The need for Arctic cooperation

We teach about the Antarctic Treaty and its success in managing this huge area in such a way that military action and industrial development has been kept away from the region for decades.

Now the melting ice in the Arctic is placing extra pressure on this region, which is more complicated as it includes the land areas of a number of territories as well as the increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean.

Now this article in The Guardian suggests the need for increasing global cooperation in the Arctic as well.

It features some commentary from the Arctic explorer Pen Hadow, describing his experiences, which indigenous peoples have been warning of for years of course.

Without the ice as a natural barrier, the central Arctic Ocean – an amoeba-shaped area of water spanning more than 1m sq miles (2.8m sq km) off the coasts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, Norway and the US – is open territory. International waters are beyond any country’s jurisdiction.

Check out the work of Pen's 90 North Foundation. This aims to gain Marine Protected Area status for the central Arctic Ocean.

The foundation has teamed up with the University of Exeter and I look forward to seeing the educational resources when they emerge.