Melting Artic Sea open up sea lines and treasures

The melting of the Arctic is both a blessing and a curse

Source: The Economist
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According to The Economist, the Arctic's glaciers, including those of Greenland's vast ice cap, are retreating (see map above). The land is thawing: the area covered by snow in June is roughly a fifth less than in the 1960s. The permafrost is shrinking. Alien plants, birds, fish and animals are creeping north and some Arctic species will probably die out. As our special report shows in detail, the Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Arctic governments are starting to see a bonanza in the melt. The Arctic is stocked with minerals that were hitherto largely inaccessible, including an estimated 30% of undiscovered reserves of natural gas and 13% of undiscovered oil reserves (see map below). Encouraged by Arctic governments and dwindling reserves elsewhere, oil companies are flocking north like migrating geese to explore the continental shelves of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia. Canada and Russia also hope to develop their Arctic shipping-lanes, which the melt is making accessible.

Source: The Economist

Click on the image for larger picture.

VIDEO: Watch the receding Arctic ice-shelf and the shipping routes it could unlock.

See the full story here.

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The Arab World's triple crisis - War is looming !

The converging effects of population growth, climate change, and energy depletion are setting the stage for a looming triple crisis in the Arab World.

The region accounts for 6.3% of the world’s population but only 1.4% of its renewable fresh water. Twelve of the world’s 15 most water-scarce countries – Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, and Palestine – are in the region, and in eight, available fresh water amounts annually to less than 250 cubic meters per person. Three-quarters of the region’s available fresh water is in just four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

The World Bank’s Water Sector Assessment Report on the Gulf countries, published in 2005, predicts that these demographic pressures will likely cause the availability of fresh water to halve, exacerbating the danger of inter-state conflict. Competition to control water has already played a key role in regional geopolitical tensions, for instance, between Turkey and Syria; Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority; Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia; and between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, Qatar, Bahrain, and Jordan.

A halving of available water supplies could turn these tensions into open hostilities. Indeed, while economic growth, accompanied by greater urbanization and higher per capita incomes, has translated into greater demand for fresh water, the population movements that have resulted are now exacerbating local ethnic tensions.

This was an summary from Project Syndicate/Europe’s World, 2011. Click here to see the rest of the story.

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