Canada's Arctic Future: Lessons from East Asia

The impact of climate change on the circumpolar north has increased the value the Arctic Ocean to coastal states and presents serious foreign policy challenges to Canada. The Arctic dispute has two distinct features for Canada; a dispute over the status of the Northwest Passage and conflicting claims with coastal states over extended continental shelf claims. Canada?s response to these challenges will have a lasting effect on its relationships with neighbouring states as well as on the lives of those who inhabit the area. This paper concerns the latter challenge; overlapping extended continental shelf claims with coastal states such as Russia.

Specifically, it draws comparative lessons for Canadian policymakers based on the East Asian experience responding to the overlapping jurisdictional entitlements created by UNCLOS. East Asian states have been grappling with the challenge presented by overlapping claims to resource rich seabeds since the widespread ratification of UNCLOS in 1996. In light of similar geographic conditions (a dispute over a semi-enclosed sea), alliance structures and the relative infancy of the claimant states with UNCLOS entitlements? Canada only ratified the treaty in 2003, and the United States has yet to do so? This paper sets out the case that important comparative lessons for Canada can be drawn from the East experience with regard to territorial and delimitation disputes. In light of recent cooperative advances, particular attention is paid to the East China Sea dispute between China and Japan.

James Manicom completed his PhD at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia in June 2009. His dissertation examined maritime territorial disputes between China and Japan and was funded by the Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Flinders University and an affiliate in the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto. His research interests include Asian international relations and strategic studies, energy security, nationalism and territorial disputes; the latter three in particular as they relate to the Canadian Arctic.

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