INDEPTH: CLIMATE CHANGE
Human face of climate change: Weather out of its mind
CBC News Online | March 24, 2005
"We have to give climate change a human face – it is not all about 'sinks,' 'emission trading schemes' and technology. Climate change is about people, children, families and of our relationship with the world around us. To Inuit it is a question of our very survival as a hunting people and a hunting culture. Our human rights – to live our traditional way – are being violated by human-induced climate change."
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference, November 2004
When Mark Nuttall lived in fishing villages and remote communities in Greenland, he learned first-hand how northern peoples see their relationship with the land.
The anthropologist visited the communities to study kinship, rural development, and social change among local Inuit. Their language reflected the close connection they had with the land.
The key concept was the Inuit word sila. In one context, it means weather. In another, the same word is used to express mind, intellect or consciousness.
Indigenous peoples of the North
(Courtesy: ACIA)
"If a child might do something it shouldn't do, and should know better, the mother might reprimand the child with silaqaraluarnpit 'Are you out of your mind?,'" he recalls.
At the same time, "people looking at weather, trying to understand bizarre weather events, say silaqaraluarnaq 'The weather is out of its mind.'"
For Greenland's Inuit, then, the person and the environment are the same, consciousness and the reality of the world around them, inextricably intermixed. When people talk about climate change, they talk about ways the weather is changing in terms of themselves, their own identity, their relation to the environment.
Nuttall was studying this impact, trying to assess what climate change will mean to people.
"This shifts the focus of climate change away from one of impacts on terrestrial ecosystems to an issue that is deeply a personal issue, one that is felt very personally."
Elder Steve Alahak shows teachers from the South how to build an igloo. (CBC Photo)
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Nuttall, now an anthropology professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, had the daunting task of being lead author of Chapter 12 of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report. The chapter documents the impact of climate change on human culture, economies and people.
Climate change is often expressed in terms of temperature gradients, or salinity of the oceans, or precipitation levels. Nuttall's job was to give the problem a human face.
In the hard-science world of temperature probes, tree-ring analysis, and ice-cover observations, getting the concept of silaqaraluarnaq into the document wasn't easy.
His peer reviewers, knowing such fuzzy concepts might complicate an already complex document, urged him to cut it out of the final draft. But he insisted it be kept in.
Nuttall says it was crucial for the environmental scientists he worked for to warm to the fact they were doing this research, ultimately, for people. And anthropology was the tool to make the link.
"In a sense, anthropologists who had been working in the North [with] … archeologists and historical ecologists," Nuttall says. They "have actually been writing a lot about climate and weather and the importance of that. It might not necessarily be a huge focus but it's been very much a part of their work."
Lessons from the past
Indeed, anthropological and historical studies already give some indication of how humans adapt to climate change in the Arctic. The hallmark of the successful indigenous society, says Nuttall, was its ability to adapt, and be flexible in face of environmental change.
Inuit elders in Nunavut are reviving the ancient art of carving a shelter from nothing but snow. They are building igloos. Now teachers from all over Nunavut, as part of professional development, also learn traditional skills like igloo building. (CBC Photo/Alison Gee)
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During the medieval warming period, which lasted from the 10th to the 14th centuries, Europe and North America saw significantly warmer temperatures than in the periods before or after. Temperatures rose several degrees – even higher than today. England competed with France for wine production, and the Vikings sailed west to begin farming as far north as southern Greenland.
The Thule people, ancestors of today's Inuit, also responded to the change.
Following the bowhead whale's migration to now-open waters off the western coast of Greenland, the Thule people began populating the island as well.
"Climate has always changed, and the environment has always changed, and indigenous people in the North have always responded and seen opportunities and have had to adapt to severe changes," he says.
"I'm not saying change is negative, but it has profound implications for the development of society, for the changes of a society, so these issues are very significant in terms of people feeling these changes very intensively."
Today's indigenous peoples
Unlike the Thule people who lived before the encroachment of civilization, modern life presents its own challenges for Inuit in Greenland. For the Thule, life was flexible, mobile and low-tech 1,000 year ago, Nuttall notes.
Today, it's not so easy to just pack your things and move. "When you have fixed settlements, they represent millions of dollars of infrastructure development," says Nuttall.
Total and indigenous populations of the Arctic
The proportion of indigenous people (orange) within the Arctic portions of the countries in the early 1990s.(Courtesy: ACIA)
The situation is the same across the North for indigenous peoples from Canada's Arctic to Siberia. On the positive side, modern civilization brings medicine, communication and social supports. But it also brings new pressures from development and population, and rules and regulations that can inhibit a people's flexibility.
"With the constraints created by greater society, and the limitations on mobility, and the impacts of pollution, overfishing, poaching and wildlife changes, indigenous people's abilities to adapt to climate change in the North are limited to a greater extent," he says.
Modern economies are far more unwieldy than their pre-industrial counterparts. With investment and infrastructure comes a need to plan. With climate change, plans can be thrown out the window.
"In Greenland already, the infrastructure in towns is now based on cod fishing," Nuttall says. "Because of the early-1990s collapse of cod fishing, because of overfishing, there was a transition to deep-water shrimp fishing. Now there's signs the cod is coming back, and they may have to shift again from shrimp to cod."
Not first on agenda
Despite the huge impact climate change will ultimately have on the environment, it is almost too big for the human mind to grasp. Change occurs over decades, ecosystems shift over generations.
When Nuttall speaks to northern peoples, he finds climate change isn't a top of mind concern when they talk about what affects their ability to make a living.
Climate change is just one stressor. Others include contaminants, industrial expansion into traditional areas, increased pollution, and rapid and relentless social changes. Reindeer herders find pipelines cutting off their migration routes, while government-imposed quotas limit the rights of Inuit hunter-gatherers.
"We understand, of course, climate change is an issue, a problem, but for many people it may not be the most immediate, pressing problem they have to face in their daily lives," he says.
"So we have to try to disentangle these different issues that stress them and worry them, and figure out where climate change fits in the mix."
Nuttall's already seen changes in the human landscape of the north as a result of climate change. Like the concept of silaqaraluarnaq, it's not easy to tease apart the human from the environment, or one fact from a chain of influences, to find direct cause-and-effect relationships between the climate and survival of a people and culture.
The concept of sharing is one example. Central to many hunting cultures, sharing can be deeply affected by climate change. If the waters warm, and the seals move, it can force changes in hunting quotas that limit who can hunt, where, and how much. Quotas in turn affect how meat is distributed in a community, striking at the core of a culture based on sharing the gifts of the land and supporting one another.
Civilization a limiting force
Greater society, while it may weather the coming storm of climate change, may actually negatively impact the people most vulnerable to climate change, those living close to the land – hunters, fisherman and farmers.
"The changes anticipated in species availability and diversity will likely affect the small-scale indigenous societies that depend first and foremost on subsistence hunting or fishing," says Nuttall.
"So when seals are a cornerstone of local society ... when there is an anticipated shift of these species, and elevated UV levels having huge impact on local ecologies, and you see these resources no longer become available, the issue is one much more of food security, it's being able to access valuable food, not only for nutritional sense, but they underpin the culture."
People haven't changed. Indigenous northerners are still tied closely to the land, but whether it's from living in modern homes, or regulations governing resource management, the trappings of modern civilization impair their ability to respond to climate change.
"I think we can see these marked contrasts … the change in weather necessitates different shifts in economic practice which might be rather difficult."
Greater opportunity
Nuttall points out the ACIA report isn't all bad news. The warming environment could enhance industry's ability to tap oil and mineral reserves in the North; shipping routes could open up and agricultural opportunities may expand. As aboriginal peoples face increasing pressures on their traditional lifestyles, gaining access to a share of the new opportunities could be key to their survival.
The report provides a scientific base for decision makers to make policy decisions that may mitigate the positive and negative effects of climate change, Nuttall says.
"I think the indigenous people of the Arctic have to be involved in this dialogue," he adds.
Flexibility is key, as is giving the power to decide to those most affected. While Canadian aboriginal people have leveraged a fair amount of self-government and recognition of their rights to the land from larger society, other groups, particularly in Russia, haven't gained the same rights.
Clearing barriers to adaptation, creating flexibility in management structures, and shifting power to the people who live in the North to decide for themselves are all crucial to people's survival in the North.
Snow geese at the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area are on their spring migration north to their nesting habitats in Arctic tundra.(AP Photos/Carolyn Kaster)
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If climate change means geese arrive two weeks earlier in the Arctic then wildlife management plans need to be flexible to allow hunters to take advantage of the change, rather than being overly restrictive, Nuttall says.
With the scientific work completed on the assessment, Nuttall says he's looking forward to the next phase of work: filling in gaps in the assessment's knowledge base, educating northern residents about the dangers of increased UV radiation and pollutants, and developing strategies to deal with climate change in a forward-thinking, flexible, empowering way.
"The main message that has to get out to politicians … is that climate change has a human face," Nuttall says. "It is not simply an environmental issue. The real issue [of] climate change is one that affects us as people, affects survival of culture. I think the hope is to try to get that human aspect highlighted."
Despite the challenges facing northern peoples, Nuttall remains confident about their ability to adapt and survive changing conditions. How the larger world helps them do that may determine its future as well.
"The Arctic is a bellwether," Nuttall says. "What indigenous people are seeing and recognizing are things people in far more southerly [areas] don't recognize, especially people who don't live on the land."
"I think we have to look to the Arctic to help us think about answers to questions."
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