Polar Bear on Arctic Sea Ice. © Greenpeace / Alex Yallop

Protect the Arctic

Climate change has already removed at least 75 percent of Arctic summer sea ice volume at rates never before experienced in human history. Soon, the Arctic Ocean will be like other oceans for much of the year: open water that is exposed to exploitation and environmental destruction.

Despite the Arctic Ocean’s unique vulnerabilities, it is still the least protected of all the world’s oceans. Less than 1.5 percent has any form of protected area status. The high seas of the Arctic — which belong to no single nation — are under no form of protection.

A strong Global Ocean Treaty will enable us to finally protect the Arctic Ocean, as part of a network of sanctuaries.

And we aren’t the only ones who want this: a Greenpeace survey revealed that 74 percent of people across 30 different countries support the establishment of a global sanctuary in the international waters around the North Pole. More than 70 percent of those people believed that the Arctic should be free of oil drilling and other heavy industry.

UN Meeting on Global Oceans Treaty - Messages in New York. © Stephanie Keith / Greenpeace

How do we envision an Arctic Sanctuary?

The Arctic ocean is vast, and its ecosystem depends on that immense size. An Arctic Sanctuary would need to be large as well. The Arctic high seas make up an area the size of the Mediterranean Sea.

Within the Arctic Sanctuary, there would be no fishing, no military activity and no exploration for or extraction of fossil fuels or other minerals from the seabed.

Strict environmental controls would apply to all shipping in this area, although not all shipping activity would be prohibited. Heavy fuel oil use, for example, would not be allowed — a practice that is already adopted in Antarctic waters.

We will be pressuring the international community every chance we get. And our effort in collaboration with many organizations and indigenous peoples’ to collect signatories for an Arctic Declaration in solidarity with Arctic peoples was a big step in this direction.

Arctic issues & threats

The fight to save the Arctic is heating up. The region is more impacted by global warming than any other place in the world. And as if the impacts of climate change weren’t enough, international oil companies have invested in exploiting the oil that lies deep in Arctic waters.

The arctic & climate change

The people and animals that live in the Arctic depend on its unique ecosystem to survive. For them climate change is not a debate, it’s a daily reality. And with the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, Arctic ice is melting even faster, as the ocean absorbs the heat.

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Arctic oil drilling

Arctic Ocean drilling is a gamble with catastrophic consequences for the people, wildlife and the sensitive ecosystem of the region. And yet major companies like Shell and Exxon are making aggressive moves to usher in a new “oil rush” in the Arctic Ocean. Although the Obama administration made the Arctic Ocean off limits to offshore oil drilling for two years, those protections are at risk. We need a longer term fix — we need to keep the Arctic Ocean off-limits to oil drilling forever.

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Learn more about…

Excessive Heat Wave in West Coast, California. © David McNew / Greenpeace
Signage cautions drivers of extreme heat danger as an excessive heatwave continues on July 9, 2024 in Death Valley National Park. Hundreds of Europeans touring the American West and adventurers from around the U.S. are still being drawn to Death Valley National Park, even though the desolate region known as one of the Earth’s hottest places is being punished by a dangerous heat wave blamed for a motorcyclist’s death over the weekend. French, Spanish, English and Swiss tourists left their air-conditioned rental cars this week to take photographs of the barren landscape so different than the snow-capped mountains and rolling green hills they know back home. American adventurers liked the novelty of it, even as officials at the park in California warned visitors to stay safe. A blistering California heat wave over the past week could be topped off by the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth. That kind of extreme heat has led to more deaths than wildfires and cost billions of dollars over a decade, according to the state insurance department.
© David McNew / Greenpeace
California climate emergency
Satellite Image of Hurricane Harvey. © NASA Earth Observatory
When Hurricane Harvey blows ashore over coastal Texas on Friday night, it will likely be the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2005. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of the rapidly intensifying storm at 11:24 a.m. Central time (16:45 Universal Time) on August 24, 2017. The National Hurricane Center expects Harvey to be a category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale—with winds higher than 111 miles (179 kilometers) per hour—when it makes landfall. It will likely produce a storm surge of 6 to 12 feet (2 to 4 meters) and drop between 15 and 25 inches (38 and 63 centimeters) of rain in some areas—enough to produce life-threatening flash floods.
© NASA Earth Observatory
Extreme weather
Oil Spil in Rayong, Thailand. © Chanklang Kanthong / Greenpeace
The crude oil slick washed up on Mae Ramphueng beach in Rayong province, Thailand after it leaked from an undersea pipeline owned by Chevron’s Star Petroleum Refining Public Company Limited (SPRC). SPRC must be held accountable and liable not only for cleaning up oil pollution contamination, but also for disclosing to the public in a concise and transparent manner information on the scope of the oil spill and its negative impacts on the marine ecosystem, coastal fishing community, and tourism. Greenpeace Thailand urges the Thai government to form an independent committee to investigate the oil pollution disaster, to urgently review the National Energy Plan in order to break free from fossil fuels, and to halt plans to expand oil and fossil gas industry, which endangers livelihoods, the natural environment, and communities who bear the brunt of environmental impacts and climate crises.
© Chanklang Kanthong / Greenpeace
Fossil fuel phase-out

Achieving the impossible

When we set out to protect the Arctic from destructive oil drilling and commercial fishing people told us it was impossible. Now after years of pushing millions of us have secured an enormous area protected from commercial fishing in the center of the Arctic Ocean, and we’re getting closer every day to an Arctic safe from oil drilling too.