Climate Crisis, The Arctic And Geopolitics
By Farooque Chowdhury
15 November, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Melting Arctic ice sheets, “contribution” of climate crisis, are altering geoeconomic and geopolitical environment. Agitating strategic setting in the Arctic carries implications for imperial stakeholders, which is actually interest of the capitals that these states serve. An ice-free Arctic will turn into a theatre of economic and political conflict with serious impact on geopolitics. “The Arctic could harbor some of the last yet undiscovered major oil and gas deposits … and that this would reshuffle the geopolitical cards. Russia would gain ice-free harbors and China would gain access to the Atlantic.” (Dr. Michael Werz, Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States)
Ice-breaking now makes Arctic navigation expensive. Highest temperature change will dramatically reduce or possibly melt Arctic ice during part of the summer as soon as 2050. Conservative estimates calculate a 12 to 40 percent reduction in summer. Commercially viable Arctic sea lanes are anticipated to be opened for part of year well before 2050, which could make the ocean a major world trade route. (IPCC, The Regional Impacts of Climate Change: An Assessment of Vulnerability, November 1997) According to one estimate, the Northwest Passage may open itself for navigation for most of the year within 10-20 years. The Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan will remain ice-free throughout the year. The Russian coast and the Canadian Archipelago will be open to navigation by non-ice-strengthened ships in summer. The entire Russian coast will be ice-free, facilitating navigation through the Barents, Kara, Laptev and East Siberian Seas along the entire Northern Sea Route (NSR). The Northwest Passage through the Canadian Archipelago and along the coast of Alaska will be navigable every summer by non-icebreaking ships. Significant areas of the Arctic may turn permanently ice-free in the future while the entire area may become seasonally ice-free. During the early part of the 21st century, the impact of global warming will be less visible in other parts of the world than in the Arctic.
Countries with advanced technology and huge natural resources surround the Arctic. An ice-free Arctic passage will provide easy access to natural resources. Trade routes through the Arctic will significantly reduce distances between commercial regions and trade centers and will increase trade. The NSR between Europe and East Asia is 40 percent shorter than the route through the Suez Canal. The route is of primary interest for trade between Europe, the Far East, and the east and west coasts of the US.
The gas and oil industries are interested in using the NSR with ice-capable tankers “even before practical ice-free use of the route becomes available.” Non-Russian shipping is moving to open and develop the NSR. Asia is getting allured to open an export route. Shippers assume that Arctic routes provide more safety.
Conflicts are likely to arise as the NSR turns more available for world traffic. Increased traffic will need increased policing, search and rescue arrangements, and capacities to enforce legal bindings related to environment. Most Europe-Asia trade now travels through the Suez Canal. Diverting this traffic through the Northwest Passage would cut travel distance by 40 percent.
Climate crisis will bring fishing activity to the Arctic, particularly in the Barents Sea and Beaufort/Chukchi region that will influence fishing industry that faces continued dwindling of fishing stocks and increased pressure on fishery resources in the North Pacific and North Atlantic producing strategic implications.
The crisis will accelerate offshore hydrocarbon exploitation in the region making the job “comfortable” and more profitable. Technologies are being innovated to open remote and environmentally hostile areas to petroleum production. Huge oil and natural gas resources in Siberia are pressing profit to open the NSR. Reserves there are estimated to be comparable to those in the Middle East. According to Valery Kryukov, Valery Shmat, and Arild Moe, oil amounts are estimated at over 10.5 billion tons in Tyumen Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Kray alone, of which 5.5 percent has been exploited. (“West Siberian Oil and the Northern Sea Route: Current Situation and Future Potential”, Polar Geography 19, 1995)
Russia is working with a number of Western oil giants to exploit oil from the Barents and Timano-Pechora basins. Ice-capable tankers are being added to fleets, and petro-industry is moving into deeper water. A decrease in the problems related to drilling and producing oil offshore as sea ice extent and thickness diminishes will expand exploration and production opportunities in the Arctic. Plans are being made for offshore drilling in the US Arctic. The Russian and Canadian parts are also strong potential sites for offshore exploration.
Possible changes in oil availability and trade in the Arctic region will negatively impact the Middle East. Oil in the ME compels the West to extend strong support to many regimes there. With prospects of the West’s less dependence on these regimes the region may experience turmoil and unrest, which in turn may influence incidents in lands far away.
With resource-rich Russian Arctic the country is a major stakeholder in the region. Uninterrupted exploitation of energy, mineral and forest resources are expected there. Interests of China and Japan in the Russian Far East are growing. The importance of the NSR to Russia is not only due to economic interests, but also because of military interests, although Douglas and Willy argue the opposite in their essay “The Northern Sea Route Regime: Exquisite Superpower Subterfuge?” (Ocean Development & International Law 30, no. 4) They wrote: The importance of the route to Russia has increased as many temperate ports that were part of the former Soviet Union were lost to the new republics. But economic strategy mingles, especially in cases of powerful, with military strategy.
In September 2009, the governor of Arkhangelsk said to Baltinfo that Russia must speed up the development of the NSR before climate change makes it possible to use the North East Passage outside the Russian 200 miles zone. “We have to start developing the Northern Sea Route, or else others will do it.” He maintained that the administration for the NSR should be reestablished. The main users of the route are Norilsk Nickel, Gazprom, Lukoil, Rosneft and Rosshelf. Northeast Passage is the shortest sea route between the Far East and the European parts of Russia. The distance from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok is 14,000 kilometers, compared to 23,000 km through the Suez Canal.
In September 2009, Barents Observer reported that two German merchant vessels became the first foreign commercial vessel to make it through the formerly impenetrable passage without assistance of icebreakers.
A major contender in the region is the US, which is trying to collude with the EU and Eastern Pacific countries.
Economic situations in Russia and the US will influence their moves. Both the parties are designing and redesigning long-range military deployment plans as strategic resources are one of the key drivers in geostrategy. Investments are being made in physical infrastructure. The Arctic will witness an increase in surface naval activity over subsurface activity. An unimpeded flow of oil requires vigilance and maritime patrol.
Canada is also a major party in the region, and a number of issues related to the region are bones of contention in the US-Canada relation. Both Canada and Russia claim navigable straits in the NSR and the Northwest Passage under their exclusive control. The US asserts that the ice-covered straits of the NSR are international and subject to the right of transit passage while Russia claims the straits as internal waters. The issues are connected to economy, and competition.
Denmark and Norway are contending parties too. The point of argument is the way to increase share of the Arctic riches, claiming overlapping parts of the region. They are also wrangling over the control of the still frozen shipping routes.
China, not a member of the Arctic Council that determines Arctic policies, is actively searching ways to reap economic and strategic benefits from the ice melting despite having no Arctic coast, and hence no sovereign rights to underwater continental shelves there. The emerging giant is assessing the commercial, political and security implications of a seasonally ice-free Arctic region. It has allocated more resources to Arctic research. The country owns one of the world’s strongest polar scientific research capabilities and the world’s largest non-nuclear icebreaker. China is building a new high-tech polar expedition research icebreaker, planned to set sail in 2013.
Economic interests and protection of trade route in the Arctic widens politico-military objectives of competitors, and the objectives need support of a force capable of air defense and superiority, undersea warfare, strike capacity, escort operations, etc. With widened deployment coverage in a region with harsh environment major contenders there now need more icebreakers, ice capable tankers, nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, heavy aircrafts, port structures, airports, roads and other naval resource and superstructure that can withstand a difficult nature including icing and heavy fog. Ships and submarines are to be redesigned; new technologies are to be innovated; and war plans to be redrawn. These demand infusion of extra resources. The Arctic is an attractive area for the stationing of strategic submarines because of its geographic proximity to North America, Europe, and Asia. Exercises and reviews have already been initiated.
Adventurers and seafarers, wrote Dr. Werz, tried to find the Northwest Passage, the legendary route from Europe to Asia to avoid the Cape of Good Hope. More crucial is the tactical importance of the newly opened passage, the discovery of which was considered by the British Crown a major security mechanism of the empire, the short-cut to the profitable Asian markets. Once, the Atlantic was an open space. Atlantis and Campanella’s City of the Sun, the utopian places, were imagined in that ocean. But trade and technology have made it the shortest route between the old and the new worlds. The Arctic is waiting for similar transformation “powered” by climate crisis, and is bearing elements of increased global rivalry.
Farooque Chowdhury contributes on socioeconomic issues.
