Diplomatic Battle Begins Over Arctic

Five Arctic coastal countries will meet in Greenland on Wednesday to discuss how to carve up the Arctic Ocean, which could hold up to one-quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves, far more than Saudia Arabia’s.

A third of Arctic sea ice has disappeared since 2005, which could open up the Northwest Passage

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are squabbling over much of the Arctic seabed and Denmark has called them together for talks in its self-governing province to avert a free-for-all for the region's resources.

Russia angered the other Arctic countries last year by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole in a headline-grabbing gesture that some criticised as a stunt.

Russia’s lead explorer Artur Chilingarov, declared at the time,: "The Arctic is ours," thereby staking Moscow's claim to 460,000 square miles of ocean floor, more than five times the area of Britain.

Canada, apparently taken by surprise, responded with a military build-up, as have Denmark in Greenland and the United States in Alaska.

Now the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, and the premier of Greenland's government, Hans Enoksen, will meet the Norwegian and Russian foreign ministers Jonas Gahr Stoere and Sergei Lavrov, United States deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Canada's Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn for a two-day conference in the town of Ilulissat.

Environmentalists have not been invited and they dissent from the Danish view that existing treaties provide an adequate basis for resolving the disputes and the potential threat to the marine environment posed by oil and gas prospecting.

The issue has gained urgency because one third of the Arctic sea ice has disappeared since 2005 and some scientists say that all the floating ice could be lost in summer within 5 years.

This would improve drilling access and open up the Northwest Passage, a route through the Arctic Ocean linking the Atlantic and Pacific that would reduce the sea journey from New York to Singapore by thousands of miles.

Countries around the ice-locked ocean are rushing to stake claims on the Polar Basin seabed and its hydrocarbon treasures - made more tempting by rising oil prices - and have taken their arguments to the United Nations.

Under the 1982 United Nation’s Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal states own the seabed beyond existing 200 nautical mile (370 km) zones if it is part of a continental shelf or shallower waters.

Some shelves stretch hundreds of miles before reaching the deep ocean floor, which belongs to no state.

While the rules aim to fix clear geological limits for shelves' outer limits, they have created a tangle of overlapping Arctic claims.

Lars Kullerud, president of the University of the Arctic, an international cooperative network based in the circumpolar region, said: "The Law of the Sea Convention will basically give most of the Arctic Ocean bed to the five countries, but it is also likely that there will be two smaller areas that will not be controlled by any country."

Despite shrinking ice cover, it will be decades before it is possible to harvest oil outside the already established 200 nautical miles.

Kullerud said it was likely the process would produce areas where countries agree to disagree on mutual borders and that would fall under joint stewardship until agreement was reached.

Denmark has urged all those involved to abide by U.N. rules on territorial claims and hopes to sign a declaration that the United Nations would rule on the disputes.

Both it and Norway have said there is no need for a special treaty.

Environmentalists say there need to be stricter rules as there are no techniques available for dealing with an oil spill on the ice.

Dr. Neil Hamilton, director of WWF International’s Arctic programme, said: “We take a very different view. UNCLOS provides a solid foundation on which to build, but by itself is not enough to meet the changes and the challenges facing us in the Arctic in the 21st Century."

"What we need now is a new legal mechanism for Arctic governance to protect this most critical and vulnerable marine environment."

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