I'm on an island near the North Pole and I'm here to find out who owns the Arctic.
As the ice melts more and more in this region,
you can see just how dramatic the ice has been shrinking.
One of these countries has shown that they're willing to fight for it.
Russia's making a new push into the Arctic.
This is the Wild West.
Investment opportunities opening up in sort of an unusual area: the Russian Arctic.
The Arctic region has strategic and economic importance.
The pace of melting is only getting faster.
Russia projecting its power.
Use diplomacy to avoid further conflict in the High North.
So, I'm not allowed to
take my camera down into the mine. So I've been given this explosion-proof
super fortified camera. In case it explodes, it won't cause a death fire for
the entire community.
This coal mine is owned by the Russian government,
it's in a town with Russian flags,
and the bust of a Russian Communist revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin.
But, this isn't Russia.
It's Barentsburg, on the island of Svalbard near the North Pole.
It's a place that exists for strategic reasons, not for making money.
In fact it loses money. Has for decades.
Russia funds this place because for them, it means influence in this region.
A frozen ocean, that is melting more and more every year due to the changing climate.
This is what the Arctic Ocean looked like in
September 1984. Fast-forward thirty two years and this is what it looks like:
September 2016.
Most of the world sees this as a looming disaster, but for the
Arctic nations this change means an opportunity:
Access to a brand new ocean.
Here's what geologists think oil and gas resources might look like in the Arctic.
The US Geological Survey estimates that the region holds 30 percent of the
world's undiscovered natural gas and 13% of its oil.
These resources are still remote and costly to access but they're more
accessible every year and suddenly this desolate region is very interesting to the world.
New shipping routes are also opening up and this ocean, that was once frozen,
is now navigable for longer periods every summer, cutting weeks off
the trips between Asian and Western markets.
The topic of borders in the
Arctic region is a little bit complex and it's an issue that's still open
for discussion and negotiation. Currently the border lines in the Arctic Ocean
look like this.
Every country gets their default maritime borders that are
200 nautical miles off their coast. The rest of the water that doesn't fall within
these exclusive economic zones, is up for grabs to anyone who can prove
that it belongs to them. And that has a lot to do with a continental shelf.
A continental shelf is a part of a country's landmass. It's just covered with ocean.
The continental shelf continues until it drops off into the deeper parts of the ocean.
Since the ice has been melting, countries have been sending out
submarines to gather data on the continental shelf. They put together a
scientific case and submit it to a UN committee. This committee reviews it and
decides whether or not the country's claim is scientifically valid.
Extending from our coastlines, lying beneath the sea, is an extension of our country
called the continental shelf. It determines the new borders of our
country. Knowing where the edge of the continental shelf lies, adds millions of
square kilometers to our country and makes the resources on the seafloor and
beneath the seabed, Canada's.
So far Norway and Iceland are the only two nations
whose continental shelf claims have been submitted and approved by the UN, but
others have submitted claims that are waiting for approval.
Look at Russia's claims versus that of Greenland,
the large Arctic island that actually belongs to Denmark.
The claims overlap significantly.
Canada is in the process
of gathering data and is expected to submit a claim that will also have some overlap here.
The UN committee that evaluates these
claims is made up of scientists, not diplomats. Their sole job is to say
whether or not the claim is scientifically valid.
It's then up to the
countries to negotiate how to work out who gets what.
Russia has shown its interest in having a claim that extends all the way to the North Pole.
In 2007 Russia went so far as to plant
its flag on the seafloor under the North Pole.
And if push comes to shove, Russia
likely won't concede its North Pole claim to the tiny nation of Denmark,
whose claims overlap with theirs. Russia is easily the biggest player in the
Arctic neighborhood. Half of the Arctic is flanked by Russian coast and they
easily wield the most influence and they have the most to gain from global
warming and the ice melting. And so they're refortifying and renovating a lot of
their strategic outposts here in the Arctic.
50 airfields by 2020,
putting special forces. They're training, holding military exercises in the Arctic.
In recent years Russia has been reopening, fortifying, and building new military
bases in the Arctic region. They've been publicizing their military exercises,
which include reindeer, huskies, and soldiers in uniforms that look like
they belong in a Star Wars film.
Russia is sending us important signals, that in the Arctic,
they will project their own power and capabilities and I don't see a
sufficient response from the US and NATO, to recognize that increased military position.
One of those outposts is the town of Barentsburg, which is right
behind me, here on the island of Svalbard.
Barentsburg isn't a military facility, like all those other dots on the map, but
it serves a similar purpose. And to understand why Russia wants a town on
this island, you have to understand Svalbard. It's unlike any other piece of
land on earth and not only because it's the northernmost inhabited part of the planet.
The Svalbard treaty, signed in 1920, says that any country who has
signed the treaty can have its people on Svalbard and exploit the land for
commercial or economic purposes. The land technically belongs to Norway, but 45
countries have signed the treaty and so 45 countries have economic claim to this land.
The one rule is that no nation, including Norway, is allowed to have
military assets on Svalbard. So Russia set up a coal mine up here, not
to make money. Russia pays for these coal
miners to be here to sink economic roots into this land. If there's ever
dispute about boundaries or if oil is someday found off the shores of Svalbard,
Russia will be at the table where those discussions are happening and
Barentsburg will be their bargaining chip.
It's their claim to this land.
What's most fascinating to me, is that this strategy plays out with people.
The people living here in Barentsburg are effectively placeholders for a Russian
strategy for the Arctic. And yet when you talk to them that's not really on their mind.
They're not thinking about geopolitics,
they're not thinking about the changing landscape of the Arctic, and
what that means for Russian policy.
For Russia, coal has been their main economic activity,
it's what they've been doing here for years, but coal is in decline
and their operation is slowly losing people and interest and so they're
realizing they have to pivot to a different economic activity, that is more
sustainable for the future. And for them the answer is tourism.
On Svalbard, it's kind of clear: the coal mining era,
is something which is, you know, disappearing.
It's a bust.
Tourism, science, nature protection is its future.
You can see Russia's renewed interest in this island taking place
when you walk around the town of Barentsburg.
The consulate is undergoing
some renovation right now. They're like gutting the whole thing and renovating
after years of neglect. It's a small village of a few hundred people and it
has an entire consulate. This consulate serves more as a statement than a
functional asset for the Russian government.
All these renovations suggest
that they expect this ghost town to become a major tourist destination, but
making money isn't the motivation here.
Of course it's impossible that
Barentsburg one day will support itself without any funding from the government.
It's impossible.
The pivot to tourism isn't just about keeping deep
economic roots in Barentsburg. It also serves a purpose of turning Barentsburg
into a spectacle, for people to see just how much Russian identity is tied to the Arctic.
Newly refurbished buildings, new Arctic theme bars, museums that tell the
story of Russian presence in the Arctic.
These aren't military bases or airfields,
but this sort of projection of culture and identity goes a long way in creating
association with a place, in exerting influence.
It's called soft power.
Funding all of this on a faraway island that belongs to Norway, is the epitome of soft power.
And it's a perfect complement to Russia's surge in hard power in the Arctic.
Remember all those dots?
The most long-range air patrols with bear bombers since the Cold War,
forty five thousand troops, three thousand four hundred military vehicles,
forty one ships, fifteen submarines, and a hundred and ten aircraft.
What do you think Russia's trying to achieve in the Arctic with that massive military buildup?
I don't know.
I believe, however, that we are going to have to figure it out.
But up until now Russia has been playing by the rules
on the maritime borders front. Following all the UN protocol and making
claims in a very orderly fashion, but they've also shown some provocative
behavior in protecting their influence in the region.
On the one hand for Russia
to benefit economically from the Arctic, it has to be a stable cooperative environment.
The best thing you can do to spook off companies and economic investment,
is to think that the region could be prone to conflict.
But we have to remember that this is the government that annexed Crimea a few years ago.
It's a government that's not afraid to project power in its neighborhood.
They're showing us both tracks, sort of this dual policy of wanting to be open
for business, but be able to growl a little bit and show its muscular teeth
for its military and those two, eventually they're a little incompatible.
This region is changing fast.
The treaties and norms that have kept it
in order for years are becoming incompatible with the physical realities.
As the ice melts, the region will become more valuable. New borders will be drawn,
and new opportunities to project power will emerge.
We can only hope that Russia continues to play by the rules.
My favorite part about being in the Arctic while I was making this story,
was going on these late night hikes.
A lot of the footage in this video was shot after midnight,
when the sun would kind of just hover around the horizon.
The light would be beautiful for hours at a time.
And it was just such a crazy experience to watch the sun never set.
Anyway, thanks for watching the second episode of Borders, I published the first episode
last week. And I'm going to continue to publish these every week, on Tuesdays.
I also want to say a big thank you to lululemon, who is a sponsor of Borders.
They sent me these ABC pants, which are
these sturdy pants are used for both active hiking, as well as just kind of lounging around.
They're super comfortable.
Thank you lululemon for sending me these ABC pants,
but more importantly thanks for supporting Borders, and for making this whole thing happen.
If you want to check out these ABC pants, I'm going to leave a link here,
where you can go over to the lulu shop online, and check them out for yourself.
That's it, stay tuned: one week from now, I'm releasing the next episode of Borders.