By Andrew Duffy
April 18, 2000
Ottawa - The Arctic town of Sachs Harbour is sinking because global warming is softening the permafrost that supports it. Rosemarie Kuptana, an Inuit leader, says the town, on the west coast of Banks Island, is slowly pushing into the ground, a situation that has made it difficult for hunters to travel over an increasingly muddy landscape. "If this rate of change continues, our lifestyle may forever change," Ms. Kuptana told reporters, "because our communities are sinking with melting permafrost and our food sources are ... more difficult to hunt."
At a news conference yesterday to mark the start of Earth Week, Ms. Kuptana warned that the troubling experience of Canada's Inuit bodes ill for all Canadians. In the northwest reaches of the Arctic, she said, experienced hunters have fallen through unusually thin ice; never before seen species such as robins, barn swallows, beetles and sandflies have appeared; and Inuit are suffering allergies from white pine pollen that never before reached Banks Island. "What happens in the Arctic environment is what is in store for other regions of the world," said Ms. Kuptana, 46, an Order of Canada winner and longtime Inuit leader. "This, ladies and gentleman, is a warning signal."
In her home of Sachs Harbour, where Ms. Kuptana leads an international project to collect Inuit observations about climate change, the past decade has brought milder winters, warmer summers, a shorter fall and a later freeze-up. It's predicted that the effects will be particularly acute in northern countries such as Canada, which are expected to warm at twice the rate of southern areas. Within Canada, computer models suggest the western Arctic will warm more than any other region, between 5 and 10C this century. By comparison, the Earth has warmed between 2.7 and 5C since the depths of the last ice age 20,000 years ago.
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