64
Arctic Yearbook 2015
and collaborative work required to produce a governance regime that is inclusive and proactive. The
need for this kind of approach has been documented in reports from numerous sources, and has been
announced by leaders of organizations and states. The comprehensive, interactive visualization tool
we have developed will facilitate future stakeholder-related work, be it more in-depth stakeholder
analyses, consultations, engagement efforts, or planning processes.
As with all new tools, there are current limitations, but in this case those limitations are also the
strengths of the work. The visualization tool is intended to be an evolving and ongoing collaborative
tool, rather than a static end-product of a single research project. At this stage the list of stakeholders
is not exhaustive; some have been intentionally omitted, others combined into groups for the purpose
of simplifying the tool and the analysis. The limitation is that the visualization illustrates the interests
and connections of stakeholders as identified by the stakeholders themselves. In other words, in order
to improve the tool, stakeholder input is required. When a stakeholder chooses to participate, they not
only provide data for the analysis but they become part of the project, thus initiating the desired
stakeholder engagement and collaboration process. One example of this is the work we conducted
with three domestic shipping companies that operate in the Eastern Canadian Arctic: we gathered
information from them and presented it to delegates of the World Maritime University’s ShipArc 2015
Conference, thus connecting two groups that may not necessarily interact on their own (our
presentation is available at http://passages.ie.dal.ca/PPT/BeveridgeFournier_ShipArc.pdf).
The data have been gathered in an open-source format (D3.js for the interactive visualization, GitHub
to share the code and data), so the users not only have online access to the representation, but they
can also freely use the data and expand upon the tool (as long as the original developers’ names are
embedded within the code). For example, the scope of the analysis could be focused to study particular
areas within the Canadian Arctic (e.g., the Beaufort Sea or Lancaster Sound), or the scope could be
narrowed to study specific activities (e.g. search and rescue or fishing). The structure could also be
broken down and the study segmented by the type of sailing routes, such as intra-Arctic, destinational,
or transit routes.
The AMSA report describes the governance of Arctic shipping activities as a “complicated mosaic”
(AMSA 2009: 50), and it was our goal to provide a way to visualize this puzzle; a way to gain access
to the complex web of stakeholders, their interactions, and the antagonisms of their activities and
interests with a single click. The topic of Arctic shipping governance is not new, but documentation
has often focused on the legal framework and only those players directly involved in writing and
following the rules. There is so much more to the picture, though, and to begin to try to understand
it, a more in depth analysis was required. Not only did we engage with numerous stakeholders from
varying scales and arenas, we analyzed the information and translated it into a visualization tool to
help decode the complexities of maritime Arctic activities in Canada. With further stakeholder support
and collaboration, the work we have done can be expanded and improved.
Maritime Activities in the Canadian Arctic