Reel 2 — Contention over the Arctic

EXT. NORTHERN SEA ROUTE — AERIAL — DAY. Long lens over open Arctic water; a thinning ice edge. Cut to a container ship leaving a wake through residual floes. Lower-third: The Northern Passage. Previously impassable. Increasingly transited.

Ice melt has enabled navigable transportation of the Arctic, introducing a new route for global commercial shipping. The impacts are unprecedented — on the global climate, on the global economy, and on international relationships. The contention over the Arctic should be examined in an unbiased manner. Sources drawn from many countries and many institutions. Not solely from the country that has the most of them.

SUPER: Contention over the Arctic. Hold. Cut to title card on black.

Nations react to the Arctic differently — by geopolitical interest, by economic priority, by environmental concern. The five Arctic nations sit on coastlines or strategic positions along the new trade routes. They may benefit most economically. Indigenous communities and fragile ecosystems may suffer most from increased shipping and resource extraction; and nations dependent on alternative routes — Egypt at Suez, Panama at the Canal — may be disenfranchised by the realignment.

"Indigenous communities such as the Inuit in Canada have struggled maintaining certain traditions — predicting the weather, for example — particularly because of the changing climate in the region. The responsibility for managing ecological impacts will likely involve a combination of international agreements and cooperation among Arctic states and stakeholders."

Like all the oceans, the Arctic is governed by the principles of international law — including UNCLOS, which recognizes the sovereignty of coastal states and their territorial waters. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea established, in Article 76, the rules for determining extended continental shelf limits. Applying those rules requires geophysical mapping and knowledge of the seabed geology. The United States recently announced an extension to its economic exclusivity zone, extending its maritime boundaries in the Arctic and surrounding areas. France and China are among the countries actively awaiting approval for similar extensions.

The Northwestern Passage off the coast of Siberia has deeper waters than the Panama Canal. It is forty percent shorter. It can cut commercial shipping costs by thousands of metric tons. The Northern Passage is, on paper, a good shipping option — economically and environmentally. The maintenance is expensive. The geopolitics, more so.

Many navies have invested in their Arctic capabilities. Military operations have been conducted within the Arctic circle by various countries. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 demonstrated that Russia shows no fear in flexing its military capabilities. Russia is estimated to have spent two-hundred and eleven billion dollars on its operations in Ukraine — and as of 2024, there is no de-escalation. The Kremlin is already suffering economic sanctions and international condemnation; if Russia is willing to violate UN agreements there, it would not be surprising to see it risk conflict in the Arctic.

NATO views the increased competition and militarisation in the Arctic by regional and external stakeholders as concerning, and has issued a statement designating the Arctic as an integral part of its deterrence strategy against Russia.

GRAPHIC: Animated side-by-side — Northern Sea Route vs. Suez Canal. Lower-third: Figure 4, after Tabata et al. (2021). The NSR is the shorter route.

Tabata and colleagues — Otsuka, Goto, and Takahashi, writing in Polar Science — frame the Arctic problem across four axes: the Northern Sea Route, environmental sustainability with natural resources, interaction between humans and the environment, and Arctic governance. Because of Arctic sea ice retreat caused by global warming, the Northern Sea Route is opening up; and it is, the authors note, the only way to transport natural resources from the Russian Arctic coast to non-Arctic markets. If the route becomes a working corridor between Europe and East Asia, it reshapes the international logistics network — and the economic relationship between the two regions.

The Arctic Council — founded in 1990 — comprises Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. It is the principal coordinating body for the region. But there are other nations with interest in the Arctic Ocean — China among them. And in recent years, the economic possibilities have produced geopolitical change: a sharpening competition between the United States, Russia, and China — with each viewing the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route as critical to its future development, and each actively working to undermine the others.

"Tysiachniouk and Petrov — writing on benefit sharing in the Arctic energy sector across Northern Russia and Alaska — find that transnational energy companies extracting oil and natural gas in the region share these landscapes with local communities, indigenous populations, and state actors. The companies face serious policy challenges around benefit sharing."

"They identify four modes — paternalistic, company-centered social responsibility, partnership, and shareholder. In practice, most regions had two to four of these modes co-existing. The benefits, the authors conclude, are highly variable; and they depend on the institutional, financial, political, and geographical setting of each place."

EXT. RUSSIAN ARCTIC COAST — DAY. Wildlife sequence — polar bear at the floe edge; walruses on shore; reindeer in tundra. Cut wide to a coastal town adjacent to the route.

Three major Arctic routes are now viable for diverting traffic from the traditional southern lanes: the Northwest Passage, the Northern Sea Route, and the Trans-polar Sea Route. The conflict is not simply environmental versus economic. It is also a question of provenance — these routes have only become navigable as a result of the global climate crisis. Shorter Europe-to-Asia transits may save energy and reduce pollution relative to Suez. But the calculation must also include resource extraction along the Eurasian Arctic, sea ice collapse and melt, ice-breaking vessel capacity, and the development of towns adjacent to the route.

"The Russian Arctic coast is rich in wildlife, supporting thriving ecosystems with nearly every species of Arctic mammal — polar bears, Arctic foxes, Greenland whales, narwhals, beluga whales, Atlantic walruses, ringed seals, many wild reindeer, and roughly one thousand varieties of plants. These species have already been impacted by global climate change and polar sea-ice melt. They will be put under significantly more strain by the specific threats of industrialisation along the routes."

Powers racing to claim and develop the Arctic have put forward environmental policies; and studies suggest that environmental governance has become, as much as anything, a soft but aggressive instrument of positioning. Canada, the literature shows, has used its Arctic environmental security policies to prop itself up in the region. The development of the Northern Passage carries environmental risk — and the question of who owns the Arctic remains, on the environmental axis, very much open.

Without responsible development of these routes and their adjacent human settlements, fragile ecosystems will suffer drastic disruption — and most likely failure. The consequences will not be confined to climate and nature. They will be felt by indigenous communities first, and most acutely.

Establishing which shipping route is more economically viable is not straightforward. Ice-capable ships are expensive. Standard Panamax vessels can transit the Panama Canal at a fraction of the cost. Somanathan, Flynn, and Szymanski — writing in Maritime Economics & Logistics — modeled both routes using a transit and stochastic cost framework, and found little material difference once a Canadian Arctic Class 3 vessel requirement was imposed on the Northwest Passage. Lu and colleagues, in a more recent International Journal of e-Navigation and Maritime Economy paper, ran a more in-depth mathematical model — and concluded that the Northwest Passage could reduce both transportation costs and transit times relative to the Panama Canal, particularly as global ship sizes outgrow Panama's largest-vessel limits of 195.1 metres long, 32.6 metres wide, and 12 metres draft.

Canada and Quebec hold significant collective interests in the Northern Passage. Although Quebec is geographically on the outskirts of the Canadian Arctic, it carries substantial political influence in shaping federal policy — including Arctic policy. Quebec's experience with indigenous issues and environmental challenges can positively inform Canada's Arctic agenda; and in 2015, Quebec issued Plan Nord, a policy focusing solely on the Arctic, organised around the dual objectives of economic development and environmental protection.

"Further study of the economic dynamics and implications of Canada's involvement in Arctic shipping is paramount — to handle changing challenges and possibilities in the Arctic. Plan Nord stresses the broader implications of Arctic development for Canada's diverse provinces; and the cost-effective option remains, even after all the modeling, genuinely uncertain."

The conclusions are uneasy. The Arctic region is becoming more volatile. Climate change and new technology have made the Northern Passage more accessible as a trade route — and brought new environmental concerns and new policies to ensure the region's safety. It remains hard to decide exactly who owns this new territory, and who is responsible for it.

FADE TO WHITE. Title card: Blarg Papers — Volume 1, Issue 2 — Contention over the Arctic. Bylines: Sean Emmanuel · Anton Holmstrom · Finn Masterson · Natascha O'Donnell-Downey. Source: research conducted at Trinity College Dublin, 2025. Hold five beats. End.