Meltdown: Greenland And The Race For The Arctic

Related:

The Apostle of Greenland.

Arctic Consciousness In The 19th Century And Its Reemergence In The 21st.

The Arctic In The Western Imagination.

Claudius Clavus.

Fridtjof Nansen.

Look North.

China And The Arctic.

The Changing Geopolitics of The Arctic.

II.

An excerpt from, “Germany Opens Arctic Office” by Kathrin Keil, High North News, January 4, 2017:

“Making the Arctic a key issue of German politics requires a lot of scientific advice and support, which will be provided by the German Arctic Office”, says Dr. Volker Rachold, head of the newly opened German Arctic Office in Potsdam, Germany.

Germany has just opened the “German Arctic Office” hosted by Germany’s most renowned Arctic research centre, the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. This is a sign that non-Arctic countries invest in their Arctic capacities in times when the Arctic remains high on political agendas not only in the region but also beyond.

Officially starting its work on 1 January 2017, the rationale of the office is to provide a link between Arctic scientists on the one hand and politics and industry on the other, as the official press release reads.

The office intends to support the German government’s aim of strengthening the country’s role in Arctic affairs, which is justified through Germany being one of the leading Arctic research states.

Germany’s interest in the region stems of the increasing relevance of Arctic change also for non-Arctic regions, especially through the rapidly advancing process of climate change in the Arctic. This has geopolitical, geo-economic and geo-ecological consequences that feed back to the entire globe.

An excerpt from, “Future of the Artic Council in the context of global governance, scientific cooperation and observer state participation” Polar Geopolitics, March 17, 2025:

In this third part of the “Future of the Arctic Council” session recorded live at Arctic Frontiers, Dr. Volker Rachold and Dr. Elana Wilson Rowe discuss the continued importance, despite recent shocks to the international system, of Arctic cooperation in the context of global governance. Topics include the imperative of managing environmental problems in the Arctic and elsewhere, the Council’s strong connections to wider international processes, and how Arctic Council observer states have succeeded in embedding themselves in Arctic affairs through scientific cooperation. Volker Rachold is Head of the German Arctic Office at the Alfred Wegener Institute, and Elana Wilson Rowe is Research Professor and Head of the Center for Ocean Governance at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Professor in Global Governance at the Norwegian University of the Life Sciences.

An excerpt from, “Greenland: A post-Danish sovereign nation state in the making” by Ulrik P Gad, Cooperation and Conflict, 49(1), 98–118, March 2014:

The tidal wave of decolonization began with the giant India immediately after World War II and petered out in the 1970s and 1980s as a number of small islands and archipelagos such as Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Vanuatu and Micronesia acquired independence. The wave left behind a number of very small polities in terms of population size (Baldacchino, 2012). Small size poses specific challenges in terms of relying on outside resources – human, financial, natural, industrially processed – which make independence particularly daunting (Nielsen, 2000). However, the less-than-rosy experiences of larger decolonized states possibly also add to the reluctance observed in these small polities (Grovogui, 2012). Indeed, not all candidates have chosen the path of independence. On 25 November 2008, a majority of the people of Greenland voted in favour of enhanced home rule – ‘self-government’ – still within formal Danish sovereignty. Denmark and Greenland alike are preparing for a future envisioned as involving climate change, intensive raw material extraction, new transportation corridors and new claims to sovereignty over the Arctic. Greenland uses this imagined future as a way of enhancing its subjectivity  — not least when dealing with the European Union (EU).