On Friday members of Greenpeace blocked a coal mine in the archipelago in Arctic Norway. The environmental group was protesting plans for further coal production in the deep Arctic region. Over a dozen people protested by stopping a conveyor belt at the Svea mine that was carrying coal to a vessel that was scheduled to go to Portugal with a 70,000 ton load of coal this past week end.

Climate change and the globalization of the economy is making cross-border cooperation increasingly important, Thorvald Stoltenberg highlighted in his presentation at the Stoltenberg Symposium last week.

Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, Paavo Väyrynen, will visit Arkhangelsk next week.

During a presentation on Thursday to the Canadian House of Commons in regards to Arctic sovereignty, Mary Simon, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president, said that Canada should create a joint federal-Inuit “authority” to manage ships travelling the Arctic sea route as a means of strengthening the country’s claims to the much disputed Northwest Passage.

Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, recently told Vesit 24 television that he is concerned that with the melting ice in the Arctic and the waterway becoming more accessible to ships, it could put the United States in the perfect position to have shipboard missiles as a means of defense to counter Russian weapons.

Recently collected geological data strengthen Denmark’s and Greenlandic territorial claims to the North Pole.