Climate Change And The Inuit
Unusual incidents are being reported across the Arctic. Inuit families going off on snowmobiles to prepare their summer hunting camps have found themselves cut off from home by a sea of mud, following early thaws. There are repots of igloos losing their insulating properties as the snow drips and freezes, of lakes draining into the sea as permafrost melts, and sea ice breaking up earlier than usual, carrying seals beyond the reach of hunters. Climate change may still be a rather abstract idea to most of us, but in the Arctic it is already having dramatic effects-if summertime ice continues to shrink at its present rate, the Arctic Ocean could soon become virtually ice-free in summer. The knock-on effects are likely to include more warming, cloudier skies, increased precipitation and higher sea levels. Scientists are increasingly keen to find out what’s going on because they consider the Arctic the ‘Canary in the Mine’ for global warming
- a warning of what’s in store for the rest of the world.
For the Inuit the problem is urgent. They live in precarious balance with one of the toughest environments on earth. Climate change, whatever it causes, is a direct threat to their way of life. Nobody knows the Arctic as well as locals, which is why they are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what is happening. In Canada, Where the Inuit people are jealously guarding their hard-won autonomy in the country’s newest territory, Nunavut, the believe their best hope of survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge with the best of modern science. This is a challenge in itself.
The Canadian Arctic is a vast, treeless polar desert that is covered with snow for most of the year. Venture into this terrain and you get some idea of the hardships facing anyone who calls this home. Farming is out of the question and nature offers meager pickings. Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4500 years ago, surviving by exploiting sea mammals and fish. The environment tested them to the limits: sometimes the colonists were successful, sometimes they failed and vanished. But around a thousand years ago, one group emerged that was uniquely well adapted to cope with the Arctic environment. These Thule people moved in from Alaska, bringing kayaks, sleds, dogs, pottery and iron tools. They are the ancestors of today’s Inuit People.
These people are unique in their thought. They can turn down applications from scientists they believe will work against their interest, or research projects that will impinge too much on their daily lives and traditional activities.Some scientists doubt the value of traditional knowledge because the occupation of the Arctic doesn’t go back far enough. Others however point out that the first weather stations in the far north date back just 50 years. There are still huge gaps in our environmental knowledge, and despite scientific onslaught, many predictions are no more than best guesses. Traditional knowledge could help to bridge the gap and resolve the tremendous uncertainty about how much of what we are seeing is natural capriciousness and how much is the consequence of human activity.
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