Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Future
frictions
and Arctic angst
Climate change will multiply existing environmental, economic and
geopolitical problems. It will aggravate the problems of desertifica-
tion and water scarcity that already afflict the broad belt that runs
around the earth's equator - through Africa, the Middle East, Asia
and Central America. But it will also create geopolitical tensions over
energy in a new area - the high north of the Arctic Circle.
For the melting of the Arctic sea ice brings “new opportunities and new
risks” in the words of Per Stig Muller, Foreign Minister of Denmark, an
Arctic coastal state via its possession of Greenland. These opportunities
are mainly economic, resulting from the possibility of exploiting the con-
siderable reserves of gas and oil that are reckoned to lie within the Arctic
Circle. Russia is developing its giant Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea,
and Greenland is already licensing explorations blocks off its west coast
and will shortly be doing the same off its east coast to the likes of Cairn
Energy of the UK. These ventures risk exacerbating international political
tensions over rival energy-resource claims, and present environmental
dangers of pollution from energy development as well as from increased
shipping.
It's clear that Arctic energy will not remain largely unexplored, uncharted
and unclaimed for much longer. The Arctic is more immediately vulner-
able than Antarctica to global warming, because it is warmer. It is basically
a sea surrounded by continents, with the North Pole appreciably warmer
on average than the South Pole in the middle of Antarctica, a continent
surrounded by seas. The Arctic is also more vulnerable to exploitation than
the Antarctic, which is protected by international treaties from territorial
claims and commercial development. The main reason for this discrepancy
