Academic literature on the topic 'Mineral rights – Greenland'

Greenland has rich deposits of natural resources. Some of them could have the potential to be commercially developed. The exploitation of these resources could provide enormous opportunities for Greenland’s economic development. Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and enjoys far reaching rights of self-government. The population of Greenland is overwhelmingly Inuit, a people elsewhere recognized as an Indigenous people. The question concerning the exploitation of the natural resources is thus a complicated legal issue. International law provides indigenous peoples with special rights concerning the natural resources in their territory as referenced in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ILO Convention 169. The Kingdom of Denmark thus has international obligations regarding free, prior and informed consent. At the national level, the Self-Government Act includes provisions concerning natural resources, and this area is under the sole competence of the self-government. The Greenlandic Mineral Resources Act includes provisions on participation and consultation processes of local inhabitants. This article discusses whether the Kingdom of Denmark, through the Self-Government Act, lives up to its obligations under international law regarding the rights of the Inuit people in relation to the natural resources in their territory.

AbstractLarge scale mineral and petroleum extraction - in fact or in terms of industry projects and government hopeful expectations - has in recent years been one of the main sources of conflict between indigenous peoples and the larger society encompassing them. This is particularly true of Greenland - not because of the numbers or magnitude of projects - but because there is no individual ownership to land in Greenland, in the traditional western sense and some of the traditional sources of conflict have therefore been absent. For a discussion of aboriginal territorial rights in Greenland, it might therefore be appropriate to take your point of departure in the conflicts which may arise between mineral extraction and the traditional Greenlandic land use. I shall therefore shortly review legal data, which may contribute to the solution of such conflicts. By the same process I'll contribute to the understanding of the legal entity, which is endowed with the territorial rights in Greenland, or - popularly speaking: who owns Greenland. While it is generally recognized that the ownership of Greenland is vested in the public or in the society, is has been disputed which society or what public possess the legal claim to that entitlement. The Home Rule Commission For Greenland contributed no solution to this problem, and the "Home Rule Act" simply laid down, that "the permanent resident population in Greenland have basic rights to the natural resources of Greenland".2 The mining acts for Greenland - both the old one from 1965 (rev. 69) and the one adapted to home rule from 1978 - prescribes that mineral concessions shall respect existing (use) rights (§ 3 resp. 8).3 This suggests two issues: 1.: what are the contents of the protected existing rights and as a sub-issue: who are entitled. This first problem is my main subject in the following, while I shall only touch upon the 2. issue: namely, that the authorities in granting concessions have neglected their duty to examine and safeguard prior existing Greenlandic land use rights. This is still current practice and represent a major reason for the fact that the main issue has yet to be solved. I shall subsequently contribute to the elucidation of existing Greenlandic land use rights by discussing: 1) localized rights, 2) the more general Greenlandic territorial rights and finally 3) the issue of the protection of these Greenlandic rights according to the Danish constitution (§ 73).

Abstract While Indigenous communities in all circumpolar regions today face increasing pressure from mining companies, their influence in decision-making processes varies substantially. In Norway, the pasturelands of the reindeer-herding Sámi have huge mineral potential and new mining projects are in development. Such projects imply a domino effect, since they tend to generate infrastructures like roads, power lines, and so on. Norway enjoys a high profile as a country strongly committed to Indigenous rights; the Sámi also have their own parliamentary system. Yet to date the Sámi Parliament has been unable to halt these encroachments, a situation in part due to its composition. Because of the electoral rules and the general political position of the reindeer-herding Sámi in Norway, most of the Sámi members of parliament represent interests that run partially counter to the activities of the herders. While Indigenous political participation is territorially defined in Canada and Greenland, this is not the case in Norway.

What will take place in the Arctic in the next decade will have consequences for us all, as the changing of the “Albedo effect” is altering the global climate, disrupting many equilibria both in the ecosystem and in the social sphere. Changes in the Arctic will not stay in the Arctic, but will affect the rest of the planet. The need to exploit resources, the emergence of new actors in the Arctic and the discovery of abundant oil, gas, mineral and renewable energy resources mean that we have to literally rethink and reconstruct the “Arctic” as a concept. Huge promises are made, but big questions are also raised about how we are to rethink and regulate our “blue planet.” A new regulatory framework is thus inevitable. This article deals with the social aspects of the climate change’s effects and the understanding of human adaptation to climate change by explaining how the problem of exploration and exploitation of oil and gas and their use by indigenous people are strictly interconnected with Social Impact Assessment (SIA) and environmental protection. The article focuses on the social dimension of climate change coupled with business development of oil and gas firms in the Arctic with Greenland as a case study to illustrate opportunities and tensions affecting the indigenous Greenlandic people. Some conclusions are drawn with the formulation of recommendations on the urgent need for direct participation of Arctic indigenous people in the decision-making policy creation on environmental protection measures and culture and advice on how to implement such recommendations. A solution to implement such recommendation would be to develop an interdisciplinary research programme to be implemented through an interdisciplinary research centre susceptible to be turned into an international organization after a certain period of working activity at the academic level.

Indigenous peoples of the Arctic are currently faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, the preservation of their customs, the traditional lifestyles and cultural values is closely related to the maintenance of the environmental characteristics of the territories inhabited since time immemorial. On the other hand, the needs of the development of economic activities, represented primarily by the extraction of minerals and exploitation of energy resources, pose new challenges with respect to which the decisions are not taken – as is obvious – only by Arctic indigenous communities, and that may also be important for the natives as a chance to better their overall living conditions (in terms of labor, employment and education, for example). Arctic states have addressed these issues with different legal tools. The latter range from US land claims settlements to recognition of ‘ancestral’ and treaty rights in the constitutional order of Canada, to the creation of Sámi Parliaments in the Nordic countries, or the peculiar rules for the county of Finnmark in Northern Norway, approved in 2005, which give broad powers to the indigenous communities. In turn, the Greenlandic statute of autonomy in force since 2009 did not prevent tensions between the Inuit communities in Greenland and the Danish central authorities regarding the exploitation of natural resources and energy, including uranium. Less adequate, in comparison with the other Arctic states, appears the protection of Sámi in northern Russia, not so much in terms of regulation, but from the point of view of the effective application of existing rules. Anyway, useful legal instruments for effective protection of specific minorities represented by Arctic indigenous peoples can come also from the provisions of the international law of human rights, both that specifically dedicated to the natives and the rules of general human rights. In the light, therefore, of the tensions, but also the opportunities, offered by the exploitation of natural resources, the article examines the legal systems of the Arctic states, with particular attention to the situation of indigenous peoples.

The territorial sovereignty over Alaska, the Arctic islands of the Soviet Union, Svalbard, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago poses no problem, but the continental shelf off those territories and islands has yet to be delimited between the five Arctic States: Alaska, the Soviet Union, Norway, Denmark and Canada. Beyond the continental shelf, the mineral resources of the deep sea-bed should normally form part of the common heritage of mankind, but their presence has not yet been determined. The Arctic Ocean, in spite of the permanent presence of ice, is subject to the freedoms of the seas. The straits of the Northeast Passage are internal waters of the Soviet Union, at least since the establishment of straight baselines in 1985 (presumably, under the Territorial Sea Convention to which the USSR is a Party) and, possibly before, by way of historic title. Under the Convention, a right of innocent passage would exist but not if they are historic waters. The waters of the Northwest Passage are internal waters of Canada since their enclosure by straight baselines in 1985, under customary international law, and no right of passage exists. The sovereignty of Arctic States extends to the air space above their territory, internal waters and territorial sea. There is no right of over flight above those areas, outside of the I.C.A.O. Conventions. The Arctic Ocean being a semi-enclosed sea, bordering States should cooperate under the new Law of the Sea Convention in the exploitation of the living resources, the protection of the marine environment and the conduct of scientific research. This cooperation could best be attained by the creation of an Arctic Basin Council composed of all Arctic States and, possibly, the Nordic countries.

NOTE: This article was published in a former series of GEUS Bulletin. Please use the original series name when citing this article, for example: Skaarup, N., & Chalmers, J. A. (1998). A possible new hydrocarbon play, offshore central West Greenland. Geology of Greenland Survey Bulletin, 180, 28-30. https://doi.org/10.34194/ggub.v180.5082 _______________ The discovery of extensive seeps of crude oil onshore central West Greenland (Christiansen et al. 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, this volume; Christiansen 1993) means that the central West Greenland area is now prospective for hydrocarbons in its own right. Analysis of the oils (Bojesen-Koefoed et al. in press) shows that their source rocks are probably nearby and, because the oils are found within the Lower Tertiary basalts, the source rocks must be below the basalts. It is therefore possible that in the offshore area oil could have migrated through the basalts and be trapped in overlying sediments. In the offshore area to the west of Disko and Nuussuaq (Fig. 1), Whittaker (1995, 1996) interpreted a few multichannel seismic lines acquired in 1990, together with some seismic data acquired by industry in the 1970s. He described a number of large rotated fault-blocks containing structural closures at top basalt level that could indicate leads capable of trapping hydrocarbons. In order to investigate Whittaker’s (1995, 1996) interpretation, in 1995 the Geological Survey of Greenland acquired 1960 km new multichannel seismic data (Fig. 1) using funds provided by the Government of Greenland, Minerals Office (now Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum) and the Danish State through the Mineral Resources Administration for Greenland. The data were acquired using the Danish Naval vessel Thetis which had been adapted to accommodate seismic equipment. The data acquired in 1995 have been integrated with the older data and an interpretation has been carried out of the structure of the top basalt reflection. This work shows a fault pattern in general agreement with that of Whittaker (1995, 1996), although there are differences in detail. In particular the largest structural closure reported by Whittaker (1995) has not been confirmed. Furthermore, one of Whittaker’s (1995) smaller leads seems to be larger than he had interpreted and may be associated with a DHI (direct hydrocarbon indicator) in the form of a ‘bright spot’.

Defence date: 10 May 1991
Examining Board: Professor Isi Foighel, University of Copenhagen; Professor Terence C. Daintith, University of London (Supervisor); Professor Hans Jacob Bull, Nordisk Institutt for Sjørett, Oslo; Professor Francis Snyder, European University Institute, Florence; Professor Thomas W. Wälde, University of Dundee
First made available online in defence version: 16 October 2015, and withdrawn on 28 October 2015.
The online version made available in Open Access on 20 April 2016 is the shorter and reworked version as finalised in July 1991 (distributed in print by the EUI in July 1994). It is based on the original manuscript of the defence version of the PhD thesis (May 1991).

Biking south from Avignon, brief residence of the popes in southern France, towards Arles, town of bulls and van Gogh, should be a leisurely experience in the smiling Provencal landscape, making no undue demands on one’s physical abilities. That is, providing you stay away from the only obstacle on the way—the fortified hilltop village of Les Baux-de-Provence. An odd (some would say suspect) error of navigation brought us to the top one sunny day in September many years ago, but this detour proved to be well worth the effort. Both the village and the view are spectacular, and well justified claims to fame for Les Baux. However, Les Baux is, or should be, famous for another thing, the ore known as bauxite, discovered in the vicinity of the village by Pierre Berthier in 1821. Through the bauxite ore there is a curious connection between this sunny place of cicadas and pastis in the afternoon shade, and the Greenlandic adventures of Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen. These adventures that, told in the novel Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, propelled Danish author Peter Høeg to international fame and fortune in 1992. In this bestselling novel, that can be described both as a thriller and as a ‘post-feminist’ critique of Danish colonialism, the mysterious doings of the Cryolite Company of Greenland plays a major role, as does Smilla’s profound knowledge of the solid-state properties of water. A former glaciologist of Danish–Greenlandic origins, she investigates the death of a neighbour’s six-year-old child after a fall from a snow-covered roof, which is dismissed by the police as an accident. She finds herself rummaging in the archives of the Cryolite Company in Copenhagen, examining forensic evidence, and finally joining the crew of an ill-fated expedition to a remote part of Greenland. At first sight, the common denominator between bauxite and cryolite is aluminium. As such, this is not so remarkable: aluminium, right under boron in the Periodic Table, is present in many minerals and ores, and is the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust.