The race for the Arctic is heating up. Russia recently submitted a claim to the United Nations (U.N.) for 463,000 square miles of the icy region.
Other countries that have territory within the Arctic Circle, including the U.S., Canada, Denmark, and Norway, have also staked their claims or are planning to soon. (See sidebar, below.)
Those nations want to control as much of the region as they can. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic contains 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of its undiscovered oil. In recent years, rising temperatures have caused sea ice in the region to melt, making those resources easier to reach.
According to international law, countries own the Arctic area within about 230 miles of their coasts. To claim more territory, a country must prove that its continental shelf—the underwater land that surrounds a continent—extends beyond 230 miles.
The U.S. is still doing research for its Arctic bid, and some officials worry that the U.S. is lagging behind Russia, which beefed up its military presence in the region earlier this year to protect its claim.
“Some of the things I see [Russia] doing . . . are things I wish the United States was doing as well,” Robert Papp Jr., an Arctic adviser for the U.S. government, recently told The New York Times.
The U.N. will eventually decide which countries should control disputed parts of the Arctic, including the North Pole, but that could take years. By then, environmentalists caution, the region could look dramatically different, as climate change continues to cause Arctic ice to melt.