Excellent study material for all civil services aspirants - begin learning - Kar ke dikhayenge!
SHARE:
56,000 Greenlanders could shape the future of Rare Earths
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- Green land: In Feb 2021, Greenland’s coalition government collapsed amid an ongoing row over a new rare earth and uranium mine. Now, a new independent report calls for the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada to build bridges with the island and its people in order to reduce resource dependency on China. As resource geopolitics become even more contentious, April 2021's snap election could be a turning point for the remote Arctic nation.
- What is this nation: Observers find themselves paying attention to the operation of a tiny democracy of 56,000 people, most of it conducted in Greenlandic, and the rest in Danish. The same analysts who emphasize Greenland’s importance to securing supply chains also underline the need to develop healthy interfaces with Greenlanders and their democratic institutions. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, free to and keen to develop further its independence from the Danes, yet constrained by its reliance on them for roughly half of its annual budget. Greenland’s citizens, mostly Inuit, are entitled to take over any of the many responsibilities currently fulfilled by Copenhagen—which include immigration, shipping, and some aspects of foreign policy—on the condition that they pick up the cost as well. Full independence is a constitutionally enshrined option, so long as it receives popular backing in a referendum.
- How big is it: The island’s geographical contours are confusing. Although the Mercator projection vastly exaggerates its size, Greenland is still huge, three times the size of Texas. To get to Japan from Greenland, the proverbial crow would fly north, touching down before a southward-flying competitor reaches Brazil. It’s hard to say where land ends and ice begins. Every year researchers scan the coastline for new islands revealed by the retreating glaciers, heaped upon Greenland’s vast interior, a significant part of which is below sea level. And they are melting at an astonishing rate, opening the land, which is rich in rare-earth minerals and other resources, just as the melting ice opens the surrounding sea.
- Rare earths, unrare battle: U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer to buy Greenland in 2019, which many islanders received as an insult, has impacted official thinking in the United States. Many there are increasingly aware that China is “simultaneously the world’s biggest reserve, producer, consumer, processor, importer and exporter of rare earths. The US has taken notice of China’s recent survey of companies intended to determine how it can use its dominance in rare earths, as well as of suggestions in Chinese state media that rare earths could be a way of responding to new U.S. trade and tech barriers. In February 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order underlining America’s need for “resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains.” Greenland is edging up the priority list in Washington, aided by a new U.S. Consulate in the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk.
- Production volumes: Rare-earth production grew 9 percent from 2019 to 2020, and around 95 percent of processing is done in China—thanks mostly to cost advantage. Although rare earths are, counterintuitively, quite abundant globally, the 17 elements included in the category have a growing range of uses in emergent and existing high technologies, such as lasers, wind turbines, and nuclear control rods. Their importance to the next generation of green and military technologies is clear. Greenland’s large reserves, described by the U.S. Geological Survey as the world’s largest undeveloped deposits, could prove critical to spurring the West to catch up on processing.
- Mines: Greenland is home to just two operating mines, and the Kuannersuit project is as exceptionally divisive as it would be large. The site is being developed by the Australian firm Greenland Minerals, whose largest shareholder is the rare-earth giant Shenghe Resources, whose own largest shareholder is a research institute subordinated to a Chinese government department, facts that have attracted the interest of security researchers.
- Longing to be free: If Greenlanders progress toward independence, the significance of their collective decisions could one day extend beyond rare earths. For now, its defense and foreign affairs are conducted by Copenhagen. The island’s position makes it strategically important to the entire Arctic. Its north hosts the Thule Air Base, originally established following an agreement between Denmark’s U.S. ambassador and the White House during World War 2. During the Cold War, the United States launched the notorious Project Iceworm, a U.S. plan to install nuclear warheads under the Greenlandic ice sheets—without the knowledge of the Danish government.
- China moves in: Recent developments suggest new bouts of intrigue. In 2016, the Danish defense ministry declined to confirm whether it had prevented a Hong Kong company from buying a disused naval base at Kangilinnguit, instead emphasizing to news agencies that it planned to reopen the base as a storage and training post. The next year, a delegation of “elite” Chinese tourists, a senior naval officer among them, surreptitiously visited the site of a proposed satellite station at Greenland’s main airport. Then, the Danish government announced plans to bolster its presence in the region, aiming to spend lavishly on surveillance drones in response to what the Danish defense minister called an “increase in foreign activities.”
- Summary: Greenland’s current limbo is one chapter in the long political saga of a people attached to their pristine landscape, yet hungry for change and the prosperity it could bring. They’re determined to declare independence, yet forever delaying it. The growing interest of large companies and foreign governments provides a striking backdrop to April’s election, in which a few thousand swung votes could create a landslide.
COMMENTS