Climate change is changing all the rules in the Arctic. The polar ice cap is smaller by some 1.8 million square kilometers than it was in the two decades before 2000. The annual melting of northern ice this year may well surpass last year’s - the furthest retreat of Arctic ice in a single year since it was first measured.
The Northwest Passage - the route through the Arctic Ocean at the northern edge of the American continent - is likely to be open and navigable again before summer’s end for the second time in two years. And, according to new satellite images, the eastern sea ice blocking a northeastern passage above Siberia has melted too, turning the Arctic into an island surrounded by open water for the first time ever.
What was once solidly frozen is now, increasingly, accessible, leading to fierce disputes over territory and natural resources. Perhaps the biggest of these disputes is whom do the waters in the Northwest Passage belong to: Canada, or are they international- Canada has already staked its claim, requiring foreign ships to report when entering waters within 320 kilometers of its northern shores. The previous limit was 160 kilometers.
Canada is also backing a new search to find the Erebus and Terror - Sir John Franklin’s ships, which were lost during a 19th-century British expedition to the Arctic - in order to “take ownership of the history of this place,” as one historian put it.
Meanwhile, the United States, Canada and Russia are all busily mapping the underwater continental shelf in order to bolster claims to what are believed to be vast mineral deposits, including oil and gas.
The two poles of this planet could hardly be more different. In the Antarctic, a scientific truce of sorts remains in effect. But the Arctic is increasingly a scene of commercial and territorial conflict.
The only tolerable way to shape the future of the Arctic is through international cooperation, not a sovereignty battle. There is more to protect than access to valuable resources and shortened shipping routes. There is a desperately endangered and fragile ecosystem as well, which is threatened both by global warming and by the commercial development warming allows.