Climate change affects remote Aboriginal communities first, creating major challenges
Aboriginals to be hit hard by climate change: UN report
By Canadian Press - April 3, 2008
TORONTO -- Aboriginal communities in Canada and around the world will be among the most gravely affected by the effects of climate change, and more attention should be paid to changes in their traditional ways of life to help gauge the onset of global warming, United Nations researchers said yesterday.
The Arctic is the world's climate-change barometer, and the experiences of the aboriginals who live there should be closely scrutinized by researchers and politicians around the world, says the report for the UN's economic and social council, which was discussed at a meeting of experts in Australia.
"Because (the Arctic) is an early indicator of climate change for the rest of the world and because its coastal indigenous peoples are at this time particularly vulnerable, UN member states and agencies should designate the Arctic region as a special climate change focal point," the report recommends.
"It is distressing to note that indigenous issues are virtually never mentioned (in climate change talks) even though countries like Russia, Canada and the United States are home to substantial indigenous populations."
Researchers highlighted experiences in Nunavut and the boreal forest as harbingers of trouble for the rest of the world and evidence that the effects of climate change will be obviously apparent.
Longer-living insects are destroying trees and other vegetation in the boreal forest and threatening the natural ecosystem.
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From "The Arctic: Indicator of Global Change" report - A Presentation for the International Expert Group Meeting on Indigenous Peoples & Climate Change, April 2-4, 2008 in Darwin, Australia (Click here to see all the papers presented at this gathering)
Several Inuit villages have already been so damaged by global warming that relocation, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, is now their only option. Melting sea ice and thawing permafrost have caused:
- damage to houses, roads, airports and pipelines;
- eroded landscape, slope instability, and landslides;
- contaminated drinking water;
- coastal losses to erosion of up to 100 feet per year;
- melting of natural ice cellars for food storage.
CLIMATE CHANGE - AN OVERVIEW, Paper prepared by the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues