Greenland pushes for complete self-reliance

NUUK — Greenland wants to gain full independence from Denmark.

”Independence is the ultimate goal,” said Joergen Waever Johansen, Greenland’s minister for self-government, justice and natural resources.

Johansen plans to achieve this through a radical package of economic, educational and social reforms.

Sounding much like Quebec nationalists who want to see “winning conditions” before holding another referendum on sovereignty, Johansen said Greenland’s plan to achieve the conditions for becoming a self-sustaining nation includes a social scheme that will change where Greenlanders live and how they will make a living.

Incentives, such as a so-called “mobility fund,” will enable people to move for a job.

At the same time, policy changes will also make it harder for people to live in remote, more economically dependent communities.

The government wants to end uniform prices for utilities across the island, and it also plans to make communities harder to live in, by reducing boat services between communities, forcing travellers to take more costly flights by air instead.

The result of these measures is that many of Greenland’s larger municipalities will flourish. Others, Johansen admits, will “quietly disappear.”

Fewer municipalities in Greenland will mean the cost of government will go down as Greenlanders congregate in places where there is work.

“Sustaining 56,000 shouldn’t be a problem in the long term,” Johansen, although a local Nuuk newspaper called him a “dreaming prince” this week.

Greenland doesn’t lack for jobs, Johansen says, because some 6,000 jobs are now held by Danes — jobs that could be held by Greenlanders. Many jobs, such as driving taxis, don’t even require special technical skills or education.

The home rule government’s grand plan also calls for fewer public sector jobs. It wants to have two out of three Greenlanders working for private businesses and reduce the number of Greenlanders who are dependent on social assistance or other subsidies from 21 per cent to two per cent.

Johansen maintains the key to Greenland’s independence is a self-sustaining economy. Most Greenlanders support independence, he says, but studies and polls show they don’t want to see their standard of living suffer as a trade-off for more autonomy.

“In the end it’s all just a matter of economics,” Johansen said. “That’s really where the political challenge is.”

To beef up the economy, Greenland’s dependence on the fishing industry will have to be reduced, Johansen suggests, ending the dominance of “red gold” or shrimp in the economy.

More new jobs will have to come from resource development, which include a new gold mine as well as possible promising oil and nickel deposits.

As water-based hydrogen fuel technology evolves, Johansen also sees tapping into Greenland’s ice and water as a way to produce the jobs and revenues an independent Greenland needs.

A recently-formed self-government commission with 14 members and equal representation from the Greenlandic and Danish parliament has a two-year mandate to plot Greenland’s increased control over foreign affairs, justice and natural resources — the three big areas where Greenland is seeking more power.

After this commission finishes its work, there will be a plebiscite on self-government. Greenland held similar referendums in 1978, first to approve the home rule government, and then in 1983 on whether to enter the European Union.

“The process towards having a larger degree of self-governance is on its way: the sledge is moving,” Johansen said.

The commission will look at a proposal to keep all revenues from resource development in Greenland instead of sharing the royalties with Denmark.

Johansen said Greenlanders don’t want the same relation with Denmark as Nunavut has with Canada: Greenland wants to keep its complete sovereignty over the land and management of natural and living resources.

Also up for discussion is whether to recognize Greenlandic as the sole official language of the island, instead of giving equal status to Danish.

At least for now, Greenland isn’t asking for full independence from Denmark and its parliament. The self-governance commission will operate “with respect for the Danish constitution.”

It’s uncertain when and how Johansen’s dream of independence can be realized, but an Icelandic political observer visiting Nuuk said Greenland, like Iceland, now an independent nation of only 280,000, “can do it and it will.”