Iceland review - 2014, Blaðsíða 40

38 ICELAND REVIEW
When I was born, in the early 70s, the
world’s population stood at three billion.
When I retire, around the year 2040, the
population will have tripled to nine billion.
Never before has the human race experi-
enced such an explosion in growth. This calls
for more energy, more food and more water
to fulfill our basic needs.
THE ArcTIc cOuNcIl
There are eight countries in the Arctic
Council: Iceland, Greenland (Denmark),
Canada, the U.S., Russia, Finland, Sweden
and Norway. The Arctic is governed by those
countries since they have economic rights
in accordance with UNCLOS, the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
UNCLOS gives countries rights according
to the extent of their continental shelves. In
the case of the Arctic, the shelves of Russia,
tion of goods between England and Scotland,
pointing out that by means of shipping, 15
times the load can be transported at the same
price as moving the goods on a carriage. Still
today, shipping is by far the cheapest form of
transport. Smith understood that transport
is the foundation for business, and that spe-
cialization is the way to reach higher living
standards.
Currently, the Arctic’s infrastructure is
quite limited. In order to harvest resources,
it is essential to have access to ports, airports,
electricity and the like. Instead of build-
ing infrastructure around every project, it
would be more efficient to work on different
opportunities from a single base.
Iceland served as that base in the past. It
was a center for commerce and transport in
the Arctic until 1264 when it gave up its sov-
ereignty to the king of Norway. After that,
Iceland lost its position and Norway took it
over, and then eventually Denmark, which
held a monopoly on trade in Greenland,
Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Svalbard well
into the 20th century. The Danish Kingdom
protected their interests fiercely, positioning
its navy in the area to fend off any intruders,
who at the time were mostly Dutch whalers.
Iceland experienced its darkest hour dur-
ing those centuries and the living standard
collapsed. It was only in 1913, once Iceland
started its own shipping company, Eimskip,
that our luck started turning.
Much of the debate regarding the Arctic
has focused on the Northern Sea Route and
oil and gas exploration. Unfortunately other
projects, much closer in time, have gone
unnoticed.
OPPOrTuNITIES IN grEENlAND
Greenland is now in a similar position as
Iceland was in 1918, when Iceland had home
rule but had not yet declared independence.
Canada, the U.S., Greenland and Norway
more or less cover the entire area. That is
very different from the Antarctic. The South
Pole has no continental shelf of any country
close by and is therefore an international
territory. The Antarctic treaty governs the
continent.
With technological advances, the harvest-
ing of resources is becoming more and more
attractive in and around the North and South
Poles. As the Arctic is not an international
territory, the Arctic Council has a big say in
regarding how the development occurs.
TrANSPOrT IS kEy
Eighteenth century pioneer of political econ-
omy Adam Smith understood that transport
was the key to economic development. In
the third chapter of his magnum opus Wealth
of Nations (1776) he discusses the transporta-
fRONTIER
the farm nýhöfn on Melrakkaslétta, iceland's northernmost peninsula.