Decades of successful scientific collaboration could be at risk if political relations between Europe and the US continue to fray over trade and defense issues.
For more than 30 years, Arctic nations have worked together across the physical, biological and social sciences to understand one of the world’s fastest-changing regions. Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost around 33,000 square miles of sea ice each year — roughly the same area as Czechia.
Even during the Cold War, scientists from the US and Russia conducted, shared and often collaborated on research, along with researchers from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden. When the Cold War ended, the establishment of the Arctic Council in 1991 further improved scientific cooperation.
But some old barriers rose again when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, freezing decades of shared science in the Arctic. The situation could be further complicated if political ties between Europe and the US continue to fray.
Why research in the Arctic and Greenland matters
Greenland, the most recent object of US President Donald Trump’s ambition for territorial expansion, is Earth’s proverbial “canary in the coalmine” — an early warning sign of rising danger.
Around four-fifths of Greenland is covered by a massive ice sheet — a precariously positioned tipping point in the climate crisis — which is melting away, thanks to rising human carbon emissions.
The ice might expose access to Greenland’s rare earth mineral deposits, which resource-hungry economies may favor, but the complete loss of the sheet also has the potential to raise global sea levels by 7.4 meters, which would impact millions of people in coastal areas the world over.
The ice itself is also crucial for research. Deep-drilled ice cores are time machines that give a glimpse into Earth’s atmospheric history thanks to tiny carbon deposits captured as air bubbles in each massive core.
Scientists have collaborated for decades to study environmental change, ice sheet and glacier loss, and the complex web of land and marine ecosystems in Greenland and across the Arctic.
It’s been the site of major discoveries like the massive York meteorite, one of the largest iron rocks to have struck Earth, and ancient rocks with magnetic properties that, in 2024, enabled a US-UK research group to extend the age of Earth’s magnetic field to 3.7 million years.
Social scientists and health research are also crucial for shining a light on the cultures and well-being of the many indigenous peoples living in the Arctic Circle.
“It’s such a cliche, but what happens to the Arctic has a global impact,” said Maribeth Murray, a Canadian environmental archeologist and Director of the Arctic Institute of North America, told DW. “It’s too big for any one little institution or one country, on its own.”
Science in the region has already been affected, and scientists are worried
Though Trump’s position on Greenland has seemingly cooled, for now, scientific concerns have not.
Murray said the tensions over Greenland had left parts of the scientific community cautiously approaching future projects in the region.
“[We’re] feeling pretty uncomfortable,” she said.
Polar researchers have already seen how geopolitics can wreak havoc on science.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has ended decades-long ties between researchers and frozen fruitful science exchanges, as exemplified by the INTERACT project.
INTERACT was conceived as an Arctic-wide program that shared research and gave scientists transnational access to dozens of facilities.
“We managed to build this consortia all over the Arctic, all eight Arctic countries were involved,” said Margareta Johansson, a cryosphere scientist who was INTERACT’s coordinator, and is now attached to the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat.
Through EU funding, European scientists were able to travel to Russia to conduct science, Russian data was able to flow to European research centers, and, later, US and Canadian researchers were able to exchange research with their EU peers.
“Then, of course, in February 2022, we did not have that possibility anymore,” Johansson told DW.
Europe’s position has led to the pause of 21 Russian stations’ involvement, and the impact on science has been profound. At the start of 2025, a report Johansson co-wrote remarked how a mix of national and institutional policies, and personal moral judgements, saw Russian science excluded from INTERACT and science diplomacy avenues closed.
“If you remove all of the Russian stations, we basically don’t really know what’s going on in the Arctic,” said Johansson.
A frontier for a different type of diplomacy
Programs like INTERACT — and Arctic research generally — are forms of science diplomacy. Broadly defined, it can bring about science through diplomatic work or use science to forge international relations.
Paul Berkman, a science diplomat attached to Harvard University, told DW that science can help achieve common interests and ease hostilities.
“Science diplomacy is a path for allies and adversaries alike to build common interests, to think short to long term across a continuum of [urgent issues],” said Berkman.
Berkman said science diplomacy can provide options to address pressing challenges — whether it’s military conflict or climate change.
“The Arctic is a double-edged sword,” he said. “It is a region, potentially, of global conflict. It’s also potentially a source of global peace. The convergence that exists in the Arctic, China, Russia, the United States, Europe, and to an increasing extent, states across the planet, is an opportunity to facilitate dialogue.”
Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany
