As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound

What will be left when the Arctic's polar ice cap is gone? The answer, in the eyes of the nations who border the Arctic Ocean, is untapped economic opportunity. New oil deposits, new fisheries, and new trade routes – including the fabled Northwest Passage – all promise tantalizing riches to what are now barren, frozen outposts. But who will get to tap those riches? Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark, and the United States all have claims to the region – and different ideas about precisely what those claims should be. Yet while Russia, Canada, Norway, and Denmark are aggressively asserting their interests in the region, other foreign entanglements have left the US with little energy to expend at the inhospitable roof of the world. Further complicating the issue, global climate change may also drive existing US economic interests (like the rich crab fisheries of Alaska's Bering Sea) into new – and foreign – territory. Meanwhile, as the shrinking ice cap heralds the start of a land rush in a region where there is no land, it also threatens to leave the region's native inhabitants high and dry. "As long as it's ice," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, leader of a transnational Inuit group, "nobody cares except us, because we hunt and fish and travel on that ice. However, the minute it starts to thaw and becomes water, then the whole world is interested." – YaleGlobal