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  The Last Gold Rush: Coastal Nations Grab for Ocean Floor Riches

The Last Gold Rush Coastal Nations Grab for Ocean Floor Riches

By SPIEGEL Staff

Part 2: Staking Claims

Russia, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States have now chosen the obvious route by meeting at the Greenland conference to work toward a mutually acceptable solution to the Arctic question. But the fact that things are progressing peacefully now is no guarantee for the future, when the exploitation of natural resources from shelf zones becomes a profitable, everyday business. The potential for greed -- and, therefore, conflict -- is enormous.

The coastal zones, as they are currently defined, cover an estimated area of 60 million square kilometers (23 million square miles) worldwide. This could be increased by 15 million square kilometers (5.8 million square miles), the equivalent of three-quarters of the area of North America. France alone, thanks to its overseas possessions, could grow from about 11 million to 12 million square kilometers (4.2 million to 4.6 million square miles).

The French have already conducted 14 surveying trips on board IFREMER frigates, the Institute for Polar Research's research ship Marion Dufresne, and navy frigates. Geologist Roland Vially, a team of 15 scientists and two dozen sailors spent more than four weeks on board the Marion Dufresne, examining the ocean floor at depths between 200 and 5,000 meters (656 and 16,404 feet).

A wide-angle sonar system supplied the data the team used to develop a 3-D map of the ocean's floor. The sonic depth finder enabled the scientists to examine the structure of volcanic rock at the point of transition between the Kerguelen Plateau and the deep sea. The documents will soon be submitted to the CLCS.

Roland Vially is satisfied with his mission. "We wanted to stake out our underwater claims, in this case, against the Australians," Vially says. "There were no difficulties." In places where there was overlap -- for example, in the Kerguelen Islands and off the coast of New Caledonia -- the French came to an agreement with Canberra or were at least willing to exchange research results with their Australian counterparts.

Players Large and Small

The only real spat so far has been between Australia and tiny East Timor. Oil is already being produced between the two countries, and they have managed to establish a line of compromise. But poor states like East Timor have neither the power to successfully weather conflicts nor the ability to back up their claims with scientific data.

And what about the United States, the world's only remaining superpower? It hasn't yet ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea. For a change, this is the work of neither the Bush administration nor American industry, but of ultra-conservative senators who see any new UN treaty as subjugation and have blocked the necessary two-thirds' majority in the US Senate.

Instead, the United States makes do by conducting its own surveys. This year, it will spend $5.6 million (€3.6 million) to prove that its continental shelf extends further than 200 nautical miles and that the continental shelf in northern Alaska is 200 kilometers (124 miles) wider than was previously assumed.

Neighboring Canada has already taken the kind of action portrayed in the GBN's scenario. After the Russians sent long-range bombers over the Arctic for the first time since the end of the Cold War, Ottawa mobilized two warships, a submarine and 600 soldiers and police officers to participate in Operation Nanook. Prime Minister Stephen Harper also announced that his country would build up to eight armed icebreaker ships to conduct polar patrols at an estimated cost of $3.1 billion (€2 billion). Canada is also building a cold weather military training center in Resolute Bay.

Harper's goal, quite simply, is to lay claim to large sections of the Arctic. "In our view," he said, "the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: Use it or lose it." This attitude has led Canada to engage in a dispute with Denmark over Hans, an island that may be connected to the North Pole by an underwater ridge. Canada is also at odds with Russia over several maritime zones, and it is even arguing with the United States over the Northwest Passage, which might soon be navigable as Arctic ice melts.

Trouble Brewing in the East?

Despite the fact that the ministers who met last week in Greenland ultimately agreed to settle future disputes over the North Pole peacefully and under UN auspices, experts like Scott Borgerson, a member of the US Council on Foreign Relations and a former officer in the US Coast Guard, predict that the region "could erupt in an armed mad dash for its resources." The situation could become especially volatile in the Pacific, pitting China, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam against one another.

Why, for example, is Japan going so far out of its way to protect the fragile coral reef of Okinotori, Japan's southernmost island? The answer isn't difficult to find. The tiny bit of land between Taiwan and Guam consists of two tiny elevations that could soon disappear as a result of climate change -- and Tokyo is claiming a nautical zone of 400,000 square kilometers (154,000 square miles) around this islet -- an area larger than Japan itself.

Beijing has protested that Okinotori should not even be classified as an island under international law. But, Japan has continued nurturing the reef to stop erosion of the strategically important specks of land.

As bizarre as the details of this Chinese-Japanese spat may seem, the real issues are natural resources -- especially natural gas -- as well as military control over the waters surrounding Taiwan. Moreover, in the South China Sea, a dispute that has been going on for decades has resurfaced. Beijing has been involved in a long-standing dispute with Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia over the Spratly and Paracel islands, which lie in another area believed to hold reserves of oil and gas.

Chinese patriots agitating on the Internet claim that dominance of the seas is critical to the development of a nation in the 21st century. According to them, "there will be definitely be a war involving China, Japan, Vietnam and others."

By Rüdiger Falksohn, Uwe Klussmann, Cordula Meyer, Jan Puhl, Stefan Simons and Wieland Wagner

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan