Denmark would turn North Pole into a nature reserve if granted the territory
Foreign minister pledges Denmark would turn North Pole into a nature reserve if granted the territory
Denmark will make a claim for the North Pole and seek to exploit mineral and fossil fuel reserves in its Arctic territory, the Foreign Ministry revealed this week as it published the Kingdom of Denmark’s nine-year Arctic strategy.
But while the foreign minister, Lene Espersen, stated in an interview that Denmark would set aside the North Pole as a nature reserve, the claim was absent from the report.
The ‘Strategy for the Arctic 2011-2020’ outlines how the Kingdom of Denmark (Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands) will deal with oil and gas exploitation and trade opportunities, as well as security issues, created by receding sea ice.
“We must do everything in our power to confront and adapt to these challenges and seize the opportunities in a resourceful and productive manner,” Espersen said.
“The region will undergo profound changes due to global warming in the short term, and these changes are forcing us to act now.”
Espersen was upfront about Denmark’s willingness to exploit the potential natural resources in the Arctic, stating that the country was prepared to sell prospecting in rights in its territorial waters.
Prospectors must live up to high environmental standards, however, with the report stating, for instance, that “[oil] exploration must always live up to best practices in the industry”.
“It is important for the governments of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands that the local communities will benefit from any future surge of activity in the region, but we will not accept that the fragile environment in the Arctic will be put at risk,” Espersen said.
The report also outlines how Denmark will make a claim for the North Pole by the end of 2014 – the deadline for the five states with territory in the Arctic to make claims to the UN.
The territorial waters of the five Arctic powers – Norway, the US, Canada, Russia and Denmark – extend into the Arctic Ocean and although the North Pole currently lies in international waters, it could be granted to one of the countries should they prove it lies within 200 nautical miles of their continental shelf.
Denmark and the other four countries bordering the Arctic must lodge their territorial claims with the UN by 2014 (Map: CIA World Factbook)
During an interview with public broadcaster DR on Tuesday night, Espersen said that Denmark would not seek to exploit the area should it be granted the territory by the UN.
“We agree that in an ideal world that the area of the North Pole would be made into a common nature reserve.”
Greenpeace, which temporarily halted oil exploration in Greenlandic territorial waters both this summer and last, was critical of the strategy, however.
“It would be such a shame if Denmark went ahead and made a land grab. It would trigger a land rush,” Mads Flarup Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace’s Nordic office, told The Copenhagen Post.
Christensen did concede that Espersen’s comments in the interview were a positive step, though he did question why it was at all necessary to make claim.
“The [international waters around the north pole] should be kept as a protected reserve. It would be no one’s loss because no one has it at the moment and no one has planned to use it,” he said.
“I think we’ve achieved something given that Greenlandic premier Kuupik Kleist and Lene Espersen have stated that if Denmark is granted the North Pole it would set it aside,” he added.
“But its worrisome that it doesn’t appear in the strategy. We’re concerned it would be less likely that Denmark would give the North Pole back to common good if is given it in the first place.”
Instead, Christensen suggested that the North Pole be set aside before countries made their claims, as was the case with Antarctica.
“We see it as a step forward that it’s being put on the table, though we don’t think it is heartfelt by the Denmark. We find the Danish way an escalation and not what the Arctic needs.”
Controlling the North Pole has wider implications than oil and gas exploration, especially given that with a sea depth of 4,000 metres and limited oil and gas reserves, the sea surrounding the North Pole would be prohibitively expensive for prospectors to operate in.
The receding sea ice, however, will see the opening of the Northeast and Northwest passages, which provide shortcuts between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for both merchant and military vessels.
As a result of these changes, the five Arctic powers signed the Ilulissat Declaration in 2008, committing themselves to resolving issues regarding the Arctic through negotiation.
Russia and Denmark are believed to have the strongest claims to the North Pole. In 2007, Russia showed its ambition to stake a claim by planting a Russian flag on the ocean floor at the pole using a small submarine.
Source: The Government of Denmark
