activities due to disappearing sea ice.

In a new policy paper, researchers argue that the international community has a waning opportunity to establish the central Arctic as an area of peaceful, trans-national governance before sovereign interests and commercial activities accelerate there in the new scenario.

The paper has been prepared by by Dr Paul Berkman from the University of Cambridge for the Aspen Commission on Arctic Climate Change in Monaco this weekend.

The Commission includes scientists and policy experts and will make recommendations for the future of international co-operation in the Arctic. The article also appears in the new issue of the journal Science.

The five Arctic coastal states, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States, are in the process of asserting their presence in the Arctic Ocean as diminishing sea ice opens up new opportunities for activities such as fishing and the extraction of energy resources. Many of these claims are based on legal ownership of the sea floor.

In their paper, however, academics point out that the water overlying the sea floor in the central Arctic is already an undisputed international space, both under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and customary international law.