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Greenlanders and Canadians have considerably more in common since January 20, 2025. Two peaceful Arctic neighbours have found themselves first in line to face off against the circumpolar neighbour-turned-heel, the United States of America. The collective consciousness of the remaining NATO allies wretches on US products, heaving anything of Stars and Stripes out the windows just as fast as the US moves to cancel and strip down protections for domestic fresh water.

New York Riverkeeper, a citizens' organization dedicated to protecting the Hudson River and to safeguard drinking water took inventory of the disturbing acts of the new US Executive Branch to cancel domestic water security. In a webinar on March 27, legal counsel and environmental scientists for Riverkeeper itemized cuts to US federal staff responsible for fresh water planning and management. That these cuts are coming in tandem with sabre-rattling rhetoric, the leering White House threatening to "take" all the territory and resources it wants, even by force. The USA is on an imperial march, double-time for the expansion of manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, logging and mining.

Canada and Greenland, prepare to defend. A US Executive delegation has landed in northwest Greenland today. Several news outlets are broadcasting live from Pituffik Space Base in the northwest. Vice President Vance and his wife, National Security Advisor and Secretary of Energy have had a meal with US troops. Reporters on site say they have been locked out of the afternoon meetings.

Greenland and Canada are both fit with brand new leaders, Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen tolerating the drop-in visit with as much decorum as one can muster under the conditions. Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney hit the ground running, scrambling new trading options as the longest undefended border in the world becomes something of a nightmare. As this unfolds, WaterToday dives for a closer look at the fresh water resources surely at the center of the US plan to cast off all restraint in its own domestic water security.

According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, IISD, an independent think-tank and unique research laboratory located in central Canada, "fresh water takes many forms, including clouds, rivers, icebergs, most lakes, and the water in your glass. Because of this wide range, it’s often defined as what it’s not: salty."

The defining characteristic of fresh water is the absence of salt. Environment Canada sets the standard at 500 mg/litre, 500 parts per million, or .05%. The United States Geological Survey has a very different idea. Fresh water in USA terms has twice the salt, up to .1% salt, 1g/litre, 1000 ppm.

Fresh water resources are essential for human health and hygiene, for crops and forests, for birds, mammals, freshwater fish, reptiles and amphibians, everything that walks, crawls and flies around the earth depends on clean, non-saline water to survive and thrive. For a nation to give up its fresh water is to give up entirely. Clean drinking water must take primacy for every nation as a matter of security.

According to the Government of Canada, managing the second largest sovereign land area in the world, having a longer Arctic coastline than the rest of the circumpolar nations combined, Canada holds roughly 7% of the global fresh water resource. Greenland's fresh water resources, held in one of two of Earth's ice sheets are even more vast.

Earth's largest island, Greenland is covered in fresh water, estimated at 2.9 million cubic kilometers (0.7 million cubic miles) of ice, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the US State of Colorado. The Greenland ice sheet extends about 1.7 million square kilometers (656,000 square miles), covering 80 percent of Greenland's surface area.


Stream erodes a channel in the Greenland ice sheet on its way to a supra-glacial lake Credit: Ian Joughin/Imaggeo

What happens next is anyone's guess. Given the nature of northerners around the globe, conquest is not going to be easy. This is certainly going to be interesting, stay tuned, more to follow.