Norway remains committed to restarting the work of the Arctic Council, with a focus on reactivating its expert teams, according to the forum’s Senior Arctic Officials chair. “Our primary focus of these first months was on finding a way forward that would allow the working groups to resume their important work,” Morten Høglund said in an interview posted Thursday on the Arctic Council website. Co-operation breakdownThe Arctic Council, established in 1996, facilitates cooperation among the circumpolar states on sustainable development and environmental preservation. It consists of the eight Arctic states and six Arctic Indigenous groups, known as permanent participants. UPDATE This text has been updated with detail on Russian participation in the consensus guidelines from the Arctic Council Secretariat.
