Resource wars are possible as global warming melts polar ice - opening new areas to oil exploitation, cables indicate.
Editor's Note - While this story is not about adventure tourism, it's a story surely and profoundly tied to the future of adventure tourism in the Arctic region - from multiple perspectives.
According to a recent Aljazeera.com article, some new Wikileaks have made public secret U.S. embassy cables proving that multiple nations are competing for the future of the Arctic region's resources. Global warming will expose approximately 22 percent of the world's oil, as well as revealing new shipping lanes - both of which are seen as key resources to control by multiple nations.
Per Stig Moller, then Danish foreign minister, mused in a 2009 cable that "new shipping routes and natural resource discoveries would eventually place the region at the centre of world politics".
Canada, the US, Russia, Norway, Denmark, and perhaps even China, have competing claims to the Arctic, a region about the size of Africa, comprising some six per cent of the Earth's surface.
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