Greenland is an increasingly coveted territory – especially for its very pure water reserves – at a time of global warming, according to our partner The Conversation.
In addition to this "blue gold", the subsoil of Greenland is full of mineral wealth such as iron, nickel, gold or cobalt (highly coveted because necessary for the manufacture of mobile phones).
This analysis was conducted by Chloé Maurel, doctor in contemporary history.
Greenland is central to the plot in the Danish series Borgen, Power and Glory, which follows Borgen's three seasons.
A Woman in Power (successfully broadcast in more than 60 countries), a saga that is in line with political series, from West Wing to House of Cards.
The scriptwriters imagine that a large oil reserve is discovered in the subsoil of Greenland, which stirs up the appetites of investors and the great powers.
This "green country", a vast territory of nearly 2.2 million square kilometres, has been attached to Denmark for a long time, a connection often resented by the inhabitants, after having even been a Danish colony until 1953. In 1979, the island has attained the status of “autonomous territory” and its economy is still heavily dependent on subsidies paid by Copenhagen.
If some Greenlanders claim greater autonomy or even independence, and denounce a Danish "colonization" (carried out from the 18th century by Danish missionaries like Hans Egede, nicknamed "the Apostle of Greenland" and founder of the city of Nuuk, now the territory's capital), the local population of 57,000 finds itself in a difficult situation, marked by corruption and a high suicide rate among Greenlanders, often affected by depression, alcoholism and climate-related despair. gray and cold and lack of perspective.
Coveted raw materials
Greenland, at a time of global warming and melting ice (its ice cap has lost 4.7 million billion liters of water since 2002), has become an increasingly coveted territory, particularly for its very pure water reserves.
So much so that some entrepreneurs, seeing in this treasure a juicy financial windfall, go so far as to sell this water at the same price as great Bordeaux wines, as an article in the newspaper
Le Monde
explains .
“He sells them for up to 12 euros a bottle, in China, in the Gulf countries, in the United States or even in Denmark.
The Inland Ice brand, also distributed in gourmet restaurants, promises water that has "the purity of prehistory" and the "taste of a hundred thousand years ago".
Mr. Vildersboll, who previously worked in the oil industry, sees it as “new oil”.
In addition to this "blue gold", Greenland is full of mineral wealth in its subsoil, such as iron, nickel, gold and rare metals, such as cobalt, highly coveted today because necessary for the manufacture of telephones. laptops.
Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are also on the spot, again according to Le Monde:
“KoBold Metals, the company in which they are shareholders and which uses artificial intelligence to explore new deposits, launched its first drilling near Disko Bay, in the south-west of the country, in March, in order to 'prospect for nickel, copper and cobalt'.
The island also contains uranium, a deposit of rubies and rock flour, a silt-rich mud that could, “according to research by a Danish geologist, help make arid regions around the world fertile”.
Finally, Greenland has large deposits of precious sand, while the sand that is scarce is highly coveted for the construction of buildings.
Greenland, whose name means "green country", could also take advantage of global warming to engage in agriculture.
At the heart of major geopolitical issues
The country is also the center of major geopolitical issues.
Indeed, as the journalist Julien Bouissou analyzes, "in a region that has officially been part of the American sphere of influence since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and the signing of a treaty between Copenhagen and Washington in 1951, the mining industry can serve as a Trojan horse for Chinese influence.
The island is coveted by the United States, Russia and China.
“In 2018, Greenland […] refused a Chinese loan to finance the construction of two airports.
At the same time, Washington advanced its pawns.
In 2020, the United States, which already has a military base in Thule with advanced ballistic missile warning systems and a satellite monitoring station, opened its first consulate in Nuuk. .
»
In addition, the country is located close to the new "Northern Route" which would allow, thanks to the melting of the Arctic ice, container cargo ships from China to make the journey to Europe more quickly. than by the previously existing maritime routes.
Towards an “environmental exception”?
In July 2021, the self-governing government of Greenland, led by an environmentalist majority, however decided to ban oil exploration and exploitation on the island, in order to avoid damaging the natural environment.
It is a historic decision, a Copernican reversal, which consists in putting ecological imperatives before those of economic profit.
There is indeed the challenge of preserving nature and the ecosystem in Greenland, where increasing urbanization and mining are causing a gradual extinction of flora and fauna (with the disappearance of whales in particular).
Should we therefore put the issue of economic profit ahead of the preservation of world heritage, as advocated by Unesco?
This international cultural institution, which in 1972 created the list of world cultural and natural heritage, listed the Ilulissat fjord there in 2004, a remarkable natural site and the only vestige in the northern hemisphere of the last ice age of the Quaternary.
This classification generates tourism, which raises, as on other classified sites in the world, the question of the tension between preservation and tourism.
The imperative of preservation also relates not only to nature, but also to the culture of Greenland: protection of the vernacular language, Greenlandic Inuktitut (or Kalaallisut), a rare language of the Eskimo-Aleut family, today threatened extinction due to urbanization and cultural globalization.
Does this mean that an “environmental exception” should be created, just as there is a “cultural exception”?
Remember that it was France that popularized this notion of cultural exception, which means that culture should not be considered as a commodity like any other, a simple object of profit, but as a superior good, to which everyone must have access.
UNESCO then universalized this conception, by adopting in 2005 the Convention on Cultural Diversity, which entered into force in 2007.
OUR “GREENLAND” FILE
Could Greenland then assert both the cultural exception and the environmental exception, that is to say put the imperatives of preserving its exceptional natural environment and its Inuit culture before the predatory stakes of profit? financial ?
Greenlanders to decide.
This analysis was written by Chloé Maurel, doctor in contemporary history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
The original article was published on The Conversation website.
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