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Leonhardt van Efferink is a PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London. For more information about his PhD, please check:
Leonhardt van Efferink: Geopolitical scripts and the (de)legitimisation of ISAF
He holds Master’s degrees in Geopolitics, Territory and Security (King’s College London) and Financial Economics (Erasmus University Rotterdam).
Some circumpolar countries have recently put forward new territorial claims in the Arctic, or consider doing so in the short-run. What drives these new claims? This article attempts to answer the question by discussing the regional state actors, the effects of climate change and the importance of UNCLOS for the territorial claims.
It concludes by focusing on Russia’s Arctic claims, by analysing the country's relationship with the Arctic, its foreign policy and the way the claims have been put forward in the international political arena.
This is part 1 of the article that introduces the regional actors and addresses climate change and its main consequences. Part 2 elaborates on UNCLOS and Russia's territorial claims in the Arctic.
Readers of this article are advised to consult these maps:
Geology.com - Arctic Ocean Map
International Boundaries Research Unit - Arctic maritime jurisdiction map
Le Monde Diplomatique - Arctic map
The Arctic is generally understood to comprise all territory and water (ice) north of the Arctic Circle (Howard 2009). The region has a harsh climate and is therefore sparsely populated, but derives its appeal from its strategic location and natural resources (Roucek, 1983). Five countries border the Arctic Ocean: Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark (Greenland) and Norway (Svalbard). Besides these circumpolar countries, Finland, Iceland and Sweden are considered Arctic countries as well, because their territory lies partially north of the Arctic Circle.
During the Cold War, the Arctic was mainly seen as a strategic area. Consequently, countries defined it mostly in military terms: a strategic site for submarine voyages, bombing routes and early warning systems (Roucek, 1983). According to Heininen and Nicol (2007, p. 147), USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev’s call for Arctic cooperation set in motion a process in which the "emphasis shifted away from maritime definitions of the region to a broader political and environmental constituency."
In 1996, the Arctic Council was established by the Arctic countries and organisations of indigenous people (Heininen and Nicol, 2007). The organisation aims to protect the regional environment and promote sustainable development and stresses the importance of multilateral agreements. The regional interests of the body´s members differ widely. The US has refused to discuss security issues with Arctic Council, explaining why the organisation is still largely focused on environmental issues. The US feels least involved in the Arctic as a region and is mainly interested in those issues that relate directly to Alaska’s territory, its strategic interests and resource exploitation (Heininen and Nicol, 2007).
Moreover, the US is the only member state of the Arctic Council that has not ratified UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, see part 2). President Clinton signed the convention in 1994 and President George W. Bush expressed his support for the requisite move by Congress in 2009 (Howard 2009, the White House 2009). Nonetheless, some influential politicians who refer to ‘American exceptionalism’ have managed to block ratification by Congress.
Circumpolar countries could use UNCLOS to claim a larger share of the Arctic seas, but a unique geography makes it hard to apply the established legal framework in the region (Borgerson 2008). All five circumpolar countries were involved in a territorial dispute in the Arctic until September 2010 (IBRU 2010). The US is involved in three of them. It is in conflict with Canada over the status of the Northwest Passage (US: an international strait, Canada: internal waters), has a border conflict with the same country in the Beaufort Sea and one with Russia in the Bering Strait.
Climate change has had an enormous impact on the perceived economic potential of the Arctic as a whole and country’s territorial claims in particular. Climate change (or global warming) is the commonly used name for a process that concerns a significant rise in the global temperature since the 1980s (Henson 2008).
The Arctic was not seen until recently as a promising location for resource exploration and large-scale shipping transit (Borgerson 2008). Perceptions started to change in the 1990s when melting of the Arctic ice accelerated as a result of higher temperatures. In 2007, the sea ice cover was nearly 50% lower than in the 1950s and 1960s (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway 2010). A key driver behind recent and expected territorial claims in the region, the melting of the Arctic ice cap may potentially ease the exploration and exploitation of mineral resources in the region’s subsoil. Technological progress in recent decades has also helped in this respect (Howard 2009).
Awareness (both in the region and in countries such as China and Japan) of the resource potential of the Arctic rose enormously after the U.S. Geological Survey published its estimates of Arctic hydrocarbon reserves in 2008. These estimates suggested that the region holds 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas (USGS 2008).
Despite these positive estimates, massive new exploration and exploitation activity is very unlikely in off-shore areas in the coming decades. First, doubts have been raised about the reliability of these estimates (Howard 2009). Second, technology is still inadequate to build the necessary floating production structures, tools to drill for oil and pipelines that can deal with the tough conditions in many off-shore areas (Anderson 2009). Third, the costs of off-shore exploration and exploitation in some Arctic areas may be prohibitively high, requiring an unrealistic (although not wholly impossible) oil price to make production profitable (Howard 2009). These limitations do not alter the fact that perceptions of the Arctic resource potential have a large impact on territorial claims.
The melting ice has also increased the potential for navigation of two previously impassable shipping routes (Emerson 2010). The Northwest Passage runs through northern Canada (Anderson 2009) and was navigable for the first time in August 2007 (Dodds 2007). The Northern Sea Route is located north of the Russian mainland. The potential benefits of these routes are enormous, as traditional shipping routes that currently go through the Suez Canal or Panama Canal can be shortened by thousands of miles (Anderson 2009). The actual benefits will however remain limited in the coming decades as an all-year ice-free Arctic is very unlikely (Emerson 2010). Moreover, different types of moving ice, some potentially very dangerous, will remain a frequent impediment for many ships using these shipping lanes (Anderson 2009).
Part 2 explains UNCLOS and elaborates on Russia's territorial claims in the Arctic, and contains the references:
