Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
effect in 1994. This gives a state an Exclusive Economic Zone over sea
that is within two hundred nautical miles of its coast - and even further
if it can show its continental shelf extends beyond the two hundred-mile
limit. The four other Arctic coastal states with territory inside the Arctic
circle - Canada, the US, Norway and Denmark - have not accepted the
Russian claim. These four are all NATO members. So there is scope for
serious geopolitical tension here.
Russia is impossible to ignore in the Arctic. Its territory covers almost
180 degrees of the Arctic circle. Encouragingly, Russia joined the other
four coastal states in a declaration at a meeting in Ilulissat in Greenland.
In their Ilulissat declaration, the five said they would settle all jurisdic-
tional and navigational issues in the Arctic ocean themselves within the
framework of the Law of the Sea treaty, without the need for any new
international legal regime.
The US is not yet in a position to use the Law of the Sea treaty to extend
its jurisdiction, because unlike the four other Arctic coastal states its
Senate has failed (as with many other international treaties) to ratify it.
Arctic waterways
The melting of the Arctic sea ice will make routes as well as resources con-
tentious. With global warming, the dream, which goes back to sixteenth-
century English navigators, of an ice-free a Northwest passage, between
the Atlantic and Pacific will be realized: it is thought that the shrinkage
of sea ice will mean the passage will be open for much longer passages of
time. But Canada finds the idea that a passage through its Arctic islands
should be considered an international waterway - as the US insists - com-
pletely anathema. A shorter, northern shipping route between Europe and
Asia would reduce energy consumption and produce fewer emissions.
But this benefit would be outweighed by the environmental damage from
shipping and any oil and gas drilling in a very delicate environment - not
to mention the inevitable political tensions that would result from states
scrambling to carve up Arctic energy assets. In July 2007, Canada's prime
minister, Stephen Harper, made an assertive statement, in announcing
the establishment of a new deep-water port in the far North. “Canada has
a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic,” he
said. “We either use it or lose it.” Ottawa has reversed the rundown of its
navy so as to be able to police its Arctic waters properly.
