GEOGRAPHICAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSION OF THE ARCTIC

The story of the Arctic begins with a temperature rise (the whole world warmed 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1880), the ice is melting (1981-2010 baseline, drop of 13% per decade), and a race for the Arctic starts. These changes mark new geopolitical transformations within the region. Currently, eight states (Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russia, The United States, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland) control land in the Arctic circle while only the first five of them have coastlines located within this region.

Each of these nations has its values, rights, and privileges. Since the previously inaccessible land now opens up, the Arctic Ocean has become contested geography. Each of the nation’s fight for their rights to control a part of the geographic territory. But before the whole area will be able to open up for economic development, sovereign governments need to figure out who owns what.I II III The dissertation consists out of a paper and ‘a bank of evidence.’ The combination of both invites the reader to not only think about the geographic and political implications of several global warming phenomena within the Arctic region (described in the paper), but also look at the changing environment which poses new questions related to several fields (showed and explained within the ‘bank of evidence’).

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