The Politics of Uranium in Greenland: It’s not elemental at all

The debate over uranium has been on and off in Greenlandic politics for decades. While the first discovery of uranium dates back to the mid-1950s, the subject keeps dividing the political and public spheres, as well as the relationship with Copenhagen in the Danish Realm. In 1965, the first legal mentioning of uranium is stated as a resource of a different kind, accompanied by international conventions. With the introduction of Home Rule in 1979 a new Mineral Resources Act was implemented as a joint matter between Denmark and Greenland, and later replaced by a new act in 1991. However, these laws do not mention radioactive substances. In the 2000s, the discourse of 'zero-tolerance' was coined. However, there has never been any official document stating this matter. In 2009, with the introduction of the new Self-Government Act, Greenland received the competence over all its natural resources and implemented another Mineral Resources Act in 2010. But many issues regarding extraction of uranium are still evidently dividing the political parties and the Greenlandic population, and calls for a uranium-referendum have recently resurfaced. The standard phrase is iteratively to ‘agree to disagree’, i.e. postponing the hard decisions to the indefinitely future, even within the new and current, as of Fall 2016, coalition government. In sum, paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes in a negated manner: The element of uranium is by no means elementary in the case of Greenland. This paper applies mixed methods, i.e. combining survey data and qualitative interviews, to map the preferences of the political parties, the public, and other key actors in both Nuuk and locals close to the Kvanefjeld-project in Southern Greenland. We argue that the standard Liberal game-theoretical notion in IR of ‘the shadow of the future’ works in murky and somewhat counterproductive ways. Thus, different ‘agree to disagree’-uncertainties across issue domains (economical, political, and environmental etc.) can be detected in several local and domestic arenas, and within ‘Rigsfælleskabet’ in relation to Denmark proper. Hence, the uranium-case is arguably off the equilibrium path on the Pareto-frontier in order to provide a sustainable decision to either move forward or, vice versa, put an end to the, for some, pipeline dream of an immensely profitable uranium venture.