Arctic region has been a matter of intense disputes for the last several
decades. The presence of large deposits of natural resources in Arctic
such as oil, gas and fish as well as potential economic benefits of
shipping routes has already attracted many countries, both Arctic and
non-Arctic, thus resulting in potential conflict of interests. Unclear
borders and territorial claims made the problem even more complicated.
To evaluate the level of conflict of countries and identify high
risk areas there is an attempt to estimate the utility of each area in the
Arctic region for all countries with respect to main resources - oil, gas,
fish and maritime routes. As a result, we present several models of potential
conflict resolution based on different preferential allocation of
resources among interested countries. Two main approaches are used
- each territory is allocated to a single country, and each territory can
be allocated to several countries - so called shared allocation. It turns
out that shared allocation in general can decrease the total dissatisfaction
level of each country. We strongly believe that early forecast of
such potential conflict zones and discussions on different scenarios of
resource allocation might ease the decision making process in international
relations.
