Peter Brookes writes in today’s Boston Herald on the coming battle over resources in the Arctic. An excerpt:
While the Climaterati caucus over cappuccinos in Copenhagen about polar bear habitat and the fate of small island nations from rising sea levels, there are other possible climate change implications, too – those of the security kind.
In fact, we’re already seeing them in the Arctic.
By many accounts, much of the Arctic sea ice is melting following a three-decade trend. But while the geographic North Pole belongs to no one, the area around it may hold as much as 20 percent of the world’s undiscovered, technically-recoverable natural resources.
That’s good news, but who owns it?
Circumpolar nations (the U.S., Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark) are clamoring to claim the vast untapped ocean floor under the disappearing ice – even the transit lanes through it.
Problem is there are overlapping claims, especially involving the potentially-rich Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,200-mile long undersea mountain range.
The five Arctic Ocean-bordering states have promised to play nice, but they’re also gearing up for rough seas, particularly Russia.
In 2007, Russian mini-subs planted a titanium flag on the sea bed near the North Pole at a depth of nearly 14,000 feet, claiming for Moscow a territory the size of France, Germany and Italy combined.
While some saw the flag-planting as little more than a geopolitical stunt, the Russians are serious about it, which isn’t surprising considering energy’s central role in Moscow’s re-emergence as a global power.
The rest here.