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January/February 2008 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Polar vision Feature: Carbon cemetery Feature: North Shore highway The Inside Story Editor's Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Slicing the polar pie
With vast resources lying under the floor of the Arctic Ocean, claims to the polar region are heating up. How will the boundaries be drawn?
By Steven Fick and Alyssa Julie

A team of Russian researchers made headlines last August when they plunged their submarine 4,000 metres down to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to symbolically plant their national flag. The incident highlighted growing pressures on the international community to clarify international boundaries at the top of the world, where a 21st-century resource rush is gaining momentum.

The Arctic Ocean’s wealth of fossil fuels and minerals — a booty estimated at 10 to 25 percent of the world’s supply — is becoming increasingly valuable to polar nations. Warming temperatures and superheated economic interests are spurring Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway and Denmark to jockey for a piece of the polar pie. There are two leading proposals on the table for how to divide the territory (below), a decision that will ultimately have enormous economic implications.

As it stands, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea gives the five countries (other than the U.S., which has yet to ratify it) jurisdiction over zones extending 200 nautical miles from their coasts (below). But the UN says countries may extend their claims if their continental shelf surpasses that limit or if they can prove that an undersea ridge is an extension of their shelf. Inevitably, portions will be unclaimable. Canada has begun mapping its continental shelf to help bolster its claim.

To complicate matters further, many bilateral boundaries within the 200-nautical-mile limit have not been finalized. The Canada-U.S. border, for example, has been established to only 12 nautical miles offshore, and Canada and Denmark have not agreed on the boundary north of Greenland.

Current ownership Two proposals for dividing the unclaimed polar region   Median line principle Sector method principle CLICK TO ENLARGE CLICK TO ENLARGE CLICK TO ENLARGE • Sovereignty is automatic for areas within a country’s 200- nautical-mile limit • Claims can be extended beyond the 200-nautical-mile limit if a country can prove that its continental shelf surpasses the limit or that undersea ridges are part of its shelf. It is generally agreed that the Lomonosov Ridge is part of the continental shelf of both Russia and Canada. The nature of the Alpha-Mendeleyev Ridge is unclear, and the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge is not part of a continental shelf.   • A median line is a line every point of which is equidistant from the nearest point on the shoreline • Favours Canada and Denmark, doubling the portion each would receive under the sector method principle (RIGHT) • Russia would receive about the same under both principles • The United Nations has shown some preference for this principle • Based on straight longitude lines • Favours the United States and Norway, doubling the portion each would receive under the median line principle (LEFT) • Russia used this principle in its unsuccessful 2001 submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf

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