From: Canada.com, Aug. 29, 2008

EUROPEANS URGED BY NORDIC NATIONS TO PROTECT ARCTIC

By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service

Just days after [Canada's] Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveiled his government's vision of the Arctic as a potential resource bonanza, a report commissioned by top ministers from Europe's Nordic countries is urging the European Union to embrace a new role as the Arctic's environmental guardian and to throw its considerable political and economic weight behind polar protection over exploitation.

The report is the latest sign that economic and environmental interests are colliding in the Arctic, where a record retreat of sea ice is raising alarms about the effects of climate change, even as Canada and other countries pursue seabed claims and expanded resource rights.

While acknowledging that the five individual nations with Arctic Ocean coastlines -- Canada, Russia, the U.S., Norway and Denmark -- are the key players in the region, the report urged a collective Europe to focus on environmental issues as its principal response to the melting Arctic's recent emergence as a geopolitical and economic hot spot.

The report, issued Friday by the Nordic Council of Ministers, calls on the EU to build an Arctic policy around the principles of environmental stewardship, "an area where the EU could already throw its full weight as a significant Arctic actor."

Citing the EU's leadership in oceans research and on climate change, the report urges the creation of an Arctic policy based on "the precautionary principle, the principles of preventive action, that environmental damage should be by priority rectified at the source, and that the polluter should pay."

The Copenhagen-based Nordic Council includes political representatives from Denmark (including Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

The report follows recent debates in Europe and in North America over whether the Arctic Ocean should be administered under a special science-focused international convention similar to a treaty that governs the Antarctic Continent.

But a summit held in Greenland in May, attended only by the five nations with Arctic coastlines, made clear that those countries do not support any new international governance regime for the polar region beyond such existing treaties as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Canada and the four other Arctic nations did pledge in the summit's Ilullisat Declaration to co-operate in balancing economic development and environmental protection in the Arctic.

A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey, however, confirmed that the Arctic Ocean and surrounding coastal areas contain a wealth of oil and gas deposits representing about one-quarter of the world's known hydrocarbon reserves.

Earlier this week, ahead of a three-day Arctic tour aimed partly at boosting his government's election fortunes, Harper declared Canada's northern frontier an "incredible endowment" of oil, gas, gold and diamonds that "will fuel the prosperity of our country for generations."

Opposition critics, including Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, quickly hammered Harper for focusing on the Arctic's potential resource wealth at the expense of its "fragile" environment.

Copyright Canwest News Service 2008