The Arctic and the Geopolitics of Strategic Minerals

In recent months, Arctic resources have moved to the center of geopolitical debate. President Trump has publicly proposed that the United States take control of Greenland, citing its strategic location and mineral wealth, while leaders in Denmark and Greenland have rejected the proposal.

The dispute comes at a time when critical minerals are becoming central to the global energy transition. Electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and advanced technologies all depend on them. Yet much of the world’s refining and processing capacity is concentrated in a small number of countries, most prominently China. That concentration has intensified concerns about how geopolitical rivalry could shape access to the materials that underpin the transition to cleaner energy.

Saleem Ali, professor of energy and the environment at the University of Delaware and a leading voice on mineral diplomacy, discusses where frontier resources, in the Arctic and beyond, fit into this evolving landscape. He assesses whether emerging resource frontiers can meaningfully rebalance global mineral supply chains, or whether their importance has been overstated.

Ali also discusses a proposal for a governance framework, a Global Minerals Trust, designed to reduce resource nationalism and prevent critical minerals from becoming instruments of geopolitical leverage. He examines whether cooperation is realistic in a period of growing competition for strategic resources.

Andy Stone: Welcome to the Energy Policy Now podcast from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m Andy Stone.

In recent months, Arctic resources have become a topic of very public geopolitical debate.  President Trump has talked about the possibility of the United States taking control of Greenland, citing its strategic importance and its mineral wealth. Leaders in Denmark and Greenland have rejected the idea.

But stepping away from the rhetoric, this moment highlights a broader shift. As critical minerals become central to the global energy transition, we are moving into an era where countries increasingly try to secure or even dominate mineral supply chains for strategic advantage. Critical minerals are essential to electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and a range of advanced technologies. Yet much of the world’s refining and processing capacity for those minerals is concentrated in a small number of countries, and most prominently China. If supply chains are politicized, that could affect both the pace and the cost of the global transition to cleaner energy.

On today’s podcast, we’ll look at where frontier resources in the Arctic and elsewhere fit into the larger framework of geopolitics and the energy transition. We’ll look at whether frontier resources could help rebalance the global mineral supply system, or if their importance is overstated. And we’ll explore proposed governance structures that could prevent new resources from becoming further geopolitical tools, rather than energy solutions.

My guest is Saleem Ali, a professor of energy and the environment at the University of Delaware and an important voice on mineral diplomacy. He has been an advocate of the idea of a global minerals trust, a cooperative framework that might reduce resource nationalism and stabilize mineral supply chains so that geopolitical competition doesn’t undermine the energy transition. We’ll talk about how that framework might play out, how significant Arctic resources really are, and whether cooperation rather than competition is possible in the years ahead. Saleem, welcome to the podcast.

Saleem Ali: Thank you, Andy. Pleasure to be here.

Stone: It is great to have you here. And I want to note that a major focus of your work has been environmental conflict around mineral development, particularly in what are sometimes called frontier mining regions, including the Arctic. As I said in the intro, in recent months, global tension has turned sharply to the areas, especially as President Trump has talked about taking control of Greenland for its resources. So to start us out, I want to ask you just kind of a broad question to frame the conversation. When a U.S. president talks about taking control of Greenland for its resources, what does that tell us about how Arctic territory and strategic minerals are being viewed today?

Ali: Yes. Well, first of all, President Trump has been a bit ambivalent about his rationale for the interest in Greenland. He did mention minerals earlier on, but in the most recent conflagration on the topic, he said it was not about minerals. So I would say that regardless of the eventual position the U.S. takes on this matter, minerals are overall in the Arctic quite significant, especially if we think about climate change making minerals much more accessible and also navigation much more accessible.

So just as a comparison with oil and gas development, which is very active across the Arctic, we’ve got— about 10% of the world’s entire oil supply comes from the Arctic. And then about 25% of the natural gas supply comes from the Arctic. A lot of that from the Russian Arctic, which is where a lot of the pipelines have been built, by Russia, to supply gas both domestically and also for transport to Europe— though that has, of course, been abated because of the war with Ukraine to a large degree, but not completely.

Minerals are significant as well in the Arctic, in terms of exploration and reserves. We don’t know as much because we haven’t done the full scale of exploration. But one estimate regarding Greenland— for example, out of the European Union’s 34 minerals which have been identified as critical raw materials, 25 of them can be found in some form in Greenland. So there’s a significant economic incentive in terms of access and how this may become much more economically viable with melting ice.

Stone: Well, that’s a key point, right? So you just mentioned that oil and gas production in the Arctic is pretty significant. In terms of what we know of the rare earths critical minerals deposits that are in the region, how much of this is really conceivably going to be extractable in the near term? Are we talking about longer term here?

Ali: Well, first of all, with Greenland, we know that there’s a history of mining. There’s been extraction of uranium in Greenland historically, which has been a cause of environmental concerns. And so currently the Greenland government has passed laws which prohibit mining of radioactive materials. And the rare earth minerals, one of the concerns is that the ores that contain the rare earth elements have a fairly high radiation content compared to what the Greenland law has allowed. One can argue whether that is still safe or not, and a lot of it is based on risk perception. But that’s in terms of Greenland itself and how they’ve approached mining. With the other elements, certainly there are a lot of the base metals which could be mined if they become more economically viable with the shipping routes as well.

And then Greenland historically had a cryolite mine, which was very significant for the aluminum industry. Cryolite was a mineral that was used in aluminum processing. It’s actually the key compound which allowed for aluminum to be economically extractable when the process was first discovered. And that was by Charles Hall, who was a young undergraduate student at Oberlin College, who discovered that process. And then he later became the founder and CEO of Alcoa, which is of course the major aluminum company still based in the US.

So cryolite, the first cryolite mine was in Greenland. And at the time, it was the only cryolite mine in the world. We subsequently found a way to make cryolite synthetically, so it’s no longer required from mine resources. But Greenland also has that really important strategic history of this particular mining, which was during World War II, particularly, so important that the US had a military presence to protect that mine.

Stone: How significant are these resources? Again, so we just talked about cryolite, but if we look at critical minerals, are they enough to move the needle globally in terms of global supply? Why are they marginal? Just trying to get a sense of that, because again, much has been made of their potential, but I’m not sure how much is actually there.

Ali: Yeah. I mean, in terms of the overall global reserves of any of these elements, this would be marginal, really. But you know, what matters is often not the total aggregate amount, but what a country considers to be secure supply. And that’s the argument that’s made for Greenland and many of these resources in Canada and what we call friend-shoring, where you can get the minerals from friendly locations rather than having them—like, for example, the mineral reserves in Russia and China are enormous. I mean Russia, of course, the world’s largest country by land area, so obviously they also have huge geological deposits accordingly.

But that is of no consequence, of course, currently with the U.S., because of sanctions and so on and no trade. So it’s more about where you can get them rather than the total amount and whether that supply is secure.

Stone: Well, there’s also this idea, and I’ve seen it printed in the press— or online, nobody prints anything these days— but anyways, this idea that Arctic resources in the Arctic is up for grabs. But most Arctic land and offshore resources actually fall under the sovereign control of eight Arctic states under the Law of the Sea. So specifically, what is being competed over in the Arctic right now?

Ali: Yes. So when we talk about the Arctic, we’re essentially talking about within the Arctic circle in terms of geography, right? And that has to do with the latitude itself, and then all of the territories and waters within that. And a lot of the current extraction is happening in the Arctic where the oil and gas development also is happening on land, not in the water. And so it’s important to keep that context in mind, especially with the water— of course, is often inaccessible during winters. Even during summers, very hazardous because of the melting ice and so on, to be extracting.

So currently, all of the extractive activity in the Arctic is on sovereign territories in these eight Arctic states that you have noted. Including in Alaska, of course. We have both oil and gas extraction and we also have some mining activity in Alaska. There’s the Red Dog Mine, which is a major zinc lead mine in Alaska that is partially actually owned by Indigenous Alaskan Corporation. So we have this dynamic, clearly, of mining and a history of mining that is there in the Arctic across the board. Also in Canada, of course, Canada has huge experience with mining in the Arctic and a range of minerals, including diamonds also. Some of the famous Canadian diamonds were mined in the Arctic.

Stone: I bring this up because there’s been a lot of discussion as well about the Antarctic and the Antarctic Treaty. But the conditions and the sovereign situation in the Antarctic and the Arctic are very different.

Ali: Yes, yes, absolutely. So in the case of Antarctica, you have a territory where you had several claimants, countries which were claiming to have either discovered or established some human settlement nearby— temporary settlements there or bases— or claiming it based on proximity to them. So the largest territorial claim in Antarctica is of Australia because Australia sees itself as being geographically very close to Antarctica, and hence claims the territory, part of it. A large chunk of it. The Norwegians have a very large claim because Norway had the explorer Roald Amundsen, who was the first person to reach the South Pole. The United Kingdom also similarly, because of exploration, has a sizable claim. In fact, even maintains a post office in one Antarctic territory because they want to maintain that claim.

And then Argentina and Chile, of course, are very interested in Antarctica because of the proximity to the Antarctic Peninsula. And they are in fact the countries which are closest to Antarctica physically, and have even established bases with civilians who are living there. And they have in fact a school at one of the Argentine bases where kids are going to school and so on, because they want to be able to maintain a potential long-term settlement prospect for Antarctica.

So you have Antarctica as in that context, where it was contested by all these countries with overlapping claims. So in the 1950s, as part of the concern around geoscience research— and this was, amazingly, at the height of the Cold War, the countries that had these claims and other countries with a scientific interest in Antarctica, they came together and decided that they were going to put their claims in abeyance and have the Antarctic Treaty Mechanism set up under which this territory would be jointly administered for the greater good of science through the treaty mechanism. And countries were allowed to open bases there through this process and so on. And also, there are subsequent protocols which have prohibited mining until 2048 on Antarctica.

So right now, until 2048, there is no possibility for any kind of extraction under international legal mechanisms in Antarctica. And Russia is also a party to the Antarctic Treaty. China is. So all of these countries with potentially who could be interested are parties to it.

In the case of the Arctic we do not have a similar treaty, but also we do not have any territory that’s contested in that way. You have sovereign states who are bordering the Arctic Ocean, and you have an Arctic Council, which is a more informal management system that was set up to exchange knowledge and coordinate activities for research and access between the Arctic states. But because more than half of the Arctic is essentially a Russian domain, that council has been quite dysfunctional since the Ukraine war. So we do not have really that much activity that is meaningful happening. It exists, their secretariat is in Trondheim in Norway, and there’s an Arctic University. There’s collaboration which is continuing at some level. But a lot of it has been in abeyance because of the war in Ukraine.

Stone: So a lot of our discussion again about the Arctic is really based in this idea of the importance of the resources there, the conversation around Greenland— regardless of what the current framing of that potential conflict is, or that real conflict is. But all this is within the context of this idea of resource nationalism. And this resource nationalism has been really a focus of the work that you’ve been doing. And you’ve expressed concern that the exercise of resource nationalism, whether by Russia, the United States, China, whoever it may be, could slow or distort the energy transition. So if you wouldn’t mind, could you please give a bit of a better explanation of what resource nationalism is than what I just gave. And tell us about your concern about its potential impact on the transition to a cleaner global energy system.

Ali: Yes. So, resource nationalism is the view that natural resources are a way by which particular communities and nations can assert their sovereignty. And it’s a way by which countries then try to sometimes weaponize those resources as a way of exerting leverage in geopolitics. It is also a term that is used in the context of secessionist movements. So for example, a country like South Sudan or East Timor, separating from their previous parent country, so to speak— in the case of South Sudan, it was Sudan, the greater Sudan country— that it was caused by oil in the case of Sudan. That the South Sudanese felt that the North was taking too much of the revenue of their oil. And they said, “We want to exert our resource nationalism. We want to have these resources for ourselves.” And the same is true of East Timor, where they also have oil. People have said that resource nationalism can add further rationale for countries becoming independent and so on.

So it’s also used particularly in that context. The most recent case of that, which we will see whether that actually leads to the world’s newest country, is Bougainville, which is an island in the Pacific that’s part of Papua New Guinea, and has one of the world’s largest copper deposits that has not been fully extracted. There’s the Panguna copper mine, which essentially led to a civil war in the 1980s. And Bougainville has just voted for independence by a 90% plus referendum. And we will see whether that comes to pass. But that’s another example of resource nationalism that is directly linked to a critical mineral, which copper is, in many cases, in many lists, as a critical mineral.

Stone: I want to go back to the specific issue of the Arctic as well. And I think a critical question is, even if the countries of the Arctic or Greenland starts to take advantage of its mineral wealth at some point in the future, how valuable is that if the whole supply chain, the midstream, the processing is located elsewhere?

Ali: Yes. So with reference to the Arctic and mineral deposits, we also have to consider the processing potential and the energy resources for processing those minerals. Because you want to be able to have clean, affordable energy to process the minerals, which require a lot of energy. Smelters are very energy intensive. These are the huge infrastructure developments needed to actually get the metal out of the rock. So if you look at Greenland, you have— apart from the fact that it’s physically quite close to the U.S., so you have the transport costs reduced if you’re going to be processing the ore nearby.

And then, what are the sources of energy you can get to process the ore? So keep in mind that once the Greenland ice sheet begins to melt, you have a vast resource of hydropower in Greenland. And already, Greenland produces most of its energy through hydropower. This is going to be increasing dramatically as the Greenland ice sheet melts. And if we are able to get that energy then used to develop processing infrastructure for metals, that would be phenomenal. Keep in mind in Iceland, which is not too far from there, you have already an aluminum smelter in Iceland, because they have clean geothermal energy in the case of Iceland, as well as hydropower. So that’s another interesting dynamic which we have to keep in mind for the Arctic, as the energy resources become available with climate change.

Stone: So what you’re saying here is that there actually is potential for significant midstream processing in the Arctic?

Ali: Yes, absolutely. If we can harness especially the hydropower, or in the case of Iceland, the geothermal energy, which is already being used in many cases for a variety of industrial activities, that has tremendous potential. And then in nearby Quebec, of course, you also have major hydropower potential in Canada, which is already one of the reasons why you have major smelting infrastructure in parts of Quebec.

Stone: So these resources will potentially become available at a time, as we’ve already discussed, when resource nationalism is becoming a bigger issue. You have advocated for a global minerals trust as a way to reduce resource nationalism and stabilize mineral supply and access to it. In practical terms, what would that global minerals trust look like and how would it work?

Ali: This idea for the minerals trust has come about through discussions with scholars from all over the world, and we published a paper in Science last year about it. Also for your audience, if they’re interested, there’s a TED talk I gave on this idea, as well, for the Rockefeller Foundation, which can be viewed in more detail online. The concept is essentially to bring the producers and the consumers of critical metals together as trustees of a resource which is needed particularly for the green transition and hence has this planetary value that we should appreciate. So it is a way by which you can justify overcoming resource nationalism for the greater good of a sustainable planet.

And the idea is that countries which have major resources of critical metals, they would agree to sell their resources at market price. Not at any discount, but at market price, into the trust. And then consumers of those technologies who are making those technologies like solar panels or wind turbines or electric car batteries or those metals which are needed for the green transition, they will be able to buy from that trust. And this would prevent the weaponization of the mineral suppliers constraining that supply. And it would give more assurance to those countries which need those minerals that they will be able to access them.

The goal, therefore, is that we would prevent large-scale development of green field mining sites. We would be encouraging more circular economy usage of metals because there could also be a recycling or leasing mechanism within the trust where metals could be leased by countries if they’re going to be using them for temporary purposes for infrastructure that may then be potentially reused later and so on and so forth. So the trust would be like a bank, but it would be managed by the trustees who are both producers and consumers.

So this would be a win-win, in my view, because it also provides the producing countries with greater buffering against price shocks, which is a big problem with metals. It would also ensure that you can have more governance and accountability around the way the mining is occurring because you can build in some mechanism that those countries can sell into the trust once they have met certain criteria for environmental or social factors. So there can be a range of other features which would make for this as a global governance mechanism for minerals and reduce this fear that countries have that we are going to run out of supply and therefore they are going helter-skelter trying to find resources and often doing it either in a very errant way, or they’re not being as thoughtful about the ore grade and the economic and environmental impact.

Stone: Well, that’s interesting, because you have highlighted the potential environmental benefits, right? And as I understand it, if you have secure supply through this trust, you don’t, as you just mentioned, have to go mine in every corner of the globe to get these resources that may be much more efficiently gotten from better reserves controlled by certain countries.

Ali: That’s right, exactly. So it’s both ecologically efficient and economically efficient. And it’s very important that the trustees see the economic value of this too. We don’t want them to be selling at a discount or anything. They should just be buying and selling as if it was a marketplace in that regard.

And there could be a stockpile. In that way, the current U.S. government proposal for the vault, which President Trump has just launched, that is in congruence with some features of the trust which we propose, which is that there can be a stockpile of minerals. So if, for example, there is a slight decline in demand, you still have the stockpile and people are still able to sell into the stockpile, so you don’t have a price shock. So the vault idea that has been put forward by the current U.S. government would also align with the trust.

Stone: Well, the trust is interesting as well because it does— as I understand it, any country would be able to access these critical minerals through the trust. The minerals could not be withheld for geopolitical leverage, would avoid cartels controlling these resources. And you’ve talked about how this could also be advantageous to the energy transition itself, that everybody would have access to these minerals for their own clean energy development needs.

Ali: Exactly, yes. It’s very different from a cartel, because you have both the producers and the consumers as trustees.

Stone: So let me ask you this question. You kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier, but if I am a producing country and I have overwhelming advantage in either the upstream mineral resources themselves or in the midstream, tell me a little bit more why I may be able to— I guess it seems to me— forfeit some of that advantage, to take part in this.

Ali: Yes. So the advantage for the producing countries which already have a monopoly over some resources— like Indonesia, for example, is the world’s largest nickel producer. Let’s take that as an example. And the advantage Indonesia would have to still sell through the trust. They don’t have to, by the way, sell all their reserves through the trust. They can have what we call a nationally determined contribution that would be determined just like we have a nationally determined contribution for emissions under the climate change treaty. You can have, similarly, a nationally determined contribution for the amount of metals which we decide through technocratic mechanisms— through organizations like IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, or other mechanisms— what that amount is, they can sell into it.

The advantage for them there is that they are buffered from the price shocks. So that metal that they’re selling in there, they would have assurance that they can sell that, that nationally determined contribution as well. Through this technocratic mechanism, they can say, “Look, we need so much of the supply for domestic purposes. So we are going to not have this much available.” And that can all be negotiated just as we have through all these other international legal mechanisms as well for a range of commodity exchanges and then also environmental pollution criteria.

Stone: To what extent would the Arctic be an ideal place to begin to implement something like the trust? It is still largely undeveloped. Everything is kind of new there. And it seems like, from my perspective, a good place to start because there aren’t already these supply chains in existence that would have to be reconfigured in terms of how they would be marketed.

Ali: Well, with the Arctic, what would be really interesting is if we can use this as a means of leverage with Russia, in terms of the current conflict as well. And one of my other roles— I serve on the board of a nonprofit called the Science Diplomacy Center. Myself and the executive director of the Science Diplomacy Center, Paul Berkman, have argued that one of the ways to conflict resolution with Russia is through leveraging the Arctic aspects of cooperation and making the case that if the minerals that Russia wants to sell to have some escape from sanctions can be sold into a minerals trust for the green transition. That could be a way in which, at a level—   just for the Arctic, since you asked about that— would incentivize that.

And then, certainly, you have Canada and the United States as major Arctic powers. You have Finland, which has a lot of minerals and is developing a very robust critical mineral sector. Sweden, which is a huge mineral producer and has historically been one of the major mining countries of Europe. And even Norway, which has had some history of mining, though most of Norway’s resources have been oil and gas. All of these countries could have a mechanism whereby they could be a prototype for the trust.

But the key issue is developing some way with the Arctic, because Russia is so dominant in terms of just the physical space. Doing anything like this in the Arctic would need to be configured in that regard. So the idea we presented for the minerals trust was by no means confined to the Arctic. But if we wanted to, it could be an interesting prototype with these caveats and using this as a form of mineral diplomacy to hopefully also change their behavior in the context of the Ukraine war.

Stone: It’s interesting, when we talk about the Arctic and frontier resources generally, you have an interesting perspective. You look, through your work, at the Earth as a one large system. And when we think about extracting resources from the Arctic, areas that have not really been explored and developed previously— Greenland in particular— or we think about the deep sea, the potential for deep sea mining. And it’s interesting that in 2024, Norway opened its continental shelf to exploration of deep sea resources, not yet their mining. But this is becoming kind of a new area of development.

You have expressed some interesting thoughts about the value, environmentally, of actually going after these frontier resources. And I wonder if you could frame that for me. How these resources that— personally, I’ve always thought of them as kind of resources you don’t want to develop. There’s got to be some part of Earth that’s left untouched. But you, again, present an a systems perspective that challenges that. I wonder if you could tell us about that.

Ali: Yes. So, you know, with reference to comparing different sources of extraction, we have techniques we use from the field of industrial ecology called life cycle analysis, where you can compare, what are the environmental and social impacts of a particular activity? And what I’ve tried to do with colleagues working on deep sea mining is to evaluate what are the differences and impacts of extracting the battery metals, as we call them, the four key battery metals, nickel, manganese, cobalt, and copper, from the deep sea, versus the terrestrial sources for these metals.

And these are the four metals which are found in polymetallic nodules in the deep sea, which are these highly concentrated deposits of metals that have precipitated over thousands of years, and hence they are fairly concentrated in these metals.

Now, of course, there are concerns in terms of the biodiversity impacts of extraction, and that is the most difficult variable to compare, because how do you value the life of certain microorganisms in the deep sea versus other kinds of organisms on land? And environmentalists have rightly called our attention to that.

But as a systems scientist, I always try to consider, what is the trade-off? You know, if you do not mine here, do you mine on land, and then what are the relative impacts? And so, for example, with nickel, if you are mining it in Indonesia, a lot of that nickel is coming from Sulawesi, or the Spice Islands region, which are in one of the most high-biodiversity ecosystems in the world. We refer to it as “the Coral Triangle,” where you have very high biodiversity on land and extremely high biodiversity in the ocean. So if you are comparing that region for nickel versus the Clarion-Clipperton zone in the Pacific, which is where these nodules are, one recognizes that, you know, it is a real trade-off.

The other aspect is, of course, in the deep sea you do not have any human communities residing there. Whereas on land, if you are mining, often you have to displace people, you have social impacts, you have indigenous people and sacred sites concerns. There are so many concerns which we have on land, and mining is one of the least popular industries globally, which is why some countries have had a moratorium on mining. Like, El Salvador and Philippines, until recently, had a moratorium on mining.

So you have to then balance out these different factors as a system scientist. So that’s why I’ve been willing to consider the deep sea as a source of resources. Plus, the other interesting feature of the deep sea is that we did develop an international legal mechanism to govern how this extraction happens through the Law of the Sea Convention. And we have the International Seabed Authority, which was established more than 30 years ago, to try and govern, manage, develop regulations for extracting in international waters.

So what Norway has done is just in its own territorial waters, but we also have a mechanism internationally to try and regulate these resources there. So that’s how I approach it. Of course, we want to then make sure that you don’t have extraction on land as much, if you’re doing from the sea, because otherwise you will have rampant extraction. But if you have a governance mechanism like the trust internationally, then you can figure that out and say, “Look, okay, we’re going to be comparing the impacts and we mine from this region, not from this other region, based on these factors.” And then you provide compensation or encouragement through other incentives for alternative industries for those countries which may lose out from mining on their land where there is more vulnerable ecosystems present.

So that’s the other feature which is important, Because Indonesia may come and say, well, why should we mine less? We want to make more money. So you have to figure out a mechanism whereby you calibrate that accordingly, that if a certain deposit is not going to be extracted, then they’ll be compensated for it.

Stone: Could that somehow be integrated into the idea of the global minerals trust?

Ali: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s right, because the minerals trust is like a resource bank and the countries who are helping to sustain that, some of the revenues from those resources that are coming through and could be used to help with that. Plus, the international development donor community can interface with the trust to see those countries which are losing out, how can we provide them alternative development paths?

This is something which was tried in the case of one country with the rainforest concerns in the Amazon. Ecuador at one time agreed to be compensated for not extracting oil in the Yasuni Reserve many years ago. Then subsequently, there was a change in government, there was not enough— and Norway actually donated a considerable amount of money for that mechanism. But that didn’t come through in the way in which it was intended. But if this was managed multilaterally, I think we could conceivably resurrect that kind of concept and link it to the minerals trust.

Stone: And it sounds like this kind of multilateral coordination is going to be important again in the frontier area that we’re talking about here, which is the Arctic.

Ali: Exactly.

Stone: I want to ask you kind of the counter scenario here. If meaningful coordination does not emerge around mineral governance, what path do you see for the Arctic over the coming few decades? Do you see some sort of managed cooperation that manages the resources, not only from an environmental perspective, but in terms of access? Or do you see these fragmented cartels, mineral blocks, or something even more destabilizing?

Ali: Yes, it can be very problematic. You know, if we do not have some kind of governance mechanism, we can have a free-for-all. I mean, this is my concern with deep-sea mining, is that if we undermine the Law of the Sea convention and the international seabed authority, which is what unfortunately many of the well-intentioned environmentalists have ended up doing, then we open the door for countries saying, “Well, if you don’t want us to go through the mechanism that’s there, we’ll just go and do it directly. We’re not even doing anything illegal, because we are not even a party to the Law of the Sea convention, and we’ll go ahead and do it.”

And this is exactly what the U.S. is now doing with one of the mining companies is that they have— deep-sea mining companies— they have offered to provide a license through the U.S. government to go ahead and do this extraction and bypass the Law of the Sea convention. Because the U.S. has not ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.

Stone: You also mentioned that the environmental organizations may be undermining the convention as well. Could you explain that?

Ali: Yes, so a lot of the environmental groups who have been opposing deep-sea mining, the mechanism to oppose it, they’ve been going after the International Seabed Authority, which is under the Law of the Sea convention, and they’re saying that this is a corrupt entity. That it is not managed properly, that it’s not giving attention to their concerns. So they have been undermining it through a lot of journalism. There was a New York Times article by—

Stone: Are there claims based in any facts? I mean, I just want to make sure I don’t overlook their claims.

Ali: Yeah. I mean, a lot of their claims are based on the fact that it is just taking a long time to come up with the regulations and that they are listening to industry people as well as countries, but that is the role of such a multilateral institution. And some of the claims are more innuendo. But bottom line is if you completely undermine it, then you have nothing.

Stone: Right.

Ali: So you can have an imperfect entity and you try to reform it, or you just then go ahead and find another pathway, which is in this case going to be just countries going independently and doing it.

Stone: As we’re seeing with the United States, you’re saying.

Ali: Exactly. And so from the environmentalist perspective, which— I have many friends in the environmentalist community who have said, you may win the battle and lose the war. Because right now a lot of them are just saying, “No way, no how, we don’t want any mining in the deep sea.” If that is your stance, then you’ll try to do that. But the main difference here is that if you do that here, there’s another path they can take, and there’s no way for enforcing the other path. Here at least you have some imperfect mechanism to enforce regulations.

Stone: Saleem, earlier you said that there is actually no treaty governing the Arctic at this point, as there is for the Antarctic. But there is the case of Svalbard in Norway, which does have a treaty covering it. I wonder if you could explain briefly what Svalbard is about and what that treaty is. And I wonder if it could be leveraged to something more broad for the Arctic.

Ali: Yes, so Svalbard is a fascinating case of this remote archipelago, very far north. In fact, Longyearbyen, the city in Svalbard, is the furthest north permanent human settlement. And it was an uninhabited archipelago, so there were no indigenous people there. So when there were territorial claims to Svalbard, the countries who were exerting those claims, including Russia and others in Europe, they decided that we can come up with a treaty whereby Norway, which is the country that is closest to Svalbard, would have sovereignty over the archipelago. However, with the caveat that any other country which wants to have legitimate commercial activity in Svalbard would be allowed to do so. And that anyone who has employment options in Svalbard can reach there without a visa.

So if you go to Svalbard now, it’s a small community of Longyearbyen, you have people from the Philippines and other places working there without a Norwegian visa because they have employment permits to work in a particular business there. And Russia has two mining operations. They are still in Svalbard because of the Svalbard Treaty.

So you have this very interesting— those are, by the way, coal mining operations. These are not critical minerals, the operations there. But that provides an interesting hybrid mechanism whereby you can have sovereignty which is shared at the level of commercial activity, but territorial sovereignty resides with a particular country. So one can think about the Arctic Ocean, and other islands as well, where there could be similar arrangements made potentially down the road as a model for Arctic governance and making sure that the resources are more equitably managed.

Stone: Let me ask you a final question here, if I may. Earlier in this conversation, you noted that Russia is by far the largest individual country player in the Arctic. But it’s interesting because there’s been so much conflict between the United States and Canada, also the United States with respect to Greenland. And it seems to me like it would make sense for the United States and Canada, which together would have quite a vast Arctic presence, to potentially work together on mineral development and other areas involving the Arctic. Why not just get your general thoughts on that?

Ali: Yes, absolutely. I think that the U.S. and Canada currently have been in a very acrimonious relationship on issues of trade and tariffs and so on. But when it comes to the Arctic, this is a natural space for them to be cooperating. Historically, they have done so during the Cold War and missile defense systems and so on. But also around minerals, this is a great opportunity for the U.S. and Canada to cooperate. Because Canada has a tremendous experience of extractive activity in the Arctic. Mining activity as well as oil and gas activity. And then in terms of navigation, Canada also has the routes which would lead to access to Europe once there is further melting.

And so this is an area where the U.S. and Canada can form a very important alliance. And that can be something that can help to further strengthen their role on the Arctic Council and any other future governance mechanisms which may arise, and put them at a better negotiating power as compared with Russia. I should mention that U.S. and Russia also cooperated in the Bering Sea, President Reagan and Gorbachev made an agreement on science cooperation in the Bering Sea under what’s called the Beringian Heritage Program. But that was very limited to that. But the U.S. and Canada can have a much broader cooperation.

Stone: And the U.S. now actually has an ambassador for the Arctic as of 2024, is that right?

Ali: There was an appointment of the Arctic ambassador, but actually that position is vacant right now.

Stone: It is vacant now.

Ali: And that could very well be the person who can help to broker some of these kinds of deals if that person gets appointed. There was an appointment made in the final months of the Biden administration, but then that person who was appointed resigned as soon as the new administration took up office.

Stone: All right. Well, Saleem, thank you very much for talking.

Ali: Thank you very much, Andy.