Abstract
Global warming and Globalisation represents both challenges and new opportunities in the 21st Century, and the Arctic is expected to become the new frontier within petroleum and mineral exploration activities and for shipping activities. With an economic and geopolitical shift towards Asia, a significant growth in standard of living coupled with population growth, it is projected that global trade in 2050 will increase by 50% from 2010.The majority of this growth is expected to take place inAsia. Looking specifically at maritime transportation, and projections for growth from 2005 till 2050, estimates point to 93.4% for Europe (including short sea freight); while the corresponding figure outside Europe is 148.2%. Today approximately 90% of global trade is transported on ships, representing a cargo volume of 32.7 billion ton-miles. In commercial terms this represents a value of US$380billion, equal to 5% of world trade. The main objective for this paper is therefore to highlight both possibilities and challenges that will have direct impact on developing the North East Passage (NEP) as a commercially viable shipping alternative compared to the Suez Canal route. Thus, in order to highlight the different issues related to this context, key topics that will be addressed are in this paper are:Globalisation, Arctic petroleum and mineral exploration, Infrastructure, support and Incidents, Ships and logistics, Climate change and environmental issues and International regulation and management of the NEP.
