Profits vs. Disaster In Arctic Meltdown
By Stephen Leahy
19 May 2013
Inter Press Service
Inter Press Service
Hubbard glacier in Seward , Alaska . Credit:
Bigstock
Uxbridge , Canada – M any eyes are turning
north to the Arctic , some in horror at the rapid decline of a key component of
our life support system, others in eager anticipation at the untapped resources
beneath the vanishing snow and ice.
“I've worked in the north for 21 years and the scale and speed
of change up there is astonishing,” said Douglas Clark of the University of
Saskatchewan .
“These changes, taken as whole, and reflected in our report,
keep me awake at night,” Clark told IPS.
Rapid and even abrupt changes are occurring on multiple fronts
across the Arctic , according to the Arctic Resilience Report (ARR).
And what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic .
“It's the first international report to tell the world to buckle
up, we're on a wild roller coaster ride and we don't know what's coming,” he
said.
The ARR report is a two-year collaboration between experts in
the Nordic countries, Russia , Canada and the United States , and includes
indigenous perspectives. It is a cutting edge assessment of how changes in
climate, ecosystems, economics, and society interact.
The report was prepared for and released at the Arctic Council
Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna , Sweden on last Wednesday.
“What is happening in the Arctic has profound implications for
every part of the world,” said Sarah Cornell, lead author of the study.
Global warming is not only melting snow and ice; it is warming
the Arctic Ocean and the surrounding lands. Seasons are changing, permafrost is
thawing, new species are invading, Arctic species are struggling, lakes are
vanishing, and rivers are being redirected by the melting landscape, the report
documents.
Some Arctic ecosystems are undergoing catastrophic changes, and
some of these are large-scale and irreversible, Cornell, a scientist at the
Stockholm Resilience Centre, told IPS.
While the Arctic is as remote as the moon for many people, it is
intimately interconnected with the rest of the world. Weather is driven largely
by the cold Arctic and Antarctic regions balanced by the hot tropics. But the
Arctic is rapidly defrosting – last summer the sea ice shrunk to half of what it
was less than 30 years ago. The ice decline and the heating up of the Arctic
have been accelerating in recent years.
“This has and will have spectacular consequences for the rest of
the world. We don't know what they'll all be,” Cornell said.
The Arctic is home to cultures and species found nowhere else
and they can't go any further north to escape the rising temperatures. It is a
real struggle to survive, said Tero Mustonen, president of Snowchange
Cooperative, a network of local and indigenous cultures around the world.
“The Arctic is undergoing fundamental changes. Moose are showing
up in the tundra for the first time along with new insects, plants and even
trees,” Mustonen told IPS from his home in eastern Finland .
Mustonen, a co-author of the ARR, works with Chukchi reindeer
herding communities from northeastern Siberia who have roamed those remote lands
for hundreds of the years. Like many indigenous communities living on the land,
they have a deep ecological, cultural and spiritual connection to their
landscape. And that landscape is changing so much they sometimes don't recognize
their own home, he said.
“The Chukchi don't easily share their thoughts. But the elders
have a clear and powerful message to convey to the world: ‘Nature doesn't trust
humans any more'.”
However, the focus of the eight-nation Arctic Council was
primarily on future shipping opportunities, access to oil, gas and mineral
resources, and geopolitics, with China, Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore and
Italy granted observer status on the Council while Canada blocked the European
Union's application.
The Council is the world's main international forum on northern
issues and will be led by Canada for the next two years. Canada said it will
focus on economic development. Estimates show that the region may have 13
percent of the world's undiscovered oil, 30 percent of undiscovered gas
deposits, and vast quantities of mineral resources.
The Council's much-lauded scientific research will now be
focused on how to develop northern resources for the benefit of northerners.
Canada recently drew criticism for re-directing its own scientific research to
supporting business and industry.
Secretary of State John Kerry represented the U.S. at the Arctic
Council, demonstrating Washington 's renewed interest in the Arctic . The White
House also released its new National Strategy for the Arctic Region. While
acknowledging the profound impacts of global warming on the region and
indigenous people, the U.S. strategy says the region will help to supply U.S.
energy needs well into the future.
At the meeting, members adopted an agreement on marine oil
pollution preparedness. Some indigenous and environmental groups urged the
Council to place a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Arctic given the
dangerous conditions and difficulties of clean up.
Greenpeace International said the oil pollution agreement
offered no specific practical minimum standards and had no provisions to hold
companies liable for the full costs and damages.
“There were two conferences going on here — one that warned of
the dangers of climate change and rapid industrialization in this fragile
region, and another, attended by foreign ministers, that took almost no concrete
steps to address them,” said Ruth Davis, Greenpeace International senior policy
advisor.
Arctic peoples aren't necessarily opposed to economic
development but they do want to be in control of what happens. However, Arctic
nations and local communities are at very different stages. In Finland and
Russia , indigenous people have no official land or water rights, unlike Canada
or Alaska , said Mustonen.
“The rights and cultures of indigenous peoples in these regions
have to be taken seriously in order to integrate their needs into any form of
development,” he said.
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