Strategic Regions in 21st Century Power Politics - Zones of Consensus and Zones of Conflict

Chapter Seven
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of the country’s coastline. We then measured the country’s total EEZ
according to the provincial coastline percentile value.
Nat_Sector denotes each province’s area of national sector generated
by its own coastline. This variable sorts eight Arctic states according to
their relative location vis-à-vis the ocean (littoral–on-littoral) and
according to their sovereign claims regarding water beyond their EEZ
(with extended continental shelf claims in the region–without extended
continental shelf claims in the region). The coastlines of Finland and
Sweden do not directly face the northernmost ocean. At the same time,
Iceland does not strive for extension of jurisdiction beyond its own EEZ,
even though part of it is located north of the Arctic Circle. Zero values
were thus assigned to these three provinces. For other Arctic provinces,
the share of national sector was measured according to the percentile share
of its own coastline in the country’s total coastline. Depending on the
availability of data, both variables were configured at constant values
throughout the whole period under consideration.
The variables t_Jan. and t_Jul. (average, °C)^46 reflect the average
temperature^47 as recorded at thirty-seven weather stations located within
the borders of Arctic provinces in mid-January and July of 2000, 2005,
and 2010. In cases where data differed at several stations in the Arctic
provinces, the simple average was determined.
We also considered 11 human-related geopolitical variables. The
natural demographic situation in the region is expressed by the
introduction of two variables, Population and Indig_pop (thou. persons).^48
We considered the total number of residents (both citizens and non-
citizens), and the total number of indigenous residents of Arctic provinces
as of January 1 of the respective year. The data is standardized. Except for
Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Alaska, no raw data was
available on the ethnic composition of Arctic provinces. We therefore
imported data on the percentile share of the indigenous population in the
total population of the Arctic states’ northernmost territories. These values
remained constant throughout the whole period under study.^49 The value
assigned to each indigenous population was calculated by augmenting the

(^46) <weatherspark.com>
(^47) Significant variation in the extent of seasonal temperature scattering across
Arctic provinces makes annual average temperature not as informative as bi-annual
average temperature measure.
(^48) <www.arcticstat.org>; <www.statcan.gc.ca>; <www.stat.fi>; <www.ssb.no>;