Topic:
Country: Philippines
Delegate Name: Savannah Badra
Delegate: Savannah Badra
Country: Philippines
Committee: SPECPOL
The Arctic Circle is one of the last frontiers still free from full-on exploitation of its resources. As glacial melting rapidly increases, the Arctic becomes easier to gain access to due to an increase in ice-free ocean. A century ago, whalers talked of harvesting the cetaceans that piled the waters. Now there is an increase of talk about another harvest. The harvest of fossil fuels and minerals that lie beneath the land and the seabed.The Arctic Circle contains some of the world’s largest undiscovered reserves of both natural gas and oil reserves. Non-Arctic states have risen with a goal to harvest the Arctic resources to combat the decrease of natural resources in overly harvested areas.
The Philippines has supported the United Nations’ principle that all nations have sovereignty over their territories, including the right to use all resources that lie within these territories. The Philippines believes that this principle should extend to all states, and that all states should share the Arctic, to balance the resources of the Arctic proportionally, so that one state does not feel as though it is superior to other states, in order to preserve peace.
The Philippines would look favorably upon a resolution that would outline how every member state could work together to harvest the Arctic’s resources, and to allow the use of these resources to improve every nation. The Philippines believes that all countries should have a right to use the Arctic’s resources, and not something that only certain nations should be able to harness. The Philippines wishes to work with nations that agree with the harnessing of the Arctic and its resources for all, such as Russia, Spain and Nigeria.
