Canada and Denmark in Hans Island negotiations

Hans Island has long been claimed by both Denmark and Canada

It appears that Canada and Denmark are inching closer to resolution over Hans Island, a tiny barren island sitting halfway between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

Relations between the two countries have been strained in recent years, and the dispute has taken overt political dimensions, with leaders from both countries visiting the island and military exercises being carried out in the region.

But the two countries are now in negotiations and have embarked on a joint mapping exercise, and officials on both sides are confident of reaching an agreement before Canada lodges its claim over the Arctic seabed to the UN in 2013, according a report in Canada's Globe and Mail on 26th January.

The two countries first attempted to delimitate their maritime boundary in the region in a 1973 treaty, which plotted 127 points through the Nares Strait. Hans Island, however, lies in between two points, and so has remained in dispute. While it has been agreed that the island does not have claim to a territorial sea – in other words that it cannot be used extend one or the other nation's claims for offshore drilling or fishing rights in the area, the issue is important for other reasons. At the heart of the dispute is shipping rights, and it seems that Canada is worried that giving in on Hans Island will compromise its exclusive claims to the Northwest Passage.

There are two probable settlement routes: the first is shared jurisdiction of the island, the second is to have a border running down the middle of the uninhabited island, giving the two countries a land border.

The steps being taken to resolve the dispute between Canada and Denmark mirror those taking place between Canada and the US over their Beaufort Sea boundary between Alaska and Canada's Yukon territory.

While the Americans have long sought a negotiated settlement, Canada has preferred to agree to disagree. But with petroleum companies increasingly eager to explore the hydrocarbon potential of the arctic, Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has signaled his willingness to reach a deal.

The past three summers, the two countries have carried out joint mapping expeditions of the ocean floor, and bilateral discussions continue. The mapping may not be able to be finished until 2013 because of short summer working seasons, and it is unlikely that an agreement will be completed until after then.

The nations that encircle the Arctic have agreed, under the UN Law of the Sea convention, to submit their claims over what they see as their fair share of the Arctic seabed to the UN for arbitration. Canada's deadline is 2013.

As for the biggest dispute of all, who controls the Northwest Passage, none of the players has even agreed to talk about it, and no resolution to the question of whether it is in Canadian or international waters is expected in the foreseeable future.

A major poll of some 9,000 people in eight Arctic countries has recently given some insight on views on their nations' relationship with the Arctic. Over half of Canadians polled said they supported a strengthened military presence in the north to protect against international threats, more than any other country.

Around three-quarters of the Canadians questioned believe that the contested Northwest Passage is in Canadian waters, and half of them believe the Beaufort Sea should belong to Canada.

When asked if they felt their government should pursue a firm line in defending their section of the Arctic, 43per cent of Canadians agreed. This hard line was echoed by 36per cent of respondents in Iceland, 34per cent in Russia and 10per cent or less in the United States, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

The research was published by Canada's Munk School of Global Affairs and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation.

Sources: BBC News, Globe and Mail

For more information on Arctic disputes, see the Menas Borders website, here.

Norway and Russia settle Barents Sea boundary dispute, but other arctic disputes continue

Efforts to settle decades-old claims to the arctic got a major boost last week when on 16th September Norway and Russia signed the 'Barents Sea Pact', which divided an 175,000sq km section of the Barents Sea between them.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the historical agreement in the Russian city of Murmansk on Wednesday.

“The treaty resolves what for several decades remained the most important outstanding issue between Norway and Russia,” Stoltenberg stated. “It sends an important signal to the rest of the world - the Arctic is a peaceful region where any issues that arise are resolved in accordance with international law.”

Much of the Arctic has been disputed between five nations – Russia, Norway, Canada, US and Denmark, for many decades, but as polar ice caps recede, making shipping and oil and gas exploration opportunities more feasible, the importance of delimitation has become increasingly important. It is thought that up to a quarter of the world's untapped oil and gas could lie in the region.

The dispute between Norway and Russia first received attention in 1957, when a short section of their maritime boundary, from the land boundary terminus through the confines of Varangerfjord was designated. This boundary was extended through Varangerfjord in 2007, but disputes continued over the lengthy section extending northwards through the Barents Sea and into the Arctic Ocean.

Norway argued for a median line boundary, while Russia (and previously the Soviet Union) advocated a 'sectorial' approach, which would have extended the boundary north along the 32° 4' 35" E meridian. The boundary agreed last week is a compromise between the two positions, as it sits eastward of a strict median line, but west of the sectorial line. The agreement also includes a provision for a 'special area' that is east of the boundary, but is within 200 nautical miles of the Norwegian mainland where Russia is granted exclusive economic rights.

Norway has used the occasion to encourage the other polar nations to follow their example and resolve disputes in the region. Canadian Foreign Minister, Lawrence Canon visited Russia and Norway last week, but talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have not brought the two sides closer together.

The Canadian–Russian dispute centres around the Lomonosove Ridge, an underwater mountain range running along the floor of the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Canada's Ellesmere island. Both countries claim that the underwater mountain range is an extension of their continental shelves. The dispute has been referred to the UN.

Canada has a similarly stalled dispute with Denmark over Hans Island, a small inhabited barren knoll which lies in the middle of the Nares Strait, between Ellesmere Island and Denmark's Greenland Territory.

A 1973 treaty between the two arctic countries plotted 127 points delimiting the border, however the treaty did not connect the dots and the island lies in between two points. The dispute flared up in 2004 and 2005 after government officials from both countries visited the island, but no progress has been made in moving towards settlement.

More progress has been made on Canada's dispute with the US over the Beaufort Sea. Ministers of the two countries met to discuss the issue in late July, and for the third summer in a row, researchers from both countries worked in the region mapping the sea floor.

A separate, but related concern is the issue of control over the Northwest Passage, which, due to retreating polar ice caps, is increasingly being seen as a shipping shortcut between Asia and Europe. Ottawa says that the Northwest Passage is Canadian sovereign water, but Washington and several other nations regard it as an international passage.

Despite these ongoing disputes, the fact that Norway and Russia were able to find a settlement, which still needs to be ratified by both of their parliaments, means that diplomatic solutions will probably prevail for other disputes in the future.

Sources: IBRU, CTV, Nunatsiaq Online

Canada, US hold secret meetings on Beaufort Sea dispute

Icebreakers Healy and Louis S. St-Laurent in the Beaufort Sea in 2009

Canadian and U.S. government experts met quietly in Ottawa last week to begin trying to resolve a long-standing boundary dispute in the Beaufort Sea, a Canadian diplomat revealed Monday.

News of the surprise talks was disclosed during a briefing by Canadian and U.S. officials on a bi-national seabed mapping mission to be conducted next month in the Beaufort region.

The Ottawa talks on the Beaufort controversy, held July 22, followed a pledge earlier this year by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon that Canada intends to actively pursue an agreement with the U.S. over where the maritime boundary should be drawn in an unresolved, Lake Ontario-sized section of the Arctic Ocean north of the Yukon-Alaska border.

This summer's joint Canada-U.S. survey, the third consecutive year in which researchers from the two countries have agreed to collaborate on mapping the Beaufort Sea floor, will also include a sonar probe of the contested area itself for the first time.

Beginning Aug. 2, scientists aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy and the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent will co-operate in a 42-day mission aimed at generating seabed data across a wide swath of the southern, central and northern Beaufort Sea.

The information is intended to help the two countries prepare their respective claims under a United Nations (UN) treaty for extended authority over submerged territory as well as potential petroleum deposits and other seabed resources. Canada 's submission to the UN agency on continental shelves, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), is due in 2013.

To secure extensions to their authority over extended stretches of undersea territory, countries must prove that clear geological connections exist between the continental mainland and adjacent stretches of sea floor.

Historically, the key area of dispute was a triangle-shaped, 21,500-sq.-km section of the Beaufort Sea close to the Yukon-Alaska shore. But the joint Canada-U.S. seabed surveys in 2008 and 2009 showed each country's claims could extend much farther toward the North Pole than previously imagined, doubling or even tripling the ultimate size of the dispute zone once continental shelf submissions are made.

The two countries have disagreed since the 1970s over where to draw the ocean border. It is a conflict that flares whenever fisheries management, oil-and-gas exploration or other resource development issues arise in the region.

Canada 's position is based on an 1825 treaty between Russian and Britain that was transferred to the U.S. and Canada when the two countries acquired Alaska and the Yukon respectively in the latter half of the 19th century.

That treaty suggests the Beaufort Sea maritime boundary is an extension of the arrow-straight land border between Yukon and Alaska, which follows the 141st meridian.

The U.S. argues the offshore boundary is defined by an "equidistance" principle: The demarcation line at any point is drawn halfway between each country's nearest stretch of coastline.

But because the two countries are working to expand their seabed domains in the central and northern Beaufort — also potential petroleum targets — an area much larger than the traditional dispute zone is coming into play.

Under the U.S. formula for determining the maritime boundary, the looming presence of Canada's Banks Island on the Beaufort's eastern side radically alters where the border between the two countries would be drawn in areas farther out to sea.

According to the U.S. position, Alaska's northward-sloping coastline means the sea's southern maritime boundary veers slightly eastward of the Yukon-Alaska land boundary, giving the U.S. a greater amount of marine jurisdiction.

But the overlap in the northerly expanse of the Beaufort would be much larger and reversed, with the boundary under the U.S. formula swinging far to the west because of Banks Island, giving Canada a greater share of the potentially resource-rich seabed.

Meanwhile, Canada's longitude-line formula for determining the boundary would give the U.S. more seabed territory in the outer Beaufort.

Source: Vancouver Sun

For the full text of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, please see the menas borders eLibrary