By Seth Millstein
With the alarmingly high temperatures at the North Pole and the rapidly thawing ice sheet at the top of the earth, the battle to stake an ownership claim over the Arctic is changing as fast as the climate. But countries have been fighting over the territory for almost 100 years.
Many have participated in what’s been dubbed “Pax Arctica” — adherence to international law, treaties, and cooperation over competing claims. But when the dispute involves a potentially vast trove of natural resources, the mittens come off.
The message read, “I have the pole, April Sixth.”
It came via wire to the New York Times from Robert E. Peary, the legendary American explorer. Peary had mounted numerous Arctic expeditions, but this was the first that successfully reached the North Pole.
Upon leaving, Peary left a glass bottle with a handwritten note inside, claiming US sovereignty over the entire region. “[I] have formally taken possession of the entire region, and adjacent, for and in the name of the President of the United States of America,” the note declared. The claim — the first of its kind — wasn’t recognized by any other country, and it’s now unclear whether Peary had even reached the pole. Either way, the U.S. made no move to act on it.
But the race among countries to take Arctic territories as their own was on.
In response to American expeditions in the Arctic, Canada passed a 1925 law that was, in effect, a declaration of sovereignty over part of the North Pole. It required other countries to obtain a permit from Canada in order to explore the triangle-shaped area between the North Pole itself and Canada’s northwest and northeast borders.
Canada had invented a new method for making territorial claims over the North Pole: Rather than putting a flag on an ice shelf, it simply insisted that its own territory extended northward into the Arctic. The Soviet Union did the same thing the next year.
Hans Island, a small piece of uninhabitable land with minimal natural resources, lies on the Canada-Denmark border, and the two countries have been “fighting” over it for over 30 years.
In 1984, Canadian troops planted a Canadian flag on the island and left behind a bottle of whiskey. A week later, a Danish government official showed up, replacing the Canadian flag with a Danish flag and some brandy. The back-and-forth has continued sporadically for more than 20 years. It’s never been resolved, but it’s never caused any significant tension.
The quibbling, sometimes referred to as “one of the world’s friendliest border disputes,” is illustrative of how many Arctic border disputes have played out: Lots of unresolved bickering, no resolution and little consequence.
In 1982, the United Nations, after holding the longest-running negotiations in its history, signed the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and opened it for ratification. This treaty clarified how, and to what degree, a country can claim sovereignty over waters extending from its shores — including those that stretch into the Arctic. The US was not, and still isn’t, a party to the treaty.
The treaty gives members exclusive rights to natural resources within 200 miles of their coastlines. If members makes claims beyond that boundary, they must prove that the seabed is physically connected to their country.
In August 2007, the Russians took a new approach. Two of their submarines descended below the North Pole ice and planted a Russian flag on the ocean floor. It was the first-ever manned crew to reach the bottom of the Arctic Ocean at the pole. Russia’s motives extended beyond mere flag-planting: The explorers also collected water and sediment samples for analysis in an attempt to prove that the ridge below the pole is an extension of Russian land.
Canada, which had previously laid claim to some of that same territory, was not pleased. “This isn’t the 15th century,” said foreign minister Peter Mackay. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say, ‘We’re claiming this territory.’”
In December 2014, Denmark presented the United Nations with its own claim. After spending 12 years and $55 million gathering data, the Danish wanted about 900,000 square kilometers beyond the coast of Greenland. Part of what’s at stake there is shipping routes — two of them that, minus the ice, would be far cheaper and faster than current passages.
But the frozen elephant in the room is that the Arctic is also home to as much as 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas, according to a 2008 US Geological Survey review. Those estimates, though, include the 200-mile rights laid out in the UNCLOS treaty. Some scientists now believe that disputed Arctic territory actually contains very little oil.
The Russians doubled down in August 2015. Under a 1982 convention, countries can claim exclusive economic rights over areas adjacent to their shores.
In 2002, Russia used this rule to claim part of the Arctic Ocean that abutted its continental shelf. The United Nations rejected the claim, citing a lack of evidence. In 2015 Russia said it had new data justifying its claim to 463,000 square miles of territory, including the North Pole.
If its claim is accepted, Russia would not have full sovereignty over the area, but it would have economic control over the waters, which may contain oil and natural gas.
As part of a three-day tour of Alaska in September 2015, President Obama said that the US Coast Guard needed to hasten its acquisition of new icebreaker ships to catch up with rival Arctic claimant Russia. With just two “fully functioning” icebreakers, the US fleet pales in comparison to Russia’s 41 operational vessels.
The trip was intended to highlight the effects of climate change, but nevertheless, the White House said in a statement that the U.S. must prepare itself to “provide for regional peace and stability” in the Arctic as melting sea ice enables increased human activity and commerce.
