Why do defence organizations take some imaginaries of future warfare more seriously than others? In this article, we use the concept of "sociotechnical imaginaries" to chart the struggle of a vanguard group of officials within the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to articulate a new vision of "low-carbon warfare" as a response to looming climate transition risks. Our investigation draws on official government documents published since 2018, as well as semi-structured interviews conducted with MoD officials and armed forces between June and October 2023. We find that, despite some progress towards discursively, institutionally and materially embedding a new sociotechnical imaginary of low-carbon warfare within the MoD, significant barriers remain. Our findings emphasize the labor and the investment that is still required to embed new visions of low-carbon warfare in policy-impactful ways. More generally, our findings encourage greater attention to the sociotechnical politics that informs how we think about future war.

Retaining operational effectiveness in a low-carbon world will require military innovation and change. Indeed, there has been growing acknowledgement within some defence ministries that as the world decarbonises a military energy transition is essential. In this paper, we illustrate how calls for a military energy transition have gained renewed traction within the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) since 2018. Empirically, we draw on semi-structured interviews with 46 officials and armed forces personnel, conducted by the authors between June and October 2023. To structure our analysis, we adopt a multilevel perspective (MLP) from the field of Sustainability Transitions. Combining the MLP with insights from the literature on military innovation, we shed light on the ways proponents of 'low-carbon warfare' have challenged the 'high-carbon' sociotechnical regime that currently dominates the MoD. We also explain why more rapid and disruptive change has been stymied. By centring attention on the extent of 'alignment' between internal and external sources of change, our MLP makes a valuable contribution to understanding why the struggle for military change often unfolds in non-linear ways.

This piece reviews the contributions of this special edition noting comments and insights into the rapidly changing politics of the Arctic. It highlights how the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a profound impact on the High North, its peoples and its security.

As a global industry, sport makes potentially significant contributions to climate change through both carbon emissions and influence over sustainability practices. Yet, evidence regarding impacts is uneven and spread across many disciplines. This paper investigates the impacts of sport emissions on climate and identifies knowledge gaps. We undertook a systematic and iterative meta-analysis of relevant literature (1992-2022) on organized and individual sports. Using a defined search protocol, 116 sources were identified that map to four sport-related themes: (1) carbon emissions and their measurement; (2) emissions control and decarbonization; (3) carbon sinks and offsets; and (4) behavior change. We find that mega sport events, elite sport, soccer, skiing, and golf have received most attention, whereas grass-roots and women's sport, activity in Africa and South America, cricket, tennis, and volleyball are understudied. Other knowledge gaps include carbon accounting tools and indicators for smaller sports clubs and active participants; cobenefits and tradeoffs between mitigation-adaptation efforts in sport, such as around logistics, venues, sports equipment, and facilities; geopolitical influence; and scope for climate change litigation against hosts and/or sponsors of carbon-intensive events. Among these, researchers should target cobenefits given their scope to deliver wins for both climate mitigation and risk management of sport.

Defence has a carbon problem. The strengthening of net-zero emissions targets in response to the deepening climate crisis is forcing militaries to find answers to the question of how to wield force effectively within the constraints of a net-zero world. This article introduces the concept of ‘low-carbon warfare’ as a means of capturing recent developments, the extent to which they dovetail with existing concerns regarding the business of war in the twenty-first century, and the prospect of significant changes to how militaries operate in the years ahead as the global energy transition unfolds. The article demonstrates that the pursuit of low-carbon warfare will not be easy owing to the practical challenges of transitioning militaries away from fossil fuels. Moreover, low-carbon warfare will not mitigate all the ethical and environmental concerns associated with military deployments up to and including war. It does nevertheless offer a valuable starting point for conceptualizing how militaries are beginning to address their ‘carbon bootprints’ and what this will mean for future operations.

A little under ten years ago, The Polar Journal published a collection of papers by a new generation of early career researchers from the humanities and social sciences writing on the geopolitics of the Polar Regions. This guest editor was fortunate to be among them. As a doctoral student, my contribution on Britain as an Arctic nation was one of my first single-authored journal articles. I remain grateful to Klaus Dodds and Richard Powell for providing me with a platform to begin developing my voice. Naturally, when I was asked to collate this Special Issue, I seized the opportunity to provide a similar platform for a new generation of Arctic researchers. The sense of ‘unfolding polar drama’ that Dodds and Powell described has proceeded unabated, especially in the Arctic. Scholarly and practitioner interest in the high latitudes has if anything intensified. When Dodds and Powell put their collection together, Arctic geopolitics looked very different. An Arctic ‘hype machine’ was in overdrive regarding the prospect of an ‘armed rush’ to secure precious resources, sea lanes and territory. Despite this expected activity, many scholars and practitioners nevertheless remained sanguine about the region’s future. In retrospect, these were the heady days of ‘Arctic exceptionalism’: that is the idea, or belief, that whatever happened elsewhere in the world, circumpolar cooperation would be able to resolve the many challenges facing the region. This included concerns about sovereign rights and borders, the plight of indigenous peoples, the legacies of colonialism, the sustainability of development and the unfolding climate crisis. Regional geopolitics was defined by the primacy of the eight Arctic states and a consensus-based approach, institutionalised in the form of the Arctic Council (what I have elsewhere termed the principle of circumpolarity). At the point when Dodds and Powell’s issue went to press, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Singapore were yet to be welcomed as Arctic Council ‘observers’. No non-Arctic state had published a formal policy or strategy setting out an approach to regional interests. Circumpolar cooperation was even beginning to extend into military affairs, although that would prove short-lived.

Scotland's geostrategic significance to the High North is being overlooked in debates about the potential impacts of 'Scexit', as well as wider discussions about the changing Arctic security environment. Duncan Depledge and Andreas Østhagen address this oversight by drawing attention to Scotland's historic role in contributing to the defence of NATO's 'northern flank' and analysing how this is being resurrected in response to new challenges emerging in the High North. They conclude that there are some specific challenges that policymakers should address as the independence debate continues: most importantly, the potential for a 'gap' to be created in the regional security architecture of the High North.◼

With NATO activity increasing and great power competition building between the US, Russia and China across the Arctic, the Alliance needs to consider a new strategic approach to the region. Duncan Depledge examines how NATO’s traditionally cautious approach to the Arctic is now outmoded given the recent pressures posed by Russian military activity, Chinese ambition and the renewal of US strategic interest in the region. In response, NATO must go beyond simply restating its interest in the Arctic and devise a new strategic approach that normalises Alliance engagement, keeps a weather eye on Chinese ambitions, and leaves scope for expanding Alliance activity still further as the region is transformed by environmental and geopolitical change. ◼

• The Arctic has warmed by around 2°C since 1850, approximately double the global average. Even if the Paris Agreement successfully limits global warming to a further 0.5°C, the Arctic is expected to warm by at least another 1°C. • The United Kingdom’s (UK) weather is linked to conditions in the European Arctic. For example, high atmospheric pressure in the Nordic Seas divert damaging storms across the UK and mainland Europe, with the potential to cause societal disruption from flooding. • It is possible, although presently unconfirmed, that alterations in Arctic conditions provoked the ‘Beast from the East’ winter storm in 2018. • Scientists need to take observations and improve their understanding of climatic processes in the Nordic Seas and the Arctic Ocean to fill gaps in knowledge about the links between the Arctic climate and the UK’s weather; a risk identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). • The UK has significant research expertise and experience to understand how global warming will change the Arctic’s environment and affect the UK. • This strength, allied with the capabilities of the UK’s new polar research ship the RRS Sir David Attenborough, warrants an integrated programme of research, including advanced numerical modelling, to improve predictions of future extreme weather events. • Such a programme must acknowledge that the Arctic is politically an increasingly congested and contested space. It should be designed in collaboration with key Arctic and near-Arctic nations to increase the UK’s influence and ability

The new Arctic Military Exercise (ArcMilEx) dataset, which I introduce in this article, demonstrates that since 2006, Western-led military exercises have increased in the ‘High North’ (European Arctic), and that involvement in such exercises is not limited to Arctic states (26 European countries from beyond the Arctic have participated in at least one of these exercises). What the increased number of military exercises shows is that Western states (including both Arctic and non-Arctic countries) are keen to demonstrate that they have the capabilities, competence and resolve to project force in the northern high latitudes to deter potential adversaries. This paper examines the reasons behind this activity. First, it highlights the calls made by small Arctic states, especially Norway and Iceland, for their non-Arctic allies to increase their military presence in the High North. Second, it points to the renewal of NATO’s commitment to deterrence and territorial defence in Europe, including the High North, as it has sought to improve Alliance cohesion and enhance interoperability. Both developments have emerged in response to concerns growing in the West about Russia’s military ambitions in the Arctic, North Atlantic and Europe, especially since President Vladimir Putin’s re-election in 2012. The paper concludes that the material increase in Western military exercises weakens claims that cooperation is the dominant trend in the Arctic and reinforces recent scholarly analyses that paint a more complex picture of the contemporary regional security environment where conflict and cooperation go hand in hand. Using the new ArcMilEx dataset to monitor military exercises in the Arctic (and 'who' is participating in them) is shown to be a valuable barometer of both Arctic and non-Arctic states’ concern about regional stability and security.

Following the UK defence secretary's announcement in September 2018 that the Ministry of Defence is to devise a Defence Arctic Strategy, Duncan Depledge. Klaus Dodds and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe look back on how UK defence has engaged with the Arctic over the past two decades and draw attention to the shift in focus from climate change to hard security threats. They analyse what this means for the development of national Arctic policy in general, including the potential for divergence with other stakeholders such as the Foreign Office and the Scottish government. They conclude by considering how UK Arctic policy might change after Brexit.

The United Kingdom (UK) is not an Arctic state, but over the past decade its policies towards the region have developed in significant ways. Since 2013 the British Government has published two Arctic Policy Frameworks, setting out commitments to working cooperatively with the Arctic states and other stakeholders to ensure that as climate change occurs the region remains peaceful. In 2019, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) committed to publishing an Arctic Defence Strategy, that would “put the Arctic and the High North central to the security of the United Kingdom”. This article examines the evolution of UK defence interests in the Arctic, whilst also highlighting the emergence of a significant Scottish dimension in UK Arctic affairs.