In November, a student-led job made a shocking discovery: Mesyatsev Island, a floating block of ice formerly observed in the Arctic, had nearly disappeared. It took around a decade and a half for the 11.8-million-square-foot island to shrink by 99.7 % and vanish from the Arctic’s map.
However, the Arctic is changing rapidly, impacting communities and markets all over the world. Over the last 50 years, the polar region has been warming up four times faster than other parts of the globe, a trend known as Arctic amplification. Conditions have risen significantly, in 2023, the territory experienced its coolest summer.
” A melting Arctic presents new obstacles and exacerbates existing ones for Arctic states and areas”, said Samuel Jardine, head of research at London Politica. Network has already been harmed by the degrading permafrost as foundations decline and pipelines deteriorate.
According to Jardine, “it is estimated that 34 % of the people in the Arctic’s ice regions will be in danger by the end of 2100, with it costing between US$ 205 and US$ 572 billion depending on who you ask to simply keep the activity of engineering and support infrastructure in the 2080s.”
This could result in substantial threats to human security and increased migrant pressure, according to the expert, who quoted the author.
Race for Arctic tools
The Arctic is home to around 13 % (90 billion barrels ) of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30 % of its undiscovered natural gas ones, according to an , assessment , conducted by the US Geological Survey ( USGS )
As Arctic snow evaporates, the cost of extracting its raw materials drops. A Finnish mining firm discovered a deposit of rare earth elements, which is thought to be the largest in Europe, in 2023.
In the meantime, the Arctic’s exploration and development of healthy resources pose new climate risks. Oil spills pose a threat to fish, birds, and other food-producing species, while mine may create toxic waste and obliterate a vital salmon wildlife.
No less important, the Arctic’s increasing mobility is spurring political opposition over natural sources.
According to Jardine,” Changing conditions also have an impact on fish, which for the Arctic has always been one of the essential trigger factors for democratic conflicts.” There have been significant political disputes over hunting quotas and their commitment to them in the High North as fish species fly and politics spill over, perhaps between states that are widely political partners like the UK, EU, and Norway. Such incidents, of course, are comparatively minor, but tensions are likely to increase as fish stocks continue to change”.
According to Jardine, the majority of the security issues are ironically being caused by these new opportunities.
The melting ice and rising temperatures make resources easier to access, not the least of which are those on the seabed, which is already generating more activity, such as Norway’s attempt to mine its EEZ for seabed oil as it aims to get away from offshore oil. This not only drives securitization, as geopolitical tensions spill over, much as they are doing with fisheries, but also makes the various clashing claims to the Arctic seabed, specifically between Russia, Denmark, and Canada, an increasingly pertinent issue.
These nations currently make use of the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which can make legally binding recommendations but does not enforce or establish maritime boundaries.
Given the state’s current geopolitical situation, it is unlikely these states will be able to resolve the conflict among themselves, especially given concerns that rights to the seabed may allow for “dual-use” infrastructure or the use of national seabed regulations that might limit maritime traffic, the expert said.
Geopolitics of shipping
The rise in shipping traffic in the polar region is another security risk trigger. A growing number of previously difficult-to-reach regions have been made accessible by the shrinking sea ice. And as the frontier of natural resource extraction expands, Arctic shipping increases, too.
Russia’s Yamal Gas project and Canada’s iron ore mine in the Mary River region of Baffin Island are two of the biggest regional projects. Both initiatives have made a significant contribution to the rise in Arctic bulk carriers and gas tankers.
Three new shipping routes are anticipated to be created over the course of the Arctic by the melting Arctic, all of which are significantly faster on paper than the traditional routes to East-West, according to Jardine. By 2030, according to some estimates, the Arctic will be completely ice-free in the summer, which would allow non-ice-class vessels to travel the routes safely.
” The big’flashpoint’ is most likely to be over the Northern Sea Route ( NSR ),” the expert added, but all three routes have geopolitical issues to varying degrees already,” the expert added.
This raises questions about unresolved disputes over the sovereignty of new sea routes. Russia asserts that the NSR is within its territorial waters, but the US and a number of other nations refute this claim.
Canada claims that it is within its internal waters, but the US insists that it is an international strait.
Governing the Arctic
Some four million people live in the Arctic region, distributed across Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Russia, Canada and the US. Around 10 % of them are indigenous peoples.
National governments have exclusive jurisdiction over their own territories, including territorial waters and coastlines, while the rest of the Arctic Ocean is governed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea ( UNCLOS).
International agreements include those relating to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters, and the cooperation agreement on the prevention of unregulated high seas fisheries and marine oil pollution.
A special organization known as the Arctic Council was established three decades ago to bring together the representatives of the eight Arctic states and the region’s indigenous peoples. This global forum has successfully addressed issues like oil spills, sea ice loss, tundra thawing, and rescue operations.
The Arctic Council has overcome a number of obstacles, but the most significant is the recent deterioration of relations between Russia and other Arctic nations as a result of Ukraine’s ongoing military conflict.
Politics aside, the issue with a full-fledged partnership pause is that it does not aid in addressing the effects of climate change. It also doesn’t support the rights of indigenous peoples. Any limitations on collaboration are unhelpful, if not harmful, given that the Arctic is currently facing risks from climate change that threaten the entire world.