“We do not give up the North Pole. Canada’s claims to the North Pole are no more than ambition.” So declared Russian polar explorer and scientist Artur Chilingarov on December 11, whom President Vladimir Putin named a “Hero of Russia” after he famously planted his country’s flag on the seabed underneath the North Pole in 2007. […]
Oil and gas. Uranium and rare earth metals. Cod and shrimp. Reindeer and seal pelts. These things constitute the bulk of discussions about Arctic resources, yet there’s one resource that’s overlooked: time. At the Arctic Circle summit in Reykjavik earlier in October, economist and Sami reindeer herder Anders Johansen Eira gave a talk, “The Challenges of […]
In a 15-14 vote, Greenland’s parliament voted to overturn the long-standing ban on uranium mining. The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed in a memo that it supported the decision given that Greenland has maintained control over its mineral resources since 2010. While the decision was close, the lifting of the ban should not come […]
During the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna, Sweden last Wednesday, the body’s Secretariat released the “Vision for the Arctic” (PDF). The Secretariat is composed of the eight Arctic States together with the six permanent participants, the Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations. The vision has seven sections, which I analyze below. The document’s introduction describes how […]
Northern diplomats and policymakers like to reinforce the notion of cooperation in the circumpolar north, and Denmark’s Arctic Ambassador Klavs Holm is no different. On Thursday, speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he complimented the council’s camaraderie, noting, “There’s a very good atmosphere. I never experienced anything quite like it in […]
At the Arctic Frontiers conference, attendees had the opportunity to listen to numerous government and NGO representatives from Russia speak in their own language. If my memory serves me correctly, the Russians were the only ones who spoke in their own language, as the people from the Nordic countries and Asia all spoke in English. […]
Nunavut, Canada is home to a wealth of mineral resources, yet it suffers from a dearth of high-speed internet. New developments in both of those areas could bring big changes to the territory. First, after four years of assessment and analysis, the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB) approved the Mary River iron mine on Baffin Island, in […]