When the Arctic Heats Up:

Climate Change and the Escalation of Polar Power Politics

By Caden Burkman

Abstract: Climate change is rapidly transforming the Arctic from a frozen periphery into a central arena of global geopolitical confrontation. As rising temperatures accelerate sea ice melting, previously inaccessible shipping routes and vast hydrocarbon reserves are becoming increasingly available, fundamentally altering the geopolitical calculus of both Arctic and non-Arctic states. As climate-driven accessibility reshapes Arctic geopolitics, this paper focuses on how new power alignments and strategic rivalries will emerge in the coming decades. In particular, this paper will discuss the deepening relationship between Russia and China and how it reflects a convergence of complementary needs for Arctic access, securitization, technological support, and long-term resource supply. In response, Western powers are strengthening military coordination and expanding their Arctic presence to safeguard maritime sovereignty and counterbalance Eurasian power asymmetries. By examining resource competition, emerging shipping corridors, and evolving geopolitical partnerships, this paper demonstrates that climate change is a structural force in reorganizing global power structures.

Word Count: 4364

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Climate Change and Geopolitics

Before the 20th century, the Arctic was a sparsely populated barren ice desert with only a few indigenous settlements that had learned, throughout centuries, to live in the remote and extreme environment. In the early 20th century, the region took on a new significance, serving as a crucial point for communication and political connection between Western Europe and the Americas. In World War II, the Allies stationed themselves throughout the Arctic to gain better surveillance over the Arctic Sea and the U-Boat infested waters of the North Atlantic.

The region also served as the “weather kitchen of Europe,” where early observations of atmospheric patterns enabled advanced forecasting of major storms heading toward the continent, providing significant strategic advantages in military planning.[1] Throughout the Cold War, it was also a crucial area of conflict between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), with frequent air bomber paths, a large nuclear submarine presence, and a hotspot of confrontation in the Bering Strait separating Alaska and Mainland Russia.

The Arctic is saturated with strategically important resources. A 2008 United States Geological Survey estimated that the Arctic holds 13% of the world’s oil with over 90 billion barrels of oil, 30% of the proven gas reserves with 1.67 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of liquid natural gas, with 84% of these resources expected to be offshore.[2] This assessment fundamentally altered geopolitical perceptions of the region, as control over these reserves conferred enormous strategic leverage. Given that the vast majority of these resources lie offshore, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has taken on heightened importance in determining access and jurisdiction. UNCLOS allows for countries to engage in economic activity within 200 nautical miles of their maritime borders in their “Exclusive Economic Zones” (EEZ).[3] Most of today’s offshore energy infrastructure lies within EEZs; roughly 30% of global oil production and 27% of global gas production now comes from offshore platforms.[4] However, in every other sovereign maritime region, production is more feasible due to calmer waters, optimal climate conditions, and a general lack of dispute over overlapping EEZ claims. Sea ice veils the continental shelves of Europe and North America, and variations in freezing season, drifting icebergs, and intense climate conditions make offshore energy production in the Arctic too expensive and risky to justify substantial investment.

Climate change, however, is rapidly transforming this relationship. As ice melts, more continental shelf becomes exposed, lowering barriers to investment in Arctic energy drilling. Under UNCLOS, if a country can demonstrate with a robust geological survey that its continental shelf extends beyond 200 nm, it can apply for an expansion of its EEZ to up to 350 nm off its maritime borders, greatly increasing the raw materials exclusively available to it. Iceland and Greenland are also believed to contain significant deposits of rare-earth minerals, which are expected to grow in strategic importance as technologies advance and global demand for energy intensifies. As mining and drilling activities in the Arctic increase, so do the number of ships responsible for the acquisition and transport of said resources. Many of these vessels rely on heavy fuel oil, which emits large quantities of greenhouse gases, particulate matter, toxic metals, and, most critically, black carbon. In the Arctic, black carbon settles directly onto ice surfaces, creating a “greying” effect that darkens the ice sheet. This diminishes the pole’s albedo, or reflectivity of its white surface, causing darker ice to absorb more heat and accelerate melting, further exacerbating regional climate change. CO2 reduction at the magnitude necessary to reduce the melting rate of the region is becoming less likely. At its current rate, summer sea ice in the Arctic is expected to be completely gone by the late 2030s to early 2040s.[5]

With projected declines in sea ice and increasingly favorable conditions for resource extraction in the region, the Arctic is “heating up” both climatologically and geopolitically. Melting ice is widening former shipping chokepoints, making them more navigable. In the East, the Northern Sea Route could allow East Asian vessels to travel north past Russia and towards Europe, cutting shipment time to Europe by as much as 20 days.[6] Alongside the Northern Sea Route, the Northwest Passage could become seasonally viable as a result of increased summer temperatures in the Canadian Arctic, raising new sovereignty disputes between Canada, the United States, and other maritime powers.

As new sea lanes open and resource extraction expands, Arctic and near-Arctic states are likely to intensify efforts to secure naval control and resource sovereignty. This climate-driven shift is rebalancing global power. Arctic geopolitics may be shaped by increased accessibility and emerging strategic alignments rather than by resource scarcity, thereby redrawing the region’s geopolitical map.

The Pivot East and the Polar Silk Road

Russia:

As climate change opens the Arctic’s once-inaccessible waters, the region is becoming a strategic corridor linking Asia's demand, Russian territory, and global energy markets, generating strong incentives for a deepening China–Russia strategic alignment. Russian and Chinese vessels have made voyages through the Northern Sea Route for the past few years, with 2024 seeing 92 cargo voyages carrying 37.9 million tonnes of goods.[7] Combined with eased environmental conditions for offshore mining projects, it is clear why Russia is vying for control over the region. In addition, the war in Ukraine has triggered sweeping EU sanctions, particularly targeting Russian oil and gas exports. Considering that oil and gas make up 20% of Russian GDP and 40-50% of the Russian budget revenue, through restrictive sanctions, the EU has deprived Russia of nearly $1 billion dollars per month through these sanctions.[8] This has left Russia almost entirely isolated, prompting Moscow to turn its attention elsewhere, particularly toward China, for investment and a burgeoning trade relationship. Russia has, by far, the largest land claim to the Arctic with over 15,000 miles of maritime border extending from the Barents to the Bering Sea.[9] The main goal of the Russian Federation is to control the Arctic militarily and economically.[10] To advance these claims, Russia has conducted extensive seafloor mapping. In February 2023, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf approved Russia’s submission covering 1.7 million square kilometers of seabed extending to the Lomonosov Ridge.[11] This territory overlaps with claims made by Greenland and Canada and demonstrates the unrelenting commitment of the Russian government to asserting geographic dominance within the region, setting the stage for future control.

In addition, these tensions can be observed in the Svalbard Archipelago, a remote Arctic Island chain administered by Norway but governed under a unique international framework. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 grants signatories equal rights to access and extract resources on the islands.[12] Russia maintains a permanent presence in Barentsburg, a small coal mining town of roughly 300 individuals. While legally permitted under the treaty, Russia’s continued activity and efforts to expand its footprint have intensified sovereignty concerns, prompting increased patrols by the Norwegian Coast Guard.

Beyond geography, Russia has taken action indicating their ambitions in the region. In 2007, a Russian submersible planted a metal flag on the seabed of the North Pole as a “symbolic claim of the polar region’s oil and minerals.”[13] The action was met with immense disapproval by most Arctic nations, particularly Denmark and Canada. Canada, who has legal sovereignty the waters, responded by enacting legislation to build and operate eight ships throughout the Arctic to patrol conditions. The Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, Peter Mackay, responded to the incident: “You can't go around the world these days dropping a flag somewhere, this isn't the 14th or 15th century.” Moreover, Russia made access to the Northern Sea Route a designated top national priority, with ambitions to increase shipping to 80 million tons. President Vladimir Putin described the task as “a realistic, well-calculated and concrete task… We need to make the Northern Sea Route safe and commercially feasible.”[14]

Russia’s expansive and audacious actions are colliding with multiple structural constraints as a result of their war with Ukraine. Western sanctions have starved Moscow of the economic capital and advanced technologies needed to develop offshore fields and to maintain Arctic infrastructure. Restrictions on the use of European ports for transshipment have further limited Russia’s ability to move Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) into Asian energy markets, thus undermining the viability of its northern energy projects. Furthermore, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has eroded its institutional legitimacy in the Arctic Council, leaving it isolated within the main governance body of the region. All things considered, Russia cannot realize its arctic ambitions alone, prompting a strategic and economic relationship with (or reliance on) China.

China:

China’s growing influence in the Arctic begins not with geography, but with political rhetoric. By designating itself as a “Near Arctic State,” Beijing is attempting to redefine the boundaries of Arctic governance by asserting a degree of relevance that no legal framework recognizes.[15] But this is beyond mere symbolism. It is an indication of China’s strategic ambitions of becoming an indispensable stakeholder in a region it doesn’t even border. China argues that the Arctic’s emerging shipping lanes, resources, and scientific opportunities constitute matters of “global concern”, effectively legitimizing its own actions in the region. This reframing of the Arctic as a global commons of sorts enables China to engage in political and economic decision-making throughout the region, contesting the idea that the Arctic should be governed by states with exclusive geographic connections to the region. Through its ‘Polar Silk Road,’ a northern extension of the Belt and Road Initiative, China is investing in Arctic shipping routes, ports, and energy infrastructure to secure long-term access and influence. In doing so, China is reshaping Arctic geopolitics by challenging established norms of territoriality, broadening the definition of who gets to participate in Arctic decision-making and creating the ideological space for economic and infrastructural expansion across the circumpolar north.

China’s strategic interest in the Arctic is driven by a combination of long-term resource vulnerability and the structural pressures of industrial and technological expansion. As the world’s largest energy consumer, China faces a future in which its domestic reserves of hydrocarbons and rare earth minerals decline while demand for energy skyrockets.[16] The Arctic’s vast endowments of the aforementioned resources offers China an opportunity to diversify supply chains that have become strained. Beyond hydrocarbons, the Arctic contains significant mineral deposits that Beijing views as essential inputs for advanced manufacturing and the tech industry. For China, the Arctic is not a peripheral frontier, but a strategic reserve of critical resources. Access to these materials reduces China’s dependence on volatile markets, strengthens its industrial resilience, and provides a long term hedge against global disruptions. These underlying vulnerabilities give China a powerful incentive to establish a durable presence in the Arctic and secure a role in shaping the region’s emerging resource governance architecture.

To translate its geopolitical interests into practical influence, China has pursued a multifaceted approach designed to normalize its presence in the region and embed itself within the Arctic economic and scientific networks. After multiple rejected applications, China gained observer status in the Arctic Council in 2013, allowing it to expand its participation in working groups and use its institutional engagement to signal legitimacy. Furthermore, the prevalence of research China conducts in Svalbard allows it to gather technical information about climate patterns, sea-ice behavior, and Arctic geology, all of which are crucial for resource extraction projects. China’s investment in Arctic research is not confined to polar research stations, as the country has developed a fleet of nuclear powered ice-breakers and research vessels to support scientific and commercial interests. Simultaneously, China’s state owned shipping component, COSCO, has taken a series of high-profile voyages through thNorthern Sea Route, demonstrating the commercial viability of the trans-Arctic. These actions align with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, particularly through the branding of Arctic sea routes as part of an emerging “Polar Silk Road.” Through this multifaceted approach of scientific engagement, infrastructural investment, and proof-of-concept trial shipping voyages, China has gradually embedded itself into the Arctic’s emerging political economy and positioned itself as a large stakeholder despite its lack of territorial claims.

Russia and China:

Russia and China together have a clear incentive to deepen their partnership in the Arctic For Russia, the Arctic is central to its long term strategic and economic ambitions, but its capacity to operate there has been severely constrained since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Western sanctions have sharply reduced Russia’s political capital and limited its access to European technology and ports, which has restricted Moscow’s ability to develop Arctic energy projects or commercialize the Northern Sea Route on its own. On the other hand, China has the capital, industrial demand, and long-term resource insecurity that makes Arctic access alluring, but it lacks the territorial foothold required to establish maritime rights or ensure regular passage.

The partnership between the two nations thereby emerges from a place of structural complementarity where Russia supplies geography, infrastructure and legal jurisdiction while China offers financing, technology, and sustained demand. This logic underpins flagship projects such as the Yamal LNG Venture, which is an LNG project with approximately 1.3 trillion cubic meters of demonstrated natural gas reserves, where Chinese entities hold 29.9% equity and supply critical investment that Russia can no longer attract from Europe.[17] This cooperation has become more vital as the European Union prepares to implement its 2025 restriction on Russian LNG transshipment through EU ports, a policy that threatens around 20% of current volumes shipped from Novatek’s Yamal operations to Asia. It also drives China’s integration of the Northern Sea Route into its Polar Silk Road vision, effectively tying Russian-controlled sea lanes into Beijing’s broader Belt and Road Initiative. Through this deepening alignment, both states seek to build an alternative Arctic economic and governance order that is less dependent on Western institutions and increasingly capable of reshaping the strategic landscape of the circumpolar north.

Western Powers: the US, Canada, and the EU

For the United States, the partnership between Russia and China in the Arctic poses a direct challenge to both regional stability and long-standing U.S. security doctrines. American Arctic policy places a heavy emphasis on safeguarding the freedom of navigation, countering the militarization of the Northern sea route, and ensuring China’s growing commercial footprint does not evolve into a geopolitical leverage over NATO territories. Recent United States defense strategy documents highlight concerns about Sino-Russian activities, including joint naval operations near Alaska, and a strategic bomber patrol that approached Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone in July 2024.[18] These developments reinforce Washington’s view that the Arctic has become an emerging theatre of power competition. Economically, the United States is also expanding its own Arctic energy footprint, driven in part by Alaska’s substantial untapped hydrocarbon reserves. The Trump Administration’s push to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is estimated to contain over 10.4 billion barrels of oil, illustrates a willingness to tolerate environmental and political controversy to secure long-term energy capacity.[19] From the United States perspective, growing Sino-Russian alignment threatens both maritime governance normalcy and the stability of northern NATO territories, making the strengthening of Arctic defense cooperation with allies an urgent priority.

Canada views the evolving Arctic landscape through a dual lens: the need to assert sovereignty over its vast northern territories and the need to manage a rapidly shifting geopolitical environment shaped by Russia and China. Canada’s Arctic and Northern Policy Framework emphasizes that the Arctic should be governed by Arctic states in partnership with indigenous communities and all efforts should be taken to protect and preserve the environment of the region.[20] Canada has taken a notably cautious stance toward China, saying directly, “China can be expected to use all the tools at its disposal to advance its geopolitical interests, including in the Arctic. Canada will challenge China when it ought to and cooperate when its interests align with China’s.”[21] Canadian policymakers highlight China’s ambitions in commercial shipping and resource extraction as potential threats to regional governance and maritime sovereignty, especially given ongoing disputes over the legal status of the Northwest Passage. Militarily, Canada has responded to the rising regional tensions by intensifying northern training operations and improving surveillance capabilities.[22] The Canadian Armed Forces are working alongside Indigenous communities on Baffin Island and other remote areas to enhance operational readiness in extreme conditions.[23] In parallel, the state's Arctic policy indicates that coordination between the United States and Canada will be essential to counterbalance the Russian militarization and China’s expanding Arctic presence.[24] Together, these steps demonstrate Canada’s willingness to take an active role in shaping Arctic security alongside its Western allies while reinforcing its own sovereign presence in the region.

Compared to the United States and Canada, the European Union (EU) approaches the Arctic with a far narrower strategic lens, grounded in environmental protection and sustainable development rather than hard security concerns. The EU’s three-pillar Arctic policy emphasizes climate mitigation, responsible economic growth, and international cooperation, but notably omits any explicit security or defense component.[25] This omission has become consequential as the region’s strategic landscape evolves. With Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, seven of the eight Arctic Council states are now aligned with the Alliance, indicating that the primary framework for Arctic security governance lies within NATO and not the EU.[26] This shift highlights the Union’s structural limitations, considering that even as a major normative power, it lacks the military instruments increasingly central to Arctic geopolitics. As Europe accelerates its break from Russian energy following the invasion of Ukraine, the EU’s interest in alternative northern energy supplies grows, yet without a robust security presence, it plays a secondary role in shaping the Arctic’s emerging balance of power.

What This Means for the Arctic

Taken together, the United States, Canadian, and EU responses reveal a Western Arctic architecture caught between expanding security responsibilities and uneven political capacity. The United States and Canada have sharpened their military coordination while NATO’s northern entanglement has shifted the balance of Arctic security decisively toward the alliance. Yet the EU continues to lack a corresponding security footprint, leaving Western policy in the Arctic divided between environmental stewardship and strategic deterrence. As the Chinese-Russian partnership deepens and Arctic governance institutions weaken, these asymmetries point toward a significant reconfiguration of the region's political and strategic landscape.

But the transformations taking place in the Arctic are not merely regional; they signal deeper shifts in the organization of global power. As the ice recedes and new maritime corridors, resource deposits, and geostrategic chokepoints emerge, the Arctic is becoming a testing ground for the future of great-power competition and global economic integration. Whether the region evolves toward a confrontation or managed coexistence depends heavily on the stability of Western alliances and the resilience of the rules-based order that has historically governed Arctic affairs.

At the center of this uncertainty is the transatlantic relationship, whose cohesion is essential to maintaining a stable Arctic political environment. The United States has increasingly displayed an erratic stance toward NATO, demanding steep increases in other members’ defense spending, imposing tariffs, and oscillating in its long term commitments to collective security. These behaviors complicate Europe’s strategic calculations and threaten to undermine the unity that has long enabled coordinated Western action. Although the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO have fortified northern defense, the Western alliance remains vulnerable to political volatility within the United States political system. If the United States disengagement from Europe accelerates, the burden of Arctic security could shift unevenly to European states, weakening deterrence at the precise moment when Sino-Russian cooperation is intensifying.

Even in a scenario where the bond remains intact, Western intelligence sharing, defense planning, and economic coordination will face new constraints. The Arctic is transitioning from a region once defined by scientific cooperation and environmental governance to one shaped by infrastructure militarization and energy-linked dependencies. Russia and China’s deepening partnership signals the rise of an alternative Arctic order that blends economic integration with strategic denial. As Arctic sea lanes become more navigable, this emerging Eurasian corridor could rewire global energy flows, enabling Russia and China to exercise outsized influence over maritime access and hydrocarbon supply lines.

Under any Configuration, the Arctic increasingly reflects the underlying power shifts that are reshaping the international landscape. The contest over sea routes, black carbon emissions, LNG terminals, icebreaker fleets, and UNCLOS submissions reflects not just economic interests but competing visions of governance and power projection. The region illustrates a world moving toward multipolar complexity where environmental systems, energy infrastructure, and security alliances interact in unpredictable ways. Climate change has not merely opened the Arctic, it has reordered it.

The Arctic’s transformation underscores a central truth of 21st century geopolitics: climate change is not only an environmental crisis but a force reorganizing global power structures. In the far north, melting ice has unlocked new opportunities for energy extraction and maritime transit, drawing China deeper into a region it once had no claim to and driving Russia toward unprecedented levels of strategic dependence. Their partnership is reshaping the institutional and economic landscape of the Arctic, challenging the Western-led order that prevailed since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, NATO’s strengthened Arctic footprint and Western states’ renewed security coordination highlight that the Arctic is no longer a peripheral concern, it is an emerging axis of power rivalry.

As this competition accelerates, the future of the region will hinge on whether the world adopts a cooperative model grounded in shared governance or veers toward bloc politics and militarized control of critical infrastructure. Whoever shapes the Arctic will influence global shipping networks, energy flows and climate outcomes for decades to come. In this sense, the Arctic is not simply a new frontier, rather a mirror of the international system’s evolution in an era defined by environmental transformation and geopolitical realignment.

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[1]DW Documentary, “The Melting Ice of the Arctic (1/2) | DW Documentary,” YouTube, December 25, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GystZIxWQ3o.

[2]Kenneth J. Bird et al., Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal: Estimates of Undiscovered Oil and Gas North of the Arctic Circle, U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2008–3049 (Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2008), https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3049/.

[3] United Nations, “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” United Nations (United Nations, December 10, 1982), https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf.

[4] “Offshore Oil and Gas Production,” www.planete-energies.com (Planete Energies, n.d.), https://www.planete-energies.com/en/media/article/offshore-oil-and-gas-production..

[5] DW Documentary, “The Melting Ice of the Arctic (1/2) | DW Documentary,” YouTube, December 25, 2022.

[6] “Russia’s Arctic ‘Yamal LNG’ Gas Plant Saw a Record 287 Cargo Loadings in 2024,” High North News, April 30, 2025, https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/russias-arctic-yamal-lng-gas-plant-saw-record-287-cargo-loadings-2024.

[7] “Russia’s Arctic ‘Yamal LNG’ Gas Plant Saw a Record 287 Cargo Loadings in 2024,” High North News, April 30, 2025.

[8] Toby Woodall, “Who Buys Russian Oil and Gas?,” The Kyiv Independent, October 14, 2025, https://kyivindependent.com/who-buys-russian-oil-and-gas/.

[9] “Russia,” The Arctic Institute - Center for Circumpolar Security Studies, August 1, 2022, https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/country-backgrounders/russia/.

[10] Heather A. Conley, Matthew Melino, and Jon B. Alterman, “The Ice Curtain: Russia’s Arctic Military Presence,” Www.csis.org, March 26, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/ice-curtain-russias-arctic-military-presence.

[11] Martin Breum, “Russia Gets Approval for the Data behind Much of Its Arctic Ocean Seabed Claim,” ArcticToday, February 17, 2023, https://www.arctictoday.com/russia-gets-approval-for-the-data-behind-much-of-its-arctic-ocean-seabed-claim/.

[12] “Svalbard Treaty, Paris, 9 February 1920 - Arctic Portal,” Arcticportal.org, 2024, https://arcticportal.org/arctic-governance/international-agreements-archive/3407-svalbard-treaty-paris-9-february-1920.

[13] “Russia Plants Flag Staking Claim to Arctic Region,” CBC, August 2, 2007, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-plants-flag-staking-claim-to-arctic-region-1.679445.

[14] “Putin Outlines Ambitious Arctic Expansion Program,” AP News, April 9, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/d0c2eb39a3b44b40ac8ddb1749ebe143.

[15] The State Council of the People's Republic of China, “China’s Arctic Policy,” The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, January 26, 2018, https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2018/01/26/content_281476026660336.htm.

[16]Dams, Ties, and Louise van Schaik. The Arctic Elephant: Why Europe Must Address the Geopolitics of the High North, The Hague: Clingendael Institute, 2019.

[17] “EU Importers Preparing to Implement March 2025 Transshipment Ban for Russian LNG,” High North News, December 23, 2024, https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/eu-importers-preparing-implement-march-2025-transshipment-ban-russian-lng. ; The State Council of the People's Republic of China, “China’s Arctic Policy,” english.www.gov.cn, January 26, 2018, https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2018/01/26/content_281476026660336.htm.

[18]“2024 Department of Defense Arctic Strategy,” June 21, 2024, https://media.defense.gov/2024/Jul/22/2003507411/-1/-1/0/DOD-ARCTIC-STRATEGY-2024.PDF.

[19]The Associated Press, “Trump Administration Finalizes Plan to Open Pristine Alaska Wildlife Refuge to Oil and Gas Drilling,” NPR, October 24, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/10/24/nx-s1-5584883/trump-alaska-wildlife-refuge-oil-gas-drilling.

[20] Global Affairs Canada, “Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy,” GAC, 2024, https://www.international.gc.ca/gac-amc/publications/transparency-transparence/arctic-arctique/arctic-policy-politique-arctique.aspx?lang=eng#a2.

[21]Ibid.

[22] DW Documentary, “The Melting Ice of the Arctic (1/2) | DW Documentary,” YouTube, December 25, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GystZIxWQ3o.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Global Affairs Canada, “Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy,” GAC, 2024, https://www.international.gc.ca/gac-amc/publications/transparency-transparence/arctic-arctique/arctic-policy-politique-arctique.aspx?lang=eng#a2.

[25] “The EU in the Arctic | EEAS Website,” www.eeas.europa.eu, n.d., https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/eu-arctic_en#10606.

[26] Zandee, Dick, Kimberley Kruijver, and Adája Stoetman. The Future of Arctic Security. The Hague: Clingendael Institute, 2020.