The United Nations’ rejected Russia’s original claim for the same territory more than a decade ago, asking for more research to back it.
Advertisement
Under worldwide law, a country has exclusive economic rights over its continental shelf within a 200-nautical-mile (370-km) radius from its coast.
The Soviet Union has made its bid for broad territories in the Arctic region to the United Nations, as per its Foreign Ministry on Tuesday.
“Ample scientific data collected in years of Arctic research are used to back the Russian claim”, the ministry argued. Arctic nations have been jostling to claim more.
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 small submarine at the North Pole.
But global warming is changing that fast, as wider and wider areas of the Arctic become free of ice for all or part of the year.
At a Russian government-sponsored Arctic improvement convention in Moscow in January, scientists and economists disclosed their projections that the ocean shelf being pursued accommodates 90% of Russia’s remaining nickel, cobalt and platinum, 60% of copper, and virtually all the nation’s explored reserves of titanium, tin and barite. They point to a recent global accord to ban commercial trawling in the area as the better way forward in the far north.
The Russian Protection Ministry has additionally flexed its muscle over the contested Arctic riches with an enormous army train in March that deployed 40,000 troops, 50 warships and greater than 100 fight plane into and over the Barents Sea. “The protection of the Arctic is a defining issue for our times, and it can help bring countries together”.
Of these three shelves, the Siberian Shelf is the largest continental shelf in the world.
Advertisement
The Russian foreign ministry statement said the UN commission should expedite the review of its claim, placing it before those of other countries, because it was first filed in 2002.
