All things are connected...
A perspective from an indigenous world view

Patricia Cochran, Chair,
Inuit Circumpolar Council


In indigenous cultures, no one part of an ecosystem is considered more important than another part and all parts have synergistic roles to play. Indigenous communities say that “all things are connected” – the land to the air and water, the earth to the sky, the plants to the animals, the people to the spirit.

The Arctic may be seen as geographically isolated from the rest of the world, yet the Inuit hunter who falls through the thinning sea ice is connected to melting glaciers in the Andes and the Himalayas, and to the flooding of low-lying and small island states. What happens in foreign capitals and in temperate and tropical countries affects us dramatically here in the North.

Many of the economic and environmental challenges facing Inuit result from activities well to the south of our homelands, and what is happening in the far North will affect what is happening in the South. If the Greenland ice sheet melts (as it seems to be doing now), not only do world water levels rise, but scientists
speculate that dumping such massive quantities of cold water into the Atlantic may very well affect the Conveyer Belt. This circularly moving body of cold and warm waters regulates climate in much of the Northern Hemisphere. We are all connected on this planet and the Arctic plays an important role.



Living with snow and ice changes
An Indigenous Elder perspective

Caleb Pungowiyi,
Kotzebue, Alaska

“Since the late 1970s, communities along the coast of the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas have noticed substantial changes in the ocean and the animals that live there. We are seeing clear trends in many environmental factors and, we can expect major, perhaps irreversible, impacts if those trends continue.

The patterns of wind, temperature, ice and currents in the Bering and Chukchi Seas have changed. The winds are stronger and there are fewer calm days. In spring, the winds change the distribution of the sea ice and, combined with warm temperatures, speed up the melting of ice and snow and force many marine
mammals to move away, often too far to be hunted. Near some villages, the wind may force the pack ice on the shore, making it impossible for hunters to move their boats from and back to the shore. High winds also make it difficult to travel in boats, reducing the number of days that hunters can go out. These reasons have
reduced access to animals during the spring hunting period.

From mid-July to September, there is more wind from the south, making the season wetter. With less sea ice, fall storms are eroding much more of the coastline, threatening houses and even entire communities. Wave action has changed some sandy beaches into rocky ones as the sand washes away. The formation of sea ice in fall has been late in many recent years. In such years, the ice is thinner than usual, which contributes to early break-up in spring. Another aspect of late freeze-up is the way in which sea ice forms. Under normal fall conditions, the cold water and the permafrost under the water help create ice crystals on the sea floor. When large enough, these crystals float to the surface, carrying sediments. The sediments
contain nutrients that will be released in spring stimulating algae growth and the entire food chain.

Precipitation patterns have also changed, with a shift in snowfall from fall to late winter or early spring. The lack of snow makes it difficult for polar bears and ringed seals to make dens for giving birth, or in the case of male polar bears, to seek protection from the weather. The lack of ringed seal dens may affect the numbers and condition of polar bears, which prey on ringed seals and often seek out the dens. Hungry polar bears
may be more likely to approach villages and encounter people.

Other marine mammals have been affected by the changes in sea ice, wind and temperature. The physical condition of walrus was generally poor in 1996-98 due to reduced sea ice which forced the walrus to swim farther between feeding areas in relatively shallow water and resting areas on the distant ice, compounded
by a lower productivity of the sea bed. In the spring of 1999, however, the walrus recovered following a cold winter with good ice formation in the Bering Sea.

As we think about the future, we wonder what alternatives are available to Native villages in the Arctic. If marine mammal populations are no longer accessible to our communities, what can replace them? Today, there are stores with food and other resources that can be harvested. A gradual change might give us time to adjust, but a sudden shift might catch us unprepared and cause great hardship. We need to think about the overall effects on marine mammals and other resources. Some may adjust, but others will not. Our ancestors taught us that the Arctic environment is not constant, and that some years are harder than others. But they taught us that hard years are followed by times of greater abundance and celebration. As we have found with other aspects of our culture’s ancestral wisdom, modern changes, not of our doing, make us wonder when the good years will return.

Vanishing beneath the waves
A Pacific island perspective

Taito Nakalevu,
Apia, Samoa

The sea has been part of Pacific islanders’ life since the beginning of time. It has influenced the way they build, plan and carry out daily activities. It has also been an agent of chaos and change. Pacific islanders are now used to seeing islets vanish beneath the waves after cyclones or other extreme events.

The greater worry at present for most Pacific nations is whether extreme events will increase in the future. Pacific Island countries are some of the most vulnerable communities in the world and are already experiencing the effects of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which represents the consensus of 2,000 scientists, talks about a rise in sea level up to a metre or possibly higher,
depending on the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets over the next 50 to 100 years. This is worrying particularly for low-lying atoll islands like Tuvalu, Kiribati and other Pacific islands. Many of the islands are not more than a few metres above water, so a sea-level increase of as little as half a metre would completely inundate some of those island States and threaten their populations.

The problem with sea-level rise is that it would exacerbate storm surge, erosion and other coastal hazards, threatening vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that support the livelihood of island communities. Prior to 1985, the Cook Islands had been considered to be outside the main cyclone belt and could expect a major twister every 20 years or so. But all that has changed. In 2005, in one month alone, five cyclones swept the Cook Island waters, three of which were classified at Category 5 intensity. In 2004, Niue had been hit by Cyclone Heta, with the ocean rising above the 30 metre cliffs, leaving two people dead and 20 per cent of the population homeless.

Early in the morning of April 16 this year, six families from the settlements of Tekavatoetoe on Funafuti in Tuvalu were evacuated from their homes after severe flooding from unusually high swells. Radio Tuvalu says the families were moved to the Tuvalu Red Cross with the assistance of the Disaster Management, the
Police and the Red Cross. One of the woman rescued from her home told Radio Tuvalu that the first huge wave came around 4 o’clock on Monday morning. It swept most of their belongings out into the sea.

Many international environmental activists argue that Tuvaluans and others in a similar predicament should be treated like refugees and given immigration rights and other refugee benefits. This tiny nation was among the first on the globe to sound the alarm, trekking from forum to forum to try to get the world to listen. New
Zealand did agree to take 75 Tuvaluans a year as part of its Pacific Access Category, an agreement made in 2001. But Tuvalu is not alone in the.