The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Russia has submitted a bid to the UN for large swathes of the Arctic sea shelf.
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The 1982 U.N. Conference on the Regulation of the Sea establishes the fitting of nations to train sovereignty over an unique financial zone extending 200 nautical miles from their acknowledged shoreline borders.
In 2007, Moscow staked a symbolic claim to the Arctic seabed by dropping a canister containing the Russian flag on the ocean floor from a submarine at the North Pole.
The comment said that “as a foundation of the rights of Russian Federation in this area, an enormous amount of scientific data was used”.
The ministry is now saying that it has resubmitted its bid with new arguments.
“Submitting the claim to the commission is an important step in formulating Russia’s right to the Arctic Shelf in accordance with the United Nations convention on the Law of the Sea”.
That bid was rejected in 2002 by a UN commission on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
Since then, President Vladimir Putin has made making a claim to the Arctic a top priority, and inturn expanded Moscow’s military presence in the area. Kremlin officials said the facilities are crucial for protecting shipping routes that link Europe with the Pacific Ocean. Russian Federation boasts the world’s most powerful icebreaker fleet and has plans to expand its nuclear-powered vessels to assist foreign cargo ships through the passage that remains icebound for much of the year.
While countries squabble over who owns what in the Arctic, it’s slowly melting away.
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry issued comparable warnings concerning the fragile Arctic when he took the helm of the eight-nation Arctic Council at a summit in Canada’s Far North in April.
“The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth”. He added that it’s “crucial that the event we pursue is delicate to the life-style and historical past that folks need to maintain on to, and in addition that it’s sustainable”.
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But to secure the huge area, Russian Federation – whose economy is heavily reliant on natural resources – must beat similar assertions by the US, Denmark, Norway and Canada, as well as global energy firms.
