Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 17 – Most officials east and west view the Arctic as a frontier, a largely empty place that businesses and countries can exploit for their own purposes without worrying about the consequences for the region itself, according to Vitaly Zemlyansky, a Russian specialist on the region who now works at the University of Zurich.
As a result, Russia and other countries interested in the region have taken actions that have undermined the human and natural communities who live there and led to the spread of the consequences of those actions to the rest of the world as well, he says (posle.media/article/nuzhno-otkazatsya-ot-vzglyada-na-arktiku-kak-frontir).
Global warming has exacerbated these problems, Zemlyansky says. It has opened more portions of the Arctic for development even though it is undercutting human infrastructure built there, and this has led to the spread of the view of the Arctic as an inexhaustible reserve of resources whose development is unlimited.
But that ignores two important facts that are all too often neglected. On the one hand, much of the Arctic is already heavily developed, especially in its Russian sections, but overall because oil and gas rigs are keeping the lights on 24 hours a day there in an increasing share of the country.
And on the other, while the size of mineral reserves there is enormous, developing them is going to be extremely damaging unless the international community comes together and agrees on rules for doing so. If that doesn’t happen, then the Arctic will be despoiled and both its residents and those of the rest of the world will suffer.
As people who live and work in the Arctic often say, Zemlyansky adds, “what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” a fact of life that too many governments in their race for resources, profits and power are all too often inclined to forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment