Arctic delegates emphasize threat to polar regions

Take 10,000 people from 189 nations, add lots of security, endless meetings, opposing views and then try to have everyone strike an agreement that will save the world: this is the recipe for the United Nations climate conference which began earlier this week in Montreal and continues on until Dec. 9.

Federal environment minister Stéphane Dion, the president of the conference, charged its participants with finding a way to curb climate change, saying “climate change is the single most important environmental issue facing the world today.”

Dion said the longer the world waits to deal with the problem of climate change “the larger will be the challenge.”

“Let us set our sights on a more effective, more inclusive long-term approach to climate change,” Dion told the opening of the meeting on Monday. “Let us seek consensus for outcomes that move us all towards substantial solutions.”

But while finding politically-acceptable solutions to climate change preoccupies most of the conference, the impacts which global warming is having today in the polar regions are the focus of Arctic participants at the conference.

They handed out muktuk and other country foods in an effort to generate interest in their message that global warming is having an immediate impact on people in the Arctic.

This “human face” of climate change is what Inuit Circumpolar Conference president Sheila Watt-Cloutier is stressing through the two-week conference.

“Our needs are unlikely to get addressed unless we continue to push the issue,” Watt-Cloutier said.

In Canada’s World of Solutions display near the conference venue, the Government of Nunavut and the Kativik Regional Government are trying to push home the impact of global warming.

At its kiosk, the GN is handing out samples of country food and a variety of publications. The kiosk features flags, posters and a continuous show of the National Film Board video, Arctic Mission, on a major scientific exploration of the Arctic.

The KRG’s kiosk focuses on an ice-monitoring project, which looks at climate change in the communities of Kangiqsualujjuaq, Kangiqsujuaq, Umiujaq, and Kawawachikamach based on local fieldwork and interviews. In conjunction with this display, the KRG has launched a new web site at http://climatechange.krg.ca, which will feature weekly ice trail information in these communities as well as Akulivik and Ivujivik.