Arctic residents want help adapting to climate change

MONTREAL – This week, Inuit spread the word inside the United Nations Climate Change Conference about the need to focus on action to help Inuit adapt to climate change.

“Climate change is a reality in the Arctic. We are already seeing frightening impacts,” said Jose Kusugak, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

And the cost to Inuit of adapting to these impacts was high on the list of concerns ITK wanted to bring home.

Kusugak didn’t ask for anything concrete, yet – but he did say Inuit are eager to collaborate with others to seek solutions and actions that will help Inuit adapt.

To bring this message to life, Kusugak told a group of international journalists how he was born 55 years ago in a snow house near Repulse Bay on May 2, but if he returned next year on that same date, he probably wouldn’t see enough snow to build an igloo.

ITK staged two successful events at the conference, and its launching of an electronic version of Unikkaaqatigiit, a book that records Inuit perspectives on climate change across Canada, drew more than 200 delegates and media. At the book launch, Kusugak said Inuit are “global environment experts” due to their long familiarity with the land.

“If anyone knows about climate change, it’s people who live their lives outside,” Kusugak said.

Kusugak brought along four elders from the four Inuit regions to offer observations on impacts ranging from thinning ice, shriveled berries, high winds, hot weather, sick caribou, dead fish, more polynyas and shoreline erosion.

The point of their presentations was clearly to show the high human cost of adaptation in northern Canada.

John Keogak from Sachs Harbor in the Northwest Territories spoke about “devastating” changes and damage to the environment, as warmer temperatures, severe storms and higher seas are eroding coasts and causing shorelines, buildings and even graveyards to collapse into the water. In winter, thinner and later ice formation makes travel difficult and dangerous.

“We say, ‘keep your stick on the ice,'” Keogak said – to make sure the ice isn’t too thin.

Economic hardship due to changing weather was emphasized by Muctar Akomalik from Nunavut. There’s a lack of snow near his community of Arctic Bay, he said, because it’s often blown away by harsh winds. This means residents have to buy tents for hunting trips instead of building snowhouses, and they have to have all-terrain-vehicles as well as snowmobiles, so they can travel on the land.

Pauline Anderson from Northwest River in Nunatsiavut is concerned about changes in the marine environment, such as more open water and thinner ice, which are linked to climate change. And these changes, she said, have already cost lives – among those who were lost and among searchers who went out to look for them.

The many changes to the environment worry Naalak Nappaluk from Kangiqsujuaq, because of their impact on health.

“Due to climate change, due to circumstances beyond our control, there are a lot of changes in the country food we eat,” Napaaluk said.

The elders’ messages resounded with representatives of other indigenous peoples who attended the ITK event.

Aqqaluk Lynge, head of Greenland’s Inuit Circumpolar Conference, related how 20 years ago scientists could tell him about the impact of climate change on ice but not about the possible impacts on people.

“They knew what the impact would be on polar bears and marine mammals, but not on the humans,” Lynge said. “We need to put the human face on it.”

Others called for a larger debate on climate change, to show how it is affecting peoples’ livelihoods.

Another Arctic event at the UN conference, this time with Arctic Council officials, including Canada’s Arctic Ambassador Jack Anawak, showed the Arctic Council is still having trouble moving actions that could help Arctic residents adapt.

The Arctic Council has eight nation members throughout the circumpolar world as well as six indigenous permanent participants – and this body can recommend policies to its members. To date, it’s produced more studies than policy recommendations.

Vitali Churkin, the Arctic Council’s senior Arctic official in Russia, was unable to promise any immediate action on climate change, although he said another assessment of the impact on oil and gas development in the Arctic will be finished next year.

The Unikkaaqatigiit study, available online at www.itk.ca, was conducted in partnership with Université Laval, the National Aboriginal Health Organization, Inuit land-claim organizations and 17 Inuit communities.