Putin

Estimates of the wealth the Arctic holds clearly vary widely, even wildly. Partly this is simply due to a lack of information. It’s been said that we know more about the surface of Mars than about the Arctic Ocean’s floor. Still, two things seem fairly certain. One is that even the most conservative estimates of the gas and oil deposits make them attractive except in the worst of markets. The other is that the melting of the Arctic ice cap has opened the fabled, long-sought Northwest Passage across the top of Canada to commercial shipping, making it a “trans-Arctic Panama Canal,” as Icelandic president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has called it. Russia’s equivalent, the Northern Sea Route (NSR), has itself already been compared to the Suez Canal, with which it intends to compete. Not all the money is to be made underwater.

There are several advantages to these two major new shipping routes. Shorter is cheaper. The Northern Sea Route reduces a voyage from Hamburg to Yokohama from 18,350 kilometers to 11,100. The story is much the same with Canada’s Northwest Passage. Previously a ship traveling from Seattle to Rotterdam would have to pass through the Panama Canal. The direct Northwest Passage route cuts 25 percent off the distance, with commensurate savings in fuel and labor costs, though insurance costs can run higher.

The shorter routes also mean carbon dioxide emissions are reduced. The pirate-infested Strait of Malacca and Horn of Africa can be avoided. Supertankers that are too large for either the Suez or the Panama Canal and thus must sail about the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn will enjoy even greater reductions in time and distance.

But there are already problems. Canada claims full jurisdiction over the Northwest Passage as part of its territorial waters, which allows them to charge other nations for passing through them. The United States and the EU dispute that claim and are also against Russia’s charging for passage through the Northern Sea Route. There are also maritime border disputes between the United States and Russia.

Those disputes may all be settled peacefully as was one between Russia and Norway over a 175,000-square-kilometer area in the Barents Sea. Originally over fishing rights, the dispute expanded to include the gas and oil deposits, which could run to thirty-nine billion barrels. That dispute lasted several years but was settled amicably in September 2010. Russia needs Norwegian assistance in drilling in the Arctic, and Norway has the most experience in such climatic conditions.

“The Arctic … is just an ocean … governed by the law of the sea,” said Norwegian foreign minister Espen Barth Eide. In the simplest terms that means that the treasures of the Arctic Ocean and any disputes arising over them are the exclusive business of the five nations with an Arctic coastline. Germany, however, contends that the rapid and dramatic climate changes occurring in the Arctic will affect everyone and therefore are everyone’s business.

Though the five Arctic countries can resolve their disputes multilaterally or even bilaterally, as Russia and Norway did, there are nevertheless two bodies for airing and resolving differences. The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental body with eight permanent members (the five Arctic Ocean states plus the Arctic Circle states Sweden, Finland, and Iceland). Germany has permanent observer status, to which China also now aspires. Six native peoples also have permanent observer status. The council does not have the power to enact or enforce laws, but has produced the council’s first binding pact delineating the Arctic Ocean for research-and-rescue operations.

The most serious problems relating to boundaries and sovereignty are currently dealt with by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS has already defined and delineated the power of any nation bordering a sea: within 12 nautical miles of its coastline a nation exercises sovereign rights and may arrest foreign ships entering those waters without permission. A nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extends 200 nautical miles. Within the EEZ, the coastal state has exclusive rights over the economic resources of the sea, seabed, and subsoil to the exclusion of other states. The real troubles begin with the continental shelf, which is the seabed and subsoil areas that can be shown to be an extension of the land of a given country. The continental shelf can extend 200 nautical miles and in some cases up to 350 if it can be demonstrated to be part of the “natural prolongation of the soil.”