitical Shifts Drive Militarisation

Climate change has not directly provoked conflict in the Arctic, but it has amplified ambiguity in a region already shaped by rivalry. The militarisation of the Arctic predates intensified climate effects: Russia began expanding its military infrastructure on the Kola Peninsula in 2006, and this posture escalated significantly after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.¹¹⁾Tamnes R (2011) Arctic Security and Norway. In Kraska J (ed) Arctic Security in an Age of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 51. With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Arctic cooperation unravelled.¹²⁾Gricius G & Fitz E B (2022) Can Exceptionalism Withstand Crises? An Evaluation of the Arctic Council’s Response to Climate Change and Russia’s War on Ukraine. Global Studies Quarterly 2(3): 4. This geopolitical rupture, not climate change, triggered Russia’s suspension from the Arctic Council and accelerated NATO’s regional activity. These developments show that the main driver of Arctic insecurity is not the changing climate but the intensifying threat perceptions among states. Yet, climate change complicates this fragile landscape by opening new routes and obscuring intent. For instance, LNG carriers or research ships can serve strategic purposes under the guise of commercial ones, enabling grey zone operations that blur the line between offence and defence. Climate change did not invent these tactics, but it made them more attractive by allowing broader access and more frequent activity.

Thus, while climate change increases the operational tempo and conceptual ambiguity of Arctic interactions, geopolitical rivalry primarily drives militarisation. Climate change functions as a force that amplifies mistrust, heightens the risk of misinterpretation, and strains institutional resilience, but it is how geopolitics unfold within this changing environment that challenges Arctic security. Hence, it blurs the distinction between cooperation and coercion, intensifying a strategic environment already marked by rivalry.

Conclusion

Climate change has not fundamentally transformed Arctic security but has acted as a catalyst, exacerbating pre-existing geopolitical tensions. By opening new routes and access to natural resources, it has increased the tempo of interaction and the potential for misinterpretation in a region now marked by strategic fragmentation. The Arctic has ceased to be an exceptional space of cooperation; Russia’s isolation and the rise of parallel political blocs have fractured what remained of circumpolar governance. At the same time, the region’s economic and technological development has become inseparable from strategy. Dual-use infrastructure blurs the line between commerce and coercion, while limited institutional trust leaves few mechanisms to manage the ambiguity this creates. Climate change amplifies these pressures but does not cause them. It enables states to leverage new opportunities within a security landscape already defined by rivalry, leaving the Arctic more accessible, more contested, and more uncertain than ever before.

Ingrid Sollid Heggstad is a Research Intern at The Arctic Institute.