Robin des Bois (Robin Hood) has been an observer to the OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic since 2005. It is the only NGO based in France with this status. The Convention’s area covers a total of 13.5 million km2, divided into 5 regions: Arctic Waters (5.53 million km2), Greater North Sea (and English Channel), Celtic Sea, Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast, and Wider Atlantic. The Arctic is the meeting point of river, marine, and atmospheric pollution emitted by sub-Arctic and coastal countries. On October 4, November 28, 2022, January 23, May 25, October 16, 17 and 18, 2023, and January 30-31, 2024, Gaëlle Guilissen, representing Robin des Bois, took part in the first cycle of the Arctic Outcomes Working Group, in person or virtually. The objective is to draw up a final document, to be delivered in 2024, outlining the threats facing the Arctic Waters region and proposing remedial action. A further meeting is scheduled for March 6. Robin des Bois will come back to this vital issue later this year.
Current and future problems facing the Arctic’s indigenous populations and biodiversity include in particular the proliferation of salmon farms, cruise ship intrusions and the exploitation of mineral resources in the abysses.
Ivory gull (Pagophila eburnea), Svalbard © springof61
Salmon
Salmon farming is perhaps the best example of the dislocation of ecology and the absurdity of the global economy. Harassed by pollution, hydroelectric dams, the destruction of spawning grounds in OSPAR signatory countries, and genetically weakened by hybridization with farmed salmon that escape by the hundreds of thousands every year, wild migratory and amphidromous Salmo salar salmons number less than 500,000 in the Atlantic Ocean, while there are more than 500 million artificial salmons in battery farms in the North-East Atlantic. In Norway, annual salmon production is around 1.55 million tons, 90% of which is exported. The counties of Nordland and of Troms and Finnmark inside the Arctic Circle are the most productive. Overcrowding in submerged cages favours the proliferation of Lepeophtheirus salmonis or “salmon lice”, which feed on the skin and blood of their hosts. Farmed salmon has become a habitat for sea lice. In an attempt to curb colonization and restore the health of the salmons, pesticide treatments are regularly administered in increasingly high doses to counter the parasites’ resistance to pesticides. Salmon food transport is also questionable. On October 17, 2023, the Aleksandr Gusev, built in the Netherlands 30 years ago, ran up against the rocks during a storm. The 8 crew members fled ashore, but the wreck will remain forever in a bay 50 km north of Murmansk, and the 200 tons of junk food for Inarctica’s Russian fish farms will rot inside the wreck this summer.
Cruises and tourism
During the OSPAR meeting in Copenhagen in October 2023, the voices of the Inuit and Sami peoples and NGOs (Robin des Bois, ACOPS – Advisory Committee on the Protection of the Sea, WWF Global Arctic Programme) joined to express concern about the proliferation of cruise ships in the Arctic Ocean. The risks are both cultural, with the disruption of the rhythms and rituals of native populations, and environmental, with regular discharges from cruise ships in normal operation and major pollution in the event of shipwreck, collision, fire or beaching. The number of ships is growing all the time (around 100 by 2022). And the Arctic is no exception to the trend towards massification, gigantism and marketing. The MSC Preziosa, built in France, 333 meters long, flying the flag of Panama, with a capacity of 4,345 POB (People on Board), “will delight adventurers dreaming of exploring the Arctic Circle” according to its Italian-Swiss owner MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company). Accidents are dreaded by all the maritime assistance and rescue services of the countries bordering the Arctic. Depending on the location of the vessel transmitting the distress signal, the time taken for rescue services to arrive on the scene could range from 12 hours to 5 days. The Polar Code does not guarantee that, in the worst-case scenario, the survival equipment theoretically available to the survivors will be able to protect them from hypothermia. If they don’t drown, they’ll freeze to death. Fortunately, despite the current geopolitical tensions, cooperation in this field between Norway and Russia remains the norm. The risks of new propulsion methods such as Liquefied Natural Gas and lithium battery packs have not yet been assessed or even simulated in an environment as hostile as the icy Arctic Ocean. The Commandant Charcot, whose maneuverability and discretion are touted by her French shipowner Ponant, contains 4,500 m3 of Liquefied Natural Gas, several hundred tons of lithium batteries and 1,000 tons of fuel oil.
Mining in the Arctic abysses
The Spitsbergen Treaty (now Svalbard Treaty) was signed in Paris on February 9, 1920, exactly 104 years ago (2). It’s a diplomatic time bomb. The original signatories were France, the United States of America, Great Britain, Denmark, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden. Article 3 guarantees them free access to the exploitation of fishing and mining resources within the territorial waters of the archipelago. By 2024, 46 countries had signed the Treaty, including Russia (1991), Iceland (1994), Latvia and North Korea (2016). On the basis of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Russia and other European Union countries are now demanding, with varying degrees of insistence, that the Treaty be extended to the archipelago’s continental shelf. For the time being, the European Union is toning down its demands, anxious not to alienate Norway, on which it depends for its gas supplies. However, Norway has just unilaterally opened the door to the exploration of mineral resources in the abysses of the archipelago’s continental shelf by allocating itself a 280,000 km2 zone, a first step towards exploitation. A preliminary fauna and flora inventory carried out in 2020 revealed a formidable density (12 to 31 individuals per m2) and diversity of sponges, cold corals, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, anguilliform fish, kelp and brown algae, a whole benthic mosaic that has developed over millennia a physiological and morphological adaptation to life in the abyss. These populations would be devastated by robotic underwater excavators, the first step in the mechanical and logistical engineering needed to bring polymetallic sulphides rich in copper, manganese, cobalt, scandium and lithium to the surface. Norway’s one-sided initiative rekindles diplomatic tensions surrounding the archipelago. For their part, Robin des Bois and other NGOs are campaigning for a ban on the exploitation of mining resources in the Arctic Ocean, in parallel with the ban on mining resources in the Antarctic Ocean.
(1) The OSPAR Convention aims to prevent and reduce pollution resulting from human activities in the North-East Atlantic. It covers 13.5 million km2, or 4% of the world’s ocean. It is a pioneering regional convention that deserves to be replicated in other ocean ecosystems, notably the South Atlantic. Fifteen countries are signatories: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, plus the European Union. The assessment of the state of the marine environment and the actions to be taken is entrusted to 5 standing committees: Biological Diversity and Ecosystems, Hazardous Substances and Eutrophication, Impacts of Human Activities, Offshore Industry, Radioactive Substances. A plenary meeting of all the contracting parties and observers is held each year. One of OSPAR’s shortcomings is that it does not include Russia.
(2) The Spitsbergen Treaty of February 9, 1920, original text.
http://library.arcticportal.org/1909/1/The_Svalbard_Treaty_9ssFy.pdf
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