The Deteriorating Arctic and the Impact of the Shipping Industry

• Date: 01 September 2019

9-2019 NEWS & ANALYSIS 49 ELR 10837

On September 28, 2018, Maersk1 a nnounced t hat

its commercial cargo liner— the Venta Maersk—

arrived safely in St. Petersburg, Russia, a fter

departing from Russia’s Pacic port of Vladivostok. It had

traversed the Northern Sea Route.2 Record-low volume of

ice in the Bering Sea in the 2017-2018 ice season was one

of the key factors that made this journey possible.3 e

previously unnavigable waters with hundreds of miles of

ice sheets have now been broken down to mere chunks

of ice, oating in the ocean.4 is is a signicant event

for the shipping industry and climate cha nge studies: it

highlights the extent and pace at which the Arctic sea ice

is melting, paving the way to increased activity on the

Northern Sea Route.

e Northern Sea Route spans more than 4,000

kilometers,5 from Novaya Zemlya (a Russian archipela go

in the Arctic Ocean), runs along Siberia, and nally con-

nects with the Bering Strait. is route runs across the

northern coastline of Russia a nd lies entirely in Russia’s

exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Several sections of the Northern Sea Route were pre-

viously passable only by powerful icebreakers. Today,

commercial liners are able to easily forge their way with

1. U N C  T  D (UNC-

TAD), R  M T 2018, at 32 U.N. Doc. UNC-

TAD/RMT/2018, U.N. Sales No. E.18.II.D.5 (2018) (Maersk is the

world’s largest commercial shipping company with a eet size of more than

700 ships).

2. Stine Jacobsen, Maersk Sends First Container Ship rough Arctic Route, R,

Aug. 24, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-arctic-shipping-maersk/

maersk-sends-rst-container-ship-through-arctic-route-idUSKCN1L91BR.

3. N O  A A, A R

C 2018 (E. Osborne et al. eds., 2018), available at https://arctic.noaa.

gov/Portals/7/ArcticReportCard/Documents/ArcticReportCard_full_re-

port2018.pdf.

4. Mark C. Serreze et al., e Arctic’s Sea Ice Cover: Trends, Variability, Predict-

ability, and Comparisons to the Antarctic, 1436 A N.Y. A. S. 36-

53 (2018).

5. Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment, Northern Sea Route Shipping

Statistics, https://www.pame.is/index.php/projects/arctic-marine-shipping/

older-projects/northern-sea-route-shipping-statistics (last visited July 23,

2019).

assistance from icebreakers only in certain stretches.6  is

increased shipping activity has the potential to adversely

impact marine life, increase local pollution levels, speed

up the melting of ice sheets, and severely damage the Arc-

tic ecosystem.

Over the past three decade s, the older thick ice in the

Arctic has declined by more tha n 95%, and surface tem-

peratures there have been rising at tw ice the rate compared

with the rest of the world.7 2018 was the second warmest

year since 1900, with temperatures reaching 1.7 degrees

Celsius () above the long-term average.8 It is not merely

the surface area of ice that matters, but the volume of ice

that plays a larger role in ensuring the stability and perma-

nence of the Arctic. According to an a nalysis by scientists

at the University of Washington, the volume of ice mea-

sured in September 2018 was about 78% lower than the

levels recorded in September 1979.9

A stable Arctic is crucial for severa l other reasons. For

example, the white Arctic ice sheets play a major role in

keeping the temperature of the earth ba lanced by reect-

ing a large portion of sunlight back into space. Once the

top layers of the Arctic ice sheets that contain t he relatively

newer white ice melt, the older darker ice that is mixed

with soil and other sediments is exposed to the sun. e

white ice that acts as a reector of the sun’s heat no lon-

ger exists and exposes the more heat-absorbing darker ice

and ocea n beneath.10 As a result, more heat is absorbed by

the darker oceans instead of getting reected back into

space—thereby increasing the rate at which the ice melts.

6. Maria Gallucci, As the Arctic Melts, the Northern Sea Route Opens for

Business, W, Sept. 26, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/as-the-

arctic-melts-the-fabled-northwest-passage-opens-for-cargo-ships/.

7. N O  A A, supra note 3.

8. Id.

9. Chris Mooney, e Arctic Ocean Has Lost 95 Percent of Its Oldest Ice—A

Startling Sign of What’s to Come, W. P, Dec. 11, 2018, https://

www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/12/11/arctic-is-

even-worse-shape-than-you-realize/.

10. Id.

The Deteriorating Arctic and the

Impact of the Shipping Industry

by Harsha Pisupati and Armin Rosencranz

Harsha Pisupati is a graduate of Jindal Global Law School in Sonipat, Haryana, India, where Armin Rosencranz is a professor of law.

Copyright © 2019 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.