A Polar Mediterranean? Accessibility, Resources and Sovereignty in the Arctic Ocean
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00038.x |
| Author | Klaus Dodds |
| Date | 01 October 2010 |
| Published date | 01 October 2010 |
A Polar Mediterranean? Accessibility,
Resources and Sovereignty in the
Arctic Ocean
Klaus Dodds
Royal Holloway, University of London
Abstract
The Arctic Ocean has been described as
undergoing a fundamental ‘state change’ – with
particular reference to the loss of sea ice. Recent
events suggest that the five coastal states (Canada,
Denmark ⁄Greenland, Norway, Russia and the
United States) and other stakeholders are
fundamentally reconsidering their relationship with
the Arctic Ocean. The prevailing governance of the
Arctic Ocean is quite different to the Antarctic and
Southern Ocean. The Arctic Ocean is not a global
common and there is no equivalent to the 1959
Antarctic Treaty. If the Arctic Ocean is in a state
of flux then it is due to three interlocking vectors:
the role of science and technology in generating
knowledge about the region (accessibility);
international law and rights of coastal states
(resources); and the role of domestic and
international audiences (sovereignty).
In August 2007, the privately funded Arktika expedition,
involving two mini-submersibles, descended the icy depths
and in so doing provoked a cornucopia of newspaper head-
lines. The image of a Russian flag deposited on the seabed
was visually arresting (Dodds, 2008, 2009; McCannon,
1995; Powell, 2008). While international lawyers (Benitah,
2007; Koivurova, 2009; Serdy, 2009) downplayed the inci-
dent, the then Canadian foreign minister, Peter Mackay,
retorted: ‘This isn’t the 15th century. You can’t go around
the world and just plant flags and say ‘‘We’re claiming this
territory’’ ’ (BBC, 2007). The Russian foreign minister,
Sergey Lavrov, responded:
I was amazed by my Canadian counterpart’s state-
ment that we are planting flags around. We’re not
throwing flags around. We just do what other
discoverers did. The purpose of the expedition is
not to stake whatever rights of Russia, but to
prove that our shelf extends to the North Pole’
(Kommersant, 2007).
While there is a rich tradition of explorers ‘throwing flags
around’, the claim that ‘our shelf extends to the North
Pole’ is key here.
The Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC) sets out how
coastal states can acquire sovereign rights over the extended
continental shelf. As Article 77 of the LOSC notes,
The coastal State exercises over the continental
shelf sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring
it and exploiting its natural resources …The nat-
ural resources referred to in this Part consist of
the mineral and other non-living resources of the
seabed and subsoil together with living organisms
belonging to sedentary species, that is to say,
organisms which, at the harvestable stage, either
are immobile on or under the seabed or are
unable to move except in constant physical contact
with the seabed or the subsoil (LOSC, 1994).
All five Arctic Ocean coastal states – Canada, Denmark,
Norway, Russia and the United States – have embarked on
mapping projects designed to demarcate their extended or
outer continental shelves (Benitah, 2007; Potts and
Schofield, 2008). Under Article 76 of LOSC, states have
to provide evidence to a UN body called the Commission
on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), which
then issues ‘recommendations’ (Dodds, 2010). While there
is plenty of evidence of cooperative mapping between coun-
tries (e.g. Canada and the United States and Canada and
Denmark), a submission deadline (2009) for materials to be
sent to the CLCS encouraged febrile reporting. So if there
was a ‘race to the pole’, it was related to this deadline and
the need for coastal states to complete their demarcation
exercises. The 2007 expedition was a follow-up exercise
designed to provide further information relating to an
earlier Russian submission to the CLCS in 2001. In 2002,
the CLCS requested further evidence from the Russian
authorities.
Global Policy Volume 1 . Issue 3 . October 2010
Global Policy (2010) 1:3 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00038.x Copyright 2010 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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