The Polar Game

THE POLAR GAME 2 •2008 contents no. 2/2008 1 THE POLAR GAME EDITORIAL EDITORIAL Editorial “OUR PLANET IS BECOMING LARGER. NOT IN A physical sense but as in geopolitical space. A new, immense territory of approximately 30 million square kilometers – one hundred times the size of Italy and one-sixth of terrestrial mass. It is the Arctic, occupying half of the Polar Sea that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific, which remains covered by ice for nine months of the year. However, the elevation of temperatures is redesigning the environmental profile of the extreme North. From 1994 to today, its icy surface has been reduced beyond 40,000 square kilometers per year and the medium thickness of ice has diminished by 40%. This theme seems destined to increase; a forecast by some authorities of climatology. And thus the curtain rises revealing a completely new geopolitical and economic scene. The “game for the Pole” has begun. The principles of the game are as followed: 1. The hunt for new natural resources: it is estimated that a quarter of the world’s hydrocarbon reservoirs are in the Arctic. 2. The opening of new ways for marine-based commerce. The mythical Passage to the north-west should be made free from ice in the not-so-far-off future. As an example, the Yokohama-Rotterdam route would be reduced from 11,200 nautical miles (via the Suez) to approximately 6,500. 3. In the context of major food insecurities, the race for the ichthyic reservoirs of the Arctic becomes strategic. It is here because when an expedition, promoted and blessed personally by Vladimir Putin, planted the tricolor of Russia four kilometers under the North Pole, chanceries and diplomats of half the world became agitated. A purely symbolic gesture but it marks that Russia does not intend to renounce its legal claims to territories and the Arctic seas. The climax between the five Arctic powers – Russia, Denmark, the United States, Norway and Canada – is turning itself to Ilulissat (Greenland, an autonomous territory under Danish sovereignty) since the 27th to the 29th of last May, confirming on paper the respect of enforced laws of the sea (in particular, the relative 1982 Convention of the United Nations) certainly has not been enough to clear mutual suspicions and fears. The Russians, Danish, Canadians and Norwegians are trying to demonstrate that their respective continental platforms are extended profoundly into the Artic, therefore demanding the extension of their own territorial waters so as to participate in the “game for the Pole” thereby gaining a more favorable position. Thus, Canada and Denmark have touched upon the struggle for control of the famous Island of Hans, located in the strategic Nares Strait, while Oslo and Moscow dispute on the respective rights to the Barents Sea, where formidable energetic wealth awaits. 2 THE POLAR GAME EDITORIAL The “game for the Pole” is, in fact, one of the more evident indicators of the geopolitical ambitions of Russia. They have boldly indicated plans to exploit the natural gas resources there, starting with Štokman, which has been rendered accessible by the warming climate, new extractive technologies and the raising price of hydrocarbons. In strategic-military terms, the line between Russia and North America passes through polar zones. And, for the Russians, the Polar Sea is the only access without restrictions to the Atlantic. It is here because Putin has begun to strengthen the Northern Fleet, submarines and on the surface, without provoking American reactions. It is predictable that, within the next few years, all of the Arctic powers will strengthen their military installations in the region. Achieving increased tensions and therefore increasing risks, that only yesterday, seemed unthinkable. We, Europeans, have to now dedicate our attention to this newest world. Perhaps, too, because two of the major Nordic States of the EU (Sweden and Finland) have a specific Baltic vocation, while Denmark is surely not a heavyweight and Norway remains proudly outside of the family. Sooner or later, we will have to take notice of these global repercussions of this “game for the Pole.” Let’s just hope, by then, we are not too late. 3 THE POLAR GAME THE ACTORS AND ISSUES AT STAKE THE POLAR GAME THE GREAT ARCTIC GAME THE GREAT ARCTIC GAME by Jacob BØRRESEN The warmer climate, new technologies for the extraction of hydrocarbons and increasing interest for northern maritime routes are igniting the game for the Arctic. Includes points of view of the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway. T HE NEXT 25 YEARS WILL INTRODUCE the Arctic to major power competition for secure access to energy, minerals, food and markets on a scale hitherto unknown to the region. Historically, changes of this magnitude, of the conditions for human life and activities, (climate change, discovery of new major deposits of strategically important raw materials or the opening up of new strategically important transport routes etc.), has frequently led to political instability. The main drivers behind the current changes in the Arctic are: • Discovery of new petroleum deposits at a time of increasing demand for, and thus rising prices of, energy; • Technological development that makes mineral resources more accessible, and thus contributes to and increases competition for them; • A general shortage of food in the world that increases the demand for fish protein, and thus the competition for access to the rich fish resources of the Arctic; • The end of the Cold War, with the demise of the Soviet Union and the birth of Russia, which ended superpower confrontation and, also in many other ways, changed the geopolitical situation in the region; • Last but not least, a driver that increases the effects of the other four, namely global warming, which threatens to ruin the subsistence and cultural basis of the indigenous peoples in the Arctic, while at the same time it contributes to making the region more accessible to human industrialized activity; The Arctic and the Polar Sea The Arctic covers about one sixth of the earth’s landmass, or more than 30 million square kilometres. Centrally placed lies an ice covered ocean, the Polar Sea. It covers approximately 14 million square kilometres, and thus constitutes about one half of the area that is normally referred to as the Arctic. The Polar Sea is an inland ocean that has outlets into the Pacific through the Bering Straits and into the Atlantic through the Greenland/Norwegian Sea. For the remainder it is surrounded by nation states on the Eurasian and the North American continents. One half of the bottom of the Polar Sea consists of a deep Central Basin. The other half is a Continental Shelf, the majority of which is situated on the Eurasian coast. Off the islands of Franz Josef Land, for instance, the continental shelf runs more than 1,500 kilometres from the Russian mainland. No other ocean has a continental shelf of this relative size. 5 THE POLAR GAME THE GREAT ARCTIC GAME 6 THE POLAR GAME THE GREAT ARCTIC GAME The Central Basin is traversed by three, almost parallel sub-sea mountain ridges, of which one constitutes the extension of the volcanically active Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The Lomonosov Ridge, in the middle, connects the continental shelf outside Greenland with the one outside Siberia. The major part of the continental shelf surrounding the Central Basin is covered by unusually shallow water. The average sea depth between the island of Novaja Zemlja and the Bering Straits is substantially less than 100 meters, while the Barents Sea, eastwards of the line between North Cape in mainland Norway and South Cape on the Svalbard archipelago, is between 200 and 350 meters. The climate is arctic. There are long periods of continuous darkness in wintertime and similar periods of continuous daylight in summer. In the course of the short arctic summer, the sea ice along the coast breaks up, and the snow-covered shores are reverted to green tundra, where people have lived for thousands of years. The Arctic has also given life to a rich flora and fauna with highly specialised species, like, for example, some of the largest mammals in the world. Most of the Polar Sea, up until now, has been permanently covered with ice. Every autumn the sea ice that has survived the summer thaw starts to expand south from a minimum extension of about five million square kilometres to a maximum of around eleven million. On its way south it encounters new ice that spreads northwards from the coasts, and that gradually brings surface shipping, other than by assistance of icebreakers, to a complete stop. From October until June the Polar Sea, for all intents and purposes, has been covered by ice from coast to coast. As we shall see, this pattern is rapidly changing as the thickness and extension of the sea ice rapidly decreases as a result of global warming. 7 THE POLAR GAME THE GREAT ARCTIC GAME The Arctic constitutes a sensitive indicator, as well as an important regulator, of global climatic change. Long term temperature variations are substantially larger in the Polar Regions than elsewhere on Earth. And the large quantities of ice in the Arctic, both glaciers and sea ice, react dramatically to any long-term temperature change in the Earth’s atmosphere. We shall return to this later. The polar ice constitutes basis for a rich food chain. Algae and plankton grow on the underside of the ice and constitute food for fish that again make food for birds, seal, walrus and whale. The seal, that gives birth to and raises its cubs on the ice, in turn provides food for ice bear and polar fox following in its footsteps, often as far north as to the North Pole.

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