Arctic Waterfront, a measure of geopolitical stakes

 A mid-2011 post Beautiful maps in current affairs stated 

UN Convention on the Law of the Sea [...] by Dr Parson of the Southampton UK National Oceanographic Centre [...] described how nations were given an opportunity to claim Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) beyond the standard 200 nautical mile limit (viz. UNCLOS and UNEP). [...]

click to enlarge, original post

Recent news about sabre-rattling in the South China Sea prompted me to look up the actual EEZ boundaries, which I had downloaded for a project mentioned earlier - this issue also discussed re: the Arctic here and here - the area in dispute jumps out of the map just posted on arcgis.com.0 Its immensity is very apparent by using the Measure tool: roughly three quarter million square kilometres or a quarter million square miles!

Well the sabre-rattling hasn't abated - anyone heard of Greenland & POTUS lately? - and I re-used a previous Arctic map  to extend the stats hinted at above. The Arctic NATO countries are the seven NATO members that have territory within the Arctic Circle: Canada, the United States, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden... and Arctic Review stats send me mapping to fact-check!

• 8 Arctic countries
• 53% of Arctic Ocean’s coastline lies in Russia
• 50% of Norway’s land lies above the Arctic Circle
• 1/2of Canadian Arctic's inhabitants are  Indigenous Peoples

click to enlarge, full size here

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