In The Devil’s Dictionary (1911), Ambrose Bierce defined “boundary” as follows: “In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.” Bierce’s cynical definition has taken on serious dimensions as the Arctic’s polar ice continues to recede with climate change—the five surrounding Arctic states of Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the U.S. are making claims of sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Arctic Ocean’s waterways and its seabed; indeed, Russia planted its flag on the seabed under the North Pole in 2007.
The bottom line, of course, is financial. “The U. S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic is the largest source of untapped oil on the planet (McKenna and Scott, 2008). Lucrative fisheries will develop as the ice recedes and the cold-water fish move north. Mining exploration and development could increase as access improves to the Arctic‘s gold, silver, iron and, importantly, diamonds: Arctic Canada is believed to contain 12 to 15 per cent of the world‘s diamonds by value” (source). Furthermore, “Because of global warming, there are predictions that the Northwest Passage could be open for large parts of the summer in as little as 15 years. Critics say that risks turning the Northwest Passage into the commercial sea route that explorers began searching for in the 15th century. The rest of the world is sure to take more notice of a shipping route between Asia and Europe that would knock 5,000 kilometres off the current route through the Panama Canal” (source).
According to current international law, no country owns the North Pole or the Arctic Ocean, and the jurisdiction of the Arctic states is limited to an Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 nautical miles from their coasts. This was reinforced by the 1994 maritime treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which currently represents 158 nations and gives them the power to consensually approve participant’s claims: “Upon ratification of UNCLOS, a country has a ten year period to make claims to an extended continental shelf which, if approved, gives it exclusive rights to resources on or below the seabed. Due to this, Norway (ratified the convention in 1996), Russia (ratified in 1997), Canada (ratified in 2003) and Denmark (ratified in 2004) launched projects to base claims that they have exclusive right to certain portions of the Arctic seabed. The United States has signed, but not yet ratified this treaty” (source).
All existing and forthcoming claims are complicated by the fact that the various countries involved assume different things about the geography of the Arctic region. While Canada’s claim to sovereignty over most Arctic islands is undisputed, the Northwest Passage is another matter; Russia and Canada consider the Northwest Passage to be land that happens to have water on top of it, while the U.S. considers it to be water, full stop.
No matter how these resource claims are resolved, major environmental issues will remain in the balance, if only because the scramble for Arctic access and resources will inevitably pose threats to the Arctic’s fragile ecosystem. “What is certain…is that relations in the North are undergoing a ‘social melting’…that is liable to liquefy all Arctic “nature cultures”…Thus, as Canada liquefies and (re)incorporates its coastlines and internal waters within its national imaginary, it may reclaim an archipelagic identity that has long been abandoned in favour of a continental fixity, an identity that favoured notions of permanence in time and space, with solid and incontrovertible distinctions between land and water, between the developable and the undevelopable, and between the social nature that exists within and the wild nature that exists without” (source).
Article by Bill Norrington
Arctic1_IBCAO_betamap.jpg<|>762<|>Arctic topography and bathymetry (Wikipedia){|}Arctic2_Northwest_passage.jpg<|>2560<|>Popular Northwest Passage routes. Based on a NASA image at (Wikipedia){|}Arctic3_Outer continental shelf USA.png<|>800<|>The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is a peculiarity of the political geography of the United States and is the part of the internationally recognized continental shelf of the United States. From the U.S. Department of the Interior – Minerals Management Service{|}Arctic4_North_america_1765globe.jpg<|>800<|>A 1765 de l’Isle globe, showing depiction of the Mississippi River and a fictional Northwest passage (Wikipedia){|}Arctic5_Arctic_(orthographic_projection).svg.png<|>541<|>The Arctic (orthographic projection) (Wikipedia){|}Arctic6_Arctica_surface.jpg<|>978<|>Satellite image of the Arctic surface (Wikipedia)
