Location: British Library - London
Category: NRF Calendar

ESRC Seminar Series: Seminar 2, New resource frontiers? Arctic and Antarctic continental shelves
British Library, London, Tuesday 21 September 2010

This seminar will undertake an examination of the construction of Arctic continental shelves as a "final frontier" for conventional energy exploitation. What is the extent of hydrocarbon resources in the High Arctic? What consequences might result from the development of hydrocarbon resources? Are there parallels evident in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica?

ESRC Seminar Series, January 2010 - July 2011

The Polar Regions have recently returned to widespread public attention. Media reports of melting sea ice, the plight of polar bears, the sustainability of indigenous livelihoods and the claiming of the Arctic and Antarctic seabeds have garnered international interest. Geopolitical machinations in both Polar Regions have been in evidence, from the building of new scientific bases to the commissioning of replacement icebreakers. Meanwhile, oceanographic and geophysical research has gathered momentum within the context of evidentiary submissions of extended continental shelves to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Resource speculation, particularly in the Arctic, has added extra interest and verve to policy-related discussions. Such discussions increasingly now involve a range of actors, including not only the coastal states and the Arctic Council, but also regional organizations such as the European Union, extra-regional states such as China, environmental NGOs, and political representatives of indigenous peoples, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

This ESRC Seminar Series, ‘Knowledges, Resources and Legal Regimes: The New Geopolitics of the Polar Regions', is designed to investigate critically the contemporary Arctic and Antarctic.

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