Singapore: The Arctic Newcomer – Analysis

June 11, 2013

By Eurasia Review

As a city-state lying just over 100km north of the equator, Singapore may not strike you as an obvious participant at meetings of the Arctic Council. But at the Council’s recent Ministerial Meeting in May, members decided on precisely that: allowing Singapore to become a Permanent Observer to the Arctic Council.

By Stewart Watters And Aki Tonami

Singapore was one of five applicants for Observer status from Asia along with China, Japan, Korea and India, indicating the growing awareness and perceived interests by Asian states in a rapidly changing Arctic. However, China, Japan, Korea and India all have long traditions of Polar science either in Antarctica or via research stations on Svalbard – by contrast, Singapore has little Polar heritage.

Nonetheless, Singapore has articulated an intention to play a role in Arctic governance, through government statements, its submission for Arctic Council Observer status in December 2011 and the creation of an Arctic Envoy role, raising the question of what is motivating these activities. In our research, we argue that this engagement stems from Singapore’s significant interest in global maritime affairs and the strong role of the state in managing the Singaporean economy and its strategic industries of port management and vessel construction.

Singapore’s Interest In The Arctic

Singapore has played an important role in the global governance regimes and institutions for ocean management and transportation as an island state and a major shipping hub, including as a long-standing member of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Singapore asserts that freedom of navigation represents an issue of vital interest, that the high seas are the common heritage of mankind and that there must be improved cooperation between littoral and user states and that ocean governance must be open and inclusive.

Seen from this perspective, it is not surprising that Singapore seeks to follow the development of Arctic shipping and resource exploration more closely, and some Arctic Council member states have acknowledged that Singapore’s role in global maritime governance is a legitimate factor in its application for Observer Status.

However, Singapore also has considerable economic and political interest in the development of the Arctic. This is

directly related to the development of key domestic industrial sectors, namely Singapore’s role as a global hub port, as a strong base of offshore and marine engineering and as an international leader in port management.

Here it is important to remember Singapore’s political context: Singapore has been ruled by a single party since 1959 and there is a significant degree of involvement by state institutions and government officials in the management of the Singaporean economy and its major commercial entities, with a long-term strategic approach to foreign economic policy. This means that the state, and not just private companies, is very alive to the challenges and opportunities of Arctic change.

One of the most common assumptions about Singapore’s Arctic interest is that it is born of the Northern Sea Route’s (NSR) potential challenge to Singapore’s role as a global shipping hub. Some analysts assert that more northerly Asian ports could benefit from a reliable Arctic passage instead of transiting the heavily trafficked Malacca Straits, and so bypassing Singapore. Some also argue that projected energy resources in the Arctic may reduce NE Asia’s energy imports from the Middle East, again reducing Singapore’s significance.

However, we argue that for the foreseeable future this ‘threat’ is overblown. Significant questions remain about the near-term potential of large-scale, highly regularized Arctic shipping, related to navigational safety, transit time, capacity restrictions, limited seasonal access, as well as an uncertain Russian bureaucracy and lack of existing infrastructure. The Malacca Straits may be crowded, but it is well managed and highly regularized, two factors that shipping brokers and importers are reluctant to gamble with.

Indeed, there may well be an upside to the development of the NSR: Singapore’s broad expertise in the running of major port facilities may be an opportunity for one of Singapore’s most important enterprises, PSA International, to deliver and manage the new northern port infrastructure required to facilitate Arctic shipping.

Furthermore, Singapore is home to global leaders in Offshore and Marine Engineering (OME), a critical sector for Singapore’s economic strategy. For example, Singapore’s OME sector accounts for 70 per cent of the world’s jack-up rig-building market and 2/3 of the global Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) platform conversion market, both important technologies for offshore drilling in hostile environments like the Arctic. One of Singapore’s most important engineering companies, Keppel Corp., entered the Arctic ice-breaker market in 2008. In 2012, Keppel and ConocoPhillips announced their intention to jointly design a pioneering rig for offshore Arctic drilling.

In conclusion, Singapore’s Arctic interest represents the logical extension of its more general interest in important developments in international maritime policy. However, for Singapore the opening up of the Arctic for shipping and resource extraction represents an important new niche for industries critical to the Singapore economy and closely linked to the government.

Singapore has expended a great deal of diplomatic efforts to prove its suitability for Arctic Council Observer status. But the question facing Arctic Council members may have been less about Singapore’s suitability and much more about the direction in which they wanted to see the Arctic Council develop in a period of unprecedented interest in a changing Arctic.

Authors:
Stewart Watters leads the ‘Asia in a Changing Arctic’ Program at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, looking at the drivers behind the growing interest in the arctic region by Asian countries.

Aki Tonami is a researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), University of Copenhagen. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies (Ecological Economics) from Kyoto University (2008). Her main research areas include Japan’s international relations and environmental governance, particularly environmental aid.

Source:

This article has been slightly edited from its original version, which was published by WWF in its The Circle magazine, Number 1, 2013, pages 13-15 (PDF), and is reprinted with the authors’ permission.

Singapore: The Arctic Newcomer – Analysis