Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Warming opens Arctic to political tension
Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent makes its way through Baffin Bay.
The Future History of the Arctic
By Charles Emmerson
Public Affairs, 448 pages, $36.50
The Canadian Arctic is remote, cold and basically a big unused backyard.
According to British author and geopolitical specialist Charles Emmerson, that's all going to change: rising temperatures will mean increasing interest in the most remote region of this country, as untold wealth in natural resources becomes accessible.
The Arctic is coming of age.
London-based Emmerson, a Global Leadership Fellow and associate director of the World Economic Forum, doesn't waste a page on the debate over global warming -- for him it is a fait accompli.
He instead explores Arctic history, writing in great detail of the five Arctic nations -- Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark and Norway, and then considers the coming impact to each and the world as the Arctic heats up and becomes strategic to energy resources and global trade.
The Future History of the Arctic is not light going, however, and the reader should be prepared to spend time with this book.
It reminds at times of the urban myth that the Inuit language has dozens of ways to say the word snow. In fact it doesn't; it relies on adjectives to describe snow just as other languages do.
Each Arctic nation's historical relationship with the harsh and remote region is heavily detailed in Emmerson's account. Russia's, as the former Soviet Union, is particularly vivid.
Emmerson writes out on thin ice somewhat, suggesting that Russia had one of the most involved and developed Arctic programs, through Siberian rail lines, quarry and mining operations well above the Arctic Circle. The downside of such development was that it was done by prisoners of the Stalin's gulag system and few got out alive.
U.S. history too comes under scrutiny, for until the purchase of Alaska in 1867, the U.S. was not an Arctic nation. Emmerson details how Canadian territory might have fallen to American expansion plans -- British Columbia and the current Arctic were both pursued by U.S. lawmakers.
Emmerson then considers the modern-day Arctic with its thinning ice cap that might one day disappear completely. He points out that scientists of the oil exploration ilk estimate there's up to 90 billion barrels of oil under the shrinking ice.
Other natural resources -- natural gas, a faster global trade route that could trim thousands of miles off of shipping lines -- could all open up as the circumpolar region becomes more accessible.
With that, warns Emmerson, will come considerable political tension between Arctic nations. The testing has already begun, as he reminds of various U.S. submarine incursions in what was considered Canadian arctic waters, and the planting of a Russian flag on the sea bed of the North Pole by Russians in a submarine.
The opening of the Arctic might even spur domestic disputes, when the future of regions such as Greenland are considered. Currently governed by Denmark, Greenland has been moving towards independence -- and management of its own mineral resources.
Emmerson believes lawyers armed with historical agreements and each country's case will eventually sort out land claims to shelves and barriers of seascape currently lying miles under snow and seawater.
Emmerson's book is very well researched and certainly educates the reader on the cold, long-ignored region to the north.
Its premise that the Arctic will soon be a global hotspot comes through loud and clear.
Jackie Shymanski is a Winnipeg-based communications consultant.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 6, 2010 H9
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