As COP23 talks start, Inuit org supports call for action, solidarity

Fijian warriors perform a traditional welcoming ceremony at the plenary of the COP23 climate talks on Nov. 6 in Bonn, Germany. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, is presiding over the gathering.

People take to the streets of Bonn, Germany on Nov. 5, the day before the latest round of United Nations climate talks, known as COP23, began. The message at the meeting’s opening: “we no longer have the luxury of time” to curb climate change. To rally more support for political change, COP23 is giving more space to people and events outside the negotiation hall where representatives from nearly 200 countries will meet until Nov. 16. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UN/TWITTER)

Action and solidarity—that was the common message in opening remarks at the COP23 United Nations climate change conference that started Nov. 6 in Bonn, Germany.

This call was shared by Inuit Circumpolar Council President Okalik Eegeesiak at an Arctic Council-hosted side event on the global implications of a rapidly changing Arctic, held shortly after negotiators from more than 180 countries began their two-week-long meeting.

Action in dealing with climate change must include Indigenous Arctic residents, Okalik said.

While concern over the state of the Arctic’s melting ice is good, Okalik urged people around the world to pay attention to Inuit who live the Arctic region.

“We want to be included among the discussions on climate change,” which has already caused Inuit to adapt how they travel and live, Okalik said.

Her comments followed on what ICC has said previously: that Inuit need to be involved in climate change talks and receive help to adapt to a warmer Arctic.

After listening to fellow panelists talk about the melting Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic Ocean of the future, with only winter ice coverage, Okalik said that the world appears to be heading into a snowstorm and that “all hands are needed on the qamutik” because Inuit knowledge and monitoring of changes can also help find the way through this storm.

Among the most alarming information presented at the panel, live-streamed on YouTube, at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Climate Action Studio, was a comparison of the combination of warming, ice melt, increased light and freshening water now underway in the Arctic to the four riders of the Apocalypse, made by Paul Wassmann, University of Tromsø, who talked about how Arctic sea ice matters.

Panellists said that warming temperatures will bring some positive impacts in the Arctic, such as increased fisheries, more economic growth and improved transportation.

But pollution will also increase in the Arctic along with temperatures.

These, said Petteri Taalas from the World Meteorological Organization, will, under a “worst-case scenario,” rise by as much as 8.5 C in summer or as much as 20 C in winter by the end of the century, and be accompanied by “drastic changes” in the amount of precipitation and more snowfall.

Heading into 2100, the melting Greenland ice sheet will have a “strong impact on sea level rise, which is probably an underestimation,” said Jason Box from the National Geological Survey of Greenland and Denmark.

Most of that rise will affect the middle and southern parts of the planet.

But “to help buy more time,” Box said it’s essential to gather more momentum behind the Paris Agreement’s commitments to reduce climate warming and increase adaptation.

That’s the driving force behind the Bonn gathering, called COP23 because it’s the 23rd annual conference of the parties that joined the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1993 to combat climate change by limiting average global temperature increases.

The governments hope to advance the Paris Agreement of 2015, which set out goals such as keeping a global temperature rise this century to below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and aiming to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees.

The Paris Agreement also said $100 billion would be in place by 2020 from developed countries for developing ones.

But the Paris Agreement didn’t spell out exactly how its signatories, now 188, including Canada—but no longer including the United States, which has pulled out under President Donald Trump—would deal with adaptation, emission reductions, capacity-building and technology.

So the goal in Bonn is to make progress in all these areas so that these guidelines can be completed by COP24 in Poland in 2018.

The high-level segment of talks, attended by dignitaries, ministers and other senior officials, will take place Nov. 15 to Nov. 17.

Catherine McKenna, the federal minister of environment and climate change, will lead the Canadian delegation during the ministerial segment of COP23.

Canada’s delegation will include Indigenous organizations from Canada such as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Métis National Council, the Native Women’s Association and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.

In Bonn, the presidency of the COP is held by Fiji, marking the first time these negotiations are led by a small island state.

In his opening remarks to COP23, President Frank Bainimarama pleaded for the world to hold the course set in 2015 with the Paris Agreement and said “the only way for every nation to put itself first is to lock arms with all other nations and move forward together.”

Fiji’s presidency will likely mean an emphasis on adaptation to climate change and more support for holding global temperature increases to the threshold of 1.5 C.

In 2015, Inuit teamed up with the small island states, such as Fiji, on these shared points.