A rift is developing among the many Inuit who have travelled from Canada, Greenland and Alaska to attend meetings in Copenhagen, where world leaders have been trying to reach a new agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Inuit Circumpolar Council chairman Jimmy Stotts has said Inuit are worried about the impact greenhouse-gas emission cuts would have on their economic development. (Patricia Bell/CBC)

The debate causing the split is over the development of oil, gas and uranium mining.

All Inuit leaders agree climate change is having a big impact on their communities, with the melting of sea ice, permafrost and glaciers. They're calling on the countries at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen to take action and make serious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

But some Inuit leaders argue that if those cuts go through, their communities shouldn't have to comply.

Maliina Abelsen, the minister of social affairs for Greenland's self-government, said Greenland needs revenue to achieve full independence from Denmark and meet the needs of its people. To do that, Greenland is counting on developing its oil, gas and mineral sector.

Abelsen said the territory can't do that without an increase in its CO2 emissions.

"We have a situation that is fairly comparable to developing countries and economies in transition," she told CBC News this weekend. "Our position is also very similar to that of the developing country."

Abelsen is now the second Inuit leader to call for an emissions exemption for northern communities. A few days ago, the Alaska chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council made the same suggestion.

That worries Nobel Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuk activist who has travelled the world and won many awards for her work on climate change.

The Arctic is feeling the serious effects of a warming climate, she said, and all the world needs to make cuts, including Inuit.

"We must not [be] looking to the quick fixes and not looking at what it is we're going to lose as we move towards the quick fixes," she said.

Watt-Cloutier said there's a contradiction between what some leaders are asking for and what they're willing to do. She called for a meeting of all Inuit leaders from the Arctic, saying they need to discuss the matter in depth.