US sinks Arctic accord
The United States has refused to sign an agreement on challenges in the Arctic due to discrepancies over climate change wording, diplomats said yesterday, jeopardising cooperation in the polar region at the sharp edge of global warming.
With Arctic temperatures rising at twice the rate of the rest of the globe, the melting ice is creating potential new shipping lanes and has opened much of the world's last untapped reserves of oil and gas to commercial exploitation .
A meeting of eight nations bordering the Arctic in Rovaniemi in Finland yesterday was supposed to frame a two-year agenda to balance the challenge of global warming with sustainable development of mineral wealth.
But sources with knowledge of the discussions said the United States balked at signing a final declaration as it disagreed with wording that climate change was a serious threat to the Arctic.
It was the first time a declaration had been cancelled since the Arctic Council was formed in 1996.
Instead, in a brief statement, ministers from the United States, Canada, Russia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland repeated their commitment to sustainable development and the protection of the Arctic environment.
Except for the United States, other nations had wanted to go further, participants said.
"A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience," talks chair and Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini said in a statement.
"I don't want to name and blame anyone," he told reporters.
A senior US State Department official denied Washington had again dragged its heels over global environmental action.
Scientists believe the Arctic contains around 13 percent of the world's undiscovered reserves of oil and 30 percent of its reserves of natural gas as well as huge deposits of minerals such as zinc, iron and rare earth metals.
Comments