Inuits Report Climate Change Impact

by Danielle Knight

In Sachs Harbour on Banks Island, where land has been permanently frozen for centuries, Keogak says the shoreline is disappearing and soil is eroding because the permafrost is melting, making it hard to hunt and transport caribou and polar bears.

Other residents of Sachs Harbour, where Keogak and about 120 other indigenous Canadians live, tell of how the foundations of some buildings are starting to shift as the frozen soil melts.

"It doesn't look good for the community, I think we'll have to evacuate and move somewhere else," says Keogak.

His observations and other stories by people in the small Inuit community were shown in a video in The Hague where more than 160 governments are in critical talks on a treaty to fight global warming.

The video is part of a year-long project, carried out by the Canadian-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), documenting the changes observed by the native Inuit population of Sachs Harbor. The Inuit, numbering about 125,000, have lived for centuries in the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, Russia, and the United States.

Rosemarie Kuptana, another resident of Sachs Harbour, is in The Hague for the current negotiations on the Protocol to tell government officials just what climate change means for her community.

Since the weather has become warmer, the ice commonly seen floating around the island throughout the summer is now very rare, she says. Kuptana explains that this has made hunting and fishing more dangerous since seals and polar bears, some of the main food sources of the Inuit, are carried further out to sea, making it difficult for residents to get food.

"We don't know when to travel on the ice and our food sources are getting further and further away," says Kuptana. "Our way of life is being permanently altered."

Her mother Sarah Kuptana, who is one of the older residents of Sachs Harbour who appears in the video, says the area has changed a lot since she was young.

"Now there are hardly any caribou on the island," she says. "Life has become very unpredictable for us."

Other residents tell of how polar bears leave their lairs earlier and move away from the community since the weather has become warmer. Red and black foxes, unusual to the region, are now being observed, according to the video.

Andy Carpenter, a fisherman whose relatives helped establish Sachs Harbour, says that in decades past it would get so cold that fuel oil would have the consistency of jelly.

"You don't get that anymore," he says, explaining that winters have become much more milder.

Carpenter says seldom-seen aquatic species such as salmon and herring have been found swimming in the area.

Other residents tell of how they blame the shorter winters, longer summers and increase in water for the high number of insects in the area.

"We now have sand flies here for the first time," says Kuptana. New species of birds, including robins and barn swallows, have also been spotted and bird behavior is changing, she says. Snow geese stay for a shorter time in the spring, while some small birds which traditionally migrated, now stay the entire winter.

Several residents comment in the video about the increased rain, summer hail and the strange occurrence of thunder and lightning, which usually never takes place in Arctic climates. Musk ox, a large mammal native to the region, run chaotically all over the place because they are not used to the thunder and lightening, says Kuptana.

"I worry that we are like the canaries they used in the mines, the ones that warn the miners of danger," she says. "Are we a messenger for the rest of the world?"