Who owns the Arctic? Last week, Canada effectively said the region is their’s. The Canadian government submitted an application to the U.N. last Friday claiming the outer limits of country’s continental shelf includes the North Pole.
Canada joins the other seven nations with arctic borders鈥擱ussia, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and the U.S.鈥攅ying the resources beneath the northern sea.聽The U.S. Geological Survey estimates this unclaimed region contains 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 15 percent of undiscovered oil.
“We are determined to ensure that all Canadians benefit from the tremendous resources that are to be found in Canada’s far north,” John Baird, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, told .
But Canada’s not the first to claim this frozen, harsh region of the world. In August 2007, Russia planted its flag on the seabed below the North Pole to further Moscow’s claims to the Arctic.
Following Canada’s claim last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his military leadership that building a military presence in the region should be a priority.
President Putin asked them to pay “particular attention to the deployment of infrastructure and military units in the Arctic,” . This summer, the Russian military reopened a Soviet-era airbase abandoned 20 years ago on the northern Novosibirsk Islands, or New Siberian Islands, which are strategically located on a passage for ships to travel from Asia to Western Europe.
: “Next year, we have to complete the formation of new large units and military division [in the Arctic].”