The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future (44 page)

335
Much of this paragraph and the next are drawn from the work of Rob Huebert at the University of Calgary, “In the Grip of Climate Change: The Circumpolar Dimension,” Session Paper no. 1, 2030 NORTH National Planning Conference, Ottawa, June 1-4, 2009; and the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, “United States Arctic Policy: The Reluctant Arctic Power,”
SPP Briefing Papers
2, no.2 (May 2009), 27 pp.

336
R. Huebert, “United States Arctic Policy: The Reluctant Arctic Power,”
SPP Briefing Papers
2, no. 2 (May 2009), 27 pp.

337
Captain L. W. Brigham, Ph.D., personal communication, June 2, 2009.

338
Reportedly a 2009 “ice exercise” using attack submarines. R. Huebert, “In the Grip of Climate Change: The Circumpolar Dimension,” Session Paper no. 1, 2030 NORTH National Planning Conference, Ottawa, June 1-4, 2009, p. 18.

339
This 2009 directive lists four developments as justification for a change in U.S. Arctic policy, namely “(1) Altered national policies on homeland security and defense; (2) The effects of climate change and increasing human activity in the Arctic region; (3) The establishment and ongoing work of the Arctic Council; and (4) A growing awareness that the Arctic region is both fragile and rich in resources.” United States White House, Office of the Press Secretary, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 66, Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD 25, Washington, D.C., January 9, 2009,
http://media.adn.com/smedia/2009/01/12/15/2008arctic.dir.rel.source.prod_affiliate.7.pdf
.

340
Personal interview with R. Huebert, Ottawa, June 3, 2009.

341
M. Gorbachev, “The Speech in Murmansk at the Ceremonial Meeting on the Occasion of the Presentation of the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star Medal to the City of Murmansk,” October 1, 1987 (Novosti Press Agency: Moscow, 1987),
http://www.barentsinfo.fi/docs/Gorbachev_speech.pdf
; see also K. Åtland, Mikhail Gorbachev, “The Murmansk Initiative, and the Desecuritization of Interstate Relations in the Arctic,”
Cooperation and Conflict
43, no. 3 (2008): 289-311, DOI:10.1177/0010836708092838.

342
This assistance was often done at the grassroots level. For example, by securing research funding to do fieldwork in Siberia, I was able to hire Russian scientists and locals for logistics support and scientific collaboration during this very difficult time.

343
The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, or AEPS, signed June 14, 1991, in Rovaniemi. AEPS is a nonbinding multilateral agreement signed by Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States, with participation by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Nordic Sámi Council, USSR Association of Small Peoples of the North, Federal Republic of Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, United Nations Environment Program, and the International Arctic Science Committee. See
http://arcticcouncil.org/filearchive/arctic_environment.pdf
.

344
The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental forum established in 1996 “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” (
http://arctic-council.org
). Its “member states” are the eight Arctic countries Canada, the United States, Denmark/Greenland/Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia; other categories of membership include six “permanent participant” aboriginal groups; and non-Arctic observer states like the United Kingtom, Spain, China, Italy, Poland, and South Korea. The Arctic Council focuses on environmental protection and sustainable development issues; it is strictly forbidden to engage issues of security or territory. Nonetheless it is the premier “Arctic” polity as of 2010.

345
By the turn of the millennium, even before the shock wave of 9/11, things had started to tighten up. People were beginning to consider the prospect of new economic opportunities for oil and gas exploration, shipping, and fisheries made possible by the reduction of summer Arctic sea ice. Under the Putin administration, Russia began funding her own scientists again, while also rolling up the welcome mat for western scientists. I and two graduate students—informed we were no longer allowed to do fieldwork even if escorted by Russian colleagues—packed up and left.

346
ACIA, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1042 pp. Available for free download at
http://www.acia.uaf.edu
.

347
AMSA, Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report,
Arctic Council, 190 pp., April 2009.

348
These things are specifically barred from the Arctic Council’s mandate. The United States would not have supported its creation otherwise. This is perhaps unsurprising, as few, if any, superpowers will cede discussion of military matters to an intergovernmental forum. At high policy levels, U.S. support for the Arctic Council has always been reluctant, unlike lower policy levels, and among scientists, where U.S. support is strong.

349
J. Broadus, R. Vartanov,
Environmental Security: Shared U.S. and Russian Perspectives
(Woods Hole, Mass.: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, 2002), 60-61.

350
The Canada-U.S. dispute derives from differing interpretations of an 1825 treaty between Great Britain and Russia. However, Norway and Russia announced resolution of their decades-old dispute in April 2010, W. Gibbs, “Russia and Norway Reach Accord on Barents Sea,”
The New York Times,
April 27, 2010; “Norway, Russia Strike Deal to Divide Arctic Undersea Territory,”
The Moscow Times,
April 27, 2010; “Thaw in the Arctic,
Financial Times,
April 29, 2010.

351
UN Commission for the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). The extension is for the seafloor only, called an “Extended Continental Shelf,” or ECS, extending the standard EEZ up to 350 nautical miles. It does not include control over pelagic fishing as does the standard EEZ.

352
Sweden and Finland do not have coasts fronting the Arctic Ocean. The United States is unable to file an Article 76 claim until it ratifies UNCLOS. However, the United States is behaving as if it has, and has been carrying out the scientific investigations needed to make an UNCLOS Article 76 claim. The United States has also assisted other countries, especially Canada, in the collection of scientific data for their claims.

353
Resolution of Norway’s Article 76 claim was not perfect. The CLCS found that both Russia and Norway have legitimate cases for their overlapping claims in one area of the Barents Sea. The two countries had to reach their own agreement to resolve it. “UN Backs Norway Claim to Arctic Seabed Extension,”
Ottawa Citizen,
April 15, 2009. They did so in April 2010; see note 350.

354
The so-called “Ilulissat Declaration” was released May 28, 2008. Denmark invited Canada, Norway, Russia, and the United States to Ilulissat, Greenland, to craft this statement of these countries’ solidarity and commitment to existing legal frameworks, i.e., UNCLOS. It is widely perceived as a message to other entities, like the European Union, which had been issuing its own documents with proposals for shared Arctic Ocean governance, to stay out. Even the other Arctic countries of Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, and aboriginal organizations, were excluded from the meeting in Ilulissat. See
http://www.oceanlaw.org/downloads/arctic/Ilulissat_Declaration.pdf
.

355
D. L. Gautier et al., “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,”
Science
324 (2009): 1175-1179.

356
The current boundary between Canada and Denmark runs down the center of Lomonosov Ridge, thus both countries have the possibility of proving it is a geological extension of their continental shelves.

357
The Northern Sea Route offers a 35%-60% distance savings between Europe and the Far East. To go from Yokohama to Rotterdam via the Arctic Ocean would take just 6,500 nautical miles, versus 11,200 through the Suez Canal.

358
“Multiyear ice” (MYI) is sea ice that survives through at least one summer, and can grow considerably thicker and harder than “first-year ice” (FYI), normally only one to two meters thick. FYI is easier for icebreakers and fortified ships to pass through than MYI.

359
Russia’s newest nuclear icebreaker, the world’s largest, is named
50 Years of Victory
. A. Revkin, “A Push to Increase Icebreakers in the Arctic,”
The New York Times,
August 16, 2008.

360
AMSA 2009,
Table 5.2, p. 79.

361
AMSA 2009,
p. 72. The “six-thousand” figure includes vessels traveling on the North Pacific’s Great Circle Route between Asia and North America through the Aleutian Island chain, which the United States defines as being within the “Arctic.”

362
Adapted from maps 5.5 and 5.6, AMSA 2009, p. 85.

363
Personal interview with J. Marshall, vice-president, Northern Transportation Co. Ltd., Hay River, NWT, July 6, 2007. For more about this long-running company, now aboriginal-owned, see
http://www.ntcl.com/
.

364
Personal interview with ConocoPhillips Russia president Don Wallette, January 22, 2007, Tromsø.

365
Because ice is fresh but ocean water salty, pockets of highly saline brine develop within sea ice as it first begins to freeze. As the ice grows over multiple winters, the brine pockets drain and the ice thickens, increasing its strength and hardness.

366
Sea ice, including first-year ice, is always dangerous, and will always be a limiting factor in the Arctic Ocean.

367
Ships must have fortified hulls, powerful engines, and other technical requirements to operate safely in sea ice. A ship’s polar class designates the allowable conditions it can handle (summer or year-round operation, first-year or multiyear ice, etc.). The design requirements for a given polar class are set by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) defines a range of categories. The higher the polar class, the more expensive the ship is to build.

368
World fleets typically travel at fifteen to twenty or more knots. A Russian icebreaker can break ice at speeds as high as twelve to fifteen knots, but risks of damage are higher. Six- to ten knots are more typical in ice. Personal communication with Captain Lawson Brigham, November 25, 2009.

369
Canada and Russia maintain that these passages are domestic waters under their control; the United States and others maintain they are international straits and thus freely available to use without declaration or permission. These and other nontrivial impediments to transnational shipping in the Arctic are described in
AMSA 2009.

370
I suppose someday there might be more of them—perhaps by 2100 or 2150, if globalization hasn’t collapsed into a pile of fiefdoms—together with booming new Arctic port cities. The geography of distance, along with further sea-ice reductions in store, is just too compelling. But this won’t happen by 2050, the time frame of this book’s thought experiment.

371
Some 1.2 million passengers took cruise ships to the region in 2004; three years later the number had more than doubled. By 2008 some 375 cruise-ship port calls were scheduled for Greenland’s ports and harbors alone (
AMSA 2009,
p. 79).

372
From personal interviews with Mike Spence, mayor of Churchill, June 28, 2007, and L. Fetterly, general manager, Hudson Bay Port Co. (owned by OmniTRAX), June 30, 2007. Apparently there is a powerful lobby for keeping Canada’s grain running east-west on its longer, nationalized rail link to Thunder Bay, rather than on the shorter, privately held north-south line to Churchill.

373
Permafrost is also commonly studded with massive lenses of ice, which occupy less volume and may drain away entirely if it melts. This sets the stage for some highly irregular ground settling if the permafrost starts to thaw. Trees lean drunkenly and fall over. Oddly shaped sinkholes called “thermokarst” appear and fill with water, and other odd phenomena.

374
Borehole temperatures in permafrost are generally warming everywhere around the northern latitudes, but to varying degrees as a function of depth and location. In Alaska it has warmed as much as +3°C since the 1980s, but a more typical range is 0.5°-2°C. For a summary of observed permafrost temperature changes, see Table 6.8 and associated discussion on pp. 210-213,
ACIA
(2005).