The Arctic and India: Strategic Awareness and Scientific Engagement

A global temperature rise is being experienced earliest and most intensely in the Arctic region. The changes are worrying but the commercial interests are equally enticing. The Arctic is witnessing the convergence of the geophysical, the geo-economic and the geostrategic in strange and dramatic ways, making it a paradox and an antithesis. For India, the Arctic is distant when it comes to economic interests and near when it comes to climate change. As India today reassesses and rethinks its role in the new global geopolitical space, the Arctic becomes an important part of that reorientation and a movement towards a ‘global knowledge commons’. The Arctic is now an important geographical categorisation in India’s global policies. It must also be stressed that recent Arctic ascendancy in the policy domain stems directly from the strengthening of India’s climate change-linked economic and scientific positions in global world affairs.