"In the shorter term there might be economic development and jobs, but they do not come with a guarantee that the ecosystem won't be destroyed and in turn, negatively affect communities," Greenpeace's Nordic Executive Director Mads Flarup Christensen said of an industrial exploitation of the Arctic at a seminar in the Arctic town of Tromsoe.

Greenpeace called for a moratorium applying to the exploitation of fossil fuels and minerals, commercial fishing and of maritime transport, but not to traditional fishing or the seal hunt or whaling, practiced by the region's indigenous peoples.

According to the US Geological Survey, the Arctic could contain 90 million barrels of oil and 30 percent of the world's assumed gas resources, considerable reserves made even more accessible by the melting of Arctic ice.

"The problem is, we are past the tipping point for ice loss and ocean acidification, even deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions won't prevent these things from taking a huge toll on the Arctic Ocean ecosystem," Flarup Christensen said in a speech seen by AFP.

"What we can control and prevent are any additional stresses to the Arctic marine ecosystem," he said, calling for an international treaty to protect the Arctic modelled on the 1991 protocol on Antarctica.

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