The Southern African Development Community (SADC) could learn lessons about regional cooperation from the Arctic Council, a little-known but geographically huge federation that brought a delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
The Arctic Council is an inter-governmental forum involving Canada, Denmark (including Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States — the countries that have territory above the Arctic Circle. Crucially, it includes indigenous groups as equal partners.
The communities of the Arctic share cultural bonds and similar histories of colonialism. But the primary focus of the council is cooperation on environmental issues.
The extreme northern latitudes are vulnerable to organic and radioactive pollutants, and they are experiencing the most dramatic effects of global warming. Dr Robert Corell of the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University says the melting of polar ice, the changes in species habitats and the disruption of indigenous subsistence practices in the Arctic are a “preview” for the future if climate change is not brought under control. The council seeks to confront this threat by uniting local indigenous communities, national policy-makers and international scientists in monitoring the environment, making policy decisions and presenting their concerns to the world.
Like the countries of the SADC, the Arctic Council nations face development challenges. Many of the 3,5-million residents of the Arctic lack basic necessities and have few economic opportunities. Investments by multinational corporations provide some jobs but also cause environmental degradation and create new social problems.
The Arctic Council promotes sustainable development practices by pushing for a greater local voice in development and conducting aggressive scientific and social research.
The SADC’s current crises could be said to result from the poor integration of science and policy-making. In South Africa, where the government has interfered with efforts to fight HIV/Aids, and in Zambia, where food aid has been turned away because of the fear of genetically modified crops, governments have chosen to overrule international scientific consensus.
This attempt to usurp science is, in turn, a reaction to the haughty self-isolation of the scientific community, which has tended to view African communities through a paternalistic lens and has generally ignored indigenous knowledge in its research.
What is needed instead is a “consultative approach” — what the council calls “continuous dialogue among scientists, policy planners, Arctic residents and political level decision-makers”. This creates a common knowledge base respected by all parties and leads to “scientifically based decision-making” on regional issues.
Of course, there are critical differences between the Arctic and Southern Africa. Not only do the two have different weather but different political climates. With the exception of Russia, the nations of the Arctic Council are prosperous and have stable democratic institutions.
The Arctic has no challenge analogous to the crisis that the SADC faces in dealing with Zimbabwe. It is also worth noting that the council only came into being in 1991, after the end of the Cold War, before which the region was heavily militarised. Political dÃ