On September 22, 2025, the Istanbul Bridge, a Chinese ship, departed the port of Ningbo-Zhoushan. But instead of heading towards the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal, it turned north, heralding a new era in shipping.
The ship is currently chugging the frigid Arctic Ocean along the coast of Russia. If all goes well, it will reach the port of Felixstowe in the United Kingdom on October 11, a period of 18 days.
With its voyage, Beijing will have launched what it calls the ‘Polar Silk Route’. Through this route, ships from Asia will be able to reach Europe and North America without having to travel through traditional chokepoints like the Straits of Malacca, the Suez Canal and Panama Canal.
It is something that has been brewing up for a while. While the Northern Sea Route was sought after by European seafarers in the Age of Discovery, it is only now as the Arctic melts due to climate change that it is becoming a reality.
However, there will be a huge cost to pay not only by the Arctic and its inhabitants but also the rest of the world, a recent study has warned.
A recent paper titled Arctic Sea Route access reshapes global shipping carbon emissions, has warned that the Polar Silk Road will be a costly proposition for the planet.
The scientists quantified the long-term carbon consequences of Artic Sea Route (ASR) access using a trade-integrated shipping emissions projection (TISEP) model that integrated trade scenarios, vessel routing, and climate policy pathways.
The results were not promising.
“The results of our TISEP model indicate that the opening of the ASR will not only reshape regional shipping patterns but also amplify global carbon emissions and exacerbate environmental inequalities,” the scientists wrote.
Under the business-as-usual scenario, Arctic maritime emissions are projected to surge from 1.00 Mt CO2eq in 2022 to 117.61 Mt by 2100 in the high trade case, driven primarily by a sharp increase in traffic from oil, gas, and chemical tankers, which together would account for more than 80 per cent of ASR emissions.
The paper pointed out that the contribution of the ASR to global maritime emissions would rise more than twelvefold, from 0.22 per cent to 2.72 per cent, making the route one of the five most carbon-intensive corridors worldwide.
“Spatially, emissions would intensify in newly navigable but ecologically vulnerable waters, with hotspots such as the Lincoln Sea (31.65 Mt) and Baffin Bay (18.32 Mt), which were previously near-zero emission zones, emerging as critical carbon concentration zones. This transformation risks accelerating Arctic warming, disrupting albedo effects and permafrost stability, which could release significant methane stores and exacerbate global climate feedbacks,” the analysis noted.
The authors added that although access to the ASR will reduce voyage distances, these efficiency gains will be overwhelmed by the scale of increased traffic growth. “These findings underscore the Arctic’s role as an emerging emissions frontier, challenging global decarbonization efforts like the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 °C target and highlighting the need for region-specific mitigation to protect its critical ecological functions,” the experts warned.
Away from the Arctic, ASR-induced rerouting will trigger pronounced spatial shifts in global shipping emissions that will deepen regional disparities in environmental exposure, as per the paper.
High-emission traffic will be redirected away from traditional chokepoints such as the Suez and Panama Canals toward high-latitude corridors, resulting in substantial emission increases across Northeast Asia, Northern Europe, and North America.
“For example, annual emissions along the Oslo–Rotterdam corridor will increase from 5.30 Mt to 39.37 Mt, and those along the US-UK corridor will increase by 25.38 Mt, transforming the North Sea into one of the world’s most impacted maritime regions. In the Northwest Pacific, emissions through the Tsugaru, Luzon, and Taiwan Straits will increase by 30-50 Mt CO2eq primarily because of the rerouting of oil, gas, and chemical tankers serving East Asian economies,” the writers noted.
They added that these shifts, driven by carbon-intensive tankers, could increase ocean acidification risks in northern corridors, threatening marine ecosystems critical for global fisheries and biodiversity.
In contrast, equatorial corridors such as the Malacca Strait and the Suez Canal will experience marginal declines in emissions in another example of the hemispheric redistribution of maritime carbon burdens.
“These asymmetric outcomes reflect a critical inequity: while exporting nations stand to benefit economically from Arctic access, emissions will increasingly be offshored to ecologically sensitive and under-regulated transit zones, disproportionately impacting Arctic indigenous communities reliant on marine resources for cultural and economic survival,” the paper warned.
The authors recommend that governance of the ASR must move beyond decarbonisation to embrace a comprehensive environmental protection agenda, ensuring that economic gains do not come at the expense of irreversible harm to one of the planet’s most climate-sensitive regions and aligning with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for equitable global progress.
The paper, authored by Pengjun Zhao, Yunlin Li, Caixia Zhang, Tingting Kang, Zhangyuan He, Guangyu Huang, Shiyi Zhang, Xianghao Zhang, Yuanquan Xu & Weiya Kong, appeared in Nature Communications.