BBC News - Arctic Map, prepared by Durham University, shows dispute hotspots.

Maritime jurisdiction and boundaries in the Arctic region.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/staging_site/…

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pd…

British scientists say they have drawn up the first detailed map to show areas in the Arctic that could become embroiled in future border disputes. A team from Durham University compiled the outline of potential hotspots by basing the design on historical and ongoing arguments over ownership.
Russian scientists caused outrage last year when they planted their national flag on the seabed at the North Pole.

The UK researchers hope the map will inform politicians and policy makers.
“Its primary purpose is to inform discussions and debates because, frankly, there has been a lot of rubbish about who can claim (sovereignty) over what,” explained Martin Pratt, director of the university’s International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU).

“To be honest, most of the other maps that I have seen in the media have been very simple,” he added.
“We have attempted to show all known claims; agreed boundaries and one thing that has not appeared on any other maps, which is the number of areas that could be claimed by Canada, Denmark and the US.”

Energy security is driving interest, as is the fact that Arctic ice is melting more and more during the summer. Martin Pratt, Durham University.

The team used specialist software to construct the nations’ boundaries, and identify what areas could be the source of future disputes.

“All coastal states have rights over the resources up to 200 nautical miles from their coastline,” Mr Pratt said. “So, we used specialist geographical software to ‘buffer’ the claims out accurately.”

The researchers also took into account the fact that some nations were able to extend their claims to 350 nautical miles as a result of their landmasses extending into the sea.

Back on the agenda:
The issue of defining national boundaries in the Arctic was brought into sharp relief last summer when a team of Russian explorers used their submarine to plant their country’s flag on the seabed at the North Pole. A number of politicians from the nations with borders within the Arctic, including Canada’s foreign minister, saw it as Moscow furthering its claim to territory within the region.

Mr Pratt said a number of factors were driving territorial claims back on to the political agenda.

“Energy security is driving interest, as is the fact that Arctic ice is melting more and more during the summer,” he told BBC News. “This is allowing greater exploration of the Arctic seabed.”

Data released by the US Geological Survey last month showed that the frozen region contained an estimated 90 billion barrels of untapped oil.

Mr Pratt added that the nations surrounding the Arctic also only had a limited amount of time to outline their claims. “If they don’t define it within the timeframe set out by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, then it becomes part of what is known as ‘The Area’, which is administered by the International Seabed Authority on behalf of humanity as a whole.”

__________

Countries in the area are Russia, Norway, Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Canada, the US (Alaska).

We believe that 200 miles sovereignty (that is with exclusion of guaranteed maritime passage rights) from the shores of their land-mass is a foregone conclusion.

Any claims to the extension of those sovereign waters should be rejected. Those further sea-bed rights belong to the International Seabed Authority on behalf of humanity as a whole. We believe that no exception to the above should be allowed. We wrote several times that we expect China to step in and make this point stick.

We believe that this is China’s chance to declare its leading role for the 21st century.

From:    jeh1 at columbia.edu
Subject: Complete Trip Report.                                                                                                                                    Date: August 4, 2008

- July 3, 2008: Dear Prime Minister Fukuda: A letter to the leader of Japan before the G8 meeting
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…

- July 2008: *Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy*
Slides for presentation given July 4 at United Nations University in Tokyo, available in PDF and Powerpoint.
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…

Above is a summary of the State of the Science and a hint to the State of the Politics.

The links are here and we will post this also in our data base.

Opinion: Polar Race.
Monday 28 July 2008
by: Guy Taillefer, Le Devoir

 http://www.truthout.org/article/polar-ra…

Guy Taillefer argues in Le Devoir that the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation of the polar depths - that they contain 412 billion barrels of oil, or a third of the planet’s proven reserves - will put additional strain on the already-fragile international understandings with respect to polar sovereignty and development.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …”
Four hundred and twelve billion barrels of oil. A third of the planet’s proven reserves. That’s what the depths of the Arctic contain, according to the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation. One may count on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to take advantage of the opportunity to reassert Canada’s “unquestionable” sovereignty over the North - and to reduce the debate over the development of the circumpolar world to a war of flags and icebreakers.
Last Wednesday, after four years of research, the US Geological Survey, the American scientific agency specialized in hydrocarbons, delivered the first exhaustive estimate of potential oil and gas situated north of the polar circle: 90 billion barrels of crude, three times as much natural gas, 20 percent of the probable global reserves of liquefied natural gas…. The news is guaranteed to have a strong impact, given the present context of tightening energy supplies, surging prices at the pump, and the extraordinary growth of demand in developing countries. Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts…. If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases.
Moreover, quite by chance, the US Geological Survey estimates were made public one year, almost to the day, after two little Russian sailors dove to a depth of 4,000 meters in the beginning of August 2007 to plant a flag on the North Pole. This striking gesture - without any legal effect, however - relaunched the debate on the subject of sovereignty over the Arctic in great style.

Cut to the quick, then-Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay decreed that the region Russia coveted was “unquestionably” Canadian.
Unquestionably? That remains to be seen. Experts from the UN, guarantors of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, will say between now and 2013 which between Ottawa and Moscow has the better-founded pretensions from a scientific perspective. At the moment, however, it seems that Russia is better placed to prove geologically that the Lomonossov Dorsal, a chain of undersea mountains that cross the Arctic, is the prolongation of the Russian continental plateau, and not of the Canadian plateau.
Politicians, unfortunately, don’t bother much with such scientific details in their communications with the electorate, preferring to play a nationalistic rhetoric that is easily digested. So the bad scenario would be that, in this race for the summit of the world, the sharing of the Arctic will be less the result of a UN judgment and multinational dialogue than of power struggles between the five countries involved - Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark, and Norway. That scenario is altogether plausible.
“The Canadian Arctic is at the heart of our national identity,” Stephen Harper declared last year. He has announced, among other military measures in the last year, an investment of $7 billion over 25 years for buying naval patrol boats. A depressing prospect: that Canada seeks to take on its northern identity is laudable, that it proposes to get there by emphasizing military defense to the detriment of social, ecological and diplomatic initiatives, is much less so. It is difficult in any case to imagine that pugnacious Prime Minister-President Vladimir Putin will allow himself to be intimidated.
Nonetheless, the Harper way remains very questionable, in that it is a thousand leagues from the Canadian Way - based on dialogue and cooperation. Still, the most recent decades have demonstrated that it’s by balancing its own interests with those of its circumpolar neighbors - and not by sticking out its chest - that Canada has succeeded in preserving its Arctic sovereignty.
Moreover, in order to calm tensions, the five held a big meeting last spring, which ended in the participants’ commitment to settle any litigious question “in an orderly way,” to “strengthen their cooperation based on mutual trust and transparency” and to “assure the protection and preservation of the fragile marine environment of the Arctic Ocean.” Empty phrases? The future will show how these beautiful promises that we’d like to see kept will withstand the lust for 412 billion barrels of oil.
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We posted several days ago: “Reuters Reports That China Is Planting its Flag in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions. Actually they started already at least in 2003, so this is not just a reaction to the Russian Flag-posting of August 2007.”

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 27th, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

So, face up to it - China is also in this game. And why should not Nauru or Grenada also be entiled to some of the profits? if they cannot afford the expense of drilling - bet you Brazil or Japan, even Korea and India, and who knows who else - can!

OK - Now Let Us Sit Down And Talk. For Once We Are Behind China and Expect The Dragon To Stand Its Ground.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …” (Photo: NASA GSFC Direct Readout Laboratory / Allen Lunsford).

The Following just shows how for the many losers from Global Warming there will be also some winners. This change can result not only in wished for positives, but also in potential fights for takeover of the new found wealth.

 We feel the more countries get involved, the less possibility for a single country grab of the resources will be possible. According to the UN approved “The Law Of The Sea” - those resources belong to all humanity and are extraterritorial to country sovereignty. Multiplicity of contenders may thus pose the needed opposition to one country grab onto these resources, and avoidance of rules of the jungle.

BEIJING, Reuters, July 28, 2008 - China plans to install its first long-term deep-sea subsurface mooring system in the Arctic Ocean, to monitor long-term marine changes, the Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The system will collect data on the temperature, salinity and speed of currents at various depths around 75 degrees north in the Chukchi Sea, where Atlantic and Pacific currents converge above the Bering Strait. That will allow studies of the impact on China’s climate of changes in the Arctic, Xinhua said.
A trap will catch marine life for scientific research, it said, citing Chen Hong Xia, a member of the 122-member expedition team aboard the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, an ice-breaker which set off from Shanghai this month.

The mooring system will be retrieved in 2009.

China is increasing scientific research at both poles at a time when global warming and high resources prices are raising international interest in Arctic and Antarctic territories.

It deployed a 40-day mooring system in the Bering Sea in 2003, and is building a new station at Dome A, the highest point of Antarctica, to study ice cores.

A Russian submersible planted a flag on the seabed of the North Pole last August, setting off a race among northern nations to increase their presence in the polar regions.

No Ice at the North Pole ?
Friday 27 June 2008

by: Steve Connor, The Independent UK

A ship navigates through Arctic Ocean ice.
(Photo: Reuters)

Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change.
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic - and worrying - examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
“From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water,” said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.
Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice free north Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.
This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeks shows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.
“The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the North pole is covered with extensive first-year ice - ice that formed last autumn and winter. I’d say it’s even-odds whether the North Pole melts out,” said Dr Serreze.
Each summer the sea ice melts before reforming again during the long Arctic winter but the loss of sea ice last year was so extensive that much of the Arctic Ocean became open water, with the water-ice boundary coming just 700 miles away from the North Pole.
This meant that about 70 per cent of the sea ice present this spring was single-year ice formed over last winter. Scientists predict that at least 70 per cent of this single-year ice - and perhaps all of it - will melt completely this summer, Dr Serreze said.
“Indeed, for the Arctic as a whole, the melt season started with even more thin ice than in 2007, hence concerns that we may even beat last year’s sea-ice minimum. We’ll see what happens, a great deal depends on the weather patterns in July and August,” he said.
Ron Lindsay, a polar scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, agreed that much now depends on what happens to the Arctic weather in terms of wind patterns and hours of sunshine. “There’s a good chance that it will all melt away at the North Pole, it’s certainly feasible, but it’s not guaranteed,” Dr Lindsay said.
The polar regions are experiencing the most dramatic increase in average temperatures due to global warming and scientists fear that as more sea ices lost, the darker, open ocean will absorb more heat and raise local temperatures even further. Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, who was one of the first civilian scientists to sail underneath the Arctic sea ice in a Royal Navy submarine, said that the conditions are ripe for an unprecedented melting of the ice at the North Pole.
“Last year we saw huge areas of the ocean open up, which has never been experienced before. People are expecting this to continue this year and it is likely to extend over the North Pole. It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer - it’s not happened before,” Professor Wadhams said.
There are other indications that the Arctic sea ice is showing signs of breaking up. Scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre said that the North Water ‘polynya’ - an expanse of open water surrounded on all sides by ice - that normally forms near Alaska and Banks Island off the Canadian coast, is much larger than normal. Polynyas absorb heat from the sun and eat away at the edge of the sea ice.
Inuit natives living near Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland are also reporting that the sea ice there is starting to break up much earlier than normal and that they have seen wide cracks appearing in the ice where it normally remains stable. Satellite measurements collected over nearly 30 years show a significant decline in the extent of the Arctic sea ice, which has become more rapid in recent years.

We mention the UN Secretary-General as tour leader to the North Pole which is closer to his home then the South Pole, where he got close in his trip to Antarctica on the way from New York to Valencia Spain - a trip on which our website had quite a few things to say in its time.

Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.    www.alde.eu
ALDE public hearing “Republic of Moldova and its European future.”

This event is organised by ALDE MEPs: Cristian Busoi, Magor Imre Csibi,
Jelko Kacin and Istvan Szent-Iványi

06/05/2008, 15:30 - 18:30, ASP 5G1, European Parliament, Brussels

To register please contact  willem.vandenbroucke at europarl.europa…. and
visit our website http://www.alde.eu/index.php?id=96

—————

ALDE Seminar “Arctic Governance in a global world: is it time for an Arctic Charter?”
07/05/2008

Event date: 07/05/08 16:30 to 19:00
Organizer:
Location: Room A3G3, European Parliament, Brussels
For more information
Krings Thomas - Tel: +32 2 284 32 42

The Session was Chaired by Geofrey Carr, the Science Editor for The Economist. He specializes since 1995 in topics covering disease, climate science, evolution, genetics, neuroeconomics, neuroscience, and synthetic biology.

The panel included:

Ken Drinkwater of the University of Bergen, Senior Scientist at the Centre for Climate Research. He worked on marine-ecosystems for over 35 years. His recent research has focused on the Barents and Norwegian Seas as part of the ongoing 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY);

Grete K. Hovelsrud, Senior Research Fellow, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo. She works now on impact, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change developing theoretical and methodological frameworks for multi-factor interdisciplinary studies;

Eystein Jansen, Professor, Dept. of Geology and Director, Bjerkness Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen works now on defining water mass structures, rates of change, and variability of the climate system with different natural forcings;

Peter Schlosser, Professor, Columbia University, with Earth and Environmental Engineering, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science , Associate Director and Director of Research, The Earth Institute. His interests are in aqueous geochemistry, physical oceanography, climate and contaminant transport.

Daniel M. White, Director, Institute of Northern Engineering (INE), Civil and Environmental Engineering, U of Alaska at Fairbanks. He works on Climate Change impacts in the Arctic on Drinking Water and Water Resources.

We are posting the above as we were intrigued by the heavy Norwegian involvement which makes sense in the light of Norway’s direct interest in the changes of the Arctic geography, but as we did not get to listen to the discussions we will have to come back after we obtain transcripts.

Further, the first “after lunch” speaker was Mr. Jonas Gahr Store, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway.

The Keynote Speaker of Session 2 was Mr Jan Egeland of Norway, now Director of te Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and Special Assistant to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former USG under the Previous UNSG Kofi Annan.

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State of the Planet is a bi-annual event - so next one will be in 2010. By definition these meetings are intended as multi-disciplinary bringing in thinkers to assess the state of natural and human systems with the goal being SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.

The other three Sessions at this two-day Conference, March 27 and 28, 2008, were:

Session 1: Eradicating Poverty As The poor population Expands;

Session 2: Addressing Areas of Conflict in our Changing World;

Session 3: identifying Energy Solutions for Sustainable Development.

—————-

The Keynote Speaker, after the opening remarks, March 27, 2008, was Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Kofi Annan serves now as President of the Geneva based, UK backed, Global Humanitarian Forum launched on June 30, 2007,

and chairs - The Africa Progress Panel (APP) launched in Berlin on April 24, 2007 including Peter Eigen of Transparency International, Bob Geldorf, Graca Machel, Michel Camdessus, Robert Rubin, and Muhammad Yunus, funded by Bill Gates it will demand accountability on promises made on supporting development and fight poverty in Africa;

also The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), established by The Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in September 2006 ;

and The Prize Committee of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation - an African initiative that has been established to “Stimulate debate on good governance across sub-Saharan Africa and the world” - the first award was given to former President of Mozambique, Joaqui