by James Raffan
In a couple of days, senior ministers from the eight member countries of the Arctic Council and representatives from the permanent indigenous member organizations of the council would gather in Nuuk at the ultra-modern Katuaq Cultural Centre and do something pivotal. This Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council hoped to ratify the first legally binding agreement in the history of the intergovernmental body. Nuuk would become the venue for the coming-of-age party for the Arctic Council.
Boats buzzed in the harbour. Snow still lay everywhere, but the streets were open and water was starting to run in the gutters and ditches. There was fresh dolphin for sale at the Nuuk fish market; the heads of three of Flipper’s northern cousins were smiling up from a stainless steel table. Across from the arched main entrance of the Pisiffik Nuussuaq supermarket, people on the plaza were selling crafts from folding tables, as mothers with strollers, business people, children on bicycles, and elders opened the zippers of their parkas and enjoyed the relative warmth, ignoring the chill that was definitely still in the air.
Across Aqqusinersuaq Street and down closer to the water, the heads of the various national delegations were meeting at Katuaq, working to put everything in order. They would ensure that when the politicians arrived, the report of the Seventh Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council would include the much heralded first Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic.
Although the Arctic Council was created officially in Canada in 1998, the idea to bring representatives from the eight circumpolar nations together came from the Finns, who convened a conference in the late 1980s to talk about monitoring, assessment, emergency preparedness and response, and conservation of the Arctic environment. Scientific, academic, and governmental representatives from Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Denmark (Greenland), the United States, and the Soviet Union met in Rovaniemi in January 1989.
What made that gathering different from other such conferences was that, in addition to representatives of the eight circumpolar nations, there were also representatives of Arctic indigenous organizations at the table, in the spirit of the Berger Report. This was the first time that the Saami Council, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and RAIPON had participated as equals in the preparation of an international declaration.
The formation of the Arctic Council was a seismic event in the history and evolution of the Arctic for many reasons. Inclusion of indigenous representatives was a major one, but perhaps most dramatic was one of the provisions set out in the founding declaration, item 7: “Decisions of the Arctic Council are to be by consensus of the Members.” Although consensus decision making honoured the governance process used widely and for millennia by the indigenous peoples of the circumpolar world, the essential power of the Arctic Council that would emerge would be derived from who was at the table.
So perhaps the most complex problem in founding the Arctic Council was membership: who was in and who was out. Partly this question had to do with how the Arctic was defined; partly it was about political authority and, significantly, which states actually border the Arctic Ocean and which do not. Greenland, Norway, Russia, the U.S., and Canada all have Arctic coastlines. Sweden, Finland, and Iceland (somewhat strangely, because there is ocean between Grímsey and the pole), though within the Arctic Circle, do not border on Arctic waters. But these became the eight members of the Arctic Council.
After a day of speeches and deliberations inside the Katuaq Cultural Centre, Chair Lene Espersen, surrounded by smiles and pats of congratulation, emerged to say how pleased she was that this meeting had witnessed the transformation of the Arctic Council from “a decision-shaping organization to a decision-making council.” Indeed, as the draft declaration regarding search and rescue was circulated, it was headed “Strengthening the Arctic Council.” Among other provisions, it included a call for establishment of a permanent Arctic Council Secretariat in Tromsø, Norway, by 2013.
The creation of the Arctic Council and its growing power and stature have shaped the Arctic’s future in three significant ways: first, the council strongly affirms that northern people, particularly indigenous northerners, will be involved in decisions and will benefit from any developments that proceed; second, it makes clear that any environmental consequences of Arctic development are a circumpolar matter, involving everyone who lives there; and third, with the creation of a permanent Arctic Council Secretariat, it establishes a continuum of process, concern, and decision making that will allow for better prosecution of long-term plans even as democratically elected politicians cycle in and out of office.
Near the southern tip of Greenland, with Nuuk behind us to the north, we stopped at the town of Nanortalik, meaning “place of the polar bear,” although bears hadn’t been seen for almost a generation. We disembarked and learned about Nalunaq, Greenland’s only gold mine, just up the fjord. Owned by Crew Gold Corporation, a U.K.-based junior mining and exploration company, and operated by Procon, a Canadian mine services company, this mine produced more than 8,500 kilograms of gold (small compared with Kupol’s 56,700 kilograms since 2000, but a boon to the local economy nonetheless) between 2004 and 2008. Nalunaq gold was used for Danish royal wedding rings and a series of commemorative coins to mark International Polar Year (2007–8), and it was an indicator of what natural resource extraction meant to Greenland (and Denmark) in the past and what it could mean in the future.
As early as 1260, Greenland was considered a colony of the Danish-Norwegian territory because its Norse communities at the time agreed to pay taxes to the Norwegian king. By 1721, a Danish expedition had established a niuertogarfik or trade station near the modern-day location of Nuuk. A century later, in 1854, cryolite (a valuable mineral often called “white gold”) was discovered, and a mine that operated for the next 130 years was established at Ivittuut on the west coast. With that mine going strong, Denmark established a committee in the 1950s to regularize procedures for resource extraction: a committee to create a mining act for Greenland that was devoid of Greenlanders.
The effort to regulate mining at that time was part of the Grønlandskommissionen of 1950, known as G50: a much more comprehensive plan for public investment in infrastructure that was designed to help nurture private investment in Greenlandic industry. Although G50 did not work nearly as well as the government of Denmark had hoped, it did set the stage for Greenland to move from being a colony of Denmark to a semi-autonomous state in 1953. The move led to a series of initiatives to improve health conditions (tuberculosis was the main cause of death at that time), to educate the Inuit with a Danish-style school system, and to industrialize fishing, particularly along the west and southwest coasts. Although Greenland ceased to be a colony, legislation continued to come from Copenhagen, and in many respects, the Danization or modernization process made Greenlanders more dependent than ever on social and financial assistance from Denmark.
A second pan-Greenland development initiative, called the G60 plan, did what most colonizing governments have tried to do at one time or another: it enacted policies to concentrate the family groups scattered between the ice cap and the sea all the way around this massive island. This was done partly through positive incentives like the promise of new housing and access to schools, shops, and health care in the bigger settlements; and partly through negative incentives, like the closing of public facilities in the smaller settlements.
Of course, resettlement, as it was throughout the circumpolar world, was a huge perturbation to families and communities who had lived for centuries quite happily on their own paths and by their own devices. Lines were drawn to create arbitrary administrative jurisdictions; the process reminded me of a story I’d heard about when Sápmi was divided into four different nations. The Sami chastised each other in jest for being too Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or Russian (pick one) in their dealings with others after the new map had been drawn.
The “Second Copernican Revolution” in the late 1960s, when images of Spaceship E
arth came back from the Apollo missions to the moon, increased awareness of humanity’s effect on the environment and on its indigenous people. Greenland saw the same increase in awareness and activism that occurred elsewhere. But what was emerging was a deeply seated sense of pride and nascent national identity that allowed the people of Greenland to create, preserve, and protect who they were. For many years, I learned, Coca-Cola was not allowed on the product import list, for fear of the American cultural baggage that might arrive with it.
The Greenlanders themselves created a National Council. It had no legislative power, but the power of the people and positive communication began to take hold, and in 1975 the idea of Greenlanders owning Greenland was adopted by the National Council. This idea, and the critically important corollary of ownership of subsurface mineral rights, did not sit well with the Danes, but by this time the thought of Greenlanders taking some responsibility for their own affairs was out there. From 1975 to 1978 these ideas were hotly debated between Danish and Greenlandic representatives on the Home Rule Commission.
On January 17, 1979, Greenlanders overwhelmingly adopted Home Rule in a referendum. In May of that year, the Danish constitution was amended to create the Greenlandic parliament. As an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland assumed control of health, education, and social services but not—and this was key—mineral rights and resources. But this move was pivotal in giving Greenlanders a palpable sense of control over their own destiny as a northern people. A quick scan of current cultural institutions, like the museums in Nanortalik and other communities and the University of Greenland, shows that these were created after the establishment of Home Rule, a significant outcome of this devolution of power and the beginnings of intellectual and political autonomy.
The international financial community wasn’t sure what to make of Home Rule, but through the 1980s and ‘90s Greenland went about its business, winning on some fronts and losing on others. The Ivittuut cryolite mine and the Maamorilik lead and zinc mine closed. But commercial fishing, particularly for shrimp, continued.
Although social problems still plagued those who remained in the settlements—caught betwixt and between cultures, environments, and worlds—there was a pride evident throughout the land, particularly in the larger settlements. Fortunes in and on the water turned to economic opportunities on the land. In 2004, Crew Gold announced that the Nalunaq mine would begin commercial production. Gold, as ever, was highly emblematic of the possible promise of a new prosperity.
That prosperity did arrive, not via an offshore refinery but because of a decision taken in the Folketinget, the Danish national parliament. Following a second mega-referendum, Queen Margrethe II stood on June 12, 2009, and announced the passage of Act 743, the Act on Greenland Self-Government. This legislation honoured Greenland’s democratically elected assembly, called the Inatsisartut, and its government, and it devolved responsibility for the administration of justice, border controls, financial regulation and supervision, and a host of other new powers, including total control of mineral resource activities both on land and offshore.
The self-government law fixed the Danish government’s subsidy to Greenland at its 2009 level, 3.4 billion kroner (US$600 million). Unlike the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement, which devolved power to Canada’s newest northern territory with everything it needed to succeed except resource-revenue-generating potential, the Danish law gave Greenland the first 75 million kroner (US$12 million) in rates and royalties; after that, half the revenue over the 75 million kroner would be subtracted from the annual subsidy. Greenlanders were in a unique position in the circumpolar world: they got the necessary legislation to eventually take charge of their own affairs as well as the wherewithal to pay for them, through the royalty sharing agreement with Denmark.
What self-government would mean for Greenland remained to be seen, but one metric that stood out was that exploration for oil and minerals in Greenlandic lands and waters more than doubled in one year—from thirty-four permits issued and US$402 million spent in 2009 to forty-nine active permits and US$1.1 billion spent on exploration in 2010. Although these were not the actual revenues going into Greenland’s coffers, the numbers did indicate the scope of activity and the emergence of the very real possibility that Greenlanders might one day achieve total independence as a result of Denmark’s move.
After rounding the southern end of Greenland, we cut through Prince Christian Sound and turned up a smaller fjord to approach the tip of one of the many fingers of glacial ice that snake down to the sea from the Greenland ice cap. It was almost impossible to get any sense of scale or distance there, with sheer rock cliffs towering overhead on both shores. I went up to the bridge and looked to see where we were on the chart. Although the chart was only five years old, it showed ice where we were sailing. For more than four kilometres beyond where the map said the ice would start, we sailed through open water, as if chasing the glacier as it retreated back toward the mainland.
The effects of climate change are most evident in the North, and nowhere on my journey more than in Greenland. Change, at least politically and environmentally, seemed more a part of life in Greenland than almost anywhere else. And nowhere was that fact reflected more engagingly than in the politics of this harsh northern place.
On the same day that Queen Margrethe proclaimed Greenland’s self-government in 2009, there was a federal election that saw Jakob Edvard Kuupik Kleist sworn in as Greenland’s fourth prime minister. As a member of the Danish parliament and a vocal member of the leftist Inuit Atagatigiit (Unified Inuit) party, Kleist had been a great proponent of self-rule. His people-centric focus led him to concentrate on addressing the post-colonial social issues that plagued Greenland and so many other northern jurisdictions—alcoholism, domestic violence, and high suicide rates.
But he also wanted to make it known that Greenland was open for business, particularly in the resource extraction sector. Born in a small mining town called Qullissat on Disko Island, a place now abandoned by progress but surrounded by Cairn Energy’s offshore wells, Kleist knew both the economic benefits and the social costs of boom-and-bust development. Forward progress had to take into account the fate of people who lived in the place where the development was happening.
While the self-government campaign was building steam in the mid-2000s, a massive inland high-grade iron ore deposit called Isua was sold to a U.K.-based producer of iron ore for the global steel industry called London Mining. On the very edge of the ice sheet in the wilderness between Nuuk and Kangurlussuaq, Isua had been discovered in 1960, explored by one company, and further investigated by another in the 1990s.
London Mining, which had done very well in Sierra Leone at the Marampa iron ore mine, saw dramatic potential for its shareholders in the Isua project. Scoping studies in the summer of 2009 showed that, with the right permits to build infrastructure including an airstrip, a deepwater port, and a 105-kilometre pipeline to move the concentrated ore to the coast as a slurry, the company might build the Arctic business on the export of five million tonnes of concentrated ore per annum. Further investigations in 2010 doubled that number. The following summer, a team of contract hard-rock geologists and hydro geologists, along with experts in geomorphology, did more geotechnical and geomechanical drilling and completed a glacier-melting-rate study that allowed the projected annual output from the mine to jump to a seriously bankable fifteen million tonnes.
London Mining had engaged since 2009, it said, in two-way dialogue with local communities, civic organizations, and government agencies and was ready to go as soon as the exploitation licence and construction permits could be issued by the Greenland Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum. It sounded almost too good to be true, until it became clear who was going to be buying all that iron ore: China.
The People’s Republic of China had been cozying up to Iceland next door, and ramping up its icebreaker program with the hope of sending 250,000-tonne ore-carrying ships over the pole as soon
as the mine started to produce. In addition to bulk transit of commodities like iron ore, China was planning on running 5 to 15 percent of its shipping to the West through Arctic waters by 2020. Word got out that one of the consequences of China’s involvement in the Isua project was that London Mining was planning to operate the mine with as many as two thousand labourers flown over in shifts from Shanghai and Beijing.
Suddenly, Isua became a major issue in the 2013 Greenlandic federal election, with Prime Minister Kleist fighting for his political career. Given the strength of this possible new relationship with China, the electorate worried that he was giving away jobs and potential revenue in the continuing rush toward independence.
The other contender for the top political job in Greenland who was making herself known to the voters, 89 percent of whom were Inuit, was the clever and vivacious Aleqa Hammond, leader of the Siumut (Forward) social democratic party. She had found her political feet as a commissioner of the Inuit Circumpolar Council in the early 2000s and was first elected to the Inatsisartut in 2005. She was appointed to the Department of Families and Justice in 2007, and then to Finance and Foreign Affairs, from which she resigned in 2008 to protest the government’s budget deficit.
But with Kleist looking ready to sell the farm to the Chinese, she was convinced to run again, this time campaigning on greater government control of resources, heavier taxation of foreign mining, and stiffer controls on foreign workers. On April 5, 2013, having won 43 percent of the vote in the general election, she forged a coalition and became Greenland’s fifth prime minister.
In her first interview after assuming office, Hammond said, “We are welcoming companies and countries that are interested in investing in Greenland. At the same time we have to be aware of the consequences as a people. Greenland should work with countries that have the same values as we have, on how human rights should be respected. We are not giving up our values for investors’ sake.”