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Presentation Given By Sheila Watt-Cloutier
The Harvard Club, Ottawa,
February 4, 2002
Good evening. My name is Sheila Watt- Cloutier. I am Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Inuit organization that represents internationally Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukotka, Russia. I am very pleased to be here, among friends, to talk to you about climate change. But before I do so I want to introduce to you some colleagues from Russia, and to outline growing connections between Inuit and Harvard University. Sergei Kharuchi, President of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON). Pavel Sulyandziga, Vice-President RAIPON. Anatoly Raishev, Deputy Governor, Khanty- Mansijsk Region. Oleg Voitenko, Executive Assistant, Regional Programmes Dept. (Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation).
As I mentioned, ICC addresses international issues, some of global importance. When representing the interests and defending the rights of Inuit, we try to help national and international bodies make good decisionsto promote environmental, economic and cultural sustainability.
Inuit are few in numberabout 155,000 in the whole worldso we must be strategic in thinking and search for friends and allies. This is why we work closely with RAIPON and other northern Indigenous peoples, and why I am excited about our growing links with Harvard University.
ICC is noted for its environmental work. For example, over the last five years I have been immersed in global negotiations to reduce emissions of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), such as PCBs and DDT, that end-up in the Arctic contaminating the food web and poisoning our traditional country food. A global convention to do this was signed in Stockholm in 2001. As a result of good Canadian science the Northern Contaminants Programme in which Inuit participatedand our political work and advocacy, the convention singles out the Arctic and Indigenous peoples. There are lessons here that can be transferred to climate change.
Climate change in the Arctic is a fact not a theory. Inuit have for some years been reporting ecological and environmental changes in the Arctic that result from climate change. We are already adjusting and adapting to climate change impacts.
David Anderson, Minister of the Environment, is Canadas lead minister on this file. David is very attuned to the Arctic and I think he is doing a good job. But climate change is not to Inuit solely an environmental or even and economic issue, it is a matter of cultural health and survival. The media use images of disappearing ice and thinner and fewer polar bears to characterize climate change in the North. We need to give climate change a human facean Inuit face.
What does climate science tell us? In the past 40 years annual temperatures in the Canadian western Arctic have climbed by 1.5 degrees C while those over the central Arctic have warmed by over 0.5 degrees C. According to the federal Department of the Environment, a global doubling of carbon dioxide emissions could cause temperature increases of nearly 5 degrees C in Summer and 5-7 degrees C in Winter over the Canadian Arctic mainland.
These figures are stark and very worrying. Global models predict rapid and significant temperature and precipitation changes in high latitudesthe Arcticmy homeland. Worst case scenarios project massive depletion of ice cover by the middle of the century. Obviously this will cause severe difficulties for Inuita hunting based culture. Will we still define ourselves as Inuit if and when seals, walrus, whalesupon which we dependare rare or no longer to be found? What then will be the value of our constitutionally protected hunting, fishing and trapping rights defined in land claims agreements?
Inuit from across northern Canada are recording significant changes to the environment. In 1999 Inuvialuit from Sachs Harbour and the International Institute for Sustainable Development started a project to record and illustrate community observations of climate change. The resulting video, in which Inuvialuit quietly but with firm authority point out what is happening to their immediate environment, was shown with telling effect to delegates at the 2000 climate change negotiations in The Hague.
Inuvialuit reported commonplace changes: melting permafrost resulting in beach slumping; increased snowfalls; longer sec-ice free seasons; new species of birds and fishbarn owls, mallard and pin-tailed ducks, and salmonnear their community; a decline in the lemming population, the basic food for Arctic fox; and generally a warming trend. That the consistency of kerosene and fuel oil no longer resemble milk and jelly is the compelling indicator of climate change offered by Andy Carpenter, a long-time resident of Sachs Harbour. With weather patterns, temperature, and precipitation increasingly unpredictable and the shape of the land becoming unfamiliar, it is increasingly difficult for Inuvialuit to read the land, to follow the seasons, and to travel safely.
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the national Inuit organization, has been holding climate change workshops in various northern communities. Inuit from communities in Nunavut, Nunavik (northern Quebec) and Labrador observe changes similar to those reported by Inuvialuit in Sachs Harbour. Inuit in Alaska and Greenland report similar changes.
Until recently the Arctic was caught in the political straightjacket of the cold war. Our region did not receive much attention from the United Nations. But this is changing. While we are sitting here, the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is meeting in Nairobi. David Anderson has been the chair of the governing council for some years. For the first time a general resolution is to be adopted by UNEP on the Arctic acknowledging that our region is a barometer or indicator of global environmental health in relation to climate change.
As the UK environment minister said last year; What happens globally, happens first in the Arctic. Klaus Topfer, UNEPs executive director and formerly minister of the environment for Germany has caught the Arctic bug. I have spoken with him often and he now realizes the global importance of the Arctic.
UNEPs resolution is important. We can expect more research and monitoring in the Arctic as a result, and greater attention on the peoples of our region. I am very pleased with this development for international recognition of the global importance of the Arctic will help us domestically.
Canada agreed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change over ten years ago. After considerable debate, Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol late last year. But remarkably, Canada does not have an assessment of what climate change means for its North. But a formal and very important assessment is being prepared of the impacts and effects of climate change in the circumpolar world. By default, this assessment is likely to guide Canadian policy.
This circumpolar assessment is taking place under the direction of the eight-nation Arctic Council and the International Arctic Science Committee. Begun in 2000 and to be presented to ministers in Autumn 2004, the assessment is chaired by Bob Correl of Harvard University. Bob is doing a good job. He is very sensitive to the concerns of Indigenous peoples. Over 200 authors from 12 countries are participating in the assessment. Gordon McBean of the University of Western Ontario and the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences chairs the group of Canadian authors who are contributing to the assessment. Gordon is also very sensitive to our concerns. ICC sits on the assessment steering committee as do other Indigenous peoples organizations, including RAIPON.
We have offered our traditional knowledge to the assessment. The final document will speak about the impacts of climate change on our harvesting economy, on the implementation of northern land claims agreements, and on our environmentally based human rights, and on the very future of my people.
We are not prepared to play the role of helpless victims in the ongoing international debate. We can exert influence out of all proportion to our limited numbers, and we intend to do so using the circumpolar assessment. It will be our job to promote firm and ongoing global commitments to address climate change, and to help people in the North adapt to its impacts.
I want to close with some words on developing partnerships between Inuit and the Government of Canada. To be effective we need to work with friendly governments, particularly the Government of Canada.
In 1998 the Government of Canada established 18 round tables bringing together industry, provincial governments, environmental organizations, educational institutes and many others to advise on implementation of climate change policies and programmes. Indigenous peoples were ignored, and the North received very limited attention. Ottawa has looked at this issue through the prism of federal provincial relations.
We have argued in speeches, presentations, conferences, and in meetings with ministers and civil servants for a wide ranging partnership with the Government of Canada to address climate change, both domestically and internationally. We had such a relationship on the POPs file, with real success. Now that Canada has ratified Kyoto, we can repeat this partnership on climate change.
The first sign we were having an impact was last September at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in South Africa. The Prime Minister delivered in Johannesburg a long-awaited speech in which he announced Canadas intent to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He spoke about two groups most at risk from climate changefarmers on the prairies and Inuit in the North.
Late last year the Government of Canada released its Climate Change Plan for Canada what we need to do to live up to the Kyoto Protocol. Severely criticized by some provincial governments, the plan includes Aboriginal and Northern Communities. For the first time the Government of Canada acknowledges the need for our perspectives to be incorporated in the national climate change strategy. The plan recognizes the need to build our capacity to respond to climate change, and to seek opportunities for us to participate in international initiatives.
The circumpolar assessment and Canadas climate change plan set the scene for the enduring partnership that we seeka partnership that will encompass research, domestic policy, and international action. Thank you for your attention. I will try to answer questions that you may have. | 
