Saturday 11 August 2007
The Arctic, or how global warming led to a chill in diplomatic relations.
For a long time, this frozen expanse was considered a Terra incognita. As much as the extreme climate, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States made its waters impracticable and its resources unexploitable. With these two characteristics disappearing - the Canadian section could be free of summer ice within 30 years - the Arctic Ocean today is coveted by the five countries that surround it: Russia, Canada, the United States (through Alaska), Norway and Denmark (through Greenland).
One week after Russia stuck a flag in there at a depth of 4,200 meters, the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, effected a three-day visit (from August 8-10) to the Far North to reassert Canadian sovereignty over part of that territory. The Prime Minister announced the creation of a deep-water port and a military installation in the Canadian Far North. One way of reminding Moscow, and also Washington, that Ottawa is no second-tier actor.
The Arctic presents at least three major strategic issues for the European Union specifically: military, economic, and environmental.
In the military domain, the North Pole undoubtedly shelters Russian and American submarines. Being present in the Arctic Ocean allows them to bring a nuclear threat to bear against all the big cities of the Northern hemisphere.
In the economic sphere, American and Norwegian experts deem that a quarter of not-yet-discovered oil and natural gas reserves are located beyond the Arctic Circle. The territory devolving to the Russians alone contains close to 700 billion tons of oil and immense quantities of natural gas. For Moscow, exploiting these reserves is essential. The European Union's energy supply security of tomorrow will depend on the Arctic.
That's not the only economic issue. The northern maritime route is the shortest between northern Europe and north-east Asia on the one hand, and the west coast of North America on the other. Consequently, the traffic conditions in these waters are crucial for Europeans.
Finally, the issue is environmental. If Greenland is the planet's biggest reserve of freshwater, the exploitation of Alaska as the coastal countries envisage it risks degrading the environment still more.
For all these reasons, the Arctic deserves collective consideration beyond that of its bordering countries only. The least that we can say about it is that that is not the direction the world is taking.
Canada, Russia, Denmark: The Stampede to the North
By Florent Daudens
Rue89
Sunday 12 August 2007
All three claim the Arctic, a promising communication route, potentially rich in raw materials.
The Canadian Prime Minister is returning from a three-day trip in the Far North, where he announced that his country was building a deep-water port at Nanisivik and a military training center at Resolute Bay. There, a hundred soldiers will learn polar region combat techniques. Stephen Harper also wants to increase the number of Rangers from 4,100 to 5,000. "This announcement signals to the world that Canada exercises a real, growing, and long-term presence in the Arctic," he declared at a press conference.
The federal government has been taking a close interest in the Far North ever since global warming has been provoking the melting of the pack ice and thus providing a glimpse of the opening of a Northwest Passage for maritime navigation. The Canadian Army believes that the passage will be open as of 2015, but some environmentalists advance the 2050s instead.
This Panama of the North could seriously spare shippers: the London-Yokohama run is 21,200 kilometers through the Suez Canal and wouldn't be more than 15,700 through the roof of Canada - or the distance between Paris and Montréal - as Frédéric Lasserre, a researcher at Laval University points out.
Emulating the scant 2° temperature at Resolute Bay, the Prime Minister wants to cool down the ardor of the international community, which considers the Northwest Passage an international strait. The United States's ambassador to Ottawa, David Wilkins, did not fail to evoke that yesterday: "We respect Canada's right to open ports in this territory, to post troops where it deems that necessary, but that does not change our position."
In fact, the situation could, nonetheless, change. As Yves Bélanger, an expert in military questions at the Université du Québec in Montréal details, "American submarines will no longer be so welcome if Canada assures an Arctic presence." He specifies that Ottawa will have to invest at a level commensurate to its pretensions. The different measures announced will cost 384 million Canadian dollars (around 260 million Euros) over 20 years, to which must be added a previous investment to acquire six to eight warships at a cost of 7 billion Canadian dollars over 25 years (4.85 billion Euros). These measures remain relative to the Canadian Army's budget for the 2005-2006 financial year alone: 14.7 billion Canadian dollars (over 10 billion Euros).
The Race for the Arctic
Canada also covets the Arctic's natural wealth. The ocean depths contain significant oil and gas deposits, without counting lead, zinc, gold, and other minerals. Russia stuck a flag down at the North Pole last week, at 4.2 kilometers under the icecap. Denmark is also throwing itself into the race by sending a scientific expedition off the coast of Greenland on Sunday.
The three countries of the Polar Circle must prove to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf that the ridge of the Lomonosov, a chain of undersea mountains, constitutes an extension of their territory. The stakes are huge: winning sovereignty over a 1.2 million square kilometer region. Yet Yves Bélanger points out that the existence of deposits has yet to be proven. And he adds: "Canada already has plenty of work to do to exploit the wealth on its territory."
Critical Local Communities
The Prime Minister for the Northwest Territories, Joseph Handley, has criticized the federal government's investments. "There's nothing there. Not a living soul." A position that becomes comprehensible once one reads the document "A More Powerful North in a Better Canada," which draws up the development priorities of the North's indigenous communities. In that document, Joseph Handley and his counterparts from Nunavut and the Yukon remind Ottawa that Canada's sovereignty is achieved through the viability of the Northern populations. "The inhabitants of the North incarnate the human dimensions of Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic," they declare.
A dimension that the MP from the Western Arctic (a 1,346,106 square kilometer constituency), Dennis Bevington, does not fail to emphasize: All that is happening without the Northern provinces' involvement and without clear leadership." The (opposition) New Democratic Party representative adds that "to assure Canada's sovereignty, the government must also improve the inhabitants' living conditions, develop the economy and scientific research."
Canada Uses Military Might in Arctic Scramble
By Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian UK
Saturday 11 August 2007
Building programme is response to Russian move. UN to decide on seabed claims to huge oil deposits.
An international scramble for the Arctic's oil and gas resources accelerated yesterday when Canada responded to Russia's recent sovereignty claims with a plan to build two military bases in the region.
On a trip to the far north, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, said: "Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: use it or lose it. Today's announcements tell the world that Canada has a real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic."
An army training centre for 100 troops is to be built in Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port will be built on Baffin Island, to bolster Canada's claim to ownership.
The move comes a week after a Russian sub planted a flag on the Arctic seabed. Moscow claims rights to half the Arctic. The US, Norway and Denmark also have claims.
A US state department official, speaking last week, signalled that Washington will not stand by in the face of what it sees as a Russian land-grab, though America's position is complicated by its failure so far to sign the treaty of the seas.
As Canada was making its move, Danish scientists were preparing to head for the Arctic tomorrow as part of their bid for a share of the region's wealth. A US coast guard icebreaker was heading to the Arctic to map the seafloor north of Alaska.
Although the US and Canada enjoy good relations, the American ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, has expressed annoyance with the prime minister's claims in the past.
No country owns the Arctic Ocean and north pole, but there are international laws governing its use. Under one UN convention, each country with a coast has sole exploitation rights in a limited "exclusive economic zone", beyond which mineral resources are controlled by the International Seabed Authority. However, upon ratification of the UN convention, each country was given a 10-year period within which to make claims to extend its zone. Norway (ratified in 1996), Russia (1997), Canada (2003), and Denmark (2004) have all launched claims that certain Arctic sectors should belong to their territories.
The UN's ruling on these submissions will determine who gets the right to extract the Arctic's huge reserves of oil and gas, estimated at 10bn tonnes.
Arguments over the Arctic were until recently academic because of the depth of the ice, but global warming has seen some of it melt, making drilling feasible. The US geological survey estimates that 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be located under the polar cap.
Speaking in the shelter of a hut in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Mr Harper said: "Protecting national sovereignty, the integrity of our borders, is the first and foremost responsibility of a national government, a responsibility which has too often been neglected."
Last month, he announced that six to eight navy patrol ships will be built to guard the Northwest Passage sea route in the Arctic, which the US insists does not belong to Canada.
Russian researchers claim the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range. Denmark, which owns Greenland, is claiming the same landmass, saying the Lomonosov ridge is an extension of its territory.
"The preliminary investigations done so far are very promising," Helge Sander, Denmark's minister of science, technology and innovation, told Denmark's TV2 on Thursday. "There are things suggesting that Denmark could be given the north pole."
Christian Marcussen, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said: "We will be collecting data for a possible demand."
The US's position is complicated because the Senate has refused since the 1990s to ratify the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea, mainly because Republican senators refused to recognise the right of the United Nations to broker it.
Under the convention, countries are entitled to control any waters above landmasses which extend from their continental shelf, the basis of the Russian and Danish claims to the Lomonosov ridge. If the US operated on the same principle, it would be able to claim half of the Arctic.
There is a sense of alarm in the US administration at the possibility of a missed opportunity, and President George Bush in May broke ranks with Republican senators in support of ratification. New hearings in the Senate foreign relations committee will be held in the autumn.
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