Conference Report of the13th Polar Law SymposiumSpecial Online Session

flagship research project in the Arctic
region of Japan.
The 13th PLS is the 7th international
symposium for PCRC to host since 2015.
Among the accumulated experiences, it
was the first time to hold a symposium
online. Hosting the online symposium
requires completely different operations
from the physical symposium, bothlogistically and technically. This reportconveys the experience of hosting the13th PLS special online session. 2

Mami Furuhata ∗The 13th Polar Law Symposium (PLS)
special online session was held from
November 9th to 30th 2020. Due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, it became the firstsymposium held online in the history ofPLS. The PLS is an annual event and had
been held in various countries such as
Australia, Norway, Finland, U.S.,
Greenland and it was planned to be heldin Kobe-City, Japan. Polar Cooperation
Research Centre (PCRC) of Kobe
University 1 hosted and logisticallysupported this online symposium.

The 13th PLS terminated on November
30th with 354 registered participantsfrom 43 countries and regions. TheFigure 1 shows the country ofparticipants’ affiliation, the countries
with 5 or more participants are shown inthe table. Japan accounts for 70 (20%)
participants. 40 (11%) are participantsfrom U.S., 27 (8%) are from Australia
and 25 (7%) are from China. Figure 2
shows the composition of participants
by regions. 34% of participants are from
European countries, 32% from Asia, 16%from North America, 10% from Oceania
and 6 % from Latin America. Suchdiversity of participants is showing thehigh level of interest in polar researchfrom various regions of the world. And
this large number of participants may
have been possible because it was heldonline.

PCRC is the research center belonging tothe Graduate School of International
Cooperation Studies (GSICS) of Kobe
University. It is established in the first ofkind and leading institution in polar
legal and policy studies in Japan,focusing on the Arctic and Antarctic
international legal and institutional
developments. PCRC is subsidized by
the Ministry of Education, Culture,Sports, Science and Technology-Japan(MEXT) as one of the executing agencies
of Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II(ArCS II) project which is the national

Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University
The web site of PCRC: http://www.research.kobe-u.ac.jp/gsics-pcrc/index.html
2 The 13th PLS web Site: https://2020polarlawsymposium.org/∗160

same conference hall, online participantsfrom all over the world remain in theirrespective time zones. Working hours
for Japan are sleeping hours for people
on the other side of the globe. To
accommodate participation in eachseminar as much as possible, theschedule of seminars was adjusted tohold only one seminar per day.

Another feature of the online event is thelength of the session. The PLS is usually
three-day event, but this special online
session has been held for 3 weeks. One ofthe practical reasons for prolongation isthe scheduling of seminars. During thesession, 12 live events with 28 oralinteractive
presentations
havesuccessfully convened by Zoom meetingor webinar system. Unlike gathering at a

Figure 1 Country of Participants' Affiliation
80
7060
50
4030
20
100Figure 2 Region of Participants
Middle East
2%
Latin America
6%

Africa0.2%

Oceania10%Europe34%

North America
16%
Asia
32%

EuropeAsia

North America

Oceania61

Latin America

Middle EastAfrica

The Yearbooks of Polar Law. Thecommittee had to add technicalprotection to the contents to meet
publishing conditions. The individual
presentations have been embedded tothe dedicated web page with special
processing by the technical expert toprotect from downloading. How easy
would it be if this were just to project on
the screen of the venue without
distributing papers?

The challenges faced by the Planning
Committee is mainly technical issues
related to system construction ofwebsite. Not only managing the preregistration and entrant to 12 live
seminars and hosting the ZOOM
meetings, all seminars were delivered by
YouTube Live for the people who
missed the pre-registration. There were580 viewers on YouTube. Almost all
Zoom seminar were recorded anduploaded to the homepage forsubsequent On-demand Video Viewing.
These additional follow-ups of the live
event made participants available three
ways to attend; Zoom, YouTube Liveand On-demand video viewing throughthe PLS website.

It can be said that the 13th PLS provided
as much full service as possible online.
All of these has been a good experiencefor future events under these situations,but one thing cleared was that hosting
online event wouldn’t save the cost oflabor and time in preparation comparedto the physical session.

In addition to these live seminars, 43
individual presentations were uploaded
either by PPT slideshows and/or byvideo recording. Each live seminar andindividual presentation were given the
dedicated web page to upload thematerials and participants could leave
their open comment on the pages. 77
textual comments and replies werewritten throughout the symposium. This
personal comment-and-reply function
can be assumed as an alternative to thediscussion over coffee-break of thephysical conference.

It is indeed undeniable that participantsaccessing Zoom from their own room allover the world have created relaxing andfriendly atmosphere and solidarity by
sharing time and exchanging theiropinions, but online symposium cannot
be a full substitute for all the value
involved in having a face-to-face
discussion
includinginformalconversation with new colleagues for
network building.
The purpose of the PLS “is to examine,in detail, the implications of thechallenges faced by the Polar Regions forinternational law and policy and to makerecommendations
onappropriate
actions by States, policy makers andother international actors to respond toAnother technical challenge supportingthese various formats of online event
was how to protect the presentation andrecording files. The proceedings andpresentation of PLS will be published in62

these emerging and re-emerging
challenges.” 3 To tackle with thesechallenges, following 5 panels are
established on the 13th PLS; 1) Emerging
legal, policy and scientific issues in theAntarctic, 2) Policy-Law-Science Nexus
in Polar Regions, 3) Emerging Legal
Issues in Protecting the Arctic
Environment, 4) Indigenous Peoples inthe Arctic, 5) Resources Development
and Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic.
The accepted proposals to PLS wereassigned to these 5 panels according tothe theme. Among them, those selected
as oral presentation were presented in
the interactive live seminars convenedby each panel.

possible international and regional legal
approaches and the limits and weaknessof the current legal system on this issue.
Dr. Toyoshima, as a scientist who justcame back from the Arctic cruise on theoceanographic research vessel "Mirai",operated by the Japan Agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology(JAMSTEC), reported the current state ofplastic pollution based on the latest
research. She reported that arctic ocean
is the hotspot of microplastics, andmicrofiber concentration in seawater isthe highest in the arctic while fishingtools are the most harmful to the arctic
wildlife.
The discussion was inevitably directedto the need for cooperation between
natural and social scientists. These
dialogue between lawyers and scientists
are symbolic for PLS. A lot of other issue
emerging in the polar regions need forlegal and political control on humanactivities based on the scientific facts andpredictions

One of the highlighted live seminars wasthe open lecture on the Arctic plastic
problem: ‘Plastic Arctic’- How does law
deal with the emerging threat of Arctic
plastic pollution? convened by the panelof Emerging Legal Issues in Protecting
the Arctic Environment. The speaker
was Dr. Seita Romppanen, SeniorLecturer in EU and International
Environmental Law at the UEF Centerfor Climate Change, Energy andEnvironmental Law (CCEEL) and thecommentator was Dr. Junko Toyoshima,
Research fellow at Ocean Policy
Research Institute, Sasakawa Peace
Foundation. Dr. Romppanen discussed
about the legal and regulatory
framework of plastic pollution. She
carefully examined and explained the3The Polar Law Institute;Throughout the symposium, it was
impressive that young legal scholars
wereseeking
applicability
thetraditional international law to theemerging issues in the polar regions by
their analysis and interpretation. The
possible solution would be refined andstrengthened through discussions withresearchers of other fields and otherstake holders just as it was at this63

symposium. In that sense, it is convincedthat the Polar Law Symposium will be anincreasingly important venue forresearchers all over the world to share
their scientific knowledge on diverse
issues in polar regions.

Provisionally, we plan to hold thephysical meeting on 21 to 23 November
at Kobe University Main Campus inKobe, Japan. We are hoping thispandemic will be settled down soon andlooking forward to meeting you inperson in Kobe next year.

PCRC will proudly host the 14th Polar
Law Symposium in 2021 as well.

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