Nunavut a no-show at climate change gathering

REYKJAVIK — John Keogak, an Inuvialuit man from Sachs Harbour, travelled for days to be in Iceland this week to hear the findings of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report on climate change in the circumpolar world.
Keogak, who represents the Inuvialuit Game Council, doesn’t need any convincing that global warming is already damaging the Western Arctic: the shores of Banks Island are melting into the ocean, fish catches are uneven and last year, after unseasonal rain hardened the snow into ice, thousands of muskox either died from hunger or drowned when they tried to cross thinning sea ice to another island for food.

The ACIA’s report, Impacts of a Warming Arctic, pulls no punches in describing the far-reaching physical, ecological, social and economic changes the Arctic will face over the next 100 years as annual temperatures rise by three to seven degrees Celsius.

But no one from the Government of Nunavut, Nunavik or Labrador came to hear what lies ahead for them and the entire circumpolar world.

Impacts of a Warming Arctic is a summary of a much longer, more detailed report to be published early in 2005. Commissioned by the International Arctic Science Committee and the Arctic Council, this four-year project involved more than 250 scientists and draws on Western science and traditional aboriginal knowledge.

Several Inuvialuit from western Arctic regional organizations, observers from Greenland’s government and natural resources institute, researchers and leaders from the Saami Council, and the vice-president of Russia’s Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North attended the four-day ACIA symposium.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference flew overnight across the Atlantic to address the opening of the symposium on Tuesday morning.

In her speech she noted the conspicuous absence of Inuit and northern Canadian politicians and civil servants.

As she spoke a few words in Inuktitut to begin her address, she said she didn’t see many Inuit in the gathering capable of understanding her.

The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the National Aboriginal Health Organization and the Nasivvik Centre for Inuit Health and Changing Environments did send staff — all non-Inuit — to Iceland.

“How do we get our message across?” she said later.

While Watt-Cloutier doesn’t want to alarm people, she wants to make sure climate change in the Arctic isn’t ignored until the worst effects hit home by 2100.

“There’s a sense of urgency because of the future generations,” Watt-Cloutier said.

That’s because Inuit will suffer when warming accelerates and traditional knowledge is unable to keep up with with the rate of change.

“Warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct,” warns the report.

Sea ice cover has decreased by eight per cent over the past 30 years. By 2100, summer sea ice may nearly disappear.

As warming progresses, the treeline is expected to move hundreds of kilometres northwards, and the extent of tundra will shrink to its lowest level in 21,000 years.

This, in turn, will increase warming in the Arctic because forested areas absorb more heat than tundra. At the same time, the larger area of ice-free ocean will absorb more sun rather than deflect it.

“These changes will create a feedback loop whereby more warming will lead to tree establishment and forest cover, which will cause more warming and so on.”

If these projections for warming hold true, polar bears are “unlikely to survive,” ice-dependent seals are “vulnerable,” muskox and caribou will have trouble foraging for food while seabirds will lose 50 per cent of their breeding areas. Fish species will change, be vulnerable to more mercury pollution or even die off.

“Not only are some threatened species very likely to become extinct, some currently widespread species are projected to decline sharply,” says the report.

Change could get even more chaotic and extreme if run-off from glaciers and increased rain and snow alter the ocean’s salinity and temperature and slow down ocean conveyor belt that carries warmth from tropics north and back, disrupting the Gulf Stream and weather in North America and Europe.

But getting people and governments to seriously care about what lies ahead until they see it is a tough task because acting on climate change involves changing the way people live and the way they think: a huge challenge, admit Watt-Cloutier and Bob Corell, chairman of the ACIA working group that produced the report.

“We have a long job ahead of us,” Corell said.

Negotiations are still underway to convince the Arctic Council to take strong stand on climate change when the eight circumpolar nations’ foreign ministers meet in Reykjavik Nov. 24.

To see the ACIA report, go to: amap.no/acia.