Arctic Council will emphasize the environment

IQALUIT — Erkki Tuomioja blinks the perspiration out of his eyes and chuckles when a reporter asks about his impressions of Nunavut.

“It’s an almost tropical place,” he says.

As the mid-morning sun beats down upon the dusty streets of Iqaluit and thermometers rise towards a scorching 24 C, the 55-year-old minister of foreign affairs for Finland can’t avoid talking about the circumpolar environment — especially global warming.

“The environment is the number one priority for the Arctic Council,” Tuomioja says.
For the next two years, Finland will chair the eight-nation Arctic Council, and Arctic issues will sit high up on Tuomioja’s to-do list.

To that end, Tuomioja wrapped up a three-day visit to Nunavut this Monday, his first to the Canadian Arctic.

He says that despite U.S. President George Bush’s pro-industry position on global warming, it’s unlikely that the Bush administration will make it more difficult for the Arctic Council to do its environmental work.

“So far, I am not aware that we have had, since the change in the administration, any problems as yet with the U.S., and hopefully there won’t be,” Tuomioja said.
Like other members of the European Union, Finland is displeased with the United States’ government’s unwillingness to accept the Kyoto Protocol.

Last week in Bonn, Germany, the U.S. sat on the sidelines as 178 countries agreed on rules for implementing the Kyoto agreement, which sets a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by an average of 5.2 per cent by 2012.
U.S. President George Bush said the U.S. economy would suffer if his country — the world’s largest single emitter of greenhouse gases — were to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide to the levels required by the treaty.

Officials in the Bush administration are now saying that the the U.S. will go it alone and develop its own global warming policy.

In a speech in Philadelphia last week, Tuomioja said this kind of isolationism is “neither justified nor sustainable,” and that the U.S. should work with Europe to “build a genuine global partnership.”

But this week he said that Bush’s position on the Kyoto treaty doesn’t necessarily mean that the Bush administration will use its clout to hamper the environmental work of the Arctic Council.

“The problems are on the global issues, but when we come to more local and regional issues, hopefully the Americans have the same interests. That is what unites us in the Arctic Council,” Tuomioja said.

Along with Canada, Finland has always been an enthusiastic backer of the Arctic Council.

In 1989, Finland hosted a historic meeting of the world’s eight circumpolar nations in the Arctic town of Rovaniemi to talk about Arctic environmental issues — especially transboundary pollution.

That led directly to the creation of the international Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy in 1991, after another circumpolar gathering in Rovaniemi.

The AEPS led to a mini-explosion of research into environmental contaminants in the Arctic that confirmed the existence of POPs chemicals in wildilife and humans. After a proposal made by Canada, the eight circumpolar nations created the Arctic Council in 1996, and the environmental work started under the AEPS was folded into the council.

Besides its environmental work, Tuomioja says the Arctic Council is also invaluable because of the extent to which aboriginal peoples participate in its proceedings.

Although Inuit, Sami, and Russian indigenous representatives can’t vote, they sit side-by-side with government officials and participate within Arctic Council working groups.

“I think it’s most important for the regional authorities and representatives of the aboriginal peoples that they are being listened to, and this I think is the most important aspect of the Arctic Council and the other councils that we belong to.”

As for the creation of Nunavut, Tuomioja had no concrete opinion to offer.

“It seems to have changed perceptions here, quite considerably. It’s the first time the Inuit have had their own responsible government.”

But perhaps that’s because a Nunavut-style political entity wouldn’t work in Finland. Of Finland’s 5.5 million people, only about 4,000 are Sami.

“The Sami people are a special case. They are a small minority. There are no places [in Finland] where the Sami are actually the majority population.”

Although Finnish Sami enjoy “cultural autonomy,” which means government support for Sami language education and Sami language broadcasting, the Sami parliament in Finland has no legislative powers.

Even their land claims have yet to be acknowledged by the Finnish government.

“The very difficult issue of land rights has been on the agenda for some 20 years,” Tuomioja said.