Analysis Of The Legal Nature Of The Arctic Council And Its Implied Power Expansion

The Arctic Ocean is covered with ice and snow all the year round,with little human activity.In recent years,under the influence of climate change,the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been melting rapidly,which has caused many problems,such as resource exploitation,environmental protection,climate monitoring,channel transportation and so on.For China,as a country close to the Arctic Ocean geographically,a responsible country with great influence in the world,how to better participate in the governance of the Arctic Ocean,obtain due rights and interests,and make the country's various behaviors have a basis is the starting point and end point of this article.At present,the Arctic governance system includes international conventions that belong to the hard law,such as the UNCLOS,but this kind of global convention pays less attention to the particularity of the Arctic Ocean area;in addition,it also includes soft law norms such as declarations and guidelines.The Arctic Council is a main entity to issue such soft law norms,a specialized organization to solve Arctic affairs,and an important part of the current Arctic governance system.It is not only the"club" of Arctic countries,but also a governmental high-level forum with permanent participants and observer categories.There has been a debate on whether the Arctic Council belongs to international organizations or not.Through the discussion of this paper,we can find that the Arctic Council still belongs to the classification of international organizations,with various types of participants,clear hierarchy of conference system,stable organizational structure.Arctic Council's documents are mainly soft law norms,and supplemented by binding agreements in special fields.Moreover,with the increasing attention of the international community to the Arctic region and the increasing complexity of Arctic affairs,the Arctic Council is bound to carry out self-development and implied power expansion if it wants to improve its action force in the Arctic region and strengthen the international influence of the organization.In fact,in order to better realize the purpose of the Declaration on the establishment of the Arctic Council,the organization has indeed made changes in its organizational structure,strengthened its functions,expanded its ability to conclude treaties,and issued relevant agreements in the three fields of marine search and rescue,environmental protection and scientific cooperation.In short,the Arctic Council has become an important international organization with international personality.China has become an observer state of the Arctic Council in 2013.If we want to play a better role in the Arctic Council and then participate in the governance of whole Arctic region,we need to have a deeper and comprehensive understanding of the organization itself.Literature analysis,comparative research and other methods are used in this paper.Instead of researching from the organization itself,this article starts from Professor Rao's general evaluation system of international organizations in his book named the law of international organizations.The Arctic Council is analyzed from the perspective of participants,organizational structure,conference system,and the nature of legal documents.As a result,the composition and operation mechanism of this organization were deeply recognized.In addition,with the opportunity for the organization to expand its functions with the help of implicit power theory,we can summarize some ways and means for China to continue to participate in Arctic affairs in depth.According to the rules of procedure of the Arctic Council,the observer manual and other documents concerning the observer system,China should make the most of the rights given by the system in the future practice of participating in the Arctic Council,like actively participate in the meeting and express opinions,timely promote the Arctic Council to make changes in the formulation of rules and legal documents and so on.At the same time,our country should seize the opportunity of the growing development and functional expansion of the Arctic Council to seek opportunities for its participation in organizational and Arctic affairs.