Greenland has returned to the focus of international interest. Donald Trump has not yet taken office and has once again declared, as he did in 2019, his interest in controlling the island, for which he does not rule out, he says, the use of military force. Denmark has reacted by reminding that the territory is not for sale and Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede He mentioned the matter in his New Year’s speech, talking about the great interest that his island is arousing and mentioning cooperation and foreign trade with its neighbors, but also that this has to ensure the path to independence. And this year elections are being held in the country with public opinion divided on issues such as the country’s total independence from Denmark or conservation and mining exploitation. It is worth remembering that Greenland was a Danish colony until 1979, when it became an autonomous territory. Since 2009 it has the right to claim its independence through a referendum (something it has not yet done) and, since 2010, it has made its own decisions regarding its resources, although it still It receives 500 million euros from Denmark every year.
The key to all this international interest is in unexploited mineral resources, many of them, such as rare earths, linked to mobile telephony or renewable energies. In fact, Europe signed a Memorandum of Agreement in November 2023 for a strategic minerals partnership with Greenland. The idea: develop sustainable value chains for raw materials (in other words, ensure the energy transition without depending as before on China).
The paradox of thaw
The Greenland Natural Resources Institute states that the subsoil contains rare earths, precious stones, coal, graphite or uranium. “Greenland has been a mining nation since the late 18th century, when coal was mined on the Nuussuaq Peninsula. Additionally, mining has included gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, graphite, olivine, cryolite and marble. Several of them have closed in recent years, such as the Seqi olivine mine in 2011 and the Nalunaq gold mine closed in 2013. Furthermore, assessments suggest that there is enormous potential for oil exploitation in coastal waters. on the Nuussuaq peninsula.
There are so many resources that Manuel Regueiro, researcher at the Illustrious Official College of Geologists, states that “from a mining point of view it is a paradise to explore, among other things, because the global increase in temperatures is making the territory accessible. However, just because there are signs does not mean that it will explode. For that you have to put money. Let’s not forget that it is a place with very difficult conditions,” he clarifies.
The island’s resources are becoming more accessible due to global warming. The Greenland ice sheet has shrunk by 1.2 meters on average between 2010 and 2023, according to joint research by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. “The thinning at the edge of the ice sheet was five times greater, reaching an average of 6.4 meters,” says the study.
Francisco Navarro, from the Department of Applied Mathematics at the ETSI of Telecommunications at the Polytechnic University of Madrid: «The loss of ice, above all, is being superficial, and although it will be sustained, by the end of the century it will be the mass that will contribute the most to the rise in sea level. There are three large ice masses in the world. Greenland represents 11% of the total ice, Antarctica more than 80% and then there are the small glaciers. Until now, the rise in sea level was mainly due to these small glaciers, but it is estimated that by 2100 it will be Greenland that will constantly contribute to this phenomenon. It already has between 25 and 30% of the discovered territory and in these southern areas, is where mining activity has been concentrated.
A decisive year
Elections are held on the island in April and “although the parties have different visions, there is a general discussion in the country between resource conservation and exploitation. Right now 20% of their GDP is mining and, in the long term, if they want to be independent this percentage will have to increase,” says Navarro.
The relationship with mining has changed since the Inuit Ataqatigiit independence party took power in 2021. One of the first decisions of this “green and anti-mining” party was to prohibit the exploitation of oil, gas and uranium.
It was paradigmatic stoppage of the Kvanefjeld rare earth mining project, presented at the time by the firm Greenland Minerals Limited and which had the approval of the previous executive, the Siumut. Since 2013, the ban on extracting radioactive materials, maintained for 25 years, had been put on hold. In those years, according to international media reports, this “attracted the interest of companies from all over the world, including China, in search of rare earths and uranium and it was then that GMEL took a step forward with Kvanefjeld and its reserves of uranium, fluoride , thorium and rare earths. However, social protest led to the paralysis of the mining project in 2021. The new government approved a new law that since then prohibits the exploration of deposits with a concentration of uranium greater than 100 parts per million. It was the end of the project, at least for now, because in 2023, the company filed a lawsuit against the Government of Greenland and Denmark claiming more than $7.5 billion in damages.
A geostrategic position between the North Atlantic and the Arctic
Greenland is also home to the Thule air base, the northernmost in the United States, and a key piece for its radar system. In addition, the island is located on the shortest route to Europe. With his words “Trump wants to distract attention from internal problems and that is why he talks about the Panama Canal, about annexing Canada, about the Mexican border, about Greenland. Yes, there is raw material on this island, but what the United States also wants is to counteract the pressure from Russia and China in the Arctic, hence its interest in reinforcing its military presence. The same thing is happening in the Antarctic, hence China’s interest in having a base in Patagonia. “We are in a moment of great geopolitical tensions where we see how borders change very quickly and the great powers are trying to divide the pie of the deposits of Alaska, Lapland, Greenland…”, explains Fernando Cocho, Intelligence and Risk analyst. national security.