A Cold War May Be Brewing Over the Arctic, A Futurist Warns

The combination of intense climate change and growing demand for natural resources could turn the mineral-rich Arctic into some of the most contested real-estate on the globe, futurist Lawson W. Brigham writes in “Thinking About the Arctic’s Future: Scenarios for 2040,” part of the September-October issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, on store shelves now. www.wfs.org. The Arctic could soon become an integral part of the global economic system, says Brigham, and continued competition among the five Arctic coastal states (Canada, Denmark and Greenland, Norway, Russia, and the United States) for the natural resources trapped in the Arctic Ocean seabed could emerge as a major driver of regional geopolitics in the years ahead.

“Significant environmental changes in the region include retreating sea ice, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, increasing coastal erosion, and shifting vegetation zones. The Arctic Ocean could even be temporarily ice-free during summer 2040. These changes have profound consequences for the indigenous people, for all Arctic species and ecosystems, and for any anticipated economic development. The Arctic is also understood to be a large storehouse of yet-untapped natural resources, a situation that is changing rapidly as exploration and development accelerate in places like the Russian Arctic,” writes Brigham.

The author also notes that expanded exploration of the polar region, and the harvesting of the region’s resources, could give rise to as-yet unexamined phenomena. For instance, “future ships voyaging into the Arctic Ocean could bring alien species in their ballast water and increase air emissions into the cooler surface atmosphere of the Arctic.”

According to Brigham, the fact that the Arctic will change dramatically in the years ahead is all but certain; what that change will mean for the people of the region and global economy is up to the actors that are, today, shaping the region’s future.

“There can be little doubt that extraordinary change is coming to the entire region and its people. These four scenarios of the Arctic in 2040 are designed to be provocative but plausible. Hopefully, they might stimulate strategic thought and rational discussion about how the Arctic region should evolve throughout the twenty-first century,” he writes.

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THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine focused on innovation, creative thinking, and emerging social, economic, environmental, and technological trends.
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