| Advertisement |
OTTAWA, March 30 (UPI) -- Washington has criticized Canada for failing to invite Scandinavian countries and indigenous groups to talks on the future of the Arctic, a region harboring vast natural resources. Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon invited his counterparts from the United States, Russia, Norway and Denmark to the meeting Monday of Arctic coastal states in Ottawa.
Advertisement
Groups representing the Inuit people as well as Sweden, Finland and Iceland -- the remaining members of the so-called Arctic Council, which discusses the future of the region -- reacted angrily that they were left out.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a rare public rebuke, said Canada should have invited all those groups with "legitimate interests in the region," which is transformed by climate change.
"What happens in the Arctic will have broad consequences for the Earth and its climate," Clinton was quoted as saying at the conference by BBC News. "We need all hands on deck because there is a huge amount to do and not much time to do it."
Cannon in a news conference tried to defuse tensions, saying that the Ottawa meeting wasn't convened "to replace or undermine the Arctic Council."
He added the five coastal states had no intentions to form a permanent institution. Rather, Cannon said, the states at the meeting discussed overlapping claims to parts of Arctic territory -- boundary disputes that have been going on for decades.
Yet Beth Hunter, a Greenpeace oceans expert, said she thinks there is a hidden agenda to the exclusive club, accusing it of "focusing on carving up the petroleum pie rather than ensuring a sustainable future for the Arctic."
Climate change is causing the Arctic ice sheets to melt, with the oceans in the region possibly ice-free during the summer months. This is opening a new Atlantic-Pacific shipping channel and makes the vast oil and gas resources lying under the seabed more accessible.
Nations have in the past years laid conflicting claims to the seabeds, with Russia and Norway rowing over a boundary in the Barents Sea, and the United States and Canada disagreeing over a swath of the Beaufort Sea and the Northwest Passage, which in 2007 for the first time in modern history was free of ice.
Russia sparked concern when one of its submarines planted a flag in the seabed in territory it considers its own at the North Pole in 2007.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty ratified by all Arctic Council members except the United States, states that Arctic border countries can claim ownership of natural resources up to 200 nautical miles off their coasts. Arctic nations are exploring to where their continental shelves extend -- findings that could increase their territories.
Meanwhile, environmental groups are worried that the Arctic, one of the world's most pristine natural ecosystems, may be destroyed by reckless industrial activity.
"The future of the Arctic is vital to us all, from the Inuit and other peoples who inhabit it to the low-lying nations and island nations that will suffer from sea level rises caused by climate change," Hunter said. "The Arctic Club nations need to consider the long-term impacts of their decisions, not just short-term profits from exploitation."
