Recently, there have been calls for a renewed focus on the Arctic Council, the main international forum on Arctic issues. Indeed, and as the BP Gulf Disaster brings into sharp relief, paramount to the exploration opportunities and activities identified for the oil and gas sector in Greenland will be protection of the Arctic environment. “The Ottawa Declaration of 1996 formally established the Arctic Council as a high level intergovernmental forum to provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, with the involvement of the Arctic Indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic. Member States of the Arctic Council are Canada, Denmark (including Greenland and the Faeroe Islands), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States of America.” 72 There are 6 Working Groups of the Arctic Council:
Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP) Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR) Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG)
A recent report, observes that, “The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months as a result of climate change has impelled the Chinese Government to allocate more resources to research in the High North. Several Chinese academics have encouraged their government to be aware of the political, economic and military implications of shorter shipping routes and untapped energy resources.”73 Yet, as the report goes on to note, for countries such as China to “exploit” the Arctic‟s resources, they will need to partner with foreign companies. As scientists speculate that the Arctic ice is melting, the passage is becoming a coveted shipping route. The issue of whether the Northwest Passage is an internal waterway, and therefore Canada‟s, or an international waterway opens to all remains debated. Progressively this decrease in Arctic ice results in both access to broader exploration frontiers and seaway passages. This has implications for increasingly complex international jurisdictional issues, not just between Canada and Greenland, but all nations bordering on the Arctic region. Underpinning the new wave of Arctic exploration is a treaty called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Every country now controls the resources under its coastal waters up to 200 miles from its shore. But under the treaty a country's territory can be expanded much further if it can prove the ridges and rock formations underneath the water are connected to your continental shelf. Canada is in a "mad dash" to map our seafloor in the Arctic region so as to define the precise location of our continental shelf. Other countries are doing likewise. With the historical use of the 200 nm limit to define each nation's exclusive economic zone, this alone causes international disputes over contiguous areas, for example between Canada and Greenland, in which their respective 200 nm limits overlap, they have had to agree on a line 'in-between'. And even with that, there is still disagreement over ownership of Hans Island, which lies on the boundary of this 'in-between' line.
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http://arctic-council.org/article/about Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “China Prepares for an Ice-Free North.” No. 2010/2 March 2010. 73
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