U.S. has limited time to ratify convention to secure access to Arctic resources

Ratification of the Convention is an urgent matter. Although a state has up to ten years after it has ratified the Convention to map and submit proposed limits of its continental shelf to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, by that time it may be too late.¹⁹⁶ Global climate change has caused parts of the Arctic Seacap to begin melting, making it navigable for the first time.¹⁹⁷ While this is promising for underwater mining industries, these environmental effects have attracted a great deal of attention and the international community is cooperating to reverse them.¹⁹⁸ Instead of engaging in fruitless political battles with its strategic adversaries, the United States should move quickly to ratify the Convention and focus its energy on extracting the resources beneath the Arctic as quickly as possible.¹⁹⁹ Ratification “would allow full implementation of the rights afforded by the convention, [allowing member nations] to protect coastal and ocean resources.”²⁰⁰