|
Politicians make promises on Arctic policy Renewable energy to be a priority, and international shipping rules must be established, Arctic parliamentarians decide By Sarah Hurst For Petroleum News
While President George Bush and John McCain were denouncing Russia’s actions in Georgia, parliamentarians from the United States, Russia and several other countries were getting together to seek cooperative solutions to burning issues in the Arctic. Talk of the war on the southern border between Europe and Asia was diplomatically avoided at the Eighth Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians, which took place at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in mid-August.
The conference ended with the adoption of a statement that included numerous action items. On energy, the parliamentarians pledged to “promote and invest in research, development and deployment of alternative and renewable energy sources suitable for the Arctic region. Special emphasis should be placed on the replacement of fossil fuels by solar, wind, biomass and other alternative energy sources,” the statement said.
150 attendees in Fairbanks About 150 participants came to Fairbanks at the invitation of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who summed up the results of the conference in an Aug. 14 call with journalists. The three main themes of the conference were adaptation to climate change, development of rural energy resources and human health in the Arctic, Murkowski said. Presentations were made on topics ranging from Arctic marine policy to the use of geothermal power in Iceland.
“We can learn so much from one another, and when you recognize that we’ve got so much in common, it’s not just our weather and the geography, being in the high north, we deal with small populations in large geographic areas,” Murkowski said. “We’re faced with changing conditions to our lands that make development of infrastructure more problematic. We’re seeing a great rush to resource wealth, energy resource wealth, and how you manage that,” she added.
Murkowski said she had to constantly remind her colleagues in Congress that the United States is an Arctic nation and needs to act like an Arctic nation.
“So let’s be sharing some of these best practices, learn from some of the mistakes, and try to advance an area of the globe that is really — I hesitate to say we’re being discovered; we know we’ve been here all along, but for many on the planet, the Arctic is just kind of this forgotten, cold place, and now that we’re learning how rich we are in energy resource up here, for instance, all of a sudden everyone’s paying attention. All eyes are upon us as we see the impact of a changing climate, because it’s more readily apparent here in the Arctic,” Murkowski said.
Tourism on the rise Tourism in the Arctic is another indicator of the world’s increased interest in the region, she said, and the opening up of new shipping routes due to reduced ice cover makes that tourism possible, Murkowski noted. Last year ships brought about 3,000 tourists to Greenland; this year the figure was up to 55,000 – almost the same as the total population of the country.
“Last year for the first time the Northwest Passage was wide open... Think what that means to us in terms of commerce and opportunity. But it’s also very challenging because we don’t have the infrastructure in place,” Murkowski said. “How do you provide for search and rescue in an area where you don’t have ports and harbors? How do you provide for any kind of clean-up if you have an accident in these waters? How do you provide just for things like communication when we really don’t have a level of communication ability up there?”
International Arctic shipping rules needed After listening to presentations by an admiral from Denmark and an admiral from the U.S. Coast Guard, conference participants agreed that there is a need to establish international guidelines for ships operating in ice-covered waters. An aerial photograph of Big Diomede and Little Diomede islands in the Bering Strait that was shown in one of the presentations was a visual reminder of how narrow the waters between Alaska and Russia are, Murkowski said. “You get tankers moving up there, you get cruise ships moving up there. There really needs to be an understanding of what the rules of the road are,” she added.
As Arctic nations compete for sovereignty over disputed territories in the region, the United States can stake its claim to resources on the outer continental shelf by ratifying the Law of the Sea treaty, Murkowski said.
In addition to representatives from Arctic nations, there were observers from China at the Fairbanks conference.
|
