Sea Control - Sea Control 376 - Iceberg Sovereignty with Dr. Corine Wood-Donnelly

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Links1. "Iceberg sovereignty," by Corine Wood-Donnelly, Marine Policy, Volume 143, September 2022.2. Dr. Corine Wood-Donnelly personal website.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Dr. Corinne Wood Donnelly joins us this week. You may know her as the woman with the best Twitter handle on the internet, at Polar Ice Queen. And we're going to be discussing icebergs, their value as a resource, who can claim them and when, and the question of their sovereignty. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters, whether you're in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean.

Chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of local chapters and contact information on our website at simsec.org, so if you're interested, please reach out and get involved. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Poems. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International and Maritime Security. Hello, Hashemates, and welcome back to Sea Control. We're fortunate to be joined today

by Dr. Corinne Wood Donnelly, and we'll be discussing her contribution to the September issue of Marine Policy, Iceberg Sovereignty. So, Corinne, thank you for joining us. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners? Hi, Jared. Thank you for having me. I'm an Associate Professor of International Relations and the High North at Nord University in Boda, Norway, and the Faculty of Social Sciences. And at NORD, I'm part of the MINS group, which is an acronym for the Norwegian words for Environment, International Relations, the North, and Security. And if you're not familiar with Norwegian or even Arctic geography, Bodø is just a small city a bit north of the Arctic Circle. For a more familiar reference point, it's probably a bit further north than either Nome or Fairbanks and Alaska.

So I'm also a researcher at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University, which was my home institution before joining Nord University a few years ago. At Uppsala, I am the scientific coordinator for an EU-funded climate action project called Just North, which has a team who is researching on the viability of just and ethical, sustainable development for the Arctic region. And I suppose my research has really always focused on the Arctic region, particularly around rulemaking or the legal political constructions of space. I like to look at the rules that organize sovereignty and governance of extraterritorial space and resources and the various political technologies such as postage stamps or search and rescue responsibility that states use to demonstrate legitimacy for their authority over these territory and resources. And I guess that's where the history, if you will, of this particular paper on the sovereignty of icebergs emerges. In my earlier stages of research, I happened on some century-old legal papers debating the legal status of ice at the North Pole and quickly realized nothing had changed in the legal frameworks around this, despite significant developments in polar governance more broadly. Well, thank you. And as a reminder, before we jump into the questions, all opinions expressed today are our own and not reflective of any institution with which you or I might be otherwise associated. Now, you start your article detailing the two groups that are in conflict over

icebergs. So what are those two groups and what was happening back in 1998 off the course of Newfoundland that brought them into conflict with one another? Yeah, so this particular newspaper story of the iceberg war off the coast of Newfoundland talks about a group of tourists taking photos and admiring the serene beauty of an iceberg, suddenly having their reverie interrupted in quite a jarring way. The interruption was caused by a boat chugging across the water toward the iceberg, and when it reached the iceberg, started hacking away at the iceberg with some noisy mechanized tool. While this particular event isn't really a war as such, it is definitely illustrative of the conflict emerging from quite different interpretations

of value of a resource from two different groups of stakeholders. So one group was enjoying the resource as what could be labeled as a cultural ecosystem service by enjoying the aesthetic or even spiritual non-material benefits of seeing an iceberg in its natural habitat. Meanwhile, the other party saw the iceberg as a raw material and likely as part of a supply chain for some sort consumable product. What is particularly important about their different perspectives is that the story illustrates what are likely irreconcilable differences and how icebergs are consumed. So I don't think that 1998 is a particularly remarkable year in itself, but it is within a timeline of trends related to this story. The first trend is the rising popularity of polar tourism,

with polar tourism emerging in the previous decade or so as a major enterprise. Polar tourism in the period is said to have included visitors who understood the importance of conservation and tourism operators needed to maintain the pristine environment they were selling to their customers. And around this time, concerns were also emerging about the safety of public drinking water sources and the bottled water business was booming. While bottled water has been around for a long time, going back even into the 19th century, in this period, consumers were increasingly turning to bottled water as a way to avoid drinking public water that had been contaminated, either through various pollutants or through

mishandling. So much of the marketing for bottled water focused on emphasizing the purity of water and their particular brand of water. In this sort of environment, the purity of glacier ice is a strong selling point, whereas marketing campaigns like to describe water as pristine ice locked up for millennia, fresh as the day it fell in snow. So why are icebergs a valuable natural resource?

I think this is an interesting and really a rather complex question, because as was just mentioned, value is really dependent on positionality. If we're talking about the material value of icebergs, we need to first think about its role as a physical material that is part of the cryosphere. The cryosphere is the portion of the Earth's surface that is frozen, including, for example, ice caps, glaciers, and permafrost. The cryosphere is an integral part of regulating the Earth's climate system, and changes to the cryosphere, such as ice loss, affect things like air temperature and ocean currents. In this category, icebergs are essentially priceless.

But one reason icebergs are so interesting, at least to me, is the way they exist within the boundaries of both the cryosphere and the hydrosphere. As ice, the chemical molecules in icebergs are defined as a mineral, but when that ice melts, it is no longer a mineral and it becomes water. And water, as we know, is an essential element to human survival. It's the water form of icebergs that is most often associated with their value, including their potential role as a critical source of potable water. But also the more frivolous, shall we say, commercial uses of icebergs from ice for boutique cocktails, the beer production and even cosmetics. and and then a third value emerges in an aesthetic value which often also has a commercial value in polar tourism sometimes described as doomsday tourism or last chance to see tourism where people travel to see the icebergs before climate change erases them from the landscape

in in that sense they bring value as an attractive and attracting component of the tourist industry So what is the, you brought up supply chains earlier. What does the actual supply chain for ice harvested from a great glacier look like? So I understand they're showing up with them. Whoever is doing the harvesting is showing up with some mechanical implement to chop up the ice and harvest it. Where does it go from there? Supply chains include the steps and network of operators who handle a product from its site of origin and where the raw materials are sourced or services created. and through to its eventual distribution to the consumer who uses the resulting product or service.

And I think that really describing the supply chain for ice harvested from glaciers varies based on the product or service that you're selling. So if you're selling it as ice for a cocktail, the handling process will be slightly different and presumably much faster than if you're harvesting ice to manufacture cosmetics. If you're selling the opportunity to see an iceberg in person, there are again different actors in this chain. So the research of this particular article on iceberg sovereignty is situated in the political legal space around resource governance and allocation for the exploitation of materials, such as in licensing or permitting to harvest raw materials. this is this is a step that ordinarily is it's really a pre-supply chain stage so when you think about other minerals or resources that have commercial value

there are established processes to acquire the rights to exploit these resources and this is true for example of of mines for a huge variety of minerals oil wells or even fisheries in all these harvesting operations there are extensive and often expensive processes to acquire the exploitation rights and of course these processes vary by national jurisdiction but but commonly the process for designating exploitation rights for example comes in licensing through some regulatory body established by a state for example of resources and the exploitation of resources beyond national borders. Procedures and rules for this are determined through bilateral agreements or through international legal frameworks, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the

Sea. What is rather extraordinary in the case of iceberg exploitation is that there are no regulatory parameters for licensing or for designating exploitation rights in the icebergs coming from glaciers in the polar regions. In South America, you can find laws that explicitly they designate that glacial ice belongs to the state, but this doesn't exist for either Arctic or Antarctic icebergs. And from my perspective, this really puts commercial operators who rely on icebergs as raw material in a rather vulnerable position, as they cannot guarantee they will have continued rights to access what is an increasingly attractive and rather volatile raw material. So what legal principles determine iceberg sovereignty, and then who currently has

quote-unquote claim to icebergs? So beyond the principle of the rule of capture, there are no legal principles that currently determine iceberg sovereignty or exploitation rights. That's the quick answer. However, there are a number of legal principles we could turn to that give us the potential to think about how to frame more concrete ways to establish claims to sovereignty and iceberg sovereignty what is in essence being used right now is the principle of the rule of capture or we could even call it finders keepers a principle that also applies to shipwrecks the rule of capture means that the first person to capture an iceberg owns that iceberg even when this capture may cause harm to other users of the resource while in theory this can continue to work

so long as icebergs are plentiful and competition is low. As we see in our 1998 story about the iceberg war, it isn't too difficult to see where conflict can emerge. While the tourists were capturing the iceberg by enjoying it and taking photos, it wasn't physically in their possession and their enjoyment and consumption of the iceberg fell victim to a competitor who was physically able to capture the material of the iceberg a second principle we can think about is the principle of permanent sovereignty where the state has ownership of the resource and through this ownership the state would also have control over the decisions regarding the development and exploitation of the resource this principle is is quite useful so long as you are able to think

about icebergs as a fixed and self-contained mineral resource. However, the challenges of iceberg sovereignty really reveal themselves when you start to think of icebergs and the glaciers where icebergs come from as non-mineral fluvial resources. While the principle of permanent sovereignty also applies to water resources, including rivers, when they cross international boundaries, a whole new set of legal principles come into play. And by their very nature and definition, icebergs are ice forms that have broken away from an ice shelf or glacier and are freely floating in water and are therefore prone to escape. I'm going to ask you, this will be kind of a follow-up that we hadn't talked about previously. So if you don't have the answer,

feel free to wave off on it. But is the number of icebergs increasing or decreasing? It would seem to me that as we watch these different ice shelves break away, melt, I'm trying to remember the video that I saw most recently of something, you know, collapsing into the raw sea. It would seem to me like it's possible that the number of icebergs is actually increasing, but is that the case? In the short term, what I understand, and I don't monitor the number of icebergs floating on a regular basis but that climate change is making the the number of icebergs the floating around bigger and and there are more of them so there's actually quite an interesting way to track and monitor the number of icebergs at least in the north atlantic and

the international ice patrol a a system for monitoring icebergs now now by a satellite that was set up after the Titanic sank in the early part of the 20th century. How does the question of sovereignty change then as icebergs migrate? So it's precisely the migratory or fugacious nature of icebergs that make iceberg sovereignty or iceberg governance particularly challenging. For illustrating this, we can situate this discussion in the context of icebergs that have calved from glaciers in Greenland and then travel through the Davis Strait down to Iceberg Alley and eventually out to the Atlantic Ocean. And this is the area where the International

Iceberg Patrol monitors icebergs. So if the principle of permanent sovereignty over resources is the absolute principle for governing icebergs, Greenland or Denmark owns icebergs no matter where they may travel however it's it's particularly difficult for a state to own and to regulate for a resource that has escaped its national boundaries so when icebergs cross over international boundaries one has to question whether the principle of permanent sovereignty can in fact apply to something that is no longer within the territorial boundaries of a state if icebergs have permanent sovereignty then perhaps it could be argued that denmark is liable for the sinking of the Titanic.

If we treat icebergs as a water resource and part of a watershed of a very slow-moving river system, then there are a few interesting principles that could apply to the harvesting of icebergs in transboundary water law. This includes the principle of no significant harm, which could cover issues from overconsumption to environmental pollution.

And a second principle, the principle of equitable and reasonable utilization, which can be used for determining upstream consumption effects on downstream users. In this context, established commercial users of icebergs in Canada may have some downstream riparian rights to protect their interest in and continued access to icebergs against upstream use or capture. Of course, the difficulty with both of these principles is that they're rather difficult to enforce, and it can even be difficult to define and substantiate any harm done when it comes to governance of resources in maritime spaces the really the most likely place to look for ideas

on how to handle this issue is in the united nations convention on the law of the sea often referred to by its acronym UNCLOS it is kind of peculiar that the only reference to ice and UNCLOS is in Article 234, which makes special provisions for environmental protection of ice-covered waters. So UNCLOS is silent on freshwater ice and only has minimal provisions for sea ice. UNCLOS does, however, give us something in a special category of territory called the Exclusive Economic Zone, or the EEZ. it's it's a long-standing principle of international law that seas cannot be owned by any state beyond a narrow strip of coastal waters but in the middle of the 20th century the concept of the ez appears which expanded state control over maritime resources to an

extended area of 200 nautical miles from a country shore or or less if it meets another states' EEZ. In this EEZ, freedom of navigation is not disrupted, but the privilege of this space is that a state has exclusive rights to exploit the resources that are found in these waters. So for the icebergs floating around in the Davis Strait, with an agreed maritime boundary between Canada and Denmark, states could regulate the harvesting of icebergs on either side of the maritime boundary. But when icebergs escaped the EEZs of Denmark and Canada and the North Atlantic, they could then be captured by anyone on the high seas. So final question for you then, how do you propose regulating iceberg sovereignty moving forward and what body would be required to

take action? Now, my interest in the historical debates on the legal status of ice and querying the theoretical tools that are available for thinking about how icebergs could be perceived in international law, is that I'm less concerned with commercial exploitation rights and more focused on a few other implications that the absence of a regulatory framework introduces. So the first thing that I've been thinking about is that in situations where commercial practices and exploitation of resources are unregulated and unchecked, it creates risk and opportunity that the resource could be extracted and exploited in a way that is harmful for the environment and for the ecosystems that exist around icebergs, and in particular the

maritime areas around the glacier ice tongues. While it's purely speculative, imagine resource harvesting practices where the glaciers meet the sea and where there are physical manifestations of competition between harvesters over a finite resource for commutial users that relies on the resource for their survival, but leaves a footprint on the environment from its harvesting. Another thing is that there are considerations of the social dimension where local users with smaller operations or perhaps less financial or legal resources could be increasingly pushed out of the arena where they can harvest icebergs and benefit from their use. There's evidence of such practices with resources in other places, such as the fishing quota system in Iceland, to soda

companies, dehydrating communities, and developing countries through over-exploitation of water resources there. And a final interest relates both to this last point and an earlier point on the value of water as part of the hydrosphere. Water is increasingly expected to be a flashpoint for conflict in the coming decades, and there is a strong link between water scarcity and conflict. There could be ongoing discussions that water as an essential element of human survival should be part of a commons, which makes it a public good rather than a private good. And if we see icebergs as part of a global commons, the water in glaciers and icebergs should be protected from misuse and harm, and in consideration for the needs of future generations. So there are several ways

forward for developing governance or regulatory arrangements around iceberg and freshwater ice in the Arctic. One is for states with freshwater ice resource to make their own national regulatory frameworks. While this could work just fine, it could also be slow as national legislative bodies likely have much more pressing issues to address in their agendas. It could also result in uneven arrangements and differing practices from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Unilateral arrangements may not be able to address transboundary issues, meaning that national frameworks may not be adequate. In this case, states could consider bilateral arrangements, but again, this unevenness could prevail.

However, national or even bilateral arrangements in the Arctic are not likely to be helpful for freshwater ice in Antarctica, where states' claims to sovereignty are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty System. In this case, an international agreement between the Arctic states, several who are suspended claimants in Antarctica, could be significant in setting a precedent for the handling of freshwater ice that comes from Antarctica. In this regard, it would be more useful for an international governance body to play a role, at the very least in creating a discussion space for any emerging agreement on icebergs. While this could be facilitated by, say, the United Nations, this would likely be a slow process due to the number of actors who would be involved and the broader questions of water rights that could become part of the debate. This presents the Arctic Council, which was established as a forum for cooperation on issues related to the protection of the Arctic environment, as a likely facilitator for an agreement on the governance of freshwater ice. This is especially as the Arctic states have deliberately emphasized their legitimacy and authority over decision making for the Arctic and its environmental protection. So taking responsibility for this discussion and taking responsibility for decisions about the Arctic environment would certainly be within the agreement of the Arctic Council.

but in the end it's really up for the Arctic Council to decide if they will be responsible for what happens next towards establishing a legal status for ice and for determining if a governance mechanism should exist for freshwater icebergs well unfortunately that's all that we have time for today I'd like to thank my guest Dr. Corinne Wood Donnelly. Corinne where can we find you online and what's your next project? Yes. So as I mentioned earlier, I'm in the middle of just north and that is keeping us quite busy. And this I have been doing a comparative study on search and rescue and the sustainability of search and rescue within local communities in Canada and Norway. So that is keeping me quite busy for now. You can find me online on Twitter. My handle is

polar ice queen i think you might know where that uh that handle came from many many years ago and i also have a website greenwooddonnelly.com well thank you we'll have links to your personal website as well as this article uh attached to our show notes but i really appreciate you coming on today to join us to the listeners thank you for tuning in we'll see you next time Thank you. Oh, help me, oh, I'm bullying the addicts, why, I'm bullying the addicts, help me, oh, I'm bullying the addicts, bullying addicts, shit, oh, no.