In January scenes of protesters gathered outside the Inatsisartut, Greenland’s parliament, in the capital Nuuk, made news around the world. Despite the bitter Arctic cold, protesters stood for hours, holding hand-painted placards declaring ‘Greenland is not for sale’ and wearing red baseball hats printed with the words ‘Make America Go Away’.
They were objecting to US President Donald Trump’s latest claims that the United States needs to ‘own’ Greenland for national security reasons. Acquiring the island, which is strategically positioned between the US and Russia, has long been an ambition of Trump, who claims it will help protect the US from Russian and Chinese missile attacks. Days into his second term last year, Trump even threatened military action to seize Greenland to gain access to its largely untapped critical minerals, including graphite, zinc and copper.
Although its rugged topography and limited infrastructure make mining complicated and expensive, Greenland’s resources have attracted growing international attention in recent years. ‘Everyone talks about the minerals,’ said Trump in January. ‘There’s so many.’
In Washington, Greenland is increasingly seen as a potential ‘near-domestic’ solution to reduce its dependence on Chinese critical mineral supply chains, which dominate the market. Europe is also looking to the island, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, as a source of critical raw materials needed for the green energy transition.
To Greenlanders, Trump’s statements and the surge of global interest in its mineral resources sound like echoes from its colonial past: blunt, extractive and dismissive of local agency. The dilemma facing the island today, however, is more complicated than a simple rejection of foreign interest.
From Nuuk to the smallest coastal municipalities, Greenland’s leaders and communities are weighing up tough questions of who decides if these resources are extracted, how they might benefit the people of Greenland and how its fragile environment would survive the process.
Mining deals for local benefits
Malene Vahl Rasmussen, the Mayor of Kommune Kujalleq on Greenland’s southern peninsula, has been negotiating with international mining companies over exploration rights in recent months, as she explained at a panel on Arctic mineral governance organized by Chatham House in Nuuk last November. The area is thought to be home to the island’s richest mineral resources, and her sense of duty was clear: investment could bring much-needed jobs, better infrastructure, hospitals and education facilities, she said.
Shortly after the event, an exploration licence was granted to the US mining company Critical Metals Corp. At the beginning of 2026, the company began construction of a pilot plant to support extraction of rare earth oxides, a critical ingredient for magnets used in electric vehicle motors and wind turbine generators.
Local authorities have cautiously welcomed such developments, granting new mining licences to international companies in recent months, including the British firm GreenRoc Mining in December 2025 for graphite mining. But the licensing stage is merely the first step; moving to commercial operations will need new investments.
Peter Dige Thagesen, head of geopolitics at the Confederation of Danish Industry, said: ‘Several of the projects will require significant financing. This applies, for example, to mining projects such as the Greenlandic Amitsoq graphite mine near Nanortalik, and the molybdenum mine known as the Malmbjerg project. If Greenlanders wish to fully realize these projects, it is essential that financing comes not only from Greenland, but from both Denmark and the European Union.’
Changing political mood
Since Trump’s recent overtures altered the political mood, the prospect of European investments has taken on greater significance. In January, after a meeting with Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary-general, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump announced ‘a framework for a future deal’ in Greenland that would include mineral rights and give the US ‘total access’ with ‘no end, no time limit’. Neither Greenlandic nor Danish officials were reportedly involved in discussions, however.
For Mayor Rasmussen, this marked a significant escalation. In an open letter to Trump later that month, she warned: ‘If [US] mining activities are not carried out in full compliance with Greenlandic law and with genuine respect for the population, there will be no mining. It is that simple.’ Greenlanders, she insisted, were not swayed by bluster or geopolitical pressure, including from Washington. ‘Our land and our communities are not pieces on a great-power chessboard,’ she wrote.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, also responded strongly, telling reporters after Trump’s announcement: ‘We have red lines … nobody other than Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark have the mandate to make deals or agreements about [us].’ He added that if Greenlanders had to choose ‘we choose the Kingdom of Denmark, we choose the EU, we choose NATO.’
Since January, European countries have aimed to strengthen their presence on the Arctic island. For example, France opened a consulate in Nuuk in February and signed a technical cooperation agreement aimed at improving geological knowledge of Greenland’s mineral resources.
Polling consistently shows overwhelming opposition to any form of US control over the island. In February, a new survey found that 76 per cent of Greenlanders do not want their island to become a part of the United States.
One of the reasons Trump’s proposals have caused so much alarm in Greenland is that they challenge long-held convictions about the meaning of land, identity and stewardship. In Greenland, private land ownership is prohibited, with the land managed collectively as a public trust rooted in Inuit traditions, emphasizing communal, long-term care of the land rather than its commodification.
Revenue from mining is important, but so is avoiding irreversible environmental damage in ecosystems that communities rely on for fishing, hunting and identity. Fisheries, for example, account for almost a quarter of Greenland’s GDP and 90 per cent of total exports.
At Chatham House’s Environment and Society Centre, work is being done to support Greenland as it tackles these important questions, and to facilitate more exchanges with European partners. The event in Nuuk last year was just one part of ongoing discussions over Arctic mineral development, and how this can be better aligned with high environmental standards and boosting local jobs and revenues.
Climate questions
Long before Trump expressed any interest in buying Greenland, the island realized it faced a much greater security challenge: the climate. In Nuuk, icebergs drift past the shorefront far later into the winter than they once did. The Arctic is warming around four times faster than the global average, and Greenland’s ice sheet, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere, is losing mass at an accelerating speed.
The thaw is revealing new opportunities and risks, said Thomas Varming, of the Denmark and Greenland Geological Survey: ‘The warming climate is reshaping the landscape. Glacier retreats, thawing permafrost and longer ice-free seasons are exposing geology that was previously unreachable. That creates opportunities for mineral exploration that didn’t exist a decade ago,’ he said. ‘These processes could also undermine infrastructure, disrupt ecosystems and exacerbate risks for the communities who depend on this land.’
Many projects under consideration face long lead times, high capital costs and significant uncertainty, especially in a rapidly changing Arctic where melting permafrost alters ground stability and logistics. During my visit to Nuuk in November, Greenlanders told me they were worried that if the US gained greater control over the island, mining would accelerate under looser environmental and social safeguards. There is fear that decisions would be made far from Nuuk, that local consent would be sidelined and that Greenland would cease to be a self-determined society, instead becoming a resource frontier.