Maritime Routes in the Arctic: Examining the Level of Traffic and Port Capabilities Along the Northern Sea Route

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Maritime Routes in the Arctic: Examining the Level of Traffic and Port Capabilities along the Northern Sea Route

Dimitrios Dalaklis Maritime Safety and Environmental Administration, World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden

Evi Baxevani Department of Shipping, Trade and Transport, University of the Aegean, Chios, Greece

Introduction

Until recently, the Arctic was not considered a promising field for economic activities for a rather self-explanatory reason: dire year-long environmental conditions that, at a minimum, severely hindered or even completely blocked the necessary access and transport connections. It is no coincidence that, for the last couple of decades, when referring to the worldwide volume of maritime traffic, the total contribution of the Arctic region was (and still remains) rather small;1 the Arctic Ocean was kept virtually isolated by thick multiyear ice, strong winds, and polar darkness. It is true that these adverse weather conditions never prevented military vessels and aircraft from operating in the Arctic. This was due to the important strategic advantages the region offered such as being the perfect hideout loca- tion for submarines able to launch a nuclear strike, or providing the shortest flight path between Russia and the United States of America, which could be

1 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), “Review of Maritime Transport” (Series), available online: . For information before 2000, see W. Østreng et al., Ship- ping in Arctic Waters: A Comparison of the Northeast, Northwest and Trans Polar Passages (Berlin: Springer, 2013); L. Pizzolato et al., “Changing sea ice conditions and marine transportation activity in Canadian Arctic waters between 1990 and 2012,” Climatic Change 123, no. 2 (March 2014): 161–173; Office of the Auditor General of Canada, “Chapter 3,” 2014 Fall Re- port of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (October 7, 2014), available online: .

Maritime Routes in the Arctic 107 exploited by their strategic bombers and/or missiles.2 The last time the Arc- tic experienced a significant volume of commercial traffic was the early 1980s, roughly a decade before the end of the Cold War era.3 The most concerted effort to develop the Russian Arctic territories, as well as the occurrence of considerable maritime traffic, was during the Soviet era in relation with the ongoing effort at that point in time to satisfy the USSR’s aspirations and over- haul its northern territories through the building of infrastructure and facili- tating transportation of raw materials and goods by land and sea.4 In any case, because of the icy and harsh environment, Arctic coastal areas were (and the great majority still are) characterized by a severe lack of transportation infrastructure, inhibiting their contribution to the global economic activity. Before proceeding any further, it is necessary to note that for the purposes of this analysis, the “Arctic” is defined as the area containing the Arctic Ocean as well as the respective territories of the five States with a latitude higher than the Arctic Circle (66°33’46.1 N)5 that have (Arctic) coastlines and can therefore

2 P. Siousiouras, D. Dalaklis and E. Baxevani, “Arctic: A new field of geopolitical fermentation” (in Greek), Hellenic Navy’s Review 173, no. 585 (2013): 70–87. 3 The Northern Sea Route’s (NSR) freight traffic peaked in 1987, reaching the level of 6.6 million tons. See L.W. Brigham, “The Realities and Challenges of Russia’s Northern Sea Route,” Fletcher Security Review, March 6, 2016, available online: . 4 For example, the nuclear-powered polar icebreaker Lenin, the first ship of this type, com- menced its escort duties along the NSR in July 1960. Ten years later, Lenin and the subarctic icebreaker Kapitan Belousov convoyed along the cargo ship GizAiga to the port of Dudinka, an industrial complex at Noril’sk/District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, in an experimental winter voyage. In 1978, the nuclear-powered icebreaker Sibir and the cargo ship Kapitan Myshevskiy conducted a high-latitude voyage north of the Soviet island groups in May and June. There was a successful attempt during the 1978–79 season in relation to year-round navigation from the port of Murmansk to Dudinka. See L.W. Brigham, “Soviet Arctic Marine Transporta- tion,” Canadian Arctic Resources Council (n.d.), available online: . Since 1979, Soviet icebreakers and ice-strengthened carriers have main- tained year-round navigation to Dudinka. According to the Scott Polar Research Institute, in 1988 operations in the NSR involved approximately 600 freighting voyages and around 6 million tons of cargo. See also L.W. Brigham, “International workshop on the Soviet Maritime Arctic,” Polar Record 24, no. 149 (April 1988): 132. 5 The Arctic Circle is roughly 17,662 kilometers (10,975 mi) long. The area north of the Arctic Circle is about 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles) and covers roughly 4 percent of Earth’s surface. See W.M. Marsh and M.M. Kaufman, Physical Geography: Great Systems and Global Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 24. The Arctic Circle passes through the Arctic Ocean, the Scandinavian Peninsula, North Asia, North America, and Greenland. The land within the Arctic Circle is divided among eight countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the United States (Alaska), Canada, Denmark (Greenland),