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South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister: Climate Change A Security Risk
Yonhap News Agency recently reported the remarks of South Korea’s Second Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul regarding the security risks of climate change. The minister provided important commentary on both security risks, as well as the need for a more holistic partnership approach to tackling climatic risks in the Asia-Pacific region. The full article is worth reading and can be accessed here. The minister’s remarks were focused mostly on the Asia-Pacific region, but Cho Tae-yul has also spoken about the role of climatic factors in the Arctic, and expressed interest in Arctic Council membership for South Korea. (more…)
EU Releases Plan for the Arctic
The European Commission and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security policy just released a plan outlining EU policy for the Arctic. The plan acknowledges the dramatic role climate change is playing in region, including the effects of rapidly retreating sea ice on opening up new economic opportunities in terms of shipping, mining, energy extraction and fishing. The policy aims to outline a set of tangible actions that can help the EU navigate future involvement in the region.
Here is the full press release and a video announcing the new policy. See it here first before it goes viral!
India in the Arctic?
Just dug up an interesting piece on India’s growing interest in the Arctic, which identifies three core rationales: a desire to study climate change, oil and gas exploration (India already participates in exploration off the coast of Russia’s Sakhalin island), and broader geo-strategic goals (India has aspirations to eventually join the Arctic Council). As Arctic ice continues to recede, expect a broader range of countries – many of whom one would not normally put in the same sentence as “Arctic” – to turn their attention northward.
Everyone Wants to Go to Svalbard
Where will you be spending your next vacation? Don’t know about you, but we’re going to Svalbard, Norway, the northernmost inhabited place on Earth, and one of the coldest. Well, no, we’re not. But a melting arctic – opening up shipping lanes, oil and gas reserves and global warming research centers – has made the remote island of Svalbard, a place that was once offered as a harsher alternative to the death penalty, a veritable hotbed of interest from major countries, such as China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. On the U.S. side, publications such as Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr’s “The Emerging Arctic Frontier” in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings Magazine this past February, speak loud and clear to that growing interest.
Still, we plan to go to Malta instead.
The full story at Public Radio International.