Arctic
Quicktabs: Keywords
With Arctic ice melting at record pace, the world’s superpowers are increasingly jockeying for political influence and economic position in outposts like this one, previously regarded as barren wastelands.
[ More ]The author advocates for US ratification of the Law of the Sea noting that in the Arctic region, "[t]he Navy and Coast Guard can unilaterally protect and extend American sovereignty ..., but joining the UNCLOS would be a better way to confirm that sovereignty in law."
[ More ]The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a warning, conservationists say, of what could happen in the Arctic as melting sea ice opens the Arctic Ocean to oil and gas drilling. Many experts argue that the time has come to adopt an Arctic Treaty similar to the one that has safeguarded Antarctica for half a century.
[ More ]The prospect of vast oil and gas reserves beneath the Arctic Ocean has prompted countries to begin evaluating exploration options to assess what's really at stake. But even as observers debate about who really owns the Arctic and will have rights to the potential cornucopia, other experts are warning that dangerous ice, extreme cold, and the risk of environmental catastrophe will pose serious barriers.
[ More ]The Arctic, known better for its polar bears and melting sea ice than its fossil fuels, may soon become a hot spot for oil—spurring an international rush to stake claims on the seafloor.
[ More ]Pages
The main economic prizes in the Arctic are oil and gas and mineral resources. The primary reserves belong to Russia, and the major exploration activity also is theirs. Recent estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey are that 30% of the remaining world reserves of natural gas and some 10% of the oil are in the Arctic. To date, unresolved issues involving demarcation of sea beds under the UNCLOS are not a major issue in the pace of energy development; rather, the key factors are costs of development and the price cycle of oil and gas. Offshore projects are the most costly and environmentally dangerous, and most of the known reserves of oil and gas are within national Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), which extend 200 nautical miles from the coastline. Thus, immediate prospects for interstate conflict over oil and gas reserves appear small.
Reforming the treaty, however, would be difficult. The UNCLOS is not a region-specific treaty: over 150 nations are signatories, and 145 have ratified it.154 The UNCLOS initially took over a decade to acquire the required number of signatures to become effective.155 The dramatic reform required to make the UNCLOS an effective means to protect the Arctic would likely require member states to redraft large portions of the massive document. Nations around the world would subsequently have to acquiesce to the changes.156
If the international community makes the required changes to the UNCLOS, there is always the risk that current member states will rebuke the new treaty. If the reformed treaty fails to gain acceptance, not only would the Arctic remain unprotected, but so would the world’s other oceanic environments. This risk may not be worth its potential cost. Even if member states form a consensus of better protecting the Arctic environment, and more ratify the treaty, it still may prove to be ineffective. Many nations, including the United States, tend to ratify treaties only to claim reservations about provisions they do not like.157 This severely limits a treaty’s ability to create the kind of change necessary to protect the Arctic.
The ecosystem of the Arctic is more susceptible to pollution than other parts of the world.28 There are several factors that contribute to the Arctic’s vulnerability:
- Low temperatures retard the decomposition of natural and manmade substances and the breakdown of pollutants;
- Regeneration is a protracted process because of the short growing season;
- Large concentrations of animals heighten vulnerability to catastrophes;
- Marine areas are particularly important in the Arctic in comparison with other regions of the globe;
- Climatic conditions are likely to produce a more pronounced carbon dioxide-induced warming trend in the Arctic than in temperate regions and are already leading to high concentrations of air pollutants that threaten vegetation as well as human and animal life; and
- Severe weather and ice dynamics make environmental protection and cleanup extremely difficult.29
The intricate interactions and complex food-webs within the Arctic ecosystem make these concerns even more pronounced.30 Simply put, the Arctic ecosystem is ―extremely complex.31 The increased navigation and resource exploration that is likely to occur raises several important concerns. Though there are problems common to both resource exploration and navigation, this Note will discuss the challenges separately.
What of the Arctic? A 2011 Bloomberg BusinessWeek editorial argued:
“The U.S. continental shelf off Alaska extends more than 600 miles into the Arctic Ocean. American companies have been reluctant to invest in exploiting this underwater terrain, which contains vast untapped reserves of oil and natural gas. That’s because the U.S., as a nonparticipant in the sea convention, has no standing to defend its ownership of any treasures that are found there.”32
Yet this is exactly the same case as in the Gulf of Mexico. Only three nations contest the ownership of resources in the extended North American continental shelf in the Arctic: the United States, Canada and Russia. American relations with Canada are friendly; therefore, a United States-Mexico-style treaty with Canada demarcating appropriate lines north of Alaska should be relatively easy to achieve. Russia might be perceived as a more intractable problem; but a 1990 treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union defines the maritime boundary between the two powers.33
Under the Treaty, Russia has claimed vast areas beneath the Arctic Ocean, but these claims in no way infringe upon the 1990 Treaty. Actually, they are a challenge to Canada rather than the United States. South of the Arctic Ocean, the treaty line protects U.S. claims to large areas of extended continental shelf in the Bering Sea and in the Pacific Ocean southwest of the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. Accordingly, there is no barrier (barring the low one of a necessity to negotiate a treaty with Canada) to the United States developing the extended continental shelf in the Arctic and its environs in the same way it has in the Western Gap.
The procedure prescribed by UNCLOS, the international legal framework under which most Arctic nations are currently operating, could potentially prove effective in resolving the present dispute over Arctic territory, but there are many more issues facing the region that call for a new international agreement. A comprehensive treaty would be a more effective means of resolving not just the jurisdictional controversy, but also further concerns unique to the Arctic, including the environment, national security, management and exploitation of natural resources, Inuit interests, and governance of waterway usage. The issues arising in the Arctic, due to its unique icy makeup, cannot all be addressed within the UNCLOS framework, whose principles and legal norms were developed for governance of open water, not glacial masses.163
Thus, an Arctic treaty is the most optimal framework for Arctic governance, as it is has the potential to address the wide range of issues that face this distinctive region, and assure future cooperation among the States. The rapidity with which the Arctic is melting and the approaching State deadlines imposed by UNCLOS for CLCS submissions demand that the States work on developing a treaty now. Representatives of the five Arctic States met most recently in Ilulissat, Greenland, in May 2008, at which time they issued a joint declaration acknowledging the changing conditions of the Arctic due to climate change.183 The declaration also indicated an intention and commitment to continued Arctic governance under UNCLOS.184 In apparent response to the growing criticism of that approach, the declaration stressed the five States’ commitment to cooperating with each other, and concluded, “We therefore see no need to develop a new comprehensive international legal regime to govern the Arctic Ocean.”185 The Arctic States’ adherence to the UNCLOS framework, however, is fraught with the potential for future conflict as issues arise for which the treaty has not provided. The time to develop an Arctic treaty is now, while the States are expressing a commitment to cooperation, and before any one State gains an advantage over the others by successfully securing sovereignty over a portion of the Arctic. Because of the uncertainty as to the strength of each State’s claim, and the risk to each that sovereignty may be denied it in favor of another State, it would be in each State’s best interest to enter into an Arctic treaty now to assure its continuing role in governance of the region.
In 1847, a British expedition seeking the fabled Northwest Passage ended in death and ignominy because Sir John Franklin and his crew, seeing themselves as products of the pinnacle of Victorian civilization, were too proud to ask the Inuit for help. At the height of its empire, the United States sometimes sees itself as invincible, too. But the time has come for Washington to get over its isolationist instincts and ratify UNCLOS, cooperate with Canada on managing the Northwest Passage, and propose an imaginative new multilateral Arctic treaty.
Washington must awaken to the broader economic and security implications of climate change. The melting Arctic is the proverbial canary in the coal mine of planetary health and a harbinger of how the warming planet will profoundly affect U.S. national security. Being green is no longer a slogan just for Greenpeace supporters and campus activists; foreign policy hawks must also view the environment as part of the national security calculus. Self-preservation in the face of massive climatic change requires an enlightened, humble, and strategic response. Both liberals and conservatives in the United States must move beyond the tired debate over causation and get on with the important work of mitigation and adaptation by managing the consequences of the great melt.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic might hold as much as 90 billion barrels (13 percent) of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 47.3 trillion cubic meters (tcm) (30 percent) of the world’s undiscovered natural gas. At current consumption rates and assuming a 50 percent utilization rate of reserves, this is enough oil to meet global demand for 1.4 years and U.S. demand for six years. Arctic natural gas reserves may equal Russia’s proven reserves, the world’s largest.1 (See Table 1.)
The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources estimates that the underwater Arctic region claimed by Russia could hold as much as 586 billion barrels of unproven oil reserves.2 The ministry estimates that proven oil deposits “in the Russian area of water proper” in the Barents, Pechora, Kara, East Siberian, Chukchi, and Laptev Seas could reach 418 million tons (3 billion barrels) and proven gas reserves could reach 7.7 tcm. Unexplored reserves could total 9.24 billion tons (67.7 billion barrels) of oil and 88.3 tcm of natural gas.3 Overall, Russia esti- mates that these areas have up to 10 trillion tons of hydrocarbon deposits, the equivalent of 73 trillion barrels of oil.4
In addition to oil and gas, the Arctic seabed may contain significant deposits of valuable metals and precious stones, such as gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, manganese, nickel, platinum, tin, zinc, and diamonds. The rise of China, India, and other developing countries has increased global demand for these commodities.5
The U.S. relies on its sovereign power and diplomacy when pursuing territorial claims in the Arctic. The United States is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) and therefore is not bound by any procedures and determinations concluded through LOST instruments. Instead, the U.S. is pursuing its claims “as an independent, sovereign nation,” relying in part on Harry S. Truman’s Presidential Proclamation No. 2667, which declares that any hydrocarbon or other resources discovered beneath the U.S. continental shelf are the property of the United States.25 The U.S. can defend its rights and claims through bilateral negotiations and in the multilateral venues such as through the Arctic Ocean Conference in May 2008, which met in Ilulissat, Greenland.
Many have argued, including the Bush Administration, that the U.S. will not have leverage or a “seat at the table” to pursue or defend its Arctic claims on condition that the U.S. is not a party to LOST. However, U.S. attendance at the conference in Ilulissat significantly weakened this argument. Even though the U.S. is not a LOST party, other Arctic nations “are unable to assert credible claims on U.S. territory in the Arctic or anywhere else in the world” because President Truman already secured U.S. rights to Arctic resources with his proclamation.26
In the Arctic, much of the supposed distress voiced by UNCLOS proponents stems from Russia’s vast claim of Arctic ECS that it submitted to the CLCS in 2001. The proponents incorrectly imply that Russia’s claim will result in the loss of Arctic resources that belong to the United States. According to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R–AK), for example, the U.S. failure to accede to UNCLOS would cause “a negligent forfeiture of valuable oil, gas and mineral deposits.”35
But the United States has not and will not “forfeit” a drop of Arctic oil to Russia or any other nation. For one thing, Russia’s claimed ECS area does not overlap any part of the U.S. Arctic ECS. To the contrary, Russia’s claim respects a boundary that the United States and the uSSR negotiated in 1990—the “Baker– Shevardnadze line.”36
The Russian claim extends the Baker–Shevardnadze line from the Bering Strait all the way to the North Pole, likely resulting in an excessive ECS claim in the central Arctic. However, Russia’s potentially excessive claim is located to the north of the limits of the U.S. ECS area. While the Russian claim may overlap with Canada’s ECS claim, it does not overlap any U.S. ECS area.37
In short, there is no conflict between the United States and Russia regarding the division of Arctic resources, including hydrocarbons. even if there were a conflict, Russia’s claim cannot be approved by the CLCS and would not be recognized by the United States (or Canada). Both UNCLOS and the CLCS’s procedural rules prevent the commission from considering any ECS area where there are overlapping claims: “In cases where a land or maritime dispute exists, the Commission shall not consider and qualify a submission made by any of the States concerned in the dispute.”38
The United States may object to excessive ECS claims made by any member of UNCLOS even though the U.S. is not a party to the convention. Indeed, after Russia made its 2001 claim, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Japan, and Norway each filed objections with the CLCS. In June 2002, as a result of the objections, the CLCS recommended to Russia that it provide a “revised submission” on its Arctic ECS claim.39 Russia reportedly will make an amended submission to the CLCS at some point in the future.