The fight for who owns the Arctic: The players & their strategy
Well, if Santa Claus really does live at the North Pole, then not only is he sitting on a mother lode of oil and mineral wealth ... but the United Nations would like to hear from him.
Instead this week it was Denmark that went to the U.N. with its formal claim to the top of the world.The Danes point to a continental shelf connecting the North Pole with their territory of Greenland.
But they're not alone in contesting the frosty, but rapidly melting, northern territory for themselves. There are at least five sovereign nations with an interest in Santa's backyard... including Canada. And oh yes, Russia too.
To get the Danish perspective on this, we were joined by Christian Marcussen, who is the Senior Adviser and a Geophysicist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. He was in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Of course, Canada has long considered the north to be its own ... from both a scientific and emotional perspective. That, however, may just be changing. Ron McNabb is a member of the Geological Survey of Canada, and a former consultant to the Commission deciding the matter. He spoke with CBC Radio's As It Happens on Monday.
• Is the North Pole in Denmark? Danish officials say so, and a Canadian says they're on solid ground -- As It Happens. CBC Radio
There are five nations with a stake in the Arctic and its future. Denmark submitted its scientific evidence for a claim on the North Pole to the U.N. this week. Norway and Russia have already done the same. And Canada intends to... but hasn't yet.
The U.S. meanwhile, can't take a submission of claim to the U.N. because they haven't ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea.But making submissions is one thing. Actually determining who gets final claim to the Arctic is another.
To help explain how those decisions will ultimately be made, we were joined by Elizabeth Riddel-Dixon. She is a distinguished Senior Fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. She has been studying the process to claim the Arctic for 8 years.
This segment was produced by The Current's Kristin Nelson, Sarah Grant and Sujata Berry.
Swimmer Lynne Cox recalls how swimming the frigid waters of the Bering Strait from the United States to the Soviet Union, eased tensions during the Cold War.
Back in 1987, at the height of the Cold War, an American swimmer named Lynne Cox once helped to ease international tensions... by taking a very chilly dip in those same arctic waters.
The then 30-year-old swimmer, who had already set records swimming the English Channel, set out to swim from Alaska to Russia, at a 4-kilometre-wide point in the Bering Sea.
And while the Soviets were reluctant to grant her permission for the swim, leader Mikhail Gorbechov would later toast her successful crossing with American president Ronald Reagan, in Washington. Lynne Cox told her story to the BBC.