Alaska's Changing Arctic: coastal security and infrastructure
Alaska's Arctic Boundaries and Governance
The boundaries of property, resource use areas, and jurisdictions in Alaska were formed by a mix of physical, cultural, political, and legal factors.
This map shows ongoing territorial claims in the Arctic. The Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas are governed by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Except for the US, all parties are participating voluntarily in the process of determining Outer Continental Shelf boundaries. From the Economist, redrawn by Russ Mitchell.
The Alaska coastline’s unique physical features, such as its many bays, spits and barrier islands, are shaped over geologic time scales through processes like erosion, tectonic movement and volcanic activity. These features have long guided the use of the land for subsistence, transit, trade, recreational use, community location and migration, natural resource extraction and other economic opportunities. These coastal use patterns have, in turn, created complex political and legal boundaries.
Most contemporary political boundaries were solidified with the 1867 Alaska purchase from Russia. Subsequent treaties and agreements were made by drawing from a mix of geophysical boundaries such as the Canadian Coast Mountains and artificial divisions along longitudinal lines. These were used to form the official boundaries of the State of Alaska that we use today. More recently, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 created additional internal shifts to jurisdictional boundaries and management.
The international border delineating U.S. and state jurisdiction for Alaska originated in the 1867 Alaska purchase from Russia, and remains broadly accepted aside from an ongoing dispute with Canada over the Beaufort Sea boundary, as well as one in the Dixon Entrance within the Inside Passage (see map). The state is bordered on the east by the 141st meridian and on all other sides by maritime features. Domestically, the formation of municipalities and transfers of land from federal to state ownership began with Alaska’s ascension to statehood in 1959. Internal state boundaries for borough and city limits were determined by many variables including population densities, cultural and regional identities, and geographic features. These legal and political divisions serve as the scaffolding for our familiar federalist system, its rules of governance at the local, state and federal levels, and the rights of citizens. Subsequent divisions instigated by local activism and federal legislative action, including Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act conservation areas and private Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act lands, further complicated the land ownership and jurisdictional mosaic of the state. What happens on any given plot of land in Alaska depends on the rights and responsibilities of a range of government actors, natural resource access issues, and land use and tenure regimes. Understanding these jurisdictions and boundaries and how they have changed over time offers a glimpse of how future use patterns may drive policy needs, and how emerging changes may challenge longstanding or traditional use patterns.
Jurisdictional boundaries
Alaska’s vast coastline is not governed as a whole, but subject to a variety of legal and jurisdictional authorities across dozens of bounded areas and zones. Where jurisdictions overlap or multiple actors share responsibility, rules of governance and questions of responsibility become unclear. Jurisdictional overlap can happen horizontally (between two different agencies with coinciding missions) or vertically (between local, state, tribal or federal governments). Many of Alaska’s jurisdictional boundaries were adopted with statehood, but some have continued to evolve since. These include jurisdictions onshore, offshore, and those straddling land and sea.
Offshore Jurisdiction
Alaska’s primary offshore boundaries are governed by the 1953 Submerged Lands Act, the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and guidance from the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. While the U.S. has not ratified UNCLOS, we do honor many of the provisions of offshore boundaries established by the agreement, as defined by the following four jurisdictional categories: internal waters (such as ports, rivers, or inlets); territorial seas, which extend from shore low-water baseline to 12 nautical miles offshore; the contiguous zone, which extends up to 24 nautical miles from shore baseline; and the exclusive economic zone, which extends up to 200 nautical miles offshore from baseline.
The modern boundary for the U.S. exclusive economic zone stems from the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, sponsored by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. The Magnuson-Stevens Act extended management of fisheries from 12 to 200 nautical miles in an effort to assert control over foreign fisheries operating within the U.S. exclusive economic zone. In 1983, the U.S. expanded upon the Magnuson-Stevens Act with Presidential Proclamation No. 5030, reasserting U.S. authority over fisheries within its exclusive economic zone and laying additional claims to authority over such things as mineral deposits and pollution regulation within the exclusive economic zone.
Alongside these definitions of federal offshore jurisdiction, under the 1953 Submerged Lands Act, most U.S. states, including Alaska, have jurisdiction over the first three nautical miles offshore from baseline. Motivated by states wishing to assert their rights to coastal resources, but tempered by national security interests, the Submerged Lands Act grants the State of Alaska management authority and natural resource rights in those lands submerged within this jurisdictional boundary. These boundaries extend from both the main coastline as well as from islands within the state, but cannot be extended by the presence of partially or fully submerged features such as shoals. In some Gulf Coast states, these boundaries have shifted in the last decade, with certain forms of fisheries management extending to a 9 nautical mile offshore boundary. Generally, however, offshore natural resources and associated revenues beyond three nautical miles become the domain of the federal government under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
Onshore Jurisdiction
From the coastline inland, public and private lands are divided among a variety of agencies, corporations, and municipalities. This can create challenges for policymaking and management of coastal regions. After the passage of statehood in 1959, Alaska’s land ownership and responsibilities were further modified by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. ANCSA established Alaska’s unique tribal corporation system, transferring 44 million acres of federal lands into private ownership under Alaska Native Corporations in exchange for the extinguishment of Native title. Only 10 years later, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act instigated a number of land swaps that radically altered the jurisdictional and land use makeup of the state. In some cases, federal ownership of coastal areas was relinquished to state management as old coastal defense installations, such as the Distant Early Warning-Line, or DEW-Line, were deemed obsolete, while other areas were claimed by the federal government for the purposes of resource and habitat conservation. As coastlines erode, some former military sites pose new contamination challenges caused by their prior uses. In others, repurposing allows subsistence activities and natural resource access to expand.
Federal ownership status determines a range of other legislative authorities that have a role in determining land use and management, presenting opportunities and challenges for state direction. When lands are transferred between entities, the management of those lands shifts, adding or removing responsibilities, changing values and management goals, and altering the composition of stakeholders.
Dinkum Sands
A notable example of complications caused by changing geophysical definitions and contested jurisdictional boundaries can be seen in the case of Dinkum Sands. Dinkum Sands is an offshore shoal that was previously identified as an island, until further geological surveys and a 1997 Supreme Court ruling shifted its status to a partially submerged shoal. This recategorization of Dinkum Sands led to a substantial loss of oil and natural resource rights for the State of Alaska, as well as a return of revenues to the federal side, under whose jurisdiction Dinkum Sands now falls. The federal government used these funds to create an endowment for the North Pacific Research Board, based out of Anchorage, that funds a range of studies relevant to Alaska.
Mixed Responsibilities
Many coastal areas are subject to mixed responsibilities among local, state, tribal and federal entities. Disaster response is a key example, where combined resources and action may be required to meet emergency needs, but limited capacity and ambiguous areas of responsibility for a given area hamper the effectiveness of response or reimbursement. Private infrastructure, although fundamental to local communities, may not qualify for federal recovery funding, requiring state intervention to restore necessary infrastructure or utilities. Additionally, municipalities lacking the capacity to develop hazard mitigation and emergency response plans often cannot access federal funds for coastal mitigation or recovery that require such plans as a prerequisite. In places where search and rescue responsibilities are split between local and federal partners, and likewise in the case of environmental impacts from ship traffic or transport of goods, cleanup and recovery often require state and federal partners with separate jurisdictional responsibilities to collaborate.
Alaska’s fisheries provide another example of local, state, federal, and tribal mixed responsibilities. Federal fisheries are governed by the National Marine Fisheries Service and Department of Commerce (with significant input from the Magnuson-Stevens Act institution, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with state, international, and tribal collaboration for some fisheries; state fisheries are governed by the Alaska Board of Fisheries in coordination with the Department of Fish and Game; tribal fisheries are operated by tribes, such as the Metlakatla Indian Community which manages the largest tribal fishery in the U.S. in coordination with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and inter-tribal fish commissions such as the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which co-manages in-river salmon subsistence fisheries with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in times of scarcity.
Indigenous peoples in the Yukon and Kuskokwim region have long drawn attention to the inequities of industrial fisheries over food fisheries. For example, there are currently no bycatch limits for some species, like chum salmon in the industrial trawl fleet, while subsistence salmon harvests — vital for cultural wellness, intergenerational knowledge transfer, and food security — have been closed or severely limited for years.
Many marine mammals are co-governed by Alaska Native Organizations and federal wildlife agencies. Under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, the federal government (NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) is responsible for marine mammal conservation. A provision of the 1994 amendments to the act allowed federal agencies to build cooperative agreements with hunters’ organizations, especially with regards to subsistence harvest assessment. From there, Alaska Native Organizations such as the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, the Eskimo Walrus Commission and others built co-management relationships and a broad expertise in analyzing potential impacts of resource development through their own meetings as well as participating in regulatory processes.
In particular there is ongoing conflict over trawl fishery bycatch in Western Alaska and how it affects subsistence fisheries. This is largely a problem of mismatch between jurisdiction and marine ecology. For example, if Pacific Salmon were governed by the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the council would be required to develop a management plan that would lead to recovery of overfished salmon species in no more than a decade. But because the council is not responsible for anadromous species, they have chosen to delay action on salmon bycatch — which, along with warming waters in the North Pacific and other factors, may be an important contributor to the declines and closures of several fisheries important for subsistence and personal use.
Policy implications of Arctic boundaries and governance
Arctic amplification, the physical process through which the Arctic warms at two to three times the rate of the rest of the globe, is causing rapid and dramatic changes in Alaska’s coastal regions. Increased traffic along Alaska’s coast, retreating sea ice and coastal erosion may all warrant reassignments of jurisdiction, increased investments by state and private partners, and strategic pursuit of sustainable resource development. The development of new infrastructure depends on the ability of policy makers to adaptively address the emerging challenges of changing coastlines. Navigating the challenges facing Alaska’s coastal regions and its boundaries requires a deliberative, multistakeholder approach to ensure the resilience of all Alaskans.