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Canada to assert Arctic claim
OTTAWA: Canada has said it will build
two military facilities in the far north in a bid to assert its
sovereignty over the contested Arctic region.
Prime minister Stephen Harper made the announcement during a tour
of Canada’s northern territories last Friday.
It comes as a Danish mission prepares to sail to the North Pole to
map the seabed under the ice.
Early this month, a Russian expedition planted the country’s flag
on the floor of the Arctic Ocean under the North Pole.
Harper said a cold-weather army training base would be set up at
Resolute Bay and an existing port at a former mine at Nanisivik
would be refurbished to supply Arctic patrol vessels.
He said the facilities would bolster Canada’s claims to disputed
portions of the Arctic.
“Canada’s new government understands that the first principle of
Arctic sovereignty is use it or lose it,” Mr Harper said from
Resolute, a small Inuit community about 600km south of the North
Pole.
“Today’s announcements tell the world that Canada has real,
growing, long-term presence in the Arctic.”
Melting polar ice has led to competing claims over access to
Arctic resources, including the Northwest Passage, a shipping
channel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans currently blocked
by ice during the winter months.
Harper announced plans last month to build six naval vessels to
patrol the passage.
Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway and the United States also have
competing claims to the seabed below the North Pole, an area
containing as much as 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas
according to a US study.
The area is not currently regarded as part of any single country’s
territory and is governed instead by complex international
agreements.
On Aug 2, a Russian expedition sent a mini-submarine to the ocean
floor 4km below the North Pole to further Moscow’s claim to the
Arctic.
Moscow argues that waters off its northern coast extending to the
North Pole belong to its maritime territory because an underwater
feature, the Lomonosov Ridge, is an extension of its continental
territory.
Yesterday, Denmark sent a month-long
expedition to the North Pole to study the same underwater ridge to
see
if it is connected to
Greenland, a Danish territory.
The Danish mission, called Lomrog (Lomonosov Ridge off Greenland),
is supported by a Swedish icebreaker called Oden and a Russian
nuclear icebreaker called 50 let Pobedy (50 Years of Victory).
The team plans to collect bathymetric, gravity and seismic data to
map the seabed under the ice, according to a Danish science and
technology ministry statement on the expedition.
It set off from Tromsoe in northern Norway, returning to Norway’s
remote Svalbard islands on Sept 17.
The lead researchers are Martin Jakobsson from Stockholm
University in Sweden and Christian Marcussen from Denmark’s GEUS
(Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland).
The North Pole seabed is not currently regarded as part of any
single country’s territory and is governed instead by complex
international agreements.
In a unique expedition early this month, Russian explorers planted
a flag on the seabed 4,200m below the pole.
The move drew derision from Canada, with foreign minister Peter
MacKay likening it to tactics used in the 15th century.
Canada and the US are also engaged in a dispute over the future of
the Northwest Passage, the partially frozen waterway that links
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. – BBC
 
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