Issue 424 of New Internationalist

Reader-owned global journalism

July-August 2009

July/August 2009

Who owns the Arctic? A few years ago most people, if they thought about this question at all, would probably have answered ‘no-one’, or possibly ‘Santa Claus’, and been content to leave it at that. But the question of who has the power to make decisions about what happens in the Arctic, and who has the right to its land, seas and resources, is increasingly starting to burn - within the Arctic nations, and beyond. Thanks to climate change, the rest of the world has never been so aware of what’s going on in the snowy north. Suddenly, we all have a stake in it. But who gets to determine its destiny? The *NI* takes a look beyond the images of melting ice-caps and stressed-out polar bears that are sadly becoming commonplace, and focuses on the human consequences of the slow earthquake rocking the top of the world, and the struggles over its future that are currently being played out.

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In this issue

  • A mythical place – land of the frozen ocean, the aurora borealis and the midnight sun.

  • *Jess Worth* talks about the NI magazine on the Arctic with Climate Radio.

  • Nowhere near as religious as its neighbour, Saudi Arabia, nor as bling-obsessed as nearby United Arab Emirates, Qatar has astutely observed the paths other Gulf states have chosen, and then cherry-picked what seems to work best.

  • Facts and figures about the planet's thermostat.

  • In an upside-down world, there are many questions to be asked, writes *Eduardo Galeano*.

  • *Chris Richards* goes cold turkey in her umpteenth attempt to do without her car – and fumes about the structure of modern life that makes the task so hard.

  • Could countries come to blows over the North's resources? Professor *Michael Byers* explains.