Cold war looms for the Arctic

To hear Russia and Canada, we are on the cusp of a new cold war as global warming is rapidly rendering previously inaccessible Arctic oil and gas supplies ever more retrievable.

Norway has fired a diplomatic warning shot across the Arctic: there will be conflict if nations competing for access to as much as a quarter of the world's natural resources of oil and gas do not abide by international law.

Channel 4 News has travelled to the farthest northern settlement, deep inside the high Artic, to Ny Alesund at 79 degrees north.

We were not alone - we accompanied the foreign ministers of Germany and Norway, who had come to highlight the very immediate danger confronting the Arctic.

So exactly what is at stake here beneath the thinning ice cap? Why are so many countries staking a claim to this frozen world?

In the "high Arctic", as the Norwegians call it, winter is drawing in. The first midnight sunset occurred on Sunday.

Within a few weeks the sun will set altogether. At Ny Alderson research station, the scientists are hunkering down for the hard months to come.

The Channel 4 News team landed there just ahead of this week's unprecedented visit - a visit intended to promote law over war.

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