The Race for Greenland's Resources
During his first term, Mr. Trump urged his aides to explore ways to purchase Greenland, a semiautonomous territory known for its natural resources and strategic location for new shipping routes that can open up as the Arctic ice melts. A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump reignited the conversation through social media, asserting that “the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Greenland's Rich Mineral Deposits
Greenland’s vast ice sheets and glaciers are quickly retreating as the Earth warms through accelerating climate change. That melting of ice could allow drilling for oil and mining for minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Those mineral resources are essential to rapidly growing industries that make wind turbines, transmission lines, batteries, and electric vehicles.
Because of higher temperatures, an estimated 11,000 square miles of Greenland’s ice sheets and glaciers have already melted in the past three decades, an area roughly the size of Massachusetts.
The Geopolitical Importance of Greenland
In 2023, the Danish government published a report that detailed Greenland’s potential as a rich deposit of valuable minerals. The Arctic island has “favorable conditions for the formations of ore deposition, including many of the critical raw minerals.”
The melting ice in the Arctic is also opening up a new strategic asset in geopolitics: shorter and more efficient shipping routes. Navigating through the Arctic Sea from Western Europe to East Asia, for example, is about 40 percent shorter compared to sailing through the Suez Canal. Ship traffic in the Arctic has already surged 37 percent over the past decade, according to a recent Arctic Council report.
