Abstract
What is happening in the Arctic World is of importance globally because of the impact it is having on global climate and also on global mineral supplies, timber, energy resources, transportation, fisheries, tourism, environmental concerns, and scientific study. This paper was delivered as 7th Pundit Nain Singh memorial lecture at the International Geographical Union Commission on Marginalization, Globalization and Regional and Local Responses Annual Conference Nainital, India. It summarizes the progress of the Arctic world since it was almost unknown and in accessible to the outer world to the technology and capabilities exist to operate more or less efficiently in the Arctic world of Twenty First Century. The fisheries of the North, Barents, and Bering Seas are a major global food source. Since 1960, passenger and commercial aircraft have been using the Arctic in ever increasing numbers to connect Asia, Europe and North America. Big Science has entered into the Arctic World and involves numerous countries, while tourism has expanded dramatically. National and international environmental organizations are also having a significant influence on government policies particularly regarding resource development. In short, the Arctic World is now one, which is not just of major significance, but is being increasingly integrated into a global economy. The paper argues that for those who live in this part of the world, the most important aspect of our lives is to understand and influence these external forces which impact us with increasing force and complexity. This is globalization with a vengeance affecting a sparsely populated but very large part of the Northern Hemisphere.
Donald F. Lynch—deceased.
Note by the editors: This chapter is the 7th Pundit Nain Singh memorial lecture, delivered by Professor Emeritus Donald F. Lynch at the 2011 International Geographical Union Commission on Marginalization, Globalization and Regional and Local Responses Annual Conference in Nainital, Uttarakhand, India. Unfortunately he could not see it printed as he died on January 30, 2014. Given these particular circumstances, we have taken care to edit the paper in his spirit. This concerns particularly the subdivision into sections, which Don did not furnish. Also, the endnotes were converted into footnotes and the bibliographical references exported into a reference list. Finally, we completed the subtitle (which only referred to globalization) because the paper illustrates how an entire region is gradually moving out of oblivion and marginalization to become an active member of the global society. Prof. Lynch travelled to Nainital from Fairbanks, battling with cancer but so bravely that he was able to read the text on the famous explorer of nineteenth century, Pundit Nain Singh, on the way. He delivered an excellent lecture presenting an overview of a space (the Arctic world) that had been in the focus of our predecessor study group on highlands and high-latitude areas. We pay our sincere gratitude to him for attending the conference, which was the last conference of our commission he attended. We thank his former colleague, Professor Emeritus Roger Pearson, for reading through and amending the text.
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Notes
- 1.
A low estimate might be that the Arctic World contains about six to seven million people depending on where one draws the boundaries. Leaving out the great cities along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Russian portion is at least three million people. Some argue that the Arctic itself has three million people.
Some selected population data:
The Scandinavian north has probably about one million.
Yakutia has about one million.
The Canadian North has about 105,000 divided amongst the Yukon and Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
Northern Quebec and Ontario, the region of Hudson’s Bay, and Labrador are often considered part of the Arctic World.
Svalbard has 2753 people.
Murmansk has 336,137, Archangel 356,051, Noril’sk about 150,000.
The central Ob’Basin, Tyumen Oblast’, has about 3,000,000.
Interior, Arctic and Western Alaska including Fairbanks has about 200,000 people.
- 2.
From Bank of Finland Weekly, No. 44, Nov. 5, 2010 Russia Survey.
“Russia pushes for development of the Arctic. Russia has recently witnessed a sharp increase in interest of the Arctic region. This year, the country has arranged a number of international conferences on the Arctic economy, natural resources and environmental challenges. A major economic advance took place in September when Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Støre signed a treaty on territorial borders and resource exploitation for a 175,000 km2 block of the Barents Sea and Arctic Sea. The territorial issue had been pending since 1970.
The Arctic region consists of all the area north of the Arctic Circle. The total area of the Arctic exceeds 30 million km2 and represents about 6 % of our planet’s surface area. Even so, its resident population is only about 4 million. The Arctic Council provides an intergovernmental forum for countries with territories north of the Arctic Circle (Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States).
A 2008 US Geological Survey study estimated 22 % of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves lie within the Arctic region. The undiscovered oil in the Arctic region would represent about 13 % of global reserves, while natural gas about 30 %. The lion’s share of natural gas deposits is located in Russian territory, most notably in the West Siberian Basin, the Timan-Pechora Basin and the South Barents Basin.
It is estimated that over 80 % of natural resources in the Arctic region are located in sub-sea areas, which partly explains the lack of utilisation of the areas. The region’s harsh environment, lack of infrastructure and the sheer magnitude of investment needed to develop the area have limited plans to exploit natural resources.
Russians nevertheless believe in the Arctic region’s potential. Russia’s natural resources ministry says that over the next two years Russia will invest 2 billion rubles (about €48 million) to study the area.
The Arctic holds value not just for natural resources. A recent report from the Arctic Monitoring Assessment Programme, a working group of the Arctic Council, found the ice mass has been shrinking steadily for decades; by 2007 the summer ice mass was about 40 % smaller than in 1979–2000 on average. As a result, the Northeast Passage, which runs from the Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean to the Bering Straits and the Pacific Ocean, is expected to become a viable shipping route. Sovkomflot Shipping, which is owned by the Russian state, completed its first trial navigation of the Northeast Passage in September. The trip from Murmansk to Ningbo in China took 22 days, or half the time the same trip would take following the southern route through the Suez Canal. Even with reduced Arctic sea ice, the route would require icebreakers most of the year.”
- 3.
The Alaska Flag Song is easily and frequently sung.
Eight stars of gold on a field of blue,
Alaska’s flag, may it mean to you,
The blue of the sea, the evening sky,
The mountain lakes and the flowers nearby,
The gold of the early sourdough’s dreams,
The precious gold of the hills and streams,
The brilliant stars in the northern sky,
The “Bear,” the “Dipper,” and shining high,
The great North Star with its steady light,
O’er land and sea a beacon bright,
Alaska’s flag to Alaskans dear,
The simple flag of a last frontier.
- 4.
This is the concept of sequent occupance formulated by Whittlesey (1929). The concept is described in detail for the American West in Goetzmann (1966). This was just as true in Siberia and Northern Scandinavia where the main objects were first reindeer skins and subsequently fish and minerals such as iron ore. For the Alaskan and Greenland coastal areas, original exploration lead to whaling which in turn created trading posts.
- 5.
These rounded data are from the 2010 Census.
- 6.
There have been many descriptions of the miseries of the concentration camps over the past more than seventy years (e.g. Shalamov 1978). The camps in the Kolyma river basin northwest of Magadan were the worst in the U.S.S.R., and some three million people are estimated to have died in them.
- 7.
The author had the pleasure of visiting the two active Russian coal mines, Barentsburg and Pyramiden, in 1974. Frankly, I thought living conditions were quite good, but the mines seemed to exist more to maintain a Russian presence on Spitsbergen than serving an economic purpose.
- 8.
North American mega projects are described in Bone (2003). Similar grandiose Russian projects have including diverting water from the Ob’ Basin southward to Central Asia, building a railroad across the Bering Straits which is a very old both Russian and American idea, and building a dam across the Bering Straits with pumps to move more warm water into the Arctic Ocean to cause a major climatic change improving the conditions for life in the Russian north.
- 9.
For oil in Barents and Kara Seas see: Bambulyak and Svanhovd (2005) and subsequent reports.
- 10.
Scandinavian Airlines was the first western airline allowed to fly into Soviet airspace under very controlled conditions. One of the simple factors that made flying over the Arctic possible was the use of an azimuthal equidistant map projection for navigation.
- 11.
The DEW line, Distant Early Warning Sites followed the construction of the Pine Tree Line across central Canada and the still operational BMEWS stations in Thule Greenland and Clear Alaska. This involved building a large number of radar stations along the Arctic coasts of Alaska and Canada. Unmanned stations and then other means subsequently replaced it. However, for much of the Arctic this was the first real contact indigenous peoples had with the influences of the outside world. The Russians built a similar early warning system, but the details are unknown, at least to this writer. The Russians, sadly, used Novaya Zemlya as a center for nuclear weapons testing and the disposal of nuclear waste.
- 12.
The Indian Air Force has participated in our Red Flag exercises and American Air Force contingents have had exercises in India.
- 13.
Many efforts have been made by both American and Russian climatologists to quantify the impact of long periods of sunlight on the growing season. The measurements, known as thermic days, are useful but only approximations.
- 14.
The key legislation creating ‘federal national conservation units’ such as national parks and wildlife refuges is the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. Canada has created two large national parks abutting the boundary with Alaska. Wrangell Island off the north eastern Arctic coast of the Russian Federation has long been a national wildlife preserve.
- 15.
Ny Aalesund is an example of winter tourism. It is located at about 78° north latitude on the northwest coast of Svalbard. Originally a coal mining settlement, the mines were closed, and in the mid-1970s only a few people were there manning a research station. In recent years, however, the Norwegians have advertised it as a tourist destination and even the King of Norway has promoted it for snowmobiling.
- 16.
The rights of Alaskan Natives to land were postponed under the Organic Act of 1881 for future settlement by the U.S. Congress. The issues were addressed with the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, but its provisions are still being implemented.
- 17.
There is an argument that the 57,000 people of Greenland look forward to oil development to provide the financial basis for becoming an independent country rather than a dependency of Denmark.
- 18.
Under the Treaty of Cession of 1867, Russia and the United States agreed on the boundary separating the two countries in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, but neither has been able to agree on what that boundary is specifically and instead use the two hundred mile economic limit. This left a large area in the middle of the Bering Sea, known as the Donut Hole, as international waters free of supervision regarding fishing. A treaty is this regard was negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in 1994.
- 19.
Pierre Burton, a famous Canadian writer, has expressed a concept of Northerliness, by which he meant that people in the North were special. Siberians and Alaskans have often made the same claim. This author’s view is based on living in Alaska for more than forty years and on meeting people from other parts of the north. There are those who would disagree strongly with this opinion.
References
Arctic Council. (2009). Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, 2009 Report. Available at http://www.pame.is/index.php/projects/arctic-marine-shipping/amsa. Accessed 03 April 2015.
Bambulyak, A., & Svanhovd, F. B. (2005). Oil transport from the Russian part of the Barents Sea Status per 2005, The Norwegian Barents Secretariat and Akvaplan-niva, Norway (reports are published bi-annually).
Bank of Finland. (2010). Bank of Finland, Weekly, No 44, 5 November 2010. Russia Survey.
Bone, R. M. (2003). The geography of the Canadian North issues and challenges, Oxford University Press.
Goetzmann, W. H. (1966). Exploration and empire, the explorer and the scientist in the winning of the American West. New York: W.W.Norton.
Hall, M., & Saarinen, J. (2010). Tourism and change in polar regions. Routledge.
Shalamov, V. (1978). Kolyma Tales. (J. Glad, Trans.). London: Overseas Publications Interchange. (Penguin, 1980).
Smith, L. C. (2010). The World in 2050. Four forces shaping civilization’s northern future. Dutton.
Whittlesey, D. (1929). Sequent Occupance. AAAG, 19, 162–165.
Acknowledgement
I wish to Thank Professor Raghubir Chand and the conference organizers for inviting me to deliver this talk as 7th Pundit Nain Singh memorial lecture at the International Geographical Union Commission on Marginalization, Globalization and Regional and Local Responses Annual Conference Nainital, India, May 1–9, 2011.
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Lynch, D.F. (2016). The Arctic World in the Twenty-First Century: The Impact of Globalization on Demarginalization. In: Chand, R., Leimgruber, W. (eds) Globalization and Marginalization in Mountain Regions. Perspectives on Geographical Marginality, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32649-8_3
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