opinions
Pacific Environment:
Receding Sea Ice Drives New Arctic Threats
Increasing traffic on the Northern Sea Route threatens the Arctic’s fragile ecosystem.
Published
This is an op-ed written by an external contributor. All views expressed are the writer's own.
Receding sea ice is leading to consideration of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) along Russia’s coast as a shorter alternative to other shipping routes linking Asia and Europe, placing the fragile Arctic environment at increased risk.
The resulting increasing ship traffic in ice-choked Arctic waters should be strongly regulated to avoid further disruption of the vulnerable Arctic ecosystem, which acts as a coolant for the planet, deflecting the sun’s light and heat. More ship traffic will mean more emissions of black carbon and other air pollution, more noise disruptive to marine life and greater risk of oil and chemical spills.
Black carbon, or soot, emitted from ships has an outsized impact in the Arctic, accelerating the melting of ice and snow exposing darker land and water surfaces, causing more heat absorption and accelerating warming.
Add Stressors to the Arctic
The Arctic's summer sea ice is shrinking at roughly 12.2% per decade, based on NASA and NSIDC satellite data. As Arctic ice continues to melt and recede, interest in using Arctic routes will increase.
That international shipping could add additional stress to the Arctic is particularly alarming as global climate heating exceeds 1.5°C. Warming four times faster than elsewhere on the globe, the Arctic is the place on our planet under the most pressure from climate heating.
Pushing climate risks and impacts to dangerous new heights.
Impacts from the Arctic meltdown extend far beyond the Arctic, affecting ocean currents, global sea level rise, and atmospheric conditions in the mid-latitudes.
A recently released report by the U.N. Environment Programme acknowledges that exceeding 1.5°C is inevitable and imminent, pushing climate risks and impacts to dangerous new heights.
“The world must strive to return to below 1.5°C as soon as possible and simultaneously reduce the vulnerability of societies, communities and economies to climate impacts,” according to the report, Limiting Overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return. It finds that the world can achieve this goal by acting now to get on an ‘overshoot, peak, and decline’ pathway.
The report says that the policy challenge has shifted from avoiding overshoot to navigating it, while minimizing its scale and duration to the lowest extent possible. Scientific assessments indicate that temporary exceedance of 1.5°C is inevitable under current emissions trajectories and policy settings.
Therefore, the challenge confronting policy makers is no longer on how to avoid exceedance, but rather how to understand, prepare for and navigate a future in which global temperatures exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and still bring temperatures back below 1.5°C by 2100 to fulfill Paris Agreement goals.
Not exceeding 1.5°C heating is a goal adopted in the Paris Agreement, a threshold most nations have agreed is important to avoid crossing.
Risks Face Shipowners
Although the NSR is shorter than traditional routes, it’s not necessarily cheaper. Analysis shows that economic feasibility of the route is questionable and depends on factors such as weather-caused delays and uncertainty, more expensive insurance, fees charged by Russia for a permit to use the route and to provide ice breaker assistance, and constraints of the limited operational window.
Operating in polar waters also requires meeting additional international regulations — a polar ship certificate and preparation of a polar water operational manual ahead of a journey as well as additional requirements relating to ice strengthening, vessel stability, life-saving equipment and environmental protection.
In addition to navigational problems encountered in ice-clogged waters, ship operators must also consider the possibility of hull damage, the lack of infrastructure and capacity to respond to emergencies of all types, safety concerns, and the increased risk of a catastrophic oil spill that would be impossible to clean up and devastating to marine life, Indigenous communities and the environment.
Russia has been promoting the NSR for years, but its use has been limited by the harsh conditions, a lack of ice-class vessels and icebreakers, and the limited 3- to 4-month window for shipping operations. Sanctions and the war against Ukraine also have discouraged its use.
Last month, China's Sea Legend launched an 8-week regular container service linking China to Europe via the NSR and, also last month, the Republic of Korea's Panstar Line dispatched a pilot container ship on the NSR. This transit and container traffic is still quite small in absolute terms, but is growing in the few months a year the NSR is partially open.
Heightens the need for action by the International Maritime Organization
The recent surge in NSR ship traffic appears driven not only by the receding ice but also by geopolitical considerations. Disruption of shipping near the Strait of Hormuz due to the U.S. war on Iran and shipping routes near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the vital southern chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, due to Houthi attacks, has increased interest in alternative routes.
Triple Planetary Crisis
The worsening climate situation heightens the need for action by the International Maritime Organization to regulate black carbon in the Arctic. Black carbon emissions from shipping are at the nexus of the “triple planetary crisis” of climate warming, pollution and biodiversity loss. By reducing its black carbon emissions, the shipping sector can help address multiple global threats to communities and ecosystems.
“On ever thinner ice: Reducing black carbon demands urgent action” summarizes recent research on climate tipping points and makes the case for reducing Arctic black carbon emissions from shipping by requiring use of cleaner fuels.
As the surpassing of 1.5°C heating relative to pre-industrial times approaches, the risk increases that earth system tipping points and other harmful changes to earth systems will be triggered. Melting of the Greenland ice sheet and thawing permafrost throughout the Arctic are among several earth systems at greater risk around 1.5°C of warming.
As a key element of arresting and reversing climate heating and urgently protecting the Arctic, we can start immediately by reducing shipping black carbon emissions in the Arctic and discouraging unnecessary commercial transit ship traffic on the Northern Sea Route, which will bring only additional risk to the local communities, wildlife and ecosystems but no benefits.
Kay Brown is the Arctic Policy Director for Pacific Environment, and lead author on the recently released report, “On ever thinner ice: Reducing black carbon demands urgent action.”
