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With the Antarctic ice thawing faster than predicted the International scramble to secure their piece of the pie is on:
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Rhetoric heats up as Arctic ice melts away
Randy Boswell and Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, August 10, 2007
Prime Minister Stephen Harper made two major funding announcements today to boost Canada's sovereignty in the resource-rich North as Denmark's science minister claimed his country has a strong case for ownership of the North Pole.

"Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: Use it or lose it," Harper said in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, as he announced that the community, about 600 kilometres from the magnetic North Pole, will be the site of a new $4-million military training centre. The centre is to be manned by up to 100 Canadian Forces personnel at a strategic site along the Northwest Passage.

Harper also confirmed that the government will spend $100 million to build Canada's first deep-water Arctic seaport at Nanisivik, on the northern tip of Baffin Island. The port would be key to shipping through the Northwest Passage, which is expected to provide a summer sea route to Asia within decades as global warming melts the ice floes.

The two initiatives will "benefit communities throughout the region by creating jobs and opportunities and enhancing the safety and security of the people who live here." And, along with a 900-person boost to the Canadian Rangers' 4,100-member patrol, the investments will "significantly strengthen Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic."

Meantime, however, Danish science minister Helge Sander was announcing that recent findings by his country's researchers suggest "Denmark could be given the North Pole."

His assertion comes on the eve of a Danish-led research expedition to the Arctic and amid intensifying interest among all northern nations in securing shipping and seabed rights in the oil-rich region around the North Pole.

The joint Danish-Swedish expedition, which will carry one Canadian scientist, will have its path cleared by a chartered Russian icebreaker. Its aim is to cement Denmark's claims to extended seabed territory north of Greenland, an island controlled by Denmark, Sander said in a Danish television interview.

Sander said "preliminary investigations done so far are very promising," suggesting the disputed Lomonosov Ridge - a 1,500-kilometre undersea mountain range that runs past the Pole between Siberia and North America - is a geological extension of the northern coast of Greenland.

"There are things suggesting that Denmark could be given the North Pole," he said.

Canadian scientists, however, believe the Lomonosov Ridge could be seen as a continuation of Ellesmere Island, giving Canada a strong counterclaim against potential Russian and Danish land grabs.

In Ottawa, the Danish ambassador to Canada, Poul Kristensen, told CanWest News that "it's no secret that Denmark, on behalf of Greenland" has interests in Arctic resources and "of course, potentially, we can make claims."

While scientists from the five polar nations continue to collaborate on research aimed at mapping the Arctic sea floor, the governments of Canada, Russia, the U.S., Denmark and Norway remain at odds over an area thought to contain one-quarter of the planet's untapped petroleum reserves.

Earlier this month, Russia ruffled feathers by dropping a Russian flag on the North Pole seabed at the end of a deep-sea expedition to claim the mineral riches of the Arctic.

Today, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahs Stoere called Russia's move "show business more than political reality," adding that: "What is important is that the Russians follow the international legal regulations in force, as they are doing."

Harper said last week that Russia's flag-planting trek to the Pole shows that "sovereignty in our Arctic is going to be an important issue as we move into the future."

Now the Danes - still at odds with Canada over the ownership of tiny Hans Island in the boundary waters between Ellesmere Island and Greenland - are again pressing their claims to the potentially lucrative sea floor around the Pole.

The Danish government first stated its intent to vie for possible North Pole riches in 2004, when its Hans Island feud with Canada - now being dealt with quietly by diplomats - was still prompting heated public exchanges over the remote and icy rock.

When it comes to potential Arctic oil, "we are speaking of values in the billions," said Denmark's Kristensen, "and therefore the area, of course, is of interest to us."

University of British Columbia professor Michael Byers, Canada's leading expert on Arctic sovereignty, said in an interview that "all the other Arctic countries are fully committed to claiming the maximum amount of seabed to which they're entitled under the law of the sea convention."

Byers added that "chartering the Russia icebreaker is a particularly inspired move and should send a strong signal to Ottawa" to make sure this country does everything possible to "secure all the seabed that is rightfully ours. The only thing holding us back right now is a lack of political will."

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the five polar nations could acquire huge swaths of Arctic sea floor if they can prove the claimed areas are linked to their continental shelves.

Canada and Denmark have been collaborating over the past two years to gather data on the Lomonosov Ridge. Russia claimed ownership of the ridge in 2001, but the UN sent its scientists back to the Arctic to gather by 2009 more evidence to support the claim.

Canada has until 2013 to submit its territorial claims, but the federal scientist leading the sea floor studies, Jacob Verhoef, said earlier this week there's a chance the research mission could be in jeopardy because of the tight deadline, strained resources and unpredictable Arctic ice conditions.

On Thursday, a top U.S. climate researcher announced that the Arctic ice cover is shrinking faster this summer than at any time since reliable satellite images of the polar cap became available in 1979.

© Vancouver Sun 2007