The World in 2050_ Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith [80]
Despite the hype about mad scrambles and looming Arctic wars, that cooperative spirit has persisted. The early twenty-first century saw the Arctic Council release the influential “Arctic Climate Impact Assessment” (a consensus science document, modeled after the IPCC assessments) requiring collaboration and sign-off from all of its members.346 A multitude of international collaborations was completed, without drama, during the International Polar Year. A major study of the region’s current and future shipping potential—again requiring international cooperation and sign-off by the eight NORC countries—was completed in 2009.347 The list of other examples of successful cooperation and integration between supposed adversaries, on things like search-and-rescue, environmental protection, aboriginal rights, science, and public health, is long.
To be sure, the thorniest matters—national security, sovereignty, and borders—have been (and continue to be)348 scrupulously avoided. But unlike the past, the Arctic today is no longer a place of suspicious neighbors, armed to the teeth, who don’t talk to each other. Instead, there is in place a remarkably civil international network, one that is working cooperatively and effectively at many levels of governance.
The Rule of Law
The second reason to doubt the eruption of an Arctic War lies in UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Contrary to popular perception the Arctic is not a ruptured piñata. On land, its international political borders are uncontested. For the Arctic Ocean, there are now clear procedural rules for laying claim to its seabed, and indeed any other seabed. Most importantly, just about every country in the world seems to be following them.
UNCLOS was negotiated over a nine-year period from 1973 to 1982 and has emerged as one of the most sweeping, stabilizing international treaties in the world. As of 2009 it was ratified by 158 countries, with many more in various stages of doing so. Of the eight NORC countries, seven have ratified UNCLOS. The one glaring holdout—the United States of America—is obeying all UNCLOS rules and sending signals that it will eventually ratify the treaty. It therefore constitutes one of the most agreed-upon rulebooks in international law and is a highly effective agent of order.
The cornerstone of UNCLOS is the creation of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending from a country’s coastline for 200 nautical miles (about 230 statute miles) outward into the ocean. A country has sole sovereignty over all resources, living and nonliving, within its EEZ. It has the right to make rules and management plans and collect rents for the management and exploitation of these resources. The invention of these zones has greatly reduced “tragedy-of-the-commons” overfishing and other resource pressures and disputes in the world’s coastal oceans.
That’s not to say UNCLOS is perfect. Now, disputes break out over island specks because they anchor a claim to a 200 nm radius circle on the surrounding seafloor. Tiny Rockall—literally a barren rock peeking out of the North Atlantic—has been claimed by the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, and Denmark. Denmark is also tussling with Canada over Hans Island, another speck sitting between the two countries in the Nares Strait off Greenland. The convoluted coastlines of Russia and Alaska open a doughnut hole of high seas in the midst of their Exclusive Economic Zones, into which Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Poland pour fishing trawlers.349 Finally, border disputes arise over how the two-hundred-nautical-mile extension is to be drawn with respect