Fools Rule by William Marsden

Author:William Marsden [Marsden, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36673-3
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2012-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

Other countries are not so slow. The United States is planning to replace its current fleet of polar icebreakers. Even the state of Alaska is considering using its oil revenues on two Polar class breakers. And then there is China.

China’s aggressive Arctic policy calls for the construction of new icebreakers. For the last decade it has launched about twenty-six expeditions each year to conduct extensive research on ice in the Arctic—in addition to its projects in the Antarctic—using the Snow Dragon, the largest non-nuclear icebreaker in the world. At 21,000 metric tons, it has twice the displacement of Canada’s largest icebreaker and is forty-three meters longer. It sports seven laboratories and carries three small-craft vessels, a helicopter and the latest in scientific and navigation equipment. In 2009, China decided to build a new, smaller polar research icebreaker to sister Snow Dragon. Delivery date: 2013.

Chinese scientists have been researching Arctic ice since 1995, when they hiked from Ellesmere Island to the North Pole. In 2004, China established a permanent research station in Ny-Alesund on the High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.5 Those islands are the sovereign territory of Norway and have become the base for China’s Arctic research. They are also the location of the world’s seed bank. Seeds from around the world are preserved in one of three permafrost vaults cut 120 meters inside a mountain near the town of Longyearbyen.

The islands’ history provides a lesson for modern times. Northern European fishing and whaling nations had for years disputed their ownership, but nobody lived there, so no country could establish permanent status. Only when coal and other minerals were discovered was there a need to stake a claim and make rules. The Spitsbergen Treaty—also known as the Svalbard Treaty—of 1920 awarded sovereignty over the islands to Norway, but gave other signatory nations the right to live on the islands and establish commercial enterprises and research stations. So while Norway refs the game, anybody who signed the treaty can play. So far, only Russia and Norway have mined the islands, albeit under environmental conditions imposed by Norway. Ten countries have research units on Svalbard. China became one of about forty participatory nations when it signed the treaty in 1925; Chinese scientists thus have the right to be here and gather ice and weather data and, if they want, prospect for ore. They are headquartered in a large red two-story rectangular building guarded by two five-foot-tall alabaster Chinese lions.

China’s signature on the Svalbard Treaty could also give it a claim to offshore resources, which pinpoints a key Arctic dispute. Norway, backed by Canada, claims the Svalbard continental shelf is part of mainland Norway and therefore not covered by the Svalbard Treaty. Russia and China disagree.

China’s polar research is centered at the Polar Research Institute of China in Shanghai. Snow Dragon is the institute’s ship. But many other Chinese institutes also perform extensive polar research. Their work was compiled in 2009 into a major report on Arctic issues that included topics such as Arctic

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