The 11th Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council held in Finland's town of Rovaniemi ended up with failing to issue a final declaration on Tuesday, as the U.S. reportedly refused to mention climate change in the text.

Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini, chair of the council, announced at the start of the meeting that the final joint declaration would be replaced by ministerial statements.

With Arctic temperatures rising at twice the rate of the rest of the globe, the melting ice is creating potential new shipping lanes and has opened much of the world's last untapped reserves of oil and gas to commercial exploitation.

The meeting was supposed to sign a two-year agenda to balance the challenge of global warming with sustainable development of mineral wealth.

However, sources said that the U.S., the only one of the eight Arctic States, with others including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Russia, disagreed with the wording that climate change was a serious threat to the Arctic, and refused to sign.

This is the first time the council failed to make a final declaration since its formation in 1996.

"The hang up here right now is America making it hard to make a final agreement," AFP reported citing Sally Swetzof of the Aleut International Association, one of six organizations representing the Arctic's indigenous peoples.

Gosia Smieszek from the University of Lapland's Arctic Center told Finnish media that the meeting represented a fundamental disagreement among the Arctic council members on climate change, as well as the fact that the U.S. government denies climate change, which is unacceptable to other Arctic States.

The council, instead, presented a joint statement, without mention of climate change, to reiterate the eight states' commitment to peace, stability and constructive cooperation in the Arctic.

"A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience," said Soini in the Chair's statement.

The ministerial meeting also announced the International Maritime Organization as a new observer, and passed the chairmanship to Iceland.

Read more: China will 'neither interfere in, nor be absent from' development of Arctic

(Cover: The 11th Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council held in the town of Rovaniemi, Finland, May 7, 2019. /Xinhua Photo)

(With input from Reuters and AFP)