Why the Arctic is a new source of global tension

This is fresh air. I'm Dave Davies. If I ask you to picture the North Pole, what comes to mind? Maybe Santa and his elves. Maybe a vast frozen expanse with a pole of some kind marking the very top of the world.

Well our guest today, Rana Farouharp, says you should be thinking about a navigable ocean. And we all should be thinking about it a lot more than we used to. Climate change is melting the polar ice and opening up new shipping routes across the Arctic. Which means that the region is increasingly becoming a zone for great power competition and potentially conflict. It turns out that a shipping route across the Arctic is a time and money saving shortcut for a lot of international commerce.

Faruhar notes that 90% of global trade moves through ships, and the Arctic may well become as critical an avenue for world shipping as the Suez or Panama canals. Beyond that, beneath the Arctic waters are large deposits of oil, natural gas, and rare earth minerals. As well as underwater cables, which carry ninety five percent of the world's intercontinental information flow. So China and Russia are increasing their maritime presence in the Arctic.

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