Zero Tolerance – A Policy That Never Really Was?

With the Self Government Act of 2009 Greenland received full authority over its natural resources, while Copenhagen is still constitutionally responsible for the Kingdom’s defense, security and foreign policy. With Greenland’s decision to lift the zero-tolerance policy, Greenland and Denmark stand on the verge of entering the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Copenhagen and Nuuk face a range of questions regarding the mining and administration of uranium ore, including vital questions about sufficient safeguards when distributing uranium concentrate. Currently the Naalakkersuisut (Greenland government) and the Danish government disagree on the distribution of competencies in terms of uranium export, but the two parties have agreed to reach a cooperation agreement by the fall of 2014.

The uranium issue came to the fore when Inatsisartut (Greenland parliament) voted to lift the moratorium on mining uranium in October 2013. Whether or not to mine uranium has been clouded with political disagreement in Greenland, and Greenland’s premier Aleqa Hammond’s decision to put the zero-tolerance policy to a vote most likely reflects a desire to give the decision to mine uranium political legitimacy. However, with the decision to put it to a vote, one naturally assumes that there was a decision to ban mining uranium in the first place. Instead, a closer look into the genesis of the zero-tolerance policy reveals that such decision was most likely never made. In fact, the Home Rule in cooperation with the Danish Ministry of Energy granted exploration licenses in the late 1980s and early 1990s to companies to explore for radioactive minerals. In this context the past sixty years of uranium governance provide lessons for the Kingdom as it moves down the pathway to supplier status. Specifically, two lessons can be drawn from the history of the genesis of the alleged zero-tolerance policy.

The Genesis of Zero-Tolerance
It is widely believed that the zero-tolerance policy was a result of a 1988 decision made in the Joint Committee on Minerals in Greenland. The Joint Committee was established in 1979 with the Home Rule and a new mining law. The Committee was made up of five Danish and five Greenlandic members. The Committee served a purely advisory function and could not make formal decisions. The Committee advised the Danish Minister of Energy and the Home Rule respectively on which licenses should be granted to companies that applied for mining rights, but it makes little sense to claim that the Committee could have made a decision on a uranium moratorium given it lacked decision-making capacities. The law of 1979 provided both parties a veto right, and given this right it was possible for Greenland’s Home Rule to veto any uranium mining project.

According to the minutes of the two meetings in the Joint Committee in 1988 there was no decision or recommendation made to ban uranium mining. Indeed, in 1986 and 1989 the Committee recommended that licenses be granted to three different companies to explore for minerals in an area near Sarfartoq which involved uranium as a byproduct. In 1990, the 1989 license was extended. The annual reports from the Joint Committee in 1988 and 1989 report on these exploration licenses and the recommendations the Committee gave, but they contain no mention of any zero-tolerance decision or recommendation for a mining moratorium.

The recommendations to grant licenses to explore the Sarfartoq area were also debated in the Landsting (Greenland parliament). In the fall of 1988, the Landsting discussed the annual report from the Joint Committee and the possibility of granting an exploration license to the area near Sarfartoq for radioactive minerals including uranium. The debate reveals that while there was opposition to uranium mining i.e., where uranium was the primary product, the issue at hand was not to discuss a moratorium, but rather whether Greenland should continue along the path already taken to allow exploration (not extraction) for minerals with uranium as a byproduct. After a lengthy debate, the Landsting approved continuing this path.

It may be conceivable that a decision on zero-tolerance was made at the Landsting’s meeting in the spring of 1988, but unlike the minutes from other meetings, the minutes for the spring 1988 session have never been printed. According to Inatsisartut there might be recordings from the meeting, however these are yet to be found. Even if there could have been a decision in the Landsting in the spring of 1988, the exploration licenses granted to the Sarfartoq area in the late 1980s and 1990 and the exclusionary provision within the mineral licenses in the 1990s, suggest that a case by case practice developed – most likely in lieu of a policy.

This leaves a historical ambiguity to Greenland’s vote conducted in October 2013 in that the moratorium on uranium mining was at least unclear and perhaps even nonexistent.

Uranium Policy and Institutional Memory
As uranium is necessary for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, states need a clear non-proliferation and supply policy when a decision is made to mine and export uranium. The vital importance of having a clear policy has to do with the possibility of uranium concentrate being diverted to non-peaceful uses. The Kingdom is party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and therefore obligated by international law not to provide nuclear material to a non-nuclear weapon state except under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system. The front end of the nuclear fuel cycle (until the point of conversion) is not subject to full material accountancy but states are required to report exports and imports of any material containing uranium to the IAEA. Timely governance of a state’s uranium extraction and export therefore requires a system of administration and control to ensure uranium trade is safeguarded. Government officials, industry and potential buyers therefore are guided by a state’s policy on nuclear non-proliferation and accompanying conditions of supply. Moreover, without a policy, the uranium producing state itself may succumb to a case by case practice as has been the case in Greenland and Denmark. A case by case practice is not sufficient and does not constitute a policy.

The necessity of an institutional memory ties into the formulation of a clear policy. Previous decisions and motivations for these decisions inform future policies to ensure a sufficient, coherent and informed policy. As the case of the zero-tolerance policy suggests, the Kingdom’s institutional memory on uranium is weak and the historical record is disjointed from current decision-making. The history of the zero-tolerance highlights that Copenhagen and Nuuk need a jointly expressed non-proliferation and uranium export control policy with a skilled and educated workforce to implement policies, rules and regulations. With the vote in October paving the way for uranium extraction (whether as a byproduct or not), Denmark and Greenland need to learn from the past and recognize that the pathway to supplier status requires an entirely different approach.