Even from the fishing village of Ilulissat – the largest settlement in
Greenland north of the Arctic Circle – this polar region looks like an unlikely
place to squabble over: dangerous-looking rocks and stark, treeless peninsulas
jut out from the edge of the Greenland ice cap, which spits ever-greater
quantities of icebergs into a frigid sea.
But since August, when a Russian submarine placed a flag on the seabed at the
North Pole, the Arctic has been high on the world's diplomatic agenda. Five
nations are now racing to claim new territory in the central Arctic Ocean, where
climate change is expected to open up valuable new shipping routes, oil fields,
and mineral deposits.
The region's indigenous people, the Inuit, want a say in how territorial claims
unfold.
"We must develop, for the sake of my people and the world at large, a formal
international process focusing on the Arctic that includes indigenous people ...