ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which is a potential route for linking Western Europe to East Asia via the Arctic Ocean. It analyzes the development of this Arctic route for international trade. The chapter presents the strengths and constraints generated by this maritime route for stakeholders. It demonstrates the importance of the new global supply chains organization in the near future for Russian Arctic seaports. Beyond the geopolitical aspects, both technical and Russian, technological voluntarism is therefore a key to the possible development of a regular trade route along the Siberian coast. Russian Arctic territories were hitherto relatively marginalized in the global economy. The United Nations Conference on the Environment (UNCE), held in Stockholm in 1972, was the first to mention the existence of global warming. Then, many studies validated this hypothesis, including the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
