Polar super seaways? Maritime transport in the Arctic: an analysis of shipowners’ intentions q Frédéric Lasserre a,⇑ , Sébastien Pelletier b,1 a ArcticNet and Institut Hydro-Québec in Environment, Development and Society (IEDS), Laval University, Canada b Geography Dept., Laval University, Canada article info Keywords: Sea shipping and transportation Arctic Arctic routes Shipping Northwest Passage Northeast Passage abstract The seasonal melting of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, which has been confirmed for several summers in a row and is widely documented, has become a hot topic in the media. It is fuelling many speculative sce- narios about the purported renewal of a ‘‘cold war’’, or even an actual armed conflict, in the Arctic, for the control of both its natural resources and its sea routes. The melting sea ice is indeed giving a second wind to projects, abandoned in the 19th century, to find shorter sea routes between Europe and Asia. A look at the map shows the savings in distance that can be achieved with the Arctic routes: for example, a trip between London and Yokohama through the North- west Passage is 15,700 km and 13,841 km through the Northeast Passage, which is significantly shorter than the route through Suez (21,200 km) or Panama (23,300 km). 2 These findings fuel the idea that these Arctic routes, because they are shorter, are bound to attract abundant through traffic, and consequently will become a major political issue. Amid the media widespread image of a future maritime highway across Arc- tic seas, even some scientists yield to the popular image and assert, without proof, that Arctic traffic is set to increase rapidly. 3 Beyond the seemingly decisive advantage of Arctic routes, however, there remain many obstacles to navigation (Lasserre, 2010d). In addition, these scenarios for the development of marine traffic in the Arctic remain highly speculative and are not based on an analysis of shipowners’ perceptions, which is the goal of this paper. This article will thus present the results of an empirical survey conducted among shipping companies to determine their interest in developing activities in the Arctic. Besides examining the potential devel- opment of shipping in Arctic routes, this research must be replaced in the context of intense competition between shippers, competition that makes both service reliability and costs of transport paramount. In this competition structure, the benefits of established routes between major hubs seems to prevail, so that new routes have difficulty being established. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. The question of sovereignty over Arctic Passages Few analysts question the common belief that it is only a matter of time before new sea lanes will be operational in the Arctic. This prospect is at the very heart of the ongoing debate on security in the Canadian Arctic, for it raises the issue of control of such navi- gation, and therefore of Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage and the Canadian Arctic waters. It is this debate on control of navigation often depicted as bound to experience out-of-hand growth that triggered the Canadian House of Commons to vote a highly debatable resolution, in December 2009, rechristening the Northwest Passage into the Canadian Northwest Passage, a move unlikely to attract any sympathy elsewhere in the world, quite the contrary. The potential opening up of shipping routes through the North- west Passage, across the Canadian archipelago, as well as along the Northeast Passage, north of Siberia, has raised security concerns as it implies a potential surge in navigation of all sorts of ships (Byers, 2009; Grant, 2010; Lasserre, 2010b). Analysts have speculated about potential threats to the environment should an oil tanker run aground or sink; to military security should terrorists try to infiltrate North America through the back door of a sparsely popu- lated and poorly monitored area; or to human security should a 0966-6923/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2011.08.006 q The research presented in this paper was funded by the SSHRC, the FQRSC and ArcticNet. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 418 656 2131x12435; fax: +1 418 656 3960. E-mail address: Frederic.lasserre@ggr.ulaval.ca (F. Lasserre). 1 PhD candidate. 2 Data calculated by the author using Mapinfo GIS software. 3 For instance, «Because the Northwest Passage is about to become an alternative route to the Panama Canal, the volume of use within the passage will likely exceed 3000 vessels a year», Roston, 2009. The Northwest Passage’s Emergence as an International Highway. Southwestern Journal of International Law, 15, p. 469. Journal of Transport Geography 19 (2011) 1465–1473 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo