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For years, the Race for the Arctic had promised to be one of the most gentlemanly land grabs in history: Using only science and a whiff of diplomacy, the oil-rich Arctic Ocean could be peacefully divvied up between Russia, Canada, the United States and Europe.
That is, until the tiny nation of Denmark approached the United Nations on Monday with a staggering claim to nearly one third of the total prize — including the North Pole.
“It is ironic that the only country that right now could be said to be acting provocatively in the Arctic is Denmark,” said Michael Byers, the Vancouver-based author of Who Owns the Arctic? speaking to Danish media on Monday.
Canada has not yet wrapped up its final claim to areas of the Arctic Ocean now considered international waters, although Ottawa has vowed to shoot for 1.2 million square kilometres of ocean, including the North Pole. There is no definitive scientific evidence that Canada has any claim to the North Pole, but that did not stop Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander from issuing Santa Claus with Canadian citizenship last year.
On Monday, Rob Huebert at the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies called Denmark’s claim evidence that it was wrong to ever believe that the Arctic could be divvied up simply with geological data.
“I think we got sold a bill of goods,” he said. “I don’t think the Russians or the Danes, once it came up to the political leadership, ever really intended to do that.”
In its official filing to the UN’s Commission on the Limits and the Continental Shelf
the Kingdom of Denmark officially laid claim to an 895,000 square kilometer chunk of the Arctic Ocean.
Bolstered by $64-million in Arctic scientific research (some of which was carried out jointly with Canada), the Danish claim hinges on the assertion that that the Lomonosov Ridge, a massive underwater mountain range, is an extension of Greenland.
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