The Arctic Coast Guard Forum, established in 2015 in New London, Connecticut, allows heads of the Arctic nation coast guards to work directly together on plans and problem-solving. The forum’s most recent meeting, from June 7-10 in Boston, saw the eight principals reach substantive agreement on a way forward and sign a joint statement that established a framework for future collaboration: rules for information-sharing in combined operations, for example. Forum members also planned a tabletop exercise for 2016 and a live SAR exercise, the first to involve all members of the forum together, in 2017.

To the Coast Guard – and particularly to the men and women of District 17 – probably the most important partners in the Arctic are the people in the communities they serve throughout the year. Through outreach and collaboration with the residents of Arctic Alaska, district personnel are able to bring services to remote villages.

Through the U.S. departments of State and Homeland Security (DHS), the Coast Guard already works with several international partners through bilateral agreements – including coordination with Canada and Russia under specific Joint Contingency Plans, focused on spill coordination across shared maritime boundaries, and a Letter of Intent with Norway to foster increased collaboration. Each of these nations was involved, to an extent, in the Arctic Chinook SAR exercise in August 2016: Canada as a direct participant, and Russia and Norway as observers.

At the national level, the Coast Guard’s collaboration follows the same pattern: Its high-level collaborations with the White House and executive branch agencies are coordinated largely through the Arctic Executive Steering Committee (AESC), established last year by Obama. At the same time, the Coast Guard works closely with federal and state partners on shared issues – with NOAA and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, for example, to improve oil spill planning, preparedness and response in the Arctic.

NOAA’s Environmental Response Mapping Application (ERMA), developed in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, provides these partners with an accurate common operating picture for pollution response in the region. The online tool integrates data such as ship locations, weather, currents, and Environmental Sensitivity Index maps to provide the data necessary to make informed decisions for environmental response.

The service also gets plenty of help working in the Arctic from its own experts and thought leaders: Experienced ice rescuers – a time-tested skill in the 9th District (Great Lakes)  – visit periodically to offer instruction to their colleagues in District 17. Arctic Shield operations frequently borrow personnel of all kinds from other Coast Guard districts, to increase Arctic awareness service-wide. The service’s own think tank for developing policy recommendations, the Center for Arctic Study & Policy, resides at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, where it promotes research, and collaboration and dialogue among specialists from academia, government, tribal organizations, industry, non-governmental organizations, and the Coast Guard. In 2014, DHS established the Arctic Domain Awareness Center at the University of Alaska Anchorage to develop cutting-edge technological solutions and products to improve awareness and response capabilities for the service and its partners.

To the Coast Guard – and particularly to the men and women of District 17 – probably the most important partners in the Arctic are the people in the communities they serve throughout the year. Through outreach and collaboration with the residents of Arctic Alaska, district personnel are able to bring services to remote villages. According to Wilcox, state and local partners helped the Coast Guard bring the Kids Don’t Float program, launched 20 years ago in Homer, Alaska, to encourage life jacket use, to more than 3,000 people – children and adults alike – by mid-2016. Much of what the service is able to do on an everyday basis in the Arctic – from the inspection of fishing vessels near the Bering Strait to ensuring the safety of the gold-dredging vessels of Nome Harbor – is possible because of the good working relationships and mutual trust the Coast Guard has cultivated among its Arctic neighbors.

At the same time, Wilcox said, there’s still much the Coast Guard doesn’t understand about the Arctic, and as it increases the intensity of its summer operations in the region, it’s also being careful to work in a way that’s sensitive to its people’s way of life. “We don’t fully understand how the increased traffic is going to affect the subsistence efforts of Native Alaskans,” Wilcox said. “So we try to coordinate with them and respect their activities, making sure our work doesn’t interfere with people’s access to their food sources – to the bowhead whale on the North Slope, or to the colonies of walrus and seals near the Bering Strait. We try to make sure our operations are sensitive to them – and to make sure all these new users of the Arctic maritime are aware of each other’s needs.”

This article was first published in the Coast Guard Outlook 2016-2017 Edition magazine.