Anne Siders of Columbia’s Center for Climate Change Law said countries bordering the Arctic are not the only ones with interests there.
“There certainly will be interest in the Arctic from nations that don’t touch physically on the Arctic; that’s very clear for natural resources, for fishing, for a variety of reasons,” said Siders.
Energy supplies are among those reasons. Siders says China and Japan are seeking influence - so far unsuccessfully - in the Arctic Council, an international forum of eight countries that border the Arctic.
Scientists say more open water in the Arctic means more evaporation and extreme weather elsewhere. The Earth Institute’s Peter Schlosser adds that warmer water around Greenland could melt some of the island’s glaciers to the detriment of low-lying areas everywhere.
“They are impacting sea levels, for example. If you look at the tropical Pacific and island nations there, they experience sea level rise and their existence is actually threatened by that,” said Schlosser.
The Arctic is far from most of the world’s population. Scientists, however, caution that distance is no guarantee people will be spared the effects of warming in the planet’s northernmost regions.
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2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27
2013-11-27