Warming threatens Arctic way of life
11 Jun, 2007 AFP

TROMSOE (NORWAY): Hundreds of thousands of indigenous people living in the Arctic region may have to abandon their traditional way of life if global warming is not halted, indigenous community leaders warned this week. 

"The foundation of our hunting culture is the cold. It needs it to continue and thrive," Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian Inuit activist — and a nominee for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize — told a climate change conference held this week in the Norwegian town of Tromsoe. 

Around 155,000 Inuits live in northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland. Over the past 30 years, the Arctic ice sheet has been steadily shrinking, with the snow-covered regions of the northern hemisphere also reducing. 

The Arctic is warming up twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to scientists. It is now feared global warming will jeopardise traditional activities that depend on snow and ice, such as reindeer husbandry or hunting. 

This would affect not only the Inuits, but also the Samis, who live across northern Scandinavia and Russia, and the Nenets and the Chukchees of northern Siberia, among others. 

Already Inuit hunters looking for polar bears, seals or walruses are having problems with the sea ice forming too late in the autumn and breaking up too early in the spring. 

And even when it is formed, the ice is not strong enough and is dangerous, Watt-Cloutier said. "We have had more accidents and deaths as a result of that," she said. 

Hunters have had to adapt to these new conditions, Watt-Cloutier explained. "Because they are so wise and ingenious, our hunters are already learning to read quickly which ice is safe and which is not. They reroute themselves to get to the same place they used to go to directly before," she said.