Wicked problems in Canada's Arctic during Cold War 2.0

Canada faces major challenges in its governance of the North given the impact of climate change and some of the challenges currently posed by Russia and China that are a departure from the rules-based order that existed for a 36-year period following the Cold War. When combined with the general world-wide challenges that both Russia and China are making in relationship to international law, including the prohibition against invading other nations, we are led to conclude that we are well into what we may rightly call Cold War 2.0. The complexities we are experiencing now in the North suggest that many of the new problems might be characterized as wicked problems because they are difficult to solve, there are no clear solutions, and different stakeholders and experts have different ideas of how to proceed. Sometimes, the resolution to the problem creates other problems. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate experts' views of wicked problems we are more likely to experience and the challenges this presents. The paper offers suggestions for how decision-makers might seek to respond to wicked problems in the North in a new Cold War 2.0 era.