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Floor Speech
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I wanted to take just a couple of minutes here at the close of the evening to speak to an anniversary. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Arctic Research and Policy Act. It is known as ARPA. We use the acronym ``ARPA'' around here quite frequently. We talk about ARPA-E and ARPA-H.
But the original ARPA was the Arctic Research and Policy Act. It was legislation that was actually drafted by the previous Senator Murkowski from Alaska. It was one of the first pieces of legislation that Frank Murkowski introduced and got passed into law. It was signed by President Reagan. It was cosponsored by the likes of Ted Stevens and Scoop Jackson, Warren Magnuson; on the House side, Congressman Young.
It was significant in that it laid a foundation for the policies that we are seeing put in place today and over these past 40 years. It has been laying out much of the knowledge and the understanding and the policy for Alaska.
I talk a lot about the Arctic, coming from the State that makes us an Arctic nation, but I think it is important to recognize that many of our allies around the world--many of those who are not our friends around the world--are also talking about and taking a keen interest in the Arctic.
There is a lot of focus on this week because we are seeing levels of engagement from the Russians up in the Alaska ADIZ and the area in the high north. We have seen joint exercises with the Russians and the Chinese, both in the air and on the waters in our northern waters. There is a level of focus and intensity about what may be heating up in a cool place--not something that we like.
But it is important to recognize that when we speak about the Arctic, it is not just its geostrategic location on the globe that makes it such a key place for defense and strategic defense. It is the role that the Arctic plays when it comes to just the health of our planet. Some describe it as kind of the big thermostat up north. And we see down here on the east coast and parts of the country where, when you have Arctic weather coming down, pushing things in different directions, everything kind of goes out of whack. And we are all starting to pay attention to what is going on with the weather and where it is coming from.
Well, the science that comes to us in better understanding what is happening in the Arctic, much of this came about through the development of the Arctic Research and Policy Act.
So leading in these areas has been important for all the right reasons, whether it has been environmental; whether, again, it has been just from a geostrategic perspective; whether it has been a focus on the health and the well-being of indigenous peoples; whether it is understanding the extraordinary science that is unique to the area, understanding the impacts of a thawing permafrost and what that may mean, understanding the impacts within our ocean.
But it is also better understanding that geography. With the mapping that we have seen that has been spurred from both NOAA and USGS, we have been able to identify an area north of the shore of Alaska--an area, well, two times bigger than the State of California--that we identify as part of our Outer Continental Shelf, allowing us to submit claim to that territory.
The real-world advances that we are seeing in understanding more about the Arctic come about because of good legislation that began so many years ago.
There is a reception probably going on right now with many of those who have been involved with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission over the years and their partner Agencies. There are some 18 partner Agencies that participate. Several of the commissioners who have served currently and who have served in the past are present and are speaking about the contributions.
Two of the former commissioners, heads of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission--actually, both former Lieutenant Governors for the State of Alaska, Fran Ulmer and Mead Treadwell--came together and penned a joint op-ed that ran in the Anchorage Daily News last month. And I want to read just one paragraph from that op-ed because I think it really is a sum of what we have seen as a result of the framework from this law. It states:
Our nation's long-running Arctic research programs in . . . NOAA and the . . . USGS provided the essential data to enable America to recently claim new rights to an offshore land area larger than two Californias. The law has added momentum to efforts to build new, powerful icebreakers and to increase our Arctic presence as Russia and China increase theirs. It laid the groundwork for safe shipping and resource development in the Arctic by identifying methods to reduce risk. It helped evolve our understanding of continental drift, and the plate tectonic evolution of the Arctic Ocean basin. Arctic health research is informing policy to improve health outcomes and to reduce disparities. Forty years of purposeful, coordinated U.S. Arctic effort, involving national resources, partners across the Arctic region, and Alaskans is something to celebrate and take pride in.
So I just wanted to include just, again, a few short moments in the Congressional Record today about this anniversary, with a recognition that it is important to recognize the accomplishments of what we have built and the foundation that guides our science and informs our policy, which we use to benefit our people and our Nation.
But it also needs to be a push for us, an impetus to keep our foot on the gas, so to speak, to keep moving forward, because we need to be more than a nation in the Arctic that has the title. We need to be that active participant. We need to be the leader in the Arctic space.
So what more does that mean? It means confirming our nominee to be the first-ever Ambassador-at-Large for Arctic Affairs, a gentleman by the name of Mike Sfraga, Dr. Mike Sfraga, who is currently the head of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He has been nominated by the President. He has gone through the committee. We need to get him confirmed because of the immediacy of so many of these Arctic issues that are playing out now.
Every time we have national conferences and other Arctic ambassadors are there, there is a void in the U.S. space. We need to make progress on matters that have been longstanding. It has been decades now-- decades--that several of us have been working to advance progress on ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty. Some on my side still have a little bit of older history, at a time--actually, during the Reagan years--when there were some concerns about ratification. I think we have tried to address them over the years.
But the world has changed up there. When I say the world has changed, the world is opening up in the Arctic: the levels of commerce that we are seeing; again, the levels of engagement from a national security perspective; other countries--China--looking to the Arctic waters for resources there, whether it be fisheries or whether it be minerals. It has changed, and so our active participation as a member of that important treaty, I think, needs to be an imperative.
We have got to figure out icebreakers. We have got to do better. We have authorized six icebreakers. We have funded--we have appropriated to three, and we still have nothing, nothing that is moving forward fast enough to satisfy anybody out there.
Other nations are not sitting still while we are trying to literally get our act together on this. This is an area where we have to keep moving. We have to keep building out our Arctic infrastructure. We are moving forward with a deepwater port in Nome that is critically important.
There are other aspects of infrastructure that we cannot assume are in place, whether it is adequate housing, water, wastewater, broadband--all of the infrastructure that is so important to live in a cold and remote area--and then recognizing the situation of the people who live and work and raise their families there and have since time immemorial and want to do so for generations going forward, making sure we are paying attention to education, to healthcare, housing, economy, jobs.
So today I have introduced legislation that would amend the Arctic Research and Policy Act with the very fancy title ``Arctic Research Policy Amendments Act of 2024.'' I don't go for the big acronyms in the titles. What we are doing is we are broadening the scope of the act to account for the Arctic's increasing role in national homeland defense; to strengthen climate and environmental research; to establish an annual award for excellence in Arctic research--we need to support and recognize those who are doing great work; and then to reflect the essential role of the indigenous people, incorporating the wisdom and experience of those who have lived there for millennia.
So it is good to work with the Commission. They continue to do great work. It is something that I--I appreciate colleagues here also waking up to the fact that this is the age of the Arctic, and how we embrace it, how we embrace our leadership role, is critical. ______
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