Arctic, Antarctica, Himalayas, three major poles to watch with climate change

There are not two poles but three on our planet Earth! The North, the South and the Himalayas. Three poles and their future management which will be at the heart of discussions at the next Arctic Circle meeting to be held in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) in January 2022, on the issues of clean energy, water resources and the fight against climate change. This is essentially the astonishing message conveyed by Mikaa Mered, Secretary General of the Overseas Chair of Sciences Po (Paris) during his second conference entitled "From the poles to the Emirates", in front of the cruise passengers who came with Sciences and Avenir-La Recherche aboard the MSC Virtuosa, discovering the World Expo in Dubai (UAE).

Arctic, Antarctica and Himalayas: the largest sources of fresh water on the planet

Exhibition entitled "Connecting minds, building the future" which should last until the end of March 2022 (see box), where the keywords of the pavilions of 192 countries are "mobility, sustainability, opportunity". What the energy geopolitics specialist thus introduces, with supporting map (see opposite), is "another vision of the world". A reversal of the continents – deliberately cutting South and North America into two separate pieces – which China (but not only China) promotes, by placing itself in the center of the map. China with its State Grid corporation of China (SGCC) - the largest electricity grid operator in the world, distributing energy to more than a billion people - is at the center of current questions on the decarbonization of energy at the global level. , as we will have understood again during the COP26 in Glasgow last November.

Mikaa Mered during his conference. Photo by Dominique Leglu.

These "three poles, Arctic, Antarctic and Himalayas, constitute the largest sources of fresh water on the planet", recalls Mikaa Mered, with their glaciers affected by global warming. The melting of those in the Himalayas (1) "has implications for the security of 1.65 billion people", according to the announcement of the Arctic Forum in Abu Dhabi, organized with the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment of the UAE. Clearly, if the three poles mentioned are only very little or not at all inhabited, it would be wrong to perceive them as "peripheral" or secondary zones, the Arctic and the Antarctic being rejected on the borders of our classic planispheres.

Their evolution should even condition the orientation of a number of scientific research, in order to better identify the impacts of the melting of the ice, "on ecosystems, energy production, agriculture and industry", themes which will be discussed during the Forum. Impacts that will also be the subject of the next IPCC report (second group), whose publication is scheduled for the end of February 2022. The question of how to achieve "carbon neutrality", that is to say "replace coal, oil and gas which today represent 84% of the world's energy consumption" by green energies is crucial, recalls Mikaa Mered.

In 2050, "maritime transport will have tripled or even quadrupled compared to 2015"

A major dilemma: how will we manage globally "to do what has never been done", that is to say, to substitute new sources of energy for the older ones? Indeed, over the decades of industrial society, any innovation (hydraulic, nuclear, wind, solar, etc.) has simply been added to the global energy mix. The major global strategic balances depend on these choices. Thus, "the first competitor of Qatar [for gas] is the Russian Arctic", explains Mikaa Mered, specifying that, already, "1/3 of the consumption of natural gas in France comes from this Russian Arctic". And to clarify that today "Total holds 19.4% of Novatek", the second largest Russian gas producer, located in the autonomous region of Yamal-Nenets in Western Siberia. "Total is not going to leave the Arctic tomorrow", launches the geopolitical specialist, who points in his own way to what he calls "the paradox of the Arctic: if we want to save this region, we will have to go dig it" … Because it is also full of metals and rare earths (2), essential for the machines (electric cars, solar panels, etc.) and production (hydrogen, etc.) envisaged for the energy transition.

How to reconcile economy and ecology? How to achieve a clean operation, without emissions of carbon dioxide or methane, greenhouse gases increasing global warming? Mikaa Mered thus points to the arrival from 2024 of new Russian icebreakers equipped with "nuclear reactors twice as powerful" as those currently used, making it possible to open the way for ships transporting liquefied gas, for example, in particular in the " Northeast Passage which will complement the Suez Canal". Not to mention the construction of other very powerful nuclear-powered icebreakers by China, which sees the Arctic and Antarctica as major challenges for its development.

By 2050, it is estimated, "maritime transport will have tripled or even quadrupled compared to 2015". The new northern route could represent 20% of maritime traffic between Europe and Asia. A route that also requires the construction of new ports, "hubs" to transit resources between land and sea. There is no doubt that in the future, new names such as Severomorsk, the main base of the Russian navy, will be better known to the general public. Who, too, will have to revise his geography on new maps of the world.

1) Work on the Hindu Kush Himalaya (KHK) region has given rise to a first free access report, produced by 300 researchers, experts and decision-makers, united in the Himap program (Hindu Kush Himalayan monitoring and assessment programme), coordinated by the International Center for Mountain Development (Icimod).

2) To read “The war of rare metals. The hidden face of the energy and digital transition”, by Guillaume Pitron, Les liens qui liberateurs, 2018.

Giant screens, catamaran and origami "Should we only use renewable energies in the future?" asks a panel in the Germany pavilion at the Dubai World Expo. Visitors are then invited to "vote" by choosing to go through one door or another, the first corresponding to "yes" and the other to "no". Same question on biodiversity: "Should we do more to protect it?" The federal republic clearly wanted to display its green color and announce "[Its] vision for 2050", in a place designed as a campus with all its laboratories. There are examples of new ways of storing energy, innovations for recycling CO ₂ and preventing the release of this greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, research on birds, frogs, locusts... interviews. of researchers in support. "100,000 ideas for a sustainable future. We invent, and invent and invent", proclaims an announcement, in front of a sea of ​​yellow balls, in which children and parents sink, laughing. The balls also allow access, as on small billiards with holes, to many quizzes, which question the art of protecting the environment "by practicing car-sharing" or by dressing in "clothes second-hand"... The queues are long in front of this pavilion, acclaimed as one of the most interesting of the Exhibition. In the more classic French pavilion, entitled "Lumière, lumière" - the fifth most visited pavilion, according to the figures for the beginning of December - the visitor is greeted by beautiful pages from the Encyclopédie - "We cannot talk about progress without starting by the Age of Enlightenment", announces the cartouche. But these are two points which especially hold the attention, tell us the hosts of the rooms, in the team of 25 people permanently on site. First, the huge airships Flying Whales (flying whales), the company of the same name presenting an aircraft 200 meters long, capable of transporting up to 60 tons in areas of difficult access, in particular without an airport . Above all, the "Art Explorer Museum Boat", a model of which floats on a small body of water. Mission of this "largest sailing catamaran in the world", designed by the Art Explora cultural foundation and whose inauguration is scheduled for 2023: "Offer on board digital exhibitions that are renewed each year". And design in the ports visited by the boat "a cultural festival designed with local actors". The idea pleases. It was obviously not possible for the cruise passengers of Sciences et Avenir to visit the pavilions of the 192 countries in 3 days, but a list of winners nevertheless emerges. In addition to that of Russia and mobility (designed by architect Norman Foster) as well as that of sustainability with its spectacular virtual aquarium, the two huge pavilions of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates (a falcon with outstretched wings, which fall back in the evening, designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava) are stormed. on innovative start-ups after wandering in the middle of real sand dunes on which videos are projected. Much more modest is Palestine, where you can smell scents of jasmine or rose emanating from various pottery, while Spain presents a film that veers into the fantastic where a very strange "August Moon" upsets people's minds, so that Kazakhstan closes its presentation with a twirling human-robot dance which is much applauded. Finally, we cannot forget the Japanese pavilion, which will host the next Universal Exhibition in Osaka in 2025. Poetic, it pays homage to the passage of time, which was once measured by flowering or the fall of leaves in autumn, and makes the visitor wander in front of a huge terrestrial globe where stylized flowers and birds float - spectacular digital effects completely mastered - before plunging him into a refreshing mist and inviting him to dance. He comes out with a fan and the small gift of an Orizuru, a lucky origami crane. Tradition obliges.DJL