ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the different priorities that can be given to the question of what should be sustained in the Arctic through the case of Greenpeace oil rig occupations in Russia, Greenland, and Norway. Greenpeace’s actions were aimed at challenging the three states’ sustainability discourse as vacuous and ignorant of the regional and global environmental risks and costs entailed in the business-as-usual approach to Arctic fossil fuel exploration. Yet the targeted states responded by shifting the focus from what needs to be sustained – the environment and humanity – to who should be responsible for any decisions or actions with regard to sustainability. The Greenpeace challenge thus quickly led to emotional reactions emphasizing ‘national’ priorities pursued by and for the nation state. In this sense, Greenpeace’s vision of a transnational, networked solution to the global problem of ecosystem and climate sustainability was immediately met by states with a focus on the priority of sustaining national imperatives, hence reinstating the dominance of the national-scale imaginary.
