Denmark to lay claim to North Pole, leaked documents suggest

AMY HUSSER AND RANDY BOSWELL
Postmedia News

OTTAWA — The race to lay claim to the North Pole — in which Canada has a stake — has heated up with reports suggesting that Denmark will hoist a symbolic flag over the top of the world next month.

According to Danish media reports, Denmark will make an official claim for territorial rights to the North Pole before a UN deadline set for 2014.

They cite a leaked draft of the European nation’s official strategy for the Arctic, in which the Danish government states that annexation of the North Pole will be one of Denmark’s official policy objectives.

The official strategy — outlining Denmark’s 10-year plan — is expected to be released in June.

But don’t expect news of the claim to lead to a freeze in diplomatic relations, says one Canadian Arctic expert.

UBC professor Michael Byers said Denmark’s plan to officially make a bid for the North Pole is “good news.”

“This is a positive development because Denmark . . . is working in a framework of international law,” he said. “It is exactly how these matters are supposed to be resolved.”

Byers said any claim on the North Pole specifically is largely a “symbolic” gesture.

“The North Pole is simply one geographic point in a large ocean,” he said.

“It will enable some Danish politician to stand up and tear at a few heartstrings among nostalgic Danes, but it is purely of symbolic consequence.”

What will be important, said Byers, is the scientific mapping of the Arctic seabed, which ultimately will determine sovereignty through a UN-appointed committee.

Examining such things as the shape and the sea floor and sediment in the region will ensure “the Arctic does not become a Wild West zone,” said Byers.

“Another key point here is that we don’t yet have a dispute because we haven’t yet seen Denmark’s map, nor do we have one of our own. It’s only when we can compare the submissions, can we see if there is overlap,” said Byers.

“In the next year or two, (Canada) will do likewise and we’ll see who will have the stronger hand.”

Danish politicians have speculated that Greenland’s proximity to the central part of the Arctic Ocean would give Denmark the strongest claim of any polar country to undersea territory at the North Pole.

But any Danish claim to the pole — along with the rest of Denmark’s 2014 submission to the UN for extended sea floor possessions — will be tested against competing claims from Russia and Canada, the two other countries likely to make a case for boundary extensions that far north.

Norway has made its Arctic claims already and has specifically indicated it has no designs on the Pole.

Canadian and Danish scientists, in fact, collaborated annually between 2006 and 2009 in mapping and analyzing the key geological formation running between North America and the North Pole: an undersea mountain chain called the Lomonosov Ridge.

Jacob Verhoef, the Halifax-based federal geologist who is the head scientist and chief architect of Canada’s continental shelf project, told Postmedia News on Tuesday that the Canadian-Danish collaboration on Lomonsov Ridge research will be key to both countries’ claims for extended territory in that part of the Arctic.

Russian scientists have argued that the seabed below the North Pole is a natural extension of the Eurasian continent, while Canadian and Danish experts have jointly published evidence that the ridge running to the Pole is best understood as an extension of North America.

Verhoef acknowledged Tuesday that competing Canadian, Danish and Russian claims over the Pole “could be done separately,” with the UN commission ultimately sorting out the validity of each claim based on the submitted scientific documentation.

The Lomonosov Ridge stretches an estimated 2,000 kilometres from the Danish-Canadian boundary waters north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, directly past the North Pole and across the Arctic Ocean toward the Siberian coast.

Russian, Canadian and Danish researchers have all spent years collecting sea floor geological data suggesting the ridge is a natural extension of their respective national landmasses — the key criteria under a UN treaty that allows countries to expand their jurisdiction over offshore territory well past the current limit of 350 kilometres from the coast.

In 2007, Russia sparked what was been widely described as a “race” for the North Pole and a “rush” for Arctic Ocean oil — increasingly accessible because of the melting polar ice cap — by sending a mini-submarine to plant a flag at the North Pole sea floor.

Under Verhoef’s direction, Canadian researchers have amassed what he has previously called “very positive” evidence that the Lomonosov Ridge — as well as a second undersea mountain to the west, Alpha Ridge, and offshore parts of the Beaufort Sea — constitute “natural prolongations” of the North American continent.

“Theoretically,” Verhoef told Postmedia News in 2008, if the Lomonosov Ridge is proven to be attached to North America, then Canada — as well as Denmark — “could use it to extend its outer limits beyond the pole. The same could be true for Russia, now measuring from the other side.’’

Canada is to make its submission under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea before the 2013 deadline.