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The battle for the Arctic’s resources heats up

A couple of years ago, a Canadian minister proudly declared that Santa Claus was a citizen of Canada. After all, his home and toy factory are at the North Pole, which, according to the minister’s interpretation, belongs to Canada.

Though Santa Claus has not commented on the matter, it is now clear that he could choose several passports when he travels the world. In 2007, a privately funded mini-submarine planted a Russian flag directly beneath his alleged home. And last month, Denmark, which has sovereignty over Greenland, staked its own territorial claim, also covering the North Pole.

By filing its claim with the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Denmark has joined our era’s “great game”: the contest for economic control over a large part of the Arctic.…  Seguir leyendo »

La disputa sobre la procedencia de Santa Claus

Hace un par de años, un ministro canadiense declaró con orgullo que Santa Claus era un ciudadano del Canadá. Al fin y al cabo, su hogar y su fábrica de juguetes están en el Polo Norte, que, según la interpretación del ministro, pertenece al Canadá.

Aunque Santa Claus no ha comentado ese asunto, ahora está claro que, cuando viaja por el mundo el 24 de diciembre, podría elegir varios pasaportes. En 2007, un minisubmarino con financiación privada plantó una bandera rusa directamente debajo de su supuesto hogar y, hace dos semanas, Dinamarca, que tiene la soberanía sobre Groenlandia, señaló su propia reivindicación territorial, que también abarcaba el Polo Norte.…  Seguir leyendo »

The drastic climatic changes in the Arctic, viewed first-hand this week by an ‘alarmed’ UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, are threatening to unleash not only environmental catastrophe on the rest of the world but a furious political struggle between competing regional governments.

The Arctic Five - the US, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark (Greenland) - are scrambling to secure territorial rights to disputed and hitherto unclaimed parts of the world’s last great wilderness. This is partly because the retreat of local sea ice is opening up to exploitation what many leading experts think could be massive reserves of petroleum- even as much as 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of its undiscovered natural gas.…  Seguir leyendo »

Aboard Training Vessel Arctic Tern, off Newport, R.I.

Russia’s flag-planting caper at the North Pole last week captured the world’s attention. Harking back to the heady days of colonial imperialism and perhaps the success of Sputnik, a resurgent Russia dispatched from Murmansk a nuclear-powered icebreaker and a research vessel armed with two mini-submarines to stake a symbolic claim to the Arctic Ocean’s riches. Russia hopes that leaving its flag encased in titanium more than 13,200 feet beneath the frozen surface bolsters its 2001 claim that the Lomonosov Ridge is a geological extension of its continental shelf and thus the 460,000 square miles of resource-rich Arctic waters stretching from the North Pole to Eurasia fall under the Kremlin’s jurisdiction.…  Seguir leyendo »