The United States and China have been competing for rare earth resources around the world in recent years, with one of the targets being the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, and the Chinese Communist Party actively involved in Greenland’s infrastructure and energy development. The island, which has the largest deposits of rare earth metals on earth, will hold parliamentary elections on Saturday, and whether to approve foreign companies to mine rare earths there will be a decisive issue in the election, while the monopoly of Chinese companies on rare earth mines is the focus of the opposition.
Two Australian mining companies are currently seeking to start mining projects in Greenland, the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, where melting glaciers have reduced the cost of mining rare earth metals due to the effects of climate change. The first of these projects has received early environmental assessment approval and is seeking financing in the U.S. The second is a Greenland-based mining group led by Chinese-owned Shenghe Resources Holding, which has been awarded the right to develop a rare earth and uranium mine near Narsaq, but since the mining plan includes However, since the mining plan contains uranium, which is a radioactive substance, it will lead to serious environmental consequences. Local people are opposed to the plan and are worried that the land for hunting and fishing will be developed by the government, which will lead to a dilemma of economic development and environmental protection.
Shenghe Resources Holdings founder Wang Quanguen with Dr. John Mair, Managing Director of Greenland Minerals & Energy Ltd. at Shenghe headquarters in Chengdu, China, October 2017. (Photo credit: Greenland Minerals)
Greenland authorities finally confirmed the environmental study feasibility report submitted by the Australian group last September, after rejecting it three times. The mining case, however, sparked environmental controversy among political parties, leading to a vote of no confidence in the government passed by Parliament on Feb. 16, which forced the government to announce an election a year earlier, on April 6.
The election was considered atypical in that it discussed local issues, but the results could have international implications for rare earth and uranium mining issues.
In 2013, the day after the Greenlandic parliament voted to allow uranium mining, Mariane Paviasen and women from Narsak formed the Urani Naamik association, which became the main party opposing mining in the election, saying. “If we win on April 6, I think we will stop the project as soon as possible. Part of the problem is that the majority shareholder is a Chinese state-owned company, and when looking at what they do in the Third World, one can see that the mines they operate cause a lot of pollution. Greenland Minerals wants us to believe that it is necessary to mine these rare earths to achieve ecological transformation and make Europe greener, but it is not a good way to destroy one country to make another cleaner.”
Mikkel Myrup, president of the Association for Environmental Protection in Nuva (Avataq), shares the same view: “We were told that the world needs rare earths to produce green energy and that the production and commercialization of rare earths is a monopoly of the Chinese. So one of the arguments that convinced us to accept the Greenland mineral project was that we had to break the Chinese monopoly and look for resources in places other than China, such as Greenland. But ironically, this project is now in the hands of the Chinese.”
Greenland’s Prime Minister Kim Kielsen (pictured) and the ruling Forward Party hope to bring in 1.5 billion Danish kroner a year in local revenue by approving the mining of rare earths. (AFP)
Relations between China and the Greenland government have grown stronger since 2012, when Chinese Minister of Land and Resources Xu Shaoshi visited Greenland, Parliament passed a law on uranium mining, the government established a separate department in 2016, and in 2017, all government cabinet members went on a two-week visit to China. While China does not have direct access to the Arctic Circle, it published its “China’s Arctic Policy” in 2018, which introduced the concept of the “Silk Road on Ice. The growing relationship with Beijing has raised concerns among other Arctic countries, especially the U.S. government, and former President Trump even made a request to acquire Greenland, announcing $12.1 million in aid to Greenland in 2020 and opening a consulate in the capital, Nuuk, in Greenland.
Greenland Prime Minister Kim Kielsen and the ruling Forward Party hope that through the approval of rare earth mining, the local income of 1.5 billion Danish kroner per year, so that it can find a new economic pillar in addition to the fishing industry, to achieve economic self-sufficiency, reduce the dependence on the Danish financial allocation that accounts for 1/3 of the local budget, and in the long run, Greenland, with a population of 56,000 people, can be in a position to break away from Denmark. Independence.
A global group of 120 NGOs has called on the Greenland government to halt a mining program that would have serious environmental consequences, while the Danish government has cautiously refrained from commenting on the grounds of non-interference in the island’s internal affairs. Observers generally agree that Greenland does not yet have the conditions for true independence, and that Greenland must also face the question of whether it is ready for China to replace Denmark.
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