Oslo - Interest in the Arctic region has increased as the melting of the Arctic polar cap continues, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said Wednesday in summing up Norway's chairmanship of the eight-country Arctic Council.

The melting sea ice allows for new potential shipping routes, and also opens up new areas for exploration of oil and gas and other minerals, but also poses a threat to sensitive ecosystems.

Rising sea levels also threaten people in low-lying areas around the world, researchers told delegates during a seminar on Tuesday.

Before Store handed over the two-year chairmanship to his Danish counterpart Per Stig Moller, Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore addressed delegates gathered in Tromso, northern Norway.

The former US vice president who won the 2007 Nobel Prize for his efforts to highlight climate change, said "we must take action now."

Gore highlighted the "special threat" caused by "black carbon or soot" which comes from the burning of diesel fuel, biomass, cooking fires and forest fires and how winds carry the soot to snow- and ice- capped regions in the Arctic as well as the Himalayas.

The soot "changes the way how ice and snow interact with the sun," he said, absorbing rather than reflecting the sunrays.

"We have everything we need to solve this crisis. The possible exception is political will," Gore said, noting that "political will ... comes from the heart."

Store said a task force was to be set up under the Arctic Council. It would present findings on for instance black carbon effects to December's UN climate conference in Copenhagen aimed at securing a new treaty on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Maritime safety as well as guidelines on oil and gas exploration were also discussed during the Tromso meeting, Store told reporters.

Among issues Denmark would push as chairman of the Arctic Council was to review what sort of ships would be allowed to ply the Arctic region as shipping lanes open up, Moller said.

Moller said there was need to give the 4 million people in the Arctic region a chance to "grasp possibilities" posed by the changing climate, for instance in tourism and exploiting natural resources.

Interest in the Arctic region suggests a greater role for the council and also a need to see what role states wanting to become observers can play, Moller and Store said.

"All who can contribute are welcome," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said when asked about Moscow's view on observers.

The Arctic Council groups Canada, Denmark including Greenland and the Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States.

Set up in 1996, the council also includes representatives of the indigenous peoples in the Arctic. (dpa)