Secure and safe ports and regimes
Papp: As you look down on the earth from above the North Pole, what you see is a large ocean with an ice cap surrounded circumpolar by land with people on it. It’s a maritime environment … The rest of our country, the lower 49 states are well developed whether it is Hawaii, California or New York. We have well established and secure and safe ports and regimes to keep prosperity, trade and economics going. In Alaska, it truly is a frontier. Now that oceans are opening up and maritime traffic is increasing and maritime trade is increasing, we need to do similar things for our Arctic regions, in particular for the United States, Alaska where we don’t have developed ports, where we don’t have good navigation systems, and where we don’t have good nautical charting. A truly great nation will also look out after environmental security of the waters and land it has responsibly for. There are wide range of issues up there. First and foremost for me is maritime governance and stewardship. Then we have two buckets we have put projects into. One is adapting to climate change and the other is the economic and well being of the Arctic people.
Fortune: You take on your job at a time when things are really opening in the Arctic.
Papp: You see people at either end of the spectrum whether it is exploring, exploiting or economic development whatever e words you want to use. Perhaps my perspective has been formed by my Coast Guard experience. I have spent four decades in that service and it really shaped and formed my view of the world. An area that I worked in not too many years ago was the Great Lakes which are shared waters with Canada. There are environmentalists who have literally asked for the Saint Lawrence Seaway to be closed down and to stop shipping from going into the Great Lakes. Of course, there are probably some industrialists that would prefer to have unfettered access to the Great Lakes and not have to worry about ballast water cleaning and things like that. The reality is everybody has right to his or her own belief and opinion. What reasonable people do, what leaders do is they bring these groups together to try and form consensus to respect the legal rights of people who want to conduct commerce but requiring them to do it in an environmentally sound manner. Trying to find that balance is the challenge whether you are a Coast Guard officer or a diplomat.