Major business and shipping opportunities could await in the Canadian Arctic as global warming opens once-frozen channels near the North Pole — but with a potential challenge to Canadian sovereignty, says a northern strategic studies expert.
As climate change slowly transforms the Northwest Passage and other polar straits into viable commercial routes — scientists point to data showing both a nine-per-cent decrease in northern ice cover over the past three decades and a 40-per-cent reduction in ice thickness — Canada is already facing issues in monitoring the region, says Rob Huebert, associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
“If I was a betting person, I would bet in the next 10 years we are going to see some major international crisis along the lines of the voyage of the Polar Sea or the Manhattan,” Huebert told a meeting of the Alberta Geomatics Group last week.
“All of the science tells us . . . that probably by the year 2050 we are going to have the Northwest Passage, and possibly the entire polar cap, melt during the summer period.”
The U.S. has publicly flouted Canada’s claim over the passage — first by sending the tanker Manhattan through the ice-encrusted channel in 1969 and then the icebreaker Polar Sea in 1985. Washington and other countries have insisted that the passage be governed by international maritime law, like the Strait of Malacca in Malaysia.
But satellite coverage of Canada’s north is still inadequate, Huebert told the AGG, which represents about 100 members involved in gathering and processing geographical data using technologies including GPS (global positioning satellites), remote sensing and GIS (geographic information systems).
A northern east-west sea lane open to traffic other than icebreakers and expensive ice-classified research vessels could have a huge impact on several areas, including commerce, national territorial integrity and the environment, particularly with long-distance transport of potential pollutants.
Huebert predicts increased shipping traffic will spell a boom in economic activity for northern settlements, but will also bring the inevitable smuggling of goods, drugs and people.
Traditional maritime shipping routes between Europe and Asia involve passage through the Panama Canal, while oil from Venezuela must be shipped in supertankers south around the Horn of Africa.
A trip through the Northwest Passage — now only navigable between August and October — would shave off more than 7,000 nautical miles, “a tremendously huge savings for any transportation industry,” says Huebert.
But the Canadian claim of sovereign control over the Northwest Passage is based on the federal government’s position that the route lies within “internal waters” — the United Nations’ Law of the Sea Convention awards sovereign-like control over ice-covered straits.
“Canada has always argued that since this region is ice-covered for almost all of the year, this is not an international strait, and you cannot use it for shipping,” says Huebert.
But other countries view the passage as a potential commercial route. “We know when the conditions are right, the Russians, Americans and the Europeans will make a challenge,” adds Huebert, who is also an assistant professor in the U of C’s political science department. “We will see a huge door open as climate change makes this region more accessible.”
Several recent incidents point to a renewed interest in the passage — including the incursion of a Chinese government survey vessel which showed up unannounced and undetected at Tuktoyaktuk in the summer of 1999, and in the same summer, a submarine sighting in Baffin Bay.
Inuit hunters reported seeing the sub surface, but it disappeared by time Canadian Aurora maritime patrol planes were scrambled to the area.
A floating Russian drydock was towed through the channel in 1999 en route to Bermuda, the first time a non-Canadian ship used the route for commercial purposes. International eco-tours are also pushing farther north as conditions permit.
Yet current satellite technology is not capable of ensuring adequate surveillance over Canada’s North, says Huebert, and combined with limited icebreaker capability and huge distances, virtually leaves this country in the dark when it comes to incursions on its northern waterways.
“We have almost no capability,” he adds, “of knowing what’s going on up in that region.”
