Political-geographical problems of delimitation of Russia’s North and Arctic

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the political-geographical issues related to determination of the composition and boundaries of the Russian regions in the North and Arctic. It is pointed out that a generally accepted identification technique for the southern boundary of the North is lacking as well as a basic federal law of its regionalization (zoning). It is concluded that the delimitation of the Russian North is the country’s most challenging social, economic and political problem, because it affects the interests of tens of millions of Russian citizens, and not only those living in the Extreme North and in equated localities, but also four times as many people living in adjacent areas, who also receive a cash bonus and northern living allowance. This research unveils the question of unsettledness as to the demarcation of the water area of the Arctic Ocean that arose after the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea became effective in 1982, because its main provisions differ drastically from the historically established division of the Arctic into five polar sectors under the jurisdiction of Russia, Canada, USA, Denmark and Norway. An assessment is made of the following negative consequences of Russia’s retreat from the sectoral principle of division of the Arctic: an actual loss of the national treatment in its own sector, voluntary abandonment of its sovereign rights to a part of the water area and deep-water bottom in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and a likely transformation of the national water transport communications, the Northern Sea Route, to an international route, with its removal from the jurisdiction of Russia. The possibility that Russia retains its maritime arctic spaces within the boundaries of the entire polar sector is substantiated.