Greenland, Business in the Arctic, the Polar Code and Coast Guard Cooperation

• Author: Øyvind Ravna
• Pages: 1-2

Greenland, Business in the Arctic,

the Polar Code and Coast Guard

Cooperation

This issue of Arctic Review on Law and Politics represents another milestone. Even

though the journal qualified for level 2 in the Norwegian Scientific Index more than a

year ago, this is the first issue that effectively counts at this highest academic level for

journals and books in Norway.

Originally, the majority of articles in this issue were to have related to Greenland.

However, several factors, including the peer-review process and time constraints,

have meant that this is not the case. Even so, there are two solid articles related to

Greenland in the issue. In addition, three of the other ar ticles deal with highly

relevant topics concerning the landmasses and seas in the High North.

Maria Ackre

´nexamines the public consultation processes followed in Greenland in

connection with two large-scale mining projects, inquiring how the deliberative

democratic process unfolded. The author focuses on two projects that received a lot

of media attention, the 2005 Isukasia iron ore mine project and the 2001 TANBREEZ

project to extract rare earth elements. These two projects used highly different ap-

proaches to public consultation. In the former case, a limited degree of deliberative

democracy was used in the public consultation process, while in the latter, the opposite

applies.

Peter

Ø

rebech examines the significance of historic Inuit habitation in Greenland to

the outcome of the 1933 PCIJ East Greenland case. The article explains how Denmark

prevented Norway from claiming East Greenland by referring to the 1814 Treaty of

Kiel, which ceded Norway from Denmark to Sweden, with the significant exception of

the ancient Norwegian dependencies of Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

Possession of these territories remained with the Kingdom of Denmark. Norway’s

attempt to annex East Greenland in 1931-32 failed because the region was not

considered terra nullius, and had retained this status across the centuries. Despite the

absence of any Norsemen for two centuries in the late Middle Ages, the Inuit were

always considered ‘‘subjects’’ of the King of Denmark before, during and after this

period. The study determines that a terr itory inhabited by indigenous groups with a

form of social and political organization, precludes any claim of occupation since the

land is not terra nullius.

Arctic Review on Law and Politics

Vol. 7, No. 1, 2016, pp. 12

#2016 Ø. Ravna. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-

NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), allowing third parties to

copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any

purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.

Citation:

Ø

. Ravna.‘‘Greenland, Business in the Arctic, the PolarCode and Coast Guard Cooperation.’’ Arctic Review on Law

and Politics, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2016, pp. 12. http://dx.doi.org/10.17585/arctic.v7.445 1