This is a compiling of information that is available and source information is displayed below.
The diminishment of Arctic sea ice has led to increased human activities in the Arctic, and has heightened interest in, and concerns about, the region’s future. The United States, by virtue of Alaska, is an Arctic country and has substantial interests in the region. On May 10, 2013, the Obama Administration released a national strategy document for the Arctic region.
Record low extents of Arctic sea ice over the past decade have focused scientific and policy attention on links to global climate change and projected ice-free seasons in the Arctic within decades. These changes have potential consequences for weather in the United States, access to mineral and biological resources in the Arctic, the economies and cultures of peoples in the region, and national security.
The five Arctic coastal states—the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark (of which Greenland is a territory)—are in the process of preparing Arctic territorial claims for submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. The Russian claim to the enormous underwater Lomonosov Ridge, if accepted, would reportedly grant Russia nearly one-half of the Arctic area. There are also four other unresolved Arctic territorial disputes.
A number of Arctic nations have tried to stake claims outside of their Exclusive Economic Zone.
-On Dec. 20, 2001, Russia submitted its claim to The UN Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf, requesting an additional 1.2 million sq km (over 460,000 sq miles) of marine economic control.
-The Canadian government has begun programs mapping its continental shelf, and as of 2006 it has committed $51 million to the project.
-During 2008, the US government spent $5.6 million to prove that the US continental shelf off the coast of Alaska extends beyond the 200-mile EEZ limit.
-Denmark spent around $42 million between 2004 and 2010 to improve its claims for outer continental shelf territory. As discussed below, other Arctic nations have also been scrambling to stake claims because resources are becoming available due to the melting of the ice.
Russia’s Stake:
Russia is the most important player in the Arctic, with significant economic, security and governance interests in the region. This is primarily because of natural resources. Over 20% of undiscovered global hydrocarbon reserves are located in the Arctic area and most of them in the Russian Arctic. These natu¬ral resources are vital to Russian national security and economy; oil and gas alone account for roughly 20-25% of Russian GDP. Russia’s domestic social programs, infrastructure investments, and mili¬tary modernization are all critically dependent on revenues from natural resource export.
Similarly, hydrocarbons provide important leverage for Russian foreign influence. This is especially the case with energy-dependent Europe, where a third of the natural gas consumed is imported from Russia. The Arctic plays an increasing role in this equa¬tion as a strategically vital resource base for Russia. So far, the Russian Arctic has been responsible for about 10-15% of Russian GDP and 25% of its foreign exports and there are systematic efforts to increase these figures.
Russia’s increasing northward focus is also due to the fact that Russia’s mature hydrocarbon sources in Western Siberia are slowly drying up. Recent hydrocarbon activities in the Russian Arctic have taken place primarily through onshore projects in key locations such as the Yamal Peninsula and in nascent offshore projects on the Arctic sea bed in the Barents, Pechora and Kara Seas. These offshore projects have often taken the form of joint ventures between Russian and international energy corpora¬tions. This signals Russia’s need to seek investments and technological know-how through international cooperation.
However, key offshore projects – such as the Shtokhman gas field and Prirazlomnoye oil field – have turned out to be extremely challenging and have been suffering from continuous delays and shuffling of foreign partners up until today. Russia has also set its sights on resource bases outside its territorial borders and submitted a claim for the extension of its continental shelf to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) process as early as 2001.
In order to access, exploit and deliver Arctic natu¬ral resources to global markets, Russia also aims to develop critical infrastructure in the Northern Sea Route (NSR), including ports, search-and-rescue (SAR) centres, route administration, ice-breaking capability, and oil spill response capabilities. In addition, non-maritime parts of the Arctic trans¬port system – pipelines, aviation routes, railways, and roads – and the overall socio-economic con¬ditions of the region require development and modernization.
Russia also has security interests in the Arctic. Russia seeks to project its sovereign authority in its wide Arctic region through improved border control (FSB), to provide safety and security espe¬cially in the NSR, and to maintain credible forces to secure critical infrastructures. Russia also seeks to maintain, develop and project a credible military force – primarily naval, aerial and missile assets – in the region in order to be able to react in various politico-military scenarios, as well as to deter the expansion of unwanted foreign military presence into the (Russian) Arctic.
China’s Stake:
China approaches the Arctic as a global power and an “Arctic stakeholder” affected by Arctic develop¬ments. China’s interests towards the Arctic have been growing steadily and it has become a part of Chinese strategic discourse. Overall, however, the Arctic remains a relatively minor aspect of China’s official foreign policy China’s growing Arctic interest must thus be understood primarily as future-oriented, reflecting its aspiration to be pre¬pared for the Arctic opening and its consequences.
The primary motive for China’s gradually increas¬ing Arctic interest is the economy. As a growing economy and a non-littoral Arctic stakeholder, China aims to secure access to opening Arctic ship¬ping routes, which could offer substantial savings in maritime transport and diversify Chinese security of supply. China also seeks to strengthen its ability to access Arctic resource bases, including rich fishing waters in the Arctic Ocean, rare mineral deposits in Greenland, and hydrocarbons in Russia
The United States stake:
The US has traditionally been a “reluctant Arctic power” that has paid a limited amount of policy attention to the region, and only primarily to its own Arctic backyard, Alaska. Lack of public aware¬ness, long distances, the low-threat environment, budgetary concerns, and more pressing global issues have all ensured that the Arctic has remained in the background of policy-making.
While the Arctic continues to be a relatively minor topic on the overall US foreign policy agenda today, the US has started to pay closer attention to the region with the publication of key strategic documents and high-profile participation in Arctic affairs. In short, the Arctic has gradually emerged as a “new” foreign policy frontier in the US.
The exploitation of natural resources – gas, oil, and minerals – is the primary driver of contemporary US policy in the Arctic. To enhance US energy security and the economy, the Obama administration has encouraged the responsible development of domes¬tic oil and gas production. In recent years, due to a declining trend in production in existing oil fields on the Alaskan North Slope coupled with a lack of new onshore sites, there has been domestic pressure to explore offshore oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Major energy corporations from the US and abroad have acquired licenses for offshore produc¬tion blocks. These efforts, however, have been chal¬lenging and beset with delays due to US administration pressure after recent environmental accidents. In addition, advances in unconventional gas and oil production have reduced the urgency to go Arctic.
Secondly, the US also has a range of security inter¬ests in the Arctic. Importantly, parts of US strategic deterrence, global missile defense and early warn¬ing architecture are situated or operational in the Arctic region. The issue of freedom of navigation in the Arctic is another important security interest for the US. This is because accessible and open inter¬national maritime routes are arteries of the global and US economy and key enablers of flexible power projection by the US military
Section 112 of the Arctic Research and Policy Act (ARPA) of 1984 (Title I of P.L. 98-373 of July 31, 1984)4 defines the Arctic as follows:
As used in this title, the term “Arctic” means all United States and foreign territory north of the Arctic Circle and all United States territory north and west of the boundary formed by the Porcupine, Yukon, and Kuskokwim Rivers [in Alaska]; all contiguous seas, including the Arctic Ocean and the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi Seas; and the Aleutian chain.
The European Union Stake:
The European Union has started to show increas¬ing interest in Arctic affairs. The EU is intimately connected to the Arctic region through its Arctic Member States as well as various EU competences, policies and regulations with a direct bearing on the Arctic in areas such as the environment, climate change, trade, energy, research, transport, and fishery. That said, the EU has never been a forerun¬ner in Arctic governance, nor has it been accepted as a legitimate “stakeholder” by all Arctic states. This was mostly because of the EU’s politically insensi¬tive stance towards sealing and whaling and because of the European Parliament’s politically unfeasible initial position, which suggested a comprehensive international treaty to govern the Arctic region on the basis of the Antarctic Treaty.
Over time, however, the EU has come to adopt a more politically aware and conciliatory tone in its Arctic policy. Today, the EU’s Arctic policy maintains that Arctic governance should be built on existing multilateral frameworks – the UNCLOS, the Arctic Council, and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) – instead of a new Arctic treaty, while simultaneously bearing in mind and respect¬ing the sovereignty and national interests of Arctic states themselves. Due to the influence of various member states with divergent interests, the EU continues to lack a coherent Arctic strategy and moves forward at the level of policy statements. While the EU has sought a greater role in the Arctic, it has come to recognize that the Arctic states are the primary actors in the region and that the EU should focus its growing engagement on support¬ing existing successful co-operation and providing assistance in meeting new challenges in the region.
The first EU Arctic interest relates to global climate change, which has various environmental, social, economic and geopolitical implications for the Arc¬tic region as well as for Europe. While the EU has tackled climate change at the global level, its emerg¬ing Arctic climate policy has started to emphasize up-to-date knowledge of regional climate dynamics and the need to invest in Arctic environmental research. These efforts are identified as requiring coordination between the EU, Arctic states and Arctic stakeholders.
Secondly, the EU also has significant economic interests in the Arctic. Europe is a major destination for Arctic resources. Around 25% of Arctic oil and gas output is destined for Europe, and 80% of the fish caught in Iceland and 60% in Norway are sold in the EU.
Consequently, the EU seeks to secure access to Arctic resource bases in the context of intensifying global competition, and to influence policy development in the Arctic states towards favorable resource exploitation and management.
Motivated in part by a desire to exercise sovereign control over the Arctic region’s increasingly accessible oil and gas reserves (see “Oil, Gas, and Mineral Exploration”), the four Arctic coastal states other than the United States—Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark (of which Greenland is a territory)—are in the process of preparing territorial claims in the Arctic, including claims for expanded Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), for submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. (As mentioned earlier—see “U.S. Activities as a Non-Party to UNCLOS”—the United States, as a non-party to UNCLOS, cannot participate as a member of the commission; it cannot submit a claim under Article 76. Over the years, however, it has submitted observations on submissions made by other states, requesting that those observations be made available online and to the commission. In addition, since 2001, the United States has gathered and analyzed data to determine the outer limits of its extended continental shelf.) Russia has been attempting to chart the Arctic Ocean’s enormous underwater Lomonosov Ridge in an attempt to show that it is an extension of Russia’s continental margin. The Russian claim to this ridge, if accepted, would reportedly grant Russia nearly one-half of the Arctic area; a 2001 claim submitted by Russia was rejected as insufficiently documented. Canada also claims a portion of the Lomonosov Ridge as part of its own underwater continental shelf.45 In August 2007, a Russian submersible on a research expedition deposited an encased Russian Federation flag on the seabed of the presumed site of the North Pole. The action captured worldwide attention, but analysts note that it did not constitute an official claim to the territory and was therefore a purely symbolic act.
At a May 2008 meeting in Ilulissat, Greenland, the five Arctic coastal states reaffirmed their commitment to the UNCLOS legal framework for the establishment of extended continental shelf limits in the Arctic.
In addition to this process, there are four unresolved Arctic territorial disputes:
• Scientists have forecast that in coming decades, global warming will reduce the ice pack in Canada’s northern archipelago sufficiently to permit ships to use the trans-Arctic shipping route known as the Northwest Passage during the summer months (see “Commercial Sea Transportation”). The prospect of such traffic raises a major jurisdictional question. Ottawa maintains that such a passage would be an inland waterway, and would therefore be sovereign Canadian territory subject to Ottawa’s surveillance, regulation, and control. The United States, the European Union, and others assert that the passage would constitute an international strait between two high seas.
• The United States and Canada are negotiating over a bi-national boundary in the Beaufort Sea.
• The United States and Russia in 1990 signed an agreement regarding a disputed area of the Bering Sea; the U.S. Senate ratified the pact the following year, but the Russian Duma has yet to approve the accord.
• Denmark and Canada disagree over which country has the territorial right to Hans Island, a tiny, barren piece of rock between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island. Some analysts believe the two countries are vying for control over a future sea lane that might be created if the Arctic ice were to melt sufficiently to create a Northwest Passage. Others claim that the governments are staking out territorial claims in the event that future natural resource discoveries make the region economically valuable.
The USGS asserted that the “extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth. In the report, the USGS estimates that 90 billion barrels of oil, nearly 1,700 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids may remain to be discovered in the Arctic. An article published in Science magazine indicated that 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil may be found north of the Arctic Circle
It all comes down to who can get their way first, and seize control of the natural resources to the north, and these territorial tensions have a high probability of causing addtional global stress. what are your thoughts
andrewsoption 
Leave a comment