The new scramble for the Arctic

Finally, there are the knock-on effects in the rest of the world if the Arctic is developed. The vision that inspired European mariners for centuries – a quick route to Asia – is now available.

The North West Passage is now open to shipping for some of the ice-free summer months: through the top of Canada, along the northern coast of Alaska and down through the Bering Strait. As the planet warms and the ice declines, so that window of navigation will get wider. This will have implications for the other long range routes (such as around Africa) and through the Panama and Sues Canals.

It would also have favourable implications for climate change: less fuel will be used to transport goods. The North West Passage would also avoid the growing risk of piracy off the Somali coast and across the Indian Ocean.

Another wider political implication will be the eventual increase in power of both Russia and Canada. Assuming that the mineral development can flourish, then both will get a benefit to their national wealth and this will give both increased economic and political leverage.

Russia already controls the world’s largest reserves of natural gas and there is concern that West is becoming too dangerously reliant on Russia as an energy supplier. The West could become vulnerable to Russian pressure because of this reliance.

For the US domestically, Alaska could assume greater economic and political prominence and may lead to an increased migration into the state (and so greater representation in the US House of Representatives). The much ridiculed former Governor of Alaska and Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin may yet have the last laugh.

But all this speculation of increased exploration, development and wealth depends on getting the basic issues of Arctic governance sorted out. As long as the Arctic was on the periphery of world politics, the legal and political confusion over its status was of little significance.

That’s now beginning to change.

The struggle to achieve the highly successful Antarctic regime as the world’s first nuclear-weapon free zone and demilitarized zone of peace proves that it is possible to sort out governance issues over wilderness areas. But this can be done only after a great deal of trouble.

The Arctic countries are only at the beginning of the process.

Under current international law, the countries ringing the Arctic are limited to a 200-mile maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around their coasts. But the first complication is that the law – the UN 1982 Law of the Sea Convention – is still not ratified by the US (due to nationalistic concerns in the US Senate). The US is therefore largely absent from the international negotiations on the implementation of the treaty.

A further complication arises from the advances of technology in exploiting the continental shelf. Beyond the coastal EEZ of 200 miles, there is the possibility that a country – which has accepted the treaty - can claim further territory if its own continental shelf extends beyond the 200 miles. With the advances in technology, the Arctic countries are anxious to determine just how far out their own continental shelves may extend.