Arctic Mapping AffMichigan GRAMS Lab 7wk Seniors1AC 1ACShippingAdvantage one is shippingTwo scenariosA. EconomyStatus quo shipping is dangerous and unprofitable due to outdated maps and datathe plan is key to sustain development and incentivizes greater investment Kendrick 6/28/14writer for the Barents Observer, graduate of the University of Marylands masters program in journalism (Lyle, Map Shortcomings Could Hinder Northern Sea Route Growth, Barents Observer, 6/28/14, http://barentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2014/06/map-shortcomings-could-hinder-northern-sea-route-growth-28-06)//JGSea ice and depth mapping deficits still exist near the Northern Sea Route that could temper international excitement about the prospect of extensive Arctic shipping. Melting ice allowed the region to open up shipping routes in Arctic waters that are mostly under Russian control and cut significant transit time between Europe and Asia. Use of the route has steadily grown since ships began using it in 2010. According to data from the Northern Sea Route Administration, four vessels used the route in 2010, 34 used it in 2011, 46 used it in 2012 and 71 used it last year. China will be releasing a guide to Arctic shipping in July for ships sailing through the Northern Sea Route to Europe. But the current weak satellites in the area and poor sea maps are like bottlenecks preventing the kind of massive Arctic transit speculated by some, said Jan-Gunnar-Winther, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, to the BarentsObserver. Satellite communication with ships in the High North is weak which means ship operators cannot adequately take real-time high-resolution images for other vessels to use, Winther said. These kinds of images give information about sea conditions which allow efficient and safe maneuvering in water that is partly covered in ice, he said. The area is particularly dangerous to navigate without sufficient mapping data because there is limited infrastructure for search and rescue operations. Vessels are safest on the route when following icebreakers which can help navigate frozen Arctic patches and be a first line of support in a search and rescue operation, said Gunnar Sander, an Arctic sea ice researcher with the Norwegian Polar Institute, to the BarentsObserver. Icebreakers are expensive but without them, vessels face much higher risks, he said. A 138-meter tanker was stranded for several days after it struck ice during September while sailing in the Matisen Strait of the Northern Sea Route without an icebreaker escort. The Northern Sea Route Administration had granted the tanker a permit to sail in the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea in light ice conditions with an icebreaker escort. As far as I can judge now, the Russians have quite a good system as long as you follow the icebreakers, Sander said. In addition to ice on the water, depth data is also lacking in many parts of the Arctic Ocean, according to a January report on the Arctic by the World Economic Forum nonprofit organization in Switzerland. Bathymetric mapping, or depth mapping, is critical for monitoring ocean currents and the development of shipping lanes in the shallow waters near Russias Arctic coast, according to that report. The Northern Sea Route passes through some straits which are less than 10 meters deep, according to a 2013 report for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by a panel of Arctic researchers. Large ships now mostly follow a route north of the New Siberian Islands which is at least 18 meters deep. Many of the mapping deficits that could create a bottleneck effect for shipping in the area are being addressed through both widespread charting and legal measures. Russia is increasing its hydrographic work in the Arctic and the country has commissioned surveys for the white spots on maps that lack depth data in 2015 and 2016, said Vitaly Klyuev, the deputy director of the Department of State Policy for Maritime and River Transport of Russia, in a 2012 announcement. Russia is also planning to have ten Arctic search and rescue centers by next year. The International Maritime Organization is developing a mandatory international safety code for ships in polar waters called the Polar Code. Mapping and charting issues will be included in the code. The responsibility for how the Polar Code would be implemented would lie with the states themselves, which would give them broad discretion, said Tore Henriksen, a professor and director of the sea law center at the University of Troms, to the BarentsObserver. Despite ice melting in the Arctic region, it is still a serious danger for shippers in the area and expensive icebreakers are the best option for safe travel, Sander said. Its completely misleading to talk about an ice-free Arctic Ocean, Sander said. While the number of ships in the region and along the route is growing, it still sees nowhere near the number of vessels as routes like the Suez Canal, which had more than 17,000 vessels last year. The plan massively increases shipper and navigational confidenceDavison 12writer for Alaska Dispatch (Janet, Arctic mapping to make navigating Northwest Passage safer, Alaska Dispatch, 10/14/12, http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/arctic-mapping-make-navigating-northwest-passage-safer)//JGArctic explorers may have come up empty-handed in the search for Sir John Franklin's lost shipwrecked vessels, but the research they did will help future mariners navigating the treacherous the Northwest Passage. But in a bit of Arctic irony, work done during the search in Nunavut will help future mariners navigating through the icy and dangerous waters where HMS Erebus and HMS Terror may have gone down. Hydrographers who were part of the search gathered enough depth and multi-beam sidescan sonar data to create a preliminary electronic chart that expands the area for safe navigation in Alexandra Strait, reducing travel time and saving fuel costs for vessels in the area. Andrew Leyzack, the Canadian Hydrographic Service's hydrographer-in-charge during the Franklin search, says this past summer's result is significant. Not only will it help reduce travel time for vessels around King William Island by six or seven hours, but it could also provide an alternative navigation route in case of ice in the lower Victoria Strait. "The time savings and the fuel savings are considerable," says Leyzack, who noted the new route could also be useful if a vessel runs into trouble. "In the event of a search-and-rescue call, it just cuts off that much more time if the responding vessels could transit this route as opposed to going all the way around the Royal Geographic Society Islands." The new chart which Leyzack likens to a multi-lane highway replacing a dirt road will guide ships from Victoria Strait to Storis Passage and comes as the Canadian Hydrographic Service faces increasing demands for mapping and updating navigational charts for the Arctic. Economic motivation And just as economic dreams fuelled Franklin's ultimately doomed quest to find the Northwest Passage, a fiscal motivation lies behind the mounting pressure for better charts. Interests ranging from oil and gas exploration and resource extraction to tourism want to take vessels to new areas and in greater numbers. Add the impact of changing climate, and retreating ice patterns, along with the desire to do what it takes to avoid shipping accidents and their associated potential environmental threats and salvage costs, and the CHS is under no illusion about the demand for its services. But don't expect charts showing every detail of the Arctic seabed north of 60 degrees latitude an area of about seven million square kilometres any time soon. "Canada has the longest coastline in the world and we have three oceans and the Great Lakes," says Savi Narayanan, the CHS's director general. "It is totally unrealistic to have all the areas fully charted to modern standards where any ship can go anytime." So the service has been setting priorities. Ten years ago, the Arctic didn't rank very high. But that's changed in the past decade, with the increased Arctic oil and gas exploration, tourism and more traffic in the northern waters. "We realized we need to have enhanced charting in the Arctic," says Narayanan. Staying inside the lines Tim Keane, vice-president of Enfotec Technical Services, a subsidiary of the Montreal-based bulk shipping company Fednav that specializes in ice analysis and vessel routing, says there are areas within the Northwest Passage where there are scant soundings. "It could benefit from more extensive soundings to determine exactly how much draft a ship can carry through that area." Shippers don't want to go where they have little guidance about what might lie underneath the water's surface. "There are vast areas where there are no surveys or nothing in any chart that would indicate that the area has been well surveyed, so you are restricted in terms of navigating," says Keane, whose firm works with mining developments that would require bulk shipping in the North, such as Baffinland's Mary River iron mine. "Any prudent navigator will never put his[/her] ship into a position where (s)he's outside of a known charted area." For the CHS, charting priority is focusing on the main existing navigational channels. "The area where Parks Canada would like to search for the Franklin ships is also an area of high priority for charting because that is one of the navigational corridors and it's a really high-risk area because of the weather conditions and the ice conditions," says Narayanan. Only about 10 per cent of the total Arctic has been charted and surveyed to a modern standard. Twenty-five to 35 per cent of the main Arctic shipping routes are surveyed and charted to that standard, says Narayanan. (In southern Canada, almost 100 per cent of the most critical channels are charted to that level.) Changing climate Retreating Arctic ice has also influenced how the service is determining where to focus its resources. "Of course climate change is a factor in determining where we need to do charting or where the traffic will go, because we need to make sure that we provide the information ... to prevent accidents," says Narayanan. In terms of climate change, she says, the ice retreat will happen more on the Russian side of the Arctic, rather than the Canadian, because of the way the water moves in the Arctic Ocean. During this summer's Franklin search, hydrographers completed 266 square kilometres of seabed mapping using multi-beam sonar systems on two survey vessels, meeting the CHS's goal for coverage from those boats. Another 74 square kilometres of mapping was done from the research vessel Martin Bergmann. That was about half the area expected and largely a result of equipment breakdowns that cost about 80 hours of production time. An autonomous underwater vehicle provided by the University of Victoria covered about 4 charting. This year's CHS work was part of a three-year plan. Leyzack expects hydrographers will likely be back surveying next summer. "Each year reveals more clues regarding Canada's Arctic geography," he says. "With the rising number of cargo ships transiting the Northwest Passage, I think it's rather relevant that we're here doing this and gathering all the information possible about the environment ... not only with a goal to protect the environment, but also to make marine safety our top priority."Arctic shipping not cost effective absent the planmultiple barriers key to effective global shipping, but effective shipping lanes in the Arctic could reap huge potential benefits Humpert and Raspotnik 12 (Malte Humpert- Executive Director of The Arctic Institute, graduate studies at Georgetown University included regime change in the Arctic, energy and security issues, and economic potential of Arctic shipping routes, and Andreas Raspotnik, Research Fellow at the University of Cologne, double PhD, The Future of Arctic Shipping October, 11, 2012, http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2012/10/the-future-of-arctic-shipping.html)//HAArctic sea ice is melting rapidly, and within the next decade the effects of global warming maybe transform the Polar region from an inaccessible frozen desert into a seasonally navigable ocean. The summer of 2011 saw a record 33 ships, carrying 850,000 tons of cargo navigate the Northern Sea Route (NSR) off Russias northern coast. This years shipping season may see up to 1.5 million tons of cargo, as Germanys Alfred Wegener Institute predicts the NSR to be ice-free and passable for ships by early summer. The North West Passage (NWP), first ice-free in 2007, and the Transpolar Sea Route (TSR) may also open up to shipping traffic over the coming decades. An in-depth assessment of the viability of shipping along the TSR will be published in the upcoming Arctic Yearbook 2012, which will be available from the Northern Research Forums website from October 2012. The development of Arctic offshore hydrocarbon resources and related economic activities will also improve the integration of the Arctic economy in global trade patterns. Multi-year ice and the limited seasonal window for trans-Arctic voyages however, will for the foreseeable future remain formidable obstacles to the development of Arctic shipping and its economic viability. Trans-Arctic shipping routes will thus not serve as a substitute for existing shipping lanes, but will instead provide new and additional capacity for a growing transportation volume. A navigable Arctic Ocean? Summer ice extent has declined by 40 percent since satellite observation began in 1979, and over the same period sea ice has thinned considerably, experiencing a decline in volume of 70 percent. Studies differ widely in their predictions of when summer sea ice will melt completely. The latest findings suggest that Arctic sea ice may have entered into a new state of low ice cover. A recent article by Valerie N. Livina and Timothy M. Lenton on the bifurcation of Arctic sea-ice cover describes it as "distinct from the normal state of seasonal sea ice variation." Arctic sea-ice may have crossed a tipping point which could soon make ice-free summers an annual feature across most of the Arctic Ocean. Longer ice-free periods A new study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) suggests that multi-year ice, which is the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice and the principal obstacle to shipping in the Arctic Ocean, is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner ice. The ice-free period along the Arctics main shipping routes is expected to increase from around 30 days in 2010 to more than 120 days by the middle of the century. Furthermore, the distribution of the remaining summer ice will not be uniform across the Arctic Ocean. Studies suggest that sea ice will collect and persist longest along the northern flanks of the Canadian Archipelago and Greenland while the central and eastern part of the Arctic will see the most significant decline of ice, further extending the shipping season along the NSR. In 2011 the navigational season along the NSR lasted for 141 days, from early July until mid-November (see figure 1). Significant obstacles remain Nonetheless, significant obstacles to shipping remain such as icing from sea spray, wind chill, remoteness as well as their implications for rescue and emergency operations, and the lack of reliable weather forecasts. During the winter and spring months ice conditions along Arctic shipping routes will remain heavy, and the amount of floating sea ice and number of icebergs - a hazard to the safety of marine transport, may increase during the early melt season as more ice floes break apart and drift across the Arctic Ocean. Shorter sailing distances Routing shipping traffic through the Arctic allows for shorter sailing distances resulting in shorter trips. Shipping operators can achieve cost savings through a reduction of number of days at sea, energy efficiency improvements due to slower sailing speeds, or a combination of both. Distance savings along Arctic shipping routes can be as high as 40 percent compared to the traditional shipping lanes via the Suez Canal. Shorter sailing distances allow for considerable fuel cost savings. The reduced number of days at sea allows a ship to make more return trips resulting in increased revenue and potentially greater profits. Instead of realizing time savings, operators can also adopt super-slow sailing. A vessel traveling from Murmansk to Tokyo can reduce its speed by 40 percent and still arrive in Japan at the same time as a ship sailing at full speed traveling through the Suez Canal. Super-slow sailing can also double a vessels energy efficiency performance, resulting in a significant reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions. If a future emissions control framework was to include global maritime traffic, this reduction of emissions could thus also result in significant cost savings. Economic feasibility of Arctic shipping Global shipping operations are dependent on three key factors: predictability, punctuality, and economy-of-scale, all of which are currently limited in Arctic shipping. Consequently, the lack of schedule reliability and highly variable transit times along the Arctic shipping routes represent major obstacles to the development of Arctic shipping. The majority of cargo ships that travel the worlds oceans operate on regular schedules, known as liner service. In total more than 6,000 ships, most of them container ships, follow a set route calling at a number of ports to load and unload cargo, which consequently supplies the concerned countrys hinterland. Profitability can only be achieved with large- scale shipping based on stable and predictable (year-round) operations. The ability to schedule journeys a long time in advance and to guarantee uninterrupted service is considered key for container ship operators. Bulk dry and wet carriers, on the other hand, follow less predictable schedules and their routes depend more on changing supply and demand of less time- sensitive items. Of the four kinds of Arctic voyages undertaken in the Arctic Ocean - destination transport, intra-Arctic transport, trans-Arctic transport and cabotage - trans-Arctic shipping may face the most significant hurdle to becoming part of the global trade patterns. Draft and beam restrictions Arctic shipping routes, especially the NSR, are subject to significant draft and beam restrictions. Ships along the NSR must pass through a number of narrow and shallow straits in the Kara and Laptev Sea. The Yugorskiy Shar Strait at the southernmost entrance from the Barents to the Kara Sea follows a channel 21 nautical miles long and 12-30 meters deep. Along the eastern section of the NSR, ships must navigate either the Dmitry Laptev Strait or the Sannikov Strait to pass through the New Siberian Islands and travel from the Laptev to the East Siberian Seas.The eastern approach of the Laptev Strait has a depth of less than 10 meters, restricting the draft of ships to less than 6.7 meters. In addition, Russias government only permits ships with the highest ice classification1A Finnish Swedish, to sail the route. Currently, only three vessels out of more than 2,000 Panamax ships have that classification. Arctic shipping infrastructure A key characteristic of Arctic shipping routes is the limited number of ports of call. According to the Arctic Logistics Information Office, 16 ports, most of them ice-covered for part of the year, are located along the NSR. The port of Murmansk and the port of Petropavlovsk on Russias far-east Kamchatka peninsula are considered essential for the development of the NSR. Both ports are expected to serve as terminals and hubs of the NSR. In November 2011 Vladimir Putin announced a major overhaul of the entire Russian transport system with special attention to maritime traffic in the Arctic. Russia plans to build up to 10 emergency centers focused on meteorological and rescue services as well as border patrol along the NSR.The capacity of Russias seaports is scheduled to increase 50 percent by 2015 and the country plans to invest 134 rubles (3.4 billion) into developing maritime traffic over the next 10 years. The port of Kirkenes, Norway and the port of Vopnafjrur, Iceland may serve as major future Arctic hubs. Icelands strategic location at the entrance and exit to the Arctic Ocean and Vopnafjrurs suitability as a deep-water port with depth up to 70m, may allow development into a transshipment hub. Future development and investment will however, depend significantly on the countrys financial and economic situation and foreign investments. Over the past decade China has continuously increased its economic cooperation with the small island nation and Chinas premier Wen Jiabao recently visited Iceland to further strengthen the economic ties between the two countries. A Chinese delegation also visited the Faroe Islands, a small group of islands under the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark, where domestic policy makers have also identified the islands role in future Arctic shipping as a priority. Conclusion Over the past decades the Arctic has witnessed a much faster than anticipated decline of sea ice and the continuation of this trend will transform the Arctic Ocean into a navigable seaway over the coming decades. Yet due to the regions unique navigational and economic challenges Arctic shipping will, for the foreseeable future, only be cost effective for a limited number of operators.Shipping key to stable food prices, trade, and world economic stabilityMitropolous 5 (Efthimios, Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization of the United Nations, World Maritime Day Parallel Event, 11/15, International Maritime Organization, http://www.imo.org/Newsroom/mainframe.asp?topic_id=1028&doc_id=5415)We hoped to kick-start moves towards creating a far broader awareness that a healthy and successful shipping industry has ramifications that reach far beyond the industry itself. Global economic prosperity is dependent on trade and trade, in turn, is dependent on a safe and secure transport network. Shipping is the most important part of that global network, although it is rarely acknowledged as such, and seldom given the credit it deserves. Indeed, I have long come to the sad conclusion that the contribution made by the shipping industry - and, in particular, by those who work hard, both on board ships and ashore, to make it safer and more environmentally friendly - is greatly undervalued by the public at large. You may have noticed that I used the word "sad" to brand my conclusion. I am sorry to say that there is another word I might suggest as more fitting to characterize the situation and that is the word "unfair" - in capital letters! I think it is worth pausing for a moment to consider just how vital the contribution of ships and shipping actually is. More than 90 per cent of global trade is reportedly carried by sea; over the last four decades, total seaborne trade estimates have nearly quadrupled, from less than 6 thousand billion tonne-miles in 1965 to 25 thousand billion tonne-miles in 2003; and, according to UN figures, the operation of merchant ships in the same year contributed about US$380 billion in freight rates within the global economy, equivalent to about 5 per cent of total world trade. This year, the shipping industry is expected to transport 6.6 billion tonnes of cargo. If you consider this figure vis--vis the 6.4 billion population of the world, you will realize that this works out at more than one tonne of cargo for every man, woman and child on the face of the planet - even more for the richer nations. As seaborne trade continues to expand, it also brings benefits for consumers throughout the world. The transport cost element in the price of consumer goods varies from product to product and is estimated to account for around 2 per cent of the shelf price of a television set and only around 1.2 per cent of a kilo of coffee. Thanks to the growing efficiency of shipping as a mode of transport and to increased economic liberalization, the prospects for the industry's further growth continue to be strong. Shipping is truly the lynchpin of the global economy. Without shipping, intercontinental trade, the bulk transport of raw materials and the import and export of affordable food and manufactured goods would simply not be possible. Shipping makes the world go round and, so, let us be in no doubt about its broader significance. To put it in simple terms, as I have done before on a number of occasions during the campaign initiated at IMO to encourage all those involved in shipping to pay more attention to its public perception, without international shipping half the world would starve and the other half would freeze.Trade prevents war, contains war, and checks escalationsolves all other impactsGRISWOLD 2011 (Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and author of Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization. Free Trade and the Global Middle Class, Hayek Society Journal Vol. 9 http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/Hayek-Society-Journal-Griswold.pdf)Our more globalized world has also yielded a peace dividend. It may not be obvious when our daily news cycles are dominated by horrific images from the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan and Libya, but our more globalized world has somehow become a more peaceful world. The number of civil and international wars has dropped sharply in the past 15 years, along with battle deaths. The reasons behind the retreat of war are complex, but again the spread of trade and globalization have played a key role. Trade has been seen as a friend of peace for centuries. In the 19th century, British statesman Richard Cobden pursued free trade as a way not only to bring more affordable bread to English workers but also to promote peace with Britains neighbors. He negotiated the Cobden-Chevalier free trade agreement with France in 1860 that helped to cement an enduring alliance between two countries that had been bitter enemies for centuries. In the 20th century, President Franklin Roosevelts secretary of state, Cordell Hull, championed lower trade barriers as a way to promote peaceful commerce and reduce international tensions. Hull had witnessed first-hand the economic nationalism and retribution after World War I. Hull believed that unhampered trade dovetail[s] with peace; high tariffs, trade barriers and unfair economic competition, with war. Hull was awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize for Peace, in part because of his work to promote global trade. Free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways. First, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend towards democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights with each other. A second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by raising the cost of war. As national economies become more intertwined, those nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means the loss of human lives and tax dollars, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. Trade and economic integration has helped to keep the peace in Europe for more than 60 years. More recently, deepening economic ties between Mainland China and Taiwan are drawing those two governments closer together and helping to keep the peace. Leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Straight seem to understand that reckless nationalism would jeopardize the dramatic economic progress that region has enjoyed. A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it has reduced the spoils of war. Trade allows nations to acquire wealth through production and exchange rather than conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In contrast, hard assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in high-tech, service economies. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by freely trading what they can produce best at home. The world today is harvesting the peaceful fruit of expanding trade. The first half of the 20th century was marred by two devastating wars among the great powers of Europe. In the ashes of World War II, the United States helped found the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, the precursor to the WTO that helped to spur trade between the United States and its major trading partners. As a condition to Marshall Plan aid, the U.S. government also insisted that the continental European powers, France, Germany, and Italy, eliminate trade barriers between themselves in what was to become the European Common Market. One purpose of the common market was to spur economic development, of course, but just as importantly, it was meant to tie the Europeans together economically. With six decades of hindsight, the plan must be considered a spectacular success. The notion of another major war between France, Germany and another Western European powers is unimaginable. Compared to past eras, our time is one of relative world peace. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the number of armed conflicts around the world has dropped sharply in the past two decades. Virtually all the conflicts today are civil and guerilla wars. The spectacle of two governments sending armies off to fight in the battlefield has become rare. In the decade from 1998 through 2007, only three actual wars were fought between states: Eritrea-Ethopia in 1998-2000, India-Pakistan in 1998-2003, and the United States-Iraq in 2003. From 2004 through 2007, no two nations were at war with one another. Civil wars have ended or at least ebbed in Aceh (in Indonesia), Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Nepal, Timor-Leste and Sierra Leone. Coming to the same conclusion is the Human Security Centre at the University of British Colombia in Canada. In a 2005 report, it documented a sharp decline in the number of armed conflicts, genocides and refugee numbers in the past 20 years. The average number of deaths per conflict has fallen from 38,000 in 1950 to 600 in 2002. Most armed conflicts in the world now take place in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the only form of political violence that has worsened in recent years is international terrorism. Many causes lie behind the good news the end of the Cold War, the spread of democracy, and peacekeeping efforts by major powers among them but expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting world peace. In a chapter from the 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report, Dr. Erik Gartzke of Columbia University compared the propensity of countries to engage in wars to their level of economic freedom. He came to the conclusion that economic freedom, including the freedom to trade, significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, Making economies freer translates into making countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are about 14 times as conflict prone as the most free. A 2006 study for the institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, found the same pacific effect of trade and globalization. Authors Solomon Polachek and Carlos Seiglie found that trading nations cooperate more and fight less. In fact, a doubling of trade reduces the probability that a country will be involved in a conflict by 20 percent. Trade was the most important channel for peace, they found, but investment flows also had a positive effect. A democratic form of government also proved to be a force for peace, but primarily because democracies trade more. All this helps explain why the worlds two most conflict-prone regions the Arab Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa are also the worlds two least globally and economically integrated regions. Terrorism does not spring from poverty, but from ideological fervor and political and economic frustration. If we want to blunt the appeal of radical ideology to the next generation of Muslim children coming of age, we can help create more economic opportunity in those societies by encouraging more trade and investment ties with the West. The U.S. initiative to enact free trade agreements with certain Muslim countries, such as Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and Oman, represent small steps in the right direction. An even more effective policy would be to unilaterally open Western markets to products made and grown in Muslim countries. A young man or woman with a real job at an export-oriented factory making overcoats in Jordan or shorts in Egypt is less vulnerable to the appeal of an Al-Qaida recruiter. Of course, free trade and globalization do not guarantee peace or inoculation against terrorism, anymore than they guarantee democracy and civil liberty. Hot-blooded nationalism and ideological fervor can overwhelm cold economic calculations. Any relationship involving human beings will be messy and non-linear. There will always be exceptions and outliers in such complex relationships involving economies and governments. But deeper trade and investment ties among nations have made it more likely that democracy and civil liberties will take root, and less likely those gains will be destroyed by civil conflict and war.Economic decline causes warRoyal 10 (Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal, and Political Perspectives, pg 213-215)Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write: The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention. This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link economic interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those studies tend to focus on dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically consider the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should be considered ancillary to those views.B. Environment attempts at Arctic shipping are inevitable in the squoNational Geographic 13 National Geographic Staff, NOVEMBER 8, 2013, http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/energy/great-energy-challenge/big-energy-question/arctic-what-do-we-need-to-know/)//HAThe Arctic is currently changing in ways we are still trying to grasp, but it is already dramatically, undeniably different than it was just 30 years ago. The white cover of sea ice that blankets the Arctic is receding dramatically in the summer months. Satellite data show the September minimum has shrunk by more than 11 percent per decade since 1979, researchers say. As the volume and frequency of open water in the Arctic grows, so too does activity by oil and gas, shipping, mining, and other industries. Ship transit through the Bering Strait, the gateway from the North Pacific Ocean to the Arctic, more than doubled between 2008 and 2012, and sea traffic throughout the region continues to grow exponentially as it provides a shorter cargo route between Asia and Europe. At the same time, several companies seek to mine reserves that could contain as much as 22 percent of the world's undiscovered conventional oil and gas. (See related video: Experts use three words to describe the Arctic at The Arctic: The Science of Change live event.) Questions, too, are mounting along with the activity. The Arctic nationsthe United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark (including Greenland), Norway, Iceland, Finland, and Swedennow face unprecedented dilemmas over resource development, ecosystems protection, emergency response infrastructure, geopolitical boundaries, and many other effects of a changing northern climate.But absent effective charts, current shipping risks environmental catastrophenavigation capabilities are key to cooperation and disaster responseICS 14 (INTERNATIONAL CHAMBER OF SHIPPING (ICS), Arctic Shipping Position Paper 2014, http://www.ics-shipping.org/docs/default-source/resources/policy-tools/ics-position-paper-on-arctic-shipping.pdf?sfvrsn=12)//HA2. Development of Arctic maritime infrastructure to support safety and environmental protection While the IMO Polar Code will provide the regulatory framework, the infrastructure needed to ensure safety and environmental protection in the Arctic must also be developed. This includes inter alia aids to navigation, nautical charts, means of satellite communication, bunkering facilities, port reception facilities for ships waste, pilotage in shallow passages, possible ice-breaking assistance, as well as search and rescue infrastructure developed for defined incident scenarios and the provision of adequate places of refuge should ships be in distress.5 In particular, a commitment is required by IMO (and IHO) Member States to conduct the necessary hydrographic surveys in order to bring Arctic navigational charts up to a level acceptable to support safe navigation, as well as systems to support the real-time acquisition, analysis and transfer of meteorological, oceanographic, sea ice and iceberg data. Serious challenges related to life-saving and oil spill clean-up capability in remote or hostile waters or where sea ice potentially presents an obstacle must be also addressed. In particular, in co-operation with IMO, this requires increased co-ordination amongst Arctic nations to promote the regions Search and Rescue (SAR) capability, salvage capacity, and emergency pollution response. 6Biodiversity hotspots key to global biodiversity Johnsen et. al 10 (Kathrine I. Johnsen (Editor in Chief), Bjrn Alfthan, Lawrence Hislop, Janet F. Skaalvik, Protecting Arctic Biodiversity UNEP, 2010, http://www.unep.org/pdf/arcticMEAreport_screen.pdf)//HAThe Arctic contribution to global biodiversity is significant. Although the Arctic has relatively few species compared to areas such as the tropics, the region is recognised for its genetic diversity, reflecting the many ways in which species have adapted to extreme environment2 . Hundreds of migrating species (including 279 species of birds, and the grey and humpback whales) travel long distances each year in order to take advantage of the short but productive Arctic summers2 . Marine hotspots are keythe impact is extinction Mittermeier 11 (et al, Dr. Russell Alan Mittermeier is a primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist. He holds Ph.D. from Harvard in Biological Anthropology and serves as an Adjunct Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has conducted fieldwork for over 30 years on three continents and in more than 20 countries in mainly tropical locations. He is the President of Conservation International and he is considered an expert on biological diversity. Mittermeier has formally discovered several monkey species. From Chapter One of the book Biodiversity HotspotsF.E. Zachos and J.C. Habel (eds.), DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_1, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011. This evidence also internally references Norman Myers, a very famous British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity. available at: http://www.academia.edu/1536096/Global_biodiversity_conservation_the_critical_role_of_hotspots)//HAExtinction is the gravest consequence of the biodiversity crisis, since it is irreversible. Human activities have elevated the rate of species extinctions to a thousand or more times the natural background rate (Pimm et al. 1995). What are the consequences of this loss? Most obvious among them may be the lost opportunity for future resource use. Scientists have discovered a mere fraction of Earths species (perhaps fewer than 10%, or even 1%) and understood the biology of even fewer (Novotny et al. 2002). As species vanish, so too does the health security of every human. Earths species are a vast genetic storehouse that may harbor a cure for cancer, malaria, or the next new pathogenscures waiting to be discovered. Compounds initially derived from wild species account for more than half of all commercial medicineseven more in developing nations (Chivian and Bernstein 2008). Natural forms, processes, and ecosystems provide blueprints and inspiration for a growing array of new materials, energy sources, hi-tech devices, and other innovations (Benyus 2009). The current loss of species has been compared to burning down the worlds libraries without knowing the content of 90% or more of the books. With loss of species, we lose the ultimate source of our crops and the genes we use to improve agricultural resilience, the inspiration for manufactured products, and the basis of the structure and function of the ecosystems that support humans and all life on Earth (McNeely et al. 2009). Above and beyond material welfare and livelihoods, biodiversity contributes to security, resiliency, and freedom of choices and actions (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Less tangible, but no less important, are the cultural, spiritual, and moral costs inflicted by species extinctions. All societies value species for their own sake, and wild plants and animals are integral to the fabric of all the worlds cultures (Wilson 1984). The road to extinction is made even more perilous to people by the loss of the broader ecosystems that underpin our livelihoods, communities, and economies(McNeely et al.2009). The loss of coastal wetlands and mangrove forests, for example, greatly exacerbates both human mortality and economic damage from tropical cyclones (Costanza et al.2008; Das and Vincent2009), while disease outbreaks such as the 2003 emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in East Asia have been directly connected to trade in wildlife for human consumption(Guan et al.2003). Other consequences of biodiversity loss, more subtle but equally damaging, include the deterioration of Earths natural capital. Loss of biodiversity on land in the past decade alone is estimated to be costing the global economy $500 billion annually (TEEB2009). Reduced diversity may also reduce resilience of ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them. For example, more diverse coral reef communities have been found to suffer less from the diseases that plague degraded reefs elsewhere (Raymundo et al.2009). As Earths climate changes, the roles of species and ecosystems will only increase in their importance to humanity (Turner et al.2009). In many respects, conservation is local. People generally care more about trhe biodiversity in the place in which they live. They also depend upon these ecosystems the mostand, broadly speaking, it is these areas over which they have the most control. Furthermore, we believe that all biodiversity is important and that every nation, every region, and every community should do everything possible to conserve their living resources. So, what is the importance of setting global priorities? Extinction is a global phenomenon, with impacts far beyond nearby administrative borders. More practically, biodiversity, the threats to it, and the ability of countries to pay for its conservation vary around the world. The vast majority of the global conservation budgetperhaps 90%originates in and is spent in economically wealthy countries (James et al.1999). It is thus critical that those globally exible funds availablein the hundreds of millions annuallybe guided by systematic priorities if we are to move deliberately toward a global goal of reducing biodiversity loss. The establishment of priorities for biodiversity conservation is complex, but can be framed as a single question. Given the choice, where should action toward reducing the loss of biodiversity be implemented rst? The eld of conservation planning addresses this question and revolves around a framework of vulnerability and irreplaceability (Margules and Pressey2000). Vulnerability measures the risk to the species present in a regionif the species and ecosystems that are highly threatened are not protected now, we will not get another chance in the future. Irreplaceability measures the extent to which spatial substitutes exist for securing biodiversity. The number of species alone is an inadequate indication of conserva-tion priority because several areas can share the same species. In contrast, areas with high levels of endemism are irreplaceable. We must conserve these places because the unique species they contain cannot be saved elsewhere. Put another way, biodiversity is not evenly distributed on our planet. It is heavily concentrated in certain areas, these areas have exceptionally high concentrations of endemic species found nowhere else, and many (but not all) of these areas are the areas at greatest risk of disappearing because of heavy human impact. Myers seminal paper (Myers1988) was the rst application of the principles of irreplaceability and vulnerability to guide conservation planning on a global scale. Myers described ten tropical forest hotspots on the basis of extraordinary plant endemism and high levels of habitat loss, albeit without quantitative criteria for the designation of hotspot status. A subsequent analysis added eight additional hotspots, including four from Mediterranean-type ecosystems (Myers 1990).After adopting hotspots as an institutional blueprint in 1989, Conservation Interna-tional worked with Myers in a rst systematic update of the hotspots. It introduced two strict quantitative criteria: to qualify as a hotspot, a region had to contain at least 1,500 vascular plants as endemics ( > 0.5% of the worlds total), and it had to have 30% or less of its original vegetation (extent of historical habitat cover)remaining. These efforts culminated in an extensive global review (Mittermeier et al.1999) and scientic publication (Myers et al.2000) that introduced seven new hotspots on the basis of both the better-dened criteria and new data. A second systematic update (Mittermeier et al.2004) did not change the criteria, but revisited the set of hotspots based on new data on the distribution of species and threats, as well as genuine changes in the threat status of these regions. That update redened several hotspots, such as the Eastern Afromontane region, and added several others that were suspected hotspots but for which sufcient data either did not exist or were not accessible to conservation scientists outside of those regions. Sadly, it uncovered another regionthe East Melanesian Islandswhich rapid habitat destruction had in a short period of time transformed from a biodiverse region that failed to meet the less than 30% of original vegetation remaining criterion to a genuine hotspot.

1ACRussia Advantage two is RussiaMilitaristic Russia expansionism into the Arctic nowUS policy and support from other Arctic nations key to prevent escalatory conflictMitchell 14 (Jon Mitchell, pursuing Masters degree in public policy, with a concentration in international affairs Russias Territorial Ambition and Increased Military Presence in the Arctic April 23, 2014, Foreign Policy Journal, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/04/23/russias-territorial-ambition-and-increased-military-presence-in-the-arctic/)//HAAs the U.S. and E.U. keep a very close eye on the situation with Russia and Ukraine, Russia is also increasing its presence and influence elsewhere: the Arctica melting region that is opening up prime shipping lanes and real estate with an estimated $1 trillion in hydrocarbons.[1] With the opening of two major shipping routes, the North Sea route and the Northwest Passage, the potential for economic competition is fierce, especially among the eight members of the Arctic council: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Russia, and the United States.[2] President Putin made statements this week concerning Russias national interests in the Arctic region: chiefly, militarization and the preparation of support elements for commercial shipping routes.[3] The Russian President called for full government funding for socio-economic development from 2017-2020, including a system of Russian naval bases that would be home to ships and submarines allocated specifically for the defense of national interests that involve the protection of Russian oil and gas facilities in the Arctic.[4] Russia is also attempting to accelerate the construction of more icebreakers to take part in its Arctic strategy.[5] The Russian Federation recently staked a territorial claim in the Sea of Okhotsk for 52,000 square kilometers,[6] and is currently preparing an Arctic water claim for 1.2 million square kilometers.[7] The energy giant owns 43 of the approximate 60 hydrocarbon deposits in the Arctic Circle.[8] With Russian energy companies already developing hydrocarbon deposits and expanding border patrols on its Arctic sea shelf (in place by July 1, 2014),[9] Putin is actively pursuing a strong approach to the Arctic region. Russian oil fields, which significantly contribute to the countrys revenue, are in declineforcing Russian oil companies to actively explore the Arctic region.[10] While the U.S. Defense Secretary called for a peaceful and stable Arctic region with international cooperation, the Arctic has created increased militarization efforts, particularly by Russia. Already the Arctic has seen powerful warships of Russias Northern Fleet, strategic bomber patrols, and airborne troop exercises.[11] In fact, Russian military forces have been permanently stationed in the Arctic since summer 2013.[12] According to a source in the Russian General Staff, a new military command titled Northern FleetJoint Strategic Command, will be created and tasked to protect Russian interests in its Arctic territories; a strategy that was approved in 2009.[13] Furthermore, weapons developers are being tasked with creating products that can face the harsh Arctic environment. According to an RT report, Putin ordered the head of the Russian arms industry, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, to concentrate the efforts on creation of Arctic infrastructure for the soonest deployment of troops. Rogozin reported that all Russian weapons systems can be produced with special features needed in the extreme North and the weapons companies were ready to supply such arms to the Defense Ministry.[14] The Arctic infrastructure that Rogozin refers to will include Navy and Border Guard Service bases.[15] These bases are part of Putins aim to strengthen Russian energy companies and military positions in the Arctic region. In 2013, a formerly closed down base was reopened in the Novosibirsk Islands and is now home to 10 military ships and four icebreakersa move that Reuters called a demonstration of force.[16] The Defense Ministry is also planning on bringing seven airstrips in the Arctic back to life.[17] Russias militarization in the Arctic region is only a part of its increasing activity throughout the globe. Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said, Its crucially important for us to set goals for our national interests in this region. If we dont do that, we will lose the battle for resources which means well also lose in a big battle for the right to have sovereignty and independence.[18] On the contrary, Aleksandr Gorban, a representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry is quoted saying that a war for resources[19] in the Arctic will never happen. But what was once a more hands-off region of the world that provided international cooperation and stability is now turning into a race for sovereignty and resources claimsas evidenced not only by Russias increasing military presence, but also Canada and the United States. Canada is now allocating part of its defense budget towards armed ships that will patrol its part of the Arctic Circle,[20] while the United States has planned a strategy of its own. In addition to conducting military exercises with other Arctic nation members, the U.S. Navy has proposed a strategy titled The United States Navy Arctic Roadmap for 2014 to 2030 that was released in February 2014. The 2013 National Strategy for the Arctic Region, cited in the Arctic Roadmap, provides the Navys two specific objectives for the Arctic: 1) advance United States security interests; and 2) strengthen international cooperation.[21] According to the strategy, the Navys role will primarily be in support of search and rescue, law enforcement, and civil support operations.[22] However, this may grow to a more militarized strategy depending on the U.S. governments view of Russias increased military activity in the Arctic region over the next few years. In either case, the U.S. is falling behind in Arctic preparation. It has very few operational icebreakers for the Arctic region where its only primary presence is seen through nuclear submarines and unmanned aerial vehicles, according to an RT article.[23] Until 2020, the Navy will primarily use its submarines and limited air assets in the Arctic, while its mid-term and far-term strategy emphasizes personnel, surface ships, submarines, and air assets that will be prepared for Arctic conditions and operations.[24] Despite its mid and long-term strategy, the U.S. will already be lagging in establishing a military presence to compete with Russias, who already has strategies in motion until 2020 and later. Last month, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a united Canadian-U.S. counterbalance to Russias Arctic presence, pointing out they have been aggressively reopening military bases.[25] While the U.S. cannot legitimately criticize Putin for opening military bases and simultaneously avoid blatant hypocrisy, it is worth noting that Russia is developing a strong military presence in a potentially competitive region. Russias plans to reopen bases and create an Arctic military command fosters the conclusion that Russia wants to be the first established dominant force in a new region that will host economic competition and primary shipping lanes, albeit in a harsh environment that makes it difficult to extract resources. Nicholas Cunningham aptly stated both Russia and the West fear losing out to the other in the far north, despite what appears to be a small prize.[26] Although the Arctic holds a mass of the worlds oil and gas deposits, the extreme environment and remote location makes it difficult to produce energy quickly and efficiently. Despite this, the Russian Federation is focused on developing disputed hydrocarbon areas that it claims are part of the countrys continental shelf. In addition, Russia is allocating funds and forces to the Arctic to protect its interests. While the U.S. is currently lacking in natural resource development and exploitation in the Arctic Circle, it desires to display a show of strength in the cold region to compete with potential Russian domination and influence. But because the Defense Department faces constant budget cuts, preparing an Arctic naval force will be slow and difficult. For now, the United States can only show strength through nuclear submarines and drone technology. Putin and the Russian Federation are laying disputed claims to territories both inside and outside the Arctic while creating the foundation for a potential military buildup in the Arcticprovided that the U.S. and Canada can even allocate sufficient budgets for Arctic military expansion. One thing is sure: if the Arctic region continues to melt and open up vital shipping lanes, there must be international cooperation to provide security and rescue elements for commercial shipping. Since Russia has significant territorial claims and the most coastlines in the Arctic Circle, it would be natural for the Russian Federation to have a wide security presence in the region, but this must be coupled with international cooperation in commercial shipping lanes and by providing support elements, such as search and rescue. The United States will not be able to fully compete with a country that is heavily investing in the Arctic regionparticularly due to budget constraints and lack of Arctic-prepared vessels. If the U.S. desires to limit Russian influence and territorial claims, it must do so by partnering with other members of the Arctic councilnot by entering into a military buildup simply to dominate Russia in the Arctic.We have two internal linksFirst is civilian presenceArctic maritime transport and infrastructure policies are key to prevent competition from escalating by encouraging cooperationHigginbotham and Grosu 14 (JOHN HIGGINBOTHAM a senior fellow at CIGI and Carleton University, MARINA GROSU masters graduate in international public policy of Wilfrid Laurier Universitys School of International Policy and Governance junior research fellowship at CIGI. THE NORTHWEST TERRITORIES AND ARCTIC MARITIME DEVELOPMENT IN THE BEAUFORT AREA MAY 2014, CIGI, http://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/cigi_pb_40.pdf)//HAThe Arctic is facing remarkable climatic and oceanic change that is triggering unprecedented opportunities and challenges for Arctic nations, as well as for countries that do not have Arctic territory but are eager to engage and invest in the region. For Canada and the United States, the Beaufort basin offers unique opportunities for Alaska and Canadas Arctic territories. Large unexplored and unexploited oil, gas and mineral reserves, local and transpolar shipping, fishing and tourism are the main opportunities provided by the melting Arctic Ocean. International competition in attracting domestic and foreign investments for these challenging Arctic economic activities has started, with Russia and Scandinavia leading the way. Large integrated government and private investments in maritime infrastructure, resource development and shipping projects in the Arctic are central priorities for Russia and Scandinavia. The international geopolitical and legal Arctic environment has, so far, been conducive to cooperative development; however, recent tensions in relations with Russia over Ukraine underline the importance of insulating (as much as possible) Arctic cooperation from negative forces, as well as examining North American preparedness for a less benign political environment should it evolve. Arctic maritime transport and infrastructure investment will play a vital role in stimulating sustainable community development, responsible resource development and more efficient resupply in both Canadian and US Arctic regions. Canada and the United States, unfortunately, have not yet forcefully tackled Arctic maritime development, although it will be essential to the overall development of our Arctic regions. Canadas High North, in particular, remains startlingly underdeveloped when compared with southern Canadian provinces and other Arctic regions.Second is Maritime Domain Awarenessits collapsing now due to outdated maps and charts, the plan solvesPerry and Andersen 12vice president and director of studies at the IFPA, research analyst at IFPA (Charles and Bobby, The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Inc. (IFPA), now in its thirty-sixth year, develops innovative strategies for new security challenges. IFPA conducts studies, workshops, and conferences on national security and foreign policy issues and produces innovative reports, briefings, and publications, NEW STRATEGIC DYNAMICS in the ARCTIC REGION, Implications for National Security and International Collaboration, http://www.ifpa.org/pdf/StrategicDynamicsArcticRegion.pdf/cc)One key capability gap that will likely continue to hamper Arctic operations in the coming decades is in maritime domain awareness in the polar region. MDA - the effective ability of U.S. forces to locate, identify, and track vessels or any other activity in the maritime domain that could affect national security interests - remains extremely limited, largely because of the remoteness of the region, inadequate Arctic Ocean and weather data, lack of communication and navigation infrastructure, insufficient intelligence informa-tion, and the lack of a consistent U.S. government presence in the High North. Given the very limited sensor coverage of the area, great distances from main bases, and harsh, rapidly changing atmospheric conditions, even collecting and maintaining a basic awareness of other ships, subma-rines, and aircraft in the Arctic becomes a nearly impossible task. Not long after the start of the Coast Guards 2008 summer deployment in the polar region, for instance, District 17 officials based in Alaska complained of a worrying lack of Arctic domain awareness that severely constrained the services ability to fully understand the risks of operating in or monitoring the icy waters around Alaska and beyond. As a senior U.S. Coast Guard official pointed out after the agencys 2008 operations, We had almost no idea, no maritime domain awareness, of what was actually happening on the waters of the Arctic. A major impediment to achieving better domain aware-ness in the High North is the current lack of accurate data for Arctic navigation, including nautical charts for areas previously covered by ice, shoreline mapping, tides, water levels, currents, sea-ice conditions, and meteorological information. Experts agree that there is still very little knowledge about the Arctics unique and ever-changing ocean patterns, especially since only less than 5 percent of the polar area has been mapped to current standards.330 Nautical charts of the Alaska region, for example, are of low resolution and mostly based on soundings from the 1940s or 1950s, showing vast areas that have not been surveyed using modern instrumentation or have never been surveyed at all.331 The problem of producing reliable nautical charts for the Arctic is further compounded by Americas insufficient number of hydrographic survey vessels and their limited capability when it comes to operating in and around the ice.332 The lack of real-time information on weather, ocean conditions, and ice characterization (for example, depth or thickness) has had a particularly negative effect on the Coast Guards ability to conduct routine and emergency missions in the polar region, as smaller pieces of sea ice are frequently missed by current technology, posing a significant threat to most ships observed in the area, including the Coast Guards fleet of non-icebreaking boats. For their part, icebreakers attempting to operate in the deeper reaches of the Arctic Ocean are themselves extremely vulnerable to so-called sea-ice pressure ridges, formed when massive sheets of ice collide with one another, and in the absence of reliable data, even experienced mariners may be unable to sufficiently assess the deceptive appearance of sea ice, as illustrated by Coast Guard cutter Healys experience during its summer 2008 operations off Barrow, Alaska, when it struck what to the crew appeared to be thin, first-year ice only to discover that it was a fifteen-foot thick iceberg of multi-year ice, well beyond the ships icebreaking capabilities.333High tensions in the arctic will escalate due to competition, but the plan incentivizes cooperation Aerandir 12 (Mate Wesley Aerandir Lieutenant United States Navy B.A., BREAKING THE ICE: POTENTIAL U.S.-RUSSIAN MARITIME CONFLICT IN THE ARCTIC December 2012, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a573497.pdf)//HAThere is ample reason and precedent suggesting that countries will resort to armed conflict to secure their interests, especially when those interests are regarded as vital to their national security. While war in the Arctic appears unlikely at present, this thesis has analyzed why an escalation of territorial and resource disputes in the Arctic up to and including the use of force cannot and should not be ruled out. The potential for U.S.- Russian maritime conflict in the region is genuine. A. SUMMARY OF THE THREAT Opportunity, capability, and perceived intent on their own do not cause conflict, but they do serve to increase anxiety about an apparent threat to national interests. It is when these three factors combine that the potential for conflict emerges. All that remains for an otherwise benign event to quickly escalate into a militarized interstate dispute is a sufficient motive or misunderstanding. In the fog before war, an ostensibly banal event could quickly escalate into a political power play between navies in the presence of historical mistrust, a perception of vulnerability, and nationalist sentiment. In the Arctic, such motives include Russias critical reliance on hydrocarbon resources to maintain its political and economic stability, and therefore its national security. For the United States and its NATO allies, the need to maintain and credibly defend their sovereignty and their own economic interests provides ample incentive to act decisively, if necessary. When national security is challenged or threatened by another power, the potential for militarized conflict can quickly become an actual conflict. Despite the sub-zero physical climate, the Arctic is a hotbed of competing interests. Receding ice cover in the northern cryosphere presents Arctic nations, and others, with considerable economic opportunities. Whether to exploit a potential treasure trove of natural resources or simply to capitalize on time- and money-saving transportation routes, political leaders are under increasing pressure to resolve previously frozen or otherwise insignificant disputes and make these resources available as soon as possible to their constituents. Lack of resolution is bad for business: it creates a wild west (or, in this case, a no-law north) of uncertainty as to the legal standing of enterprises and exposes countries and companies alike to unnecessary harassment and possible prosecution by rival interests. Increasing economic opportunities go hand-in-hand with an increased presence in the region, creating an environment for potential conflict. Economic expansion is triggering an associated build-up in military and law enforcement capability in order to protect, defend, and regulate interests and claims. If economic encroachment were not enough to cause anxiety among the Arctic powers, the subsequent militarization of the Arctic has also caused alarm, making countries feel increasingly vulnerable to conventional military pressure from a previously ice-obstructed front. At present, only Russia is capable of defending its claims in the Arctic militarily. Given Russias economic dependence on hydrocarbon resourceswhich the Arctic promises to offer in abundanceMoscows economic claims in excess of its recognized EEZ are likely to encroach on, or overlap with, the legitimate claims of neighbors. But it stands alone. Russias overwhelming might in this domain may eventually make right in its favor if NATO is unable to deter assertive uses of force similar to those to which the Russian Coast Guard continually subjects Japan near the Kuril Islands. Any loss in this regard would be much more damaging to NATOs deterrence credibility than its current inaction. Unless Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States can come together under the NATO banner and make the Arctic a centerpiece of the Alliances collective defense 93 agenda for the twenty-first century, they each risk standing alone in the Arctic as well, and with a significantly smaller troop-to-task capability than their geopolitical rival. Simon Ollivants 1984 warning of the dangers of internal dispute within the Alliance is perhaps even more salient today. Analyzing the effects of the latest developments in military technology, force dispositions, and resource and sovereignty claims on the military stability of the region, Ollivant concluded that the greatest dangers to NATO unity were an unbalanced American hegemony in the region and increased political conflict among allied members over contested economic interests in the region.207 Denmark and Canada have yet to officially resolve their dispute over Hans Island. Canada and the United States continue to argue over the legal status of the Northwest Passage and the Beaufort Sea. Either one of these disputes could undermine decades of Alliance cohesion. Meanwhile, Russias actions and rhetoric in the Arctic leave no room to deduce anything but a firm and committed intent on the part of its leadership to secure its claims. There have been scant, if any, peaceful actions undertaken by the Putin and Medvedev administrations to back up their peace-seeking rhetoric. Calls for diplomatic resolution of territorial disputes in the Arctic and for working within existing international agreements and mechanisms have only been operationalized through agreements to cooperate on search and rescue efforts and on (competitive) scientific exploration and research for submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a forum that has no binding authority to settle such disputes. All the while, however, Russias ambitious militarization of the Arctic has been clearly reinforced with explicit rhetoric proclaiming its intent to defend its national security interests. For Russia, the natural resources in the Arctic are a national security asset of strategic importance. Canada, too, beats the drum of sovereign defense in the Arctic. Though its rhetoric is significantly less militaristic than that of Russia, it is nevertheless increasingly nationalistic. Actions, in this case, speak for themselves. The Canadians have expressed an intention to build up forces in the region to the extent necessary to defend their sovereignty. If Prime Minister Stephen Harper had his way, this build-up would be happening more quickly than it has been. Indeed, financial constraints constitute the only reason that the four NATO countries in the Arctic have not been building up their Arctic capabilities more rapidly. The bottom line is that the intent of the Arctic nations to defend their regional and broader security interests is real. The capabilities, while in some cases only planned or very slowly coming into service, are materializing, and the economic opportunity has never been greater and will only increase in the future. The threat of a militarized conflict in the Arctic is therefore real as well. Methodological analysis proves our impact Aerandir 12 (Mate Wesley Aerandir Lieutenant United States Navy B.A., BREAKING THE ICE: POTENTIAL U.S.-RUSSIAN MARITIME CONFLICT IN THE ARCTIC December 2012, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a573497.pdf)//HA1. Potential for Maritime Conflict in the Arctic Based on the methodology established for this analysis, it can be reasonably assessed that conflict in the Arctic is likely. To put this another way, with a score of 18 out of 24 possible points, there is a 75 percent chance that maritime disputes involving the United States and Russia will occur in the Arctic necessitating the show or use of force to achieve a political objective. It should be reiterated that this assessment is acknowledged to be an analytically subjective conclusion and that the intervals of measurement are notably coarse. The evidence presented in this analysis, however, supports this conclusion. Policy-makers should take care not to discount the physical indicators and declared policies of other Arctic nations when judging the seriousness of their intent to protect their various claims in the region. Advocates of a Pax Arctica involving regional cooperation ignore the more pragmatic factors underlying international relations and the actual limits of international institutions and economic incentives in restraining actors behavior in an anarchic system. US-Russia war causes extinctionHelfand 14 (Ira Helfand, M.D, past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Another View: Ukraine crisis puts focus on danger of nuclear war May 3, 2014, http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/05/04/another-view-ukraine-crisis-danger-nuclear-war/8665185/)//HAThe ongoing crisis in Ukraine has made it clear that the danger of nuclear war is still with us and may be greater than at any time since the height of the Cold War. What does that mean for United States nuclear policy? There are today more than 15,000 nuclear warheads in the world. The vast majority, more than 95 percent, are in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. Some 3,000 of these warheads are on "hair-trigger" alert. They are mounted on missiles that can be fired in 15 minutes and destroy their targets around the world less than 30 minutes later. During the Cold War, there was a widespread understanding of what nuclear weapons could do. That is not true today. Those who lived through the Cold War have put this painful information out of mind, and a generation has come of age that never learned about the terrible effects of nuclear war. This must change if we are to make rational decisions about nuclear policy. Over the last few years, new information has emerged that underlines the danger posed by even the limited use of nuclear weapons. Studies published in 2006 by Rutgers University's Alan Robock and his colleagues examined the effects of a "limited" nuclear war involving just 100 small nuclear weapons, the size of the Hiroshima bomb, less than 0.5 percent of the world's nuclear arsenals. The specific scenario they examined involved a war between India and Pakistan. The two nations have fought three wars in the last 70 years, have come close to war on two other occasions, engage in daily skirmishes across their contested border in Kashmir, and have more than 200 nuclear weapons in their arsenals, many much larger than the weapons used in the study. The effects in India and Pakistan are horrific. In the first week more than 20 million people are killed by blast, fire and radiation as the great cities of South Asia are destroyed. But the global impact is far worse. As the cities burn, the fires loft 5 million tons of soot into the upper atmosphere, blocking out sunlight. Across the globe, temperatures fall an average of 1.3 degrees Celsius, and precipitation declines as less water evaporates into the cooler atmosphere to fall back as rain. This climate disruption has a catastrophic impact on food production around the world. In Iowa, as across the entire U.S. Corn Belt, soy production declines an average of 7 percent for a full decade, and corn production declines an average of 12 percent. In China, rice production declines an average of 17 percent and the equally important wheat crop declines a staggering 31 percent. "Nuclear Famine," a report issued last year by Physicians for Social Responsibility, explored the impact this decline in food production would have on human health. The world is not prepared to withstand a fall in food production of this magnitude. World grain reserves amount to only some 70 days of consumption and would quickly be exhausted. There are already 870 million people in the developing world who are malnourished today. They get just enough food to maintain their body mass and do a little work to gather or grow food. There are also 300 million people who get adequate nutrition today but live in countries that depend on imported food. All of these people, more than 1 billion, many far removed from the actual conflict, would be at risk of starvation in the event of even this very "limited" use of nuclear weapons. Another 1.3 billion people in China might also starve given the enormous shortfalls in Chinese grain production. And no one has yet studied the effects of climate disruption on other food crops in other countries. Will U.S., Canadian and European wheat production fall as dramatically as in China? A famine of this magnitude is unprecedented in human history. Never have we faced the possible death of 15 percent to 30 percent of the human race in the course of a single decade. Such a catastrophe would not mean the extinction of our species, but it would almost certainly bring about the end of modern civilization as we know it. These data make clear that even the smaller nuclear weapons states, countries that might well go to war, and over whose nuclear arsenals the U.S. has no direct control, pose a threat to all mankind. But the danger posed by the U.S. and Russian arsenals is even greater. A single U.S. Trident submarine carries 96 warheads, each 10 to 30 times larger than the bombs used in the South Asia scenario. That means that each Trident can cause the nuclear famine scenario many times over. We have 14 of them, and that is only one-third of our nuclear arsenal, which also includes land-based missiles and long-range bombers. The Russians have the same incomprehensible level of overkill capacity. What would happen if there were a large nuclear war? A 2002 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility showed that if only 300 of the 1,500 warheads in the Russian arsenal got through to targets in the United States, up to 100 million people would die in the first 30 minutes. The entire economic infrastructure on which we depend the public health system, banking system, communications network, food distribution system would be destroyed. In the months following this attack, most of the rest of the population would also die, from starvation, exposure to cold, epidemic disease and radiation poisoning. The global climate disruption would be even more catastrophic. Limited war in South Asia would drop global temperatures 1.3 degrees Celsius. A war between the United States and Russia, using only those weapons they will still possess when the New START treaty is fully implemented in 2017, drops temperatures an average of 8 degrees Celsius. In the interior of Eurasia, North America and in Iowa, temperatures drop 20 to 30 degrees Celsius to a level not seen in 18,000 years since the coldest time of the last Ice Age. Agriculture stops, ecosystems collapse, the vast majority of the human race starves and many species, perhaps including our own, become extinct. As events in Ukraine have made clear, there is still a very real possibility that the United States and Russia may find themselves on opposite sides of an armed conflict, and that means that these vast nuclear arsenals might be used. Even if there is not a deliberate use of nuclear weapons, there is the danger of an accidental nuclear war.

1ACPlanThe United States federal government should increase hydrographic mapping and surveying capabilities in the Arctic.1ACSolvencyNavigational capabilities are key to a successful arctic strategyfederal mapping guidelines, standard operating procedures, and vessel of opportunity protocol is vital to navigation services in Arctic watersNOAA mapping is key, but funding is necessary Foxx 13U.S. Secretary of Transportation (Anthony, CMTS Chair, J.D. from New York University School of Law, U.S. Arctic Marine Transportation System: Overview and Priorities for Action http://www.cmts.gov/downloads/CMTS%20U%20S%20%20Arctic%20MTS%20Report%20%2007-30-13.pdf//cc)Arctic transits and access to Arctic resources become more feasible, national security and commercial interests, including the cruise and ecotourism industry; oil, gas, and mining industries; shipping; and fishing, represent the primary drivers for Federal delivery of adequate navigation services in U.S. Arctic waters. Ships operating in the Arctic environment must contend with difficult weather, sea states and variable ice conditions that can impact stability and navigation. Poor communications, navigation aids, and nautical charts exacerbate these difficulties. As the agency responsible for charting all U.S. waters in support of safe and efficient navigation and maritime commerce, NOAA conducts hydrographic surveys, analyzes the data, and produces nautical charts showing water depths, aids to navigation, dangerous obstructions, shoreline, and other key elements to improve a mariner's situational awareness. These data are also useful for many other purposes, such as coastal ocean science, community climate change adaptation strategies, emergency response and coastal zone management. However, NOAA lacks sufficient data to provide the same level of navigation services to the Arctic as in other parts of the Nation. Old data are the norm, and there are large gaps in the information that NOAA does have, illustrated by empty white space on nautical charts of the region. Stakeholder dialogues and U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) cutter expeditions in 2007 and 2008 validated the need for more accurate and up-to-date nautical charts in the region, as well as the shortcomings of NOAA's existing data. CHALLENGES: Overall, NOAA has the capability and expertise to survey and chart Arctic waters, but is challenged by lack of resources. Most Arctic waters that are charted were surveyed with obsolete technology, some dating back to the eighteenth century, before the region was part of the United States. Although a third of U.S. Arctic waters are classified as navigationally significant (roughly 242,000 square nautical miles, see Figure), only about 3200 square nautical miles (less than 1 percent) have been surveyed with modern multi-beam technology. Research and development into new underwater and airborne technologies able to withstand the rigors of the Arctic environment will help to fill gaps in hydrographic datasets. CURRENT ACTIVITIES: The NOAA plans to survey about 500 square nautical miles in the Arctic each year using the NOAA ship Fairweather and/or contracts, with data archive/accessibility via NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center for multiple uses. The NOAA is also developing an Arctic surveying partnership plan, where Navy, USCG, State of Alaska vessels and other ships of opportunity would acquire survey data en-route between Dutch Harbor and the Arctic Ocean to send to NOAA for analysis and charting. Employing this Integrated Ocean and Coastal Mapping (IOCM) concept would result in more accurate data along the most utilized Arctic open water routes. The NOAA could then focus its resources on the more challenging coastal areas in need of survey for harbors of refuge, port access and coastal community resilience. Prioritizing survey and charting work is underway to make best use of existing resources. In 2011, NOAA conducted an assessment of the existing Arctic nautical charts to validate the demand for additional chart coverage. The NOAA produced the Arctic Nautical Charting Plan to better address user needs for larger scale charts of the region as resources are available. In 2012, the NOAA ship Fairweather completed a 30-day reconnaissance survey from Dutch Harbor through the Bering Strait and east through the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas to the U.S.- Canadian maritime boundary. The mission was to help determine future charting survey projects in the Arctic; it covered sea lanes that were last measured by Captain James Cook in 1778. The NOAA will also factor in the results of ongoing USCG Waterway Analysis and Management System (WAMS) assessments and Port Access Route Studies (PARS) of the Arctic region to support decisions on mapping and charting priorities. FUTURE FEDERAL ACTIONS NEEDED: Establish mapping guidelines, standards, vessel of opportunity protocols, and standard operating procedures to facilitate IOCM and acquisition of Arctic hydrographic, shoreline, habitat mapping, and water column data in the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas. Survey a minimum of 500 square nautical miles a year in U.S. Arctic waters. Update nautical charts, environmental sensitivity indices, and other Arctic feature maps with mapping data acquired during annual field seasons. Consult coastal communities for input to enhance Coast Pilot in Alaska. Refine, with stakeholders and traditional knowledge, survey priority list of Arctic maritime regions. Conduct coordinated interagency ocean and coastal mapping operations and incorporate results into the Ocean and Coastal Mapping Inventory. Conduct WAMS and PARS of the Arctic region, beginning with ongoing PARS for the Bering Strait, and incorporate into decisions on mapping and charting priorities and waterways management. Complete electronic navigational chart coverage as agreed to by the Arctic Regional Hydrographic Commission. Should resources come available, NOAA would task the Survey Vessel Rainier to the Arctic, use a NOAA fishery research vessel to survey, or contract for hydrographic data in the region.Only US national investment and a regulatory strategy solves Slayton 5/21/14Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University and Co-Chair and Executive Director, Arctic Security Initiative (David M, House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Hearing Using New Ocean Technologies: Promoting Efficient Maritime Transportation and Improving Maritime Domain Awareness and Response Capability Written Statement for the Record to the United States House of Representatives Transport, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Sub-Committee//cc)With regard to Arctic shipping, the United States should continu