Mapping Canada’s North

Canadians see ice as an extension of land and treat it that way when they consider who owns and controls Canada’s north.

As the sea ice melts and the Arctic temperature rises, so are questions about sovereignty of potentially new navigable waters.  Arctic cooperation. U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard ships side-by-side

How much of the North is Canadian? How much does Canada control and how much does it own? Where does Canadian jurisdiction end and who controls the space beyond?

These are the questions a group of scientists from five Arctic coastal countries are trying to answer.

They hope their science will draw clear lines of where one country’s border ends and where another’s begins.

They also hope their science will prevent any political conflict between countries over who owns and controls access to the waters and their undersea resources.

The five countries with claims in the Arctic are Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark and Norway.

Larry Mayer, director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at University of New Hampshire, says the most significant areas of overlap are between Canada and the USA, and Canada, Denmark and Russia.

A region worth fighting for

There’s a lot at stake in the Arctic.

“There are large quantities of untouched natural gas and oil under the Arctic, [it’s] potentially the most resource rich area in the world,” Mayer says. “Countries want the rights to exploit it. It’s fragile ecologically, and countries want the right to protect it.”

Also, the Arctic contains many Northern communities. 

The traditionally coastal people use sea ice for hunting, fishing, travel and building their homes all year long, says Dr. Claudio Aporta, the principal investigator in the Inuit Sea Ice Use and Occupancy Project.        

When the ice melts and the Arctic becomes navigable, he says the Inuit’s traditional living patterns will be forced to change and a new influx of ships and people will be disruptive for communities. 

“Any development in the North will affect the Inuit communities,” Aporta says. “We can’t talk about environmental change without discussing social change.” 

The most controversial waters in the Arctic are those that make up the Northwest Passage – a strait from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific – which runs between Canadian islands. For Asian and European shippers, the passage would be more than 5,000 kilometres shorter than the current route through the Panama Canal.

The five Northern countries also want control over Arctic waters for protection. If the Northwest Passage is deemed an international strait for transit, many potential enemies and rivals could come uncomfortably close to North America.

Proving Canada's sovereignty

The Geological Survey of Canada is responsible for mapping Canada’s Arctic claims.

Dr. Jacob Verhoef, a director with the Survey, says once all science supporting Canada’s sovereignty has been collected, it will be presented to the United Nations. The UN will then compare it with data from other countries and ultimately determine ownership and control of the waters.

Verhoef says his team has found a lot more positive data than they expected.

“Canada should be very confident in its sovereignty claims” “Canada should be very confident in its sovereignty claims,” he says.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries control the coastal waters up to 200 nautical miles from their shore. But a country's sovereignty can be extended further if it can prove the sea floor is connected to the country’s land, which is referred to as a country’s continental shelf by scientists.

The Survey is collecting geographic data and studying the shape of the sea floor to determine how far Canada’s continental shelf extends.

When a country ratifies the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, it has 10 years to submit its scientific data to the UN.

Canada signed in 2003, so it has until 2013 to complete its research and sovereignty claims. Norway and Russia have already submitted their scientific data to the UN while the United States has yet to sign the treaty. Denmark’s data is due one year after Canada, in 2014.

Canada expects to finish all data collection early, in 2011, and then spend the following two years analyzing and preparing it for the UN, according to Mayer.

Mayer says he doesn’t know when the US plans on signing the Law of the Sea treaty, but it should be soon so that the UN can consider its claims along with the other countries. 

 Greenpeace workers on-site at the depleting Arctic 

Room for conflict

As countries map their continental shelves further and further from their shores, they are overlapping with other nations' claims. That’s where the UN’s scientists step in, Verhoef says.

“[Canada] will submit the best scientific data possible, and then we can do no more,” he says. “Then the UN scientists will judge.”

Because the stakes are so high, the UN’s decisions could potentially upset some countries.

Whether or not politicians will respect the scientific data remains unknown.

Kirill Kalinin, a political attaché with the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Canada, says there definitely won’t be any conflict.

“Whatever the UN decides, it will be the right decision and of course [Russia] will respect that,” he says.

However, Verhoef says there are areas of significant overlap where even science may not prove who has jurisdiction.

He says there’s even a possibility the UN won’t make a decision in areas where sovereignty is unclear.

“They may say ‘you guys work it out, we don’t know’ and throw it back to the countries,” he says. “Then, I guess, there could be some problems.”

Arctic navigation routes