Euroarctic Strategies and Synergies
Euroarctic Strategies and Synergies

Author(s): Urban Wråkberg
Subject(s): Politics, Regional Geography, Environmental and Energy policy, International relations/trade
Published by: Research Center of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (RC SFPA)
Keywords: Euroarctic; foreign policy; relations; strategies; synergies;
Summary/Abstract: That global warming is melting the sea ice of the High North has been making headlines for long. Some commentators have drawn further media attention by claiming that this melting is also eroding the hitherto stable number and positions of the northern geopolitical players. These alarmists have predicted a global scramble of national agents and private enterprises for newly accessible natural resources, particularly after a Russian flag was planted on the sea bottom at the North Pole in 2007 (a geopolitical stunt that some Russian individuals pulled while charting the seabed for the submission of Russia’s Arctic Exclusive Economic Zone to the United Nations). The idea has been propagated that the Arctic coastal states (and perhaps others) are competing to “claim sectors” of the Arctic. Many new map designs are circulating in the news and online attempting to demarcate actual and possible claims for Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in the Arctic. Deeming from discussions on blogs and in the media, because these maps are often unclear or viewed casually, and the accompanying text incomplete, many readers seem to confuse the EEZ with some kind of sectoral claim similar to the polar sectoral claims made by certain states in the 1920s. Some sectoral claims exist in the Polar Regions but are not generally acknowledged ¾ those in the far south were deactivated under the Antarctic Treaty. The EEZ, on the contrary, is a well-defined and accepted concept of international law.

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