Melting Arctic calls for greater cooperation, not confrontation

"If man cannot get to the Pole, the Pole must come to man." Jules Verne's fanciful proposition in The Purchase of the North Pole, published in 1889, is acquiring an uncomfortable realism. Global warming is doing what Verne's fictional engineers imagined, transforming an inaccessible wilderness into a commercial opportunity, with the Arctic becoming a shipping corridor, a mineral treasure house and a geopolitical fortress. The trouble is that the ice is disappearing faster than the world can agree on what actions to take.

On Tuesday, the European Commission unveiled its first revised Arctic strategy since 2021. Ursula von der Leyen, its president, warned of colliding geopolitical plates. The proposals include more satellite surveillance, protection for undersea cables and additional icebreakers. Europe's anxiety is understandable. Its priorities, however, are increasingly contradictory.

The Arctic contains an estimated 13 percent of the world's undiscovered conventional oil and 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas. Its emerging shipping routes could shorten journeys between Asia and Europe. Yet this strategically indispensable region lacks a comprehensive treaty comparable to the Antarctic Treaty system. Instead, maritime law, national jurisdictions and an increasingly strained Arctic Council form an imperfect patchwork. Antarctica has demonstrated that international cooperation can restrain geopolitical competition. The Arctic, with its established sovereign territories and military installations, cannot easily repeat that achievement.

But the European Union seems determined to make consensus harder.

Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, has openly warned against China and Russia gaining "control" of the Northern Sea Route. Yet commercial cooperation is not territorial conquest. China and Russia call for increasing Arctic cargo traffic, developing polar-class vessels and cooperating through the Arctic Council to preserve regional stability, according to a joint communique issued on Wednesday after the 31st regular meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of government. Brussels has no legitimacy to interfere in lawful cooperation between China and Russia on Arctic affairs.

The route remains seasonal, expensive and hazardous. But it offers European importers and exporters another option at a time when traditional maritime choke points face disruption. Europe risks treating a potential commercial advantage as a strategic offense.

The greater contradiction lies across the Atlantic. While the claims that Chinese merchant vessels "challenge" Europe's interests are baseless, Greenland's future is a real question that should be decided by Greenland and Denmark in accordance with international law. The threat Canada faces of being turned into a state of its southern neighbor hardly inspires confidence in Arctic territorial integrity. Brussels has defended Greenland's sovereignty, but its continuing dependence on Washington exposes the limits of European strategic independence. Apparently, threats to the rules-based order are more difficult to identify when they come from an ally.

The EU's new strategy retreats from its earlier ambition for a binding international prohibition on new Arctic hydrocarbon development. Meanwhile, the United Nations' latest emissions report warns that existing national commitments remain nowhere near sufficient to restore a credible pathway toward limiting global warming to 1.5 C above preindustrial levels. COP31, which will be held in Antalya, Turkiye, from Nov 9-20, might not be able to repair that gap through diplomatic declarations alone. Wealthy countries are obliged to provide developing economies with the finance and technology needed for a faster transition.

China's principles on Arctic cooperation — respect, cooperation, mutual benefit and sustainability — offer a more constructive starting point, provided they translate into rigorous environmental safeguards, navigational safety and respect for coastal states' legitimate rights. Multilateral coordination should include Arctic communities and non-Arctic stakeholders alike.

Governments should view with caution the so-called development opportunities that global warming is opening up in the Arctic. The thunder of collapsing glaciers sounds like nature registering its objections to humanity's priorities. Verne imagined mankind bringing the Pole closer. Some Western politicians today seem determined to do so by bringing their quarrels to it.