Arctic Peoples

The IPY Oslo Science Conference will be the largest polar science event to date! It will demonstrate, strengthen, and extend the International Polar Year’s accomplishments in science and outreach. The conference is an essential opportunity to display and explore the full breadth and implications of IPY activities. The international and interdisciplinary science conference will in particular highlight the global impact of the changes that have been observed in the Polar Regions.

The IPY-OSC steering committee received more than 2200 abstracts from 58 countries on deadline, however, as a courtesy to some partners, in particular Antarctic scientists returning from the field, the committee has decided to slightly extend the deadline until January 25, 2010.

Submit your abstract now!

PLEASE NOTE: PolarTEACHERS can still apply, and PolarCINEMA receives entries until 15th of February.

Read the rest of this entry »

Discovering the Arctic is the name of a web learning facility developed and recently launched by the Royal Geographical Society. It is aimed at the secondary school level (14-16 year olds) in the United Kingdom. According to the Royal Geographical Society, it is intended to be a resource to be dipped into depending on specific curriculum needs and priorities.

The Discovering the Arctic website seems biased toward what, according to a widespread view, constitutes the quintessential Arctic, viz. the high North of Greenland and Canada, and thus gives preference to the Inuit whereas peoples and places of Arctic Russian Federation get comparatively less coverage.

While tending to over-expose the Inuit, at the same time the information rendered about Inuit is rather superficial and sometimes incorrect. For instance, the website makes no attempt to correct the common misunderstanding that Inuit is a noun in the singular that becomes Inuits in the plural, whereas Inuit is in fact plural of the singular Inuk. Read the rest of this entry »

The Riddu Riddu Festival presents an Indigenous performance in the lavvu (traditional Saami tent) that has been set up on the North Atlantic Quay starring Inger Biret Gaup and Kristian Mølgaard.

Experience a magnificent performance combining Joik, the traditional chanting song of the Sami people, and mask dancing from Greenland. The performance exposes two genuine indigenous expressions and is a unique meeting between two indigenous people of the North.

Inger Biret Gaup and Kristian Mølgaard will perform on:

MONDAY 14th of december at 4 pm
TUESDAY 15th of december at 4 pm
WEDNESDAY 16th of december at 12:15 pm

IPS’ list of COP15 side events and parallel events organised by, involving or of relevance to Arctic and Indigenous Peoples:

5-6 December, IIPFCC (Indigenous Caucus) preparatory meeting; EEA, Kongens Nytorv 6.

7 December, 16:00, WWF Arctic Tent, Youth Day, Presentation by Arctic members of Canadian Youth Delegation, Nytorv.

8 December, 16:30, WWF Arctic Tent, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Nytorv.

10 December, 10:00 - 12:00, Foreningen NORDENs Ungdom, Arktiske folk om klimaet (The climate according to Arctic Peoples), People’s Climate Forum, DGI-byen (by the Main Central Station), Venue 3.

10 December, 18:00: “Making the Declaration Work”, IWGIA book launch, Danish Polar Centre, Strandgade 102.

12 December,12:00 – 13:00, Opening of the Riddu Riddu Lavvu, Presentation of the Ealát project featuring Dr. Robert Corell and Saami youth, the World Reindeer Herders Association and International Center for Reindeer Husbandry, North Atlantic Qua

12 December, 12:00, Opening of the Greenland Representation In the Eye of Climate Change exhibition, North Atlantic House, Strandgade 91. Read the rest of this entry »

The 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change opened on Monday, 7 December 2009. Concurrently with COP15, the 5th session of the Kyoto Protocol parties (CMP5) as well as sessions of Subsidiary Bodies and Ad Hoc Working Groups also take place in the Bella Centre.

With the announcement of U.S. President Obama that he will attend toward the end of the conference, the whole discourse on the climate negotiations and the possibility of reaching a renewed international agreement shifted from a pessimistic to an optimistic note. Suddenly, the prospect of merely reaching a political declaration instead of sealing a binding deal was described by commentators as not such a bad result after all.

A few days later, the leaking of the so-called Danish Text made the new-found spirit of optimism evaporate and brought the climate summit into disarray. The leaked text, to paraphrase outraged developing countries, is a blatant expression of rich countries covert machinations – within the so-called ”circle of commitment” - to shift the balance of obligations in their own favour and abandon the Kyoto Protocol’s principle of historical debt. Perhaps these lightning fast developments testify to the catastrophic nature, not so much of climate change itself, but rather of the ways in which it is being dealt with. Read the rest of this entry »

Warming up to the Copenhagen COP15 in December, the North Atlantic House has shrouded itself in an icy garment. A translucent screen imprinted with photographic reproductions of ice covers the waterfront end of the building, giving the appearance from a distance that it has rammed into and is being engulfed by a towering iceberg.

The 21 meters high and approximately 4000 square meter installation entitled ”The Tip of the Iceberg” is the work of artist Inuk Silis Høegh. It was inaugurated on Friday 20 November in an event that took place outside the North Atlantic House and included speeches by the Icelandic ambassador to Denmark Svavar Gestsson and head of the Faroese Representation Herálvur Joensen, followed by handing of flowers to the artist and serving of hot drinks steaming between hands in the cooling late afternoon November air. Read the rest of this entry »

The first Senior Arctic Officials (SAO) meeting of the Arctic Council under the Danish Chairmanship was held in Copenhagen on November 12-13, 2009. Over 200 participants came together for two days of intensive discussions on a wide variety of issues important to the Arctic.

SAO Chair, Ambassador Lars Møller noted in his opening speech that there was a steadily increasing amount of activity in the Arctic. To address the huge challenges, Lars Møller said, the council brought with it from its previous ministerial meeting an ambitious agenda in the form of the Tromsø Declaration.

The initial phase of the meeting, unorthodoxly, included the screening of working copies of two films presenting the AMAP organized Greenland Ice Sheet  (GRIS) and Arctic Cryosphere (SWIPA) projects. The GRIS film will also form part of a high profiled side event at the upcoming COP15 entitled Melting Snow and Ice to be attended by the Danish/Greenlandic and Norwegian foreign ministers as well as by former US vice-president and Oscar winner Al Gore. Read the rest of this entry »

Members of the Standing Committee of Parliamentarians of Arctic Regions (SCPAR) met at the Finnish Parliament in Helsinki on November 18 and 19, 2009 for a workshop on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) in relation to the Arctic Ocean.

Experts from the University of the Arctic, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) and the World Wildlife Fund briefed the committee on the legal and scientific process of determining the boundaries of continental shelves as well as some challenges and opportunities that Arctic countries face in relation to the increasingly accessible Arctic Ocean.

Under Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, coastal states can potentially extend their maritime borders. In order to do this, the country in question must collect and analyze the data that describes the depth, shape, and geophysical characteristics of the seabed and sub-sea floor, as well as the thickness of the underlying sediments. Read the rest of this entry »

In a newly released report from AMAP “Update on Selected Climate Issues of Concern - Observations, Short-lived Climate Forcers, Arctic Carbon Cycle and Predictive Capability” (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme). (A copy of the report is available on AMAPs homepage.) Recent results from Arctic carbon cycle research is presented and it is stated that improved understanding of the carbon dynamics is needed to modeling Arctic carbon cycle impact on global climate change.

Climate change may alter the natural cycling of carbon (C) in ecosystems in the Arctic. The Arctic carbon cycle is an important factor in the global climate system. Significant amount of carbon has been accumulated over thousands of years and stored in permafrost soils because of the process of cryoturbation, which moves organic matter into the deeper soil layers. Other processes, such as decomposition, wildfires, and logging, cause release of carbon into the atmosphere and, thus, act as carbon sources. At present the Arctic is a sink for carbon however climate warming - and thawing of the permafrost and accelerating decomposition processes - could disrupt the balance between accumulation of carbon in Arctic soils and emission of CO2 back into the atmosphere. Read the rest of this entry »

The Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council have proposed the establishment of an Indigenous Peoples Community Action Initiative (IPCAP Initiative). RAIPON has been the driving force. The Initiative was welcomed by the Arctic Council Ministerial Meetings in Salekhard (October 2006) and in Tromsø (March 2009) where it is stated in the Tromsø Declaration that the Ministers: “.. Welcome with appreciation the creation of a new Project Steering Group to address contaminants in indigenous peoples’ communities in remote areas of the Arctic…”

At the ACAP (Arctic Contamination Action Programme) meeting in Ottawa in September 2009, the development of the Indigenous People Contaminants Action Program Initiative was discussed by representatives from government and from RAIPON .

The IPCAP Initiative has been placed under the ACAP Working Group although there are linkages to two other working groups under Arctic Council : AMAP and SDWG. ACAP is an action program and so is the IPCAP initiative also thought to be for hazardous waste management and treatment in indigenous communities in remote area in the Arctic. The Initiative proposes actions to identify and remove local sources of contamination and thereby improve the environment and the human safety and health conditions in indigenous communities. Read the rest of this entry »