Mr. Lynge gave a presentation entitled “Responsive and responsible development” that centered on Inuit opportunities for linking up with the surrounding world in questions of sustainable development.
Mr. Lynge, firstly, commented on the political development since the introduction of Home Rule in Greenland in 1979 with its ever-increasing gap between the political discourse and the social and environmental realities.
Greenland, Mr. Lynge remarked, is presently ruled by the most formally professed red-green political party in the modern history of the country, viz., the Inuit Ataqatigiit lead by Premier Kuupik Kleist. However, Mr. Lynge said, “the former leftwingers have swung around and are now going with the industry”, and stated: “There is no left left.”
Mr. Lynge then went on to remark that, despite consistent campaigning for the right to sustainable use of nature, it is not the claim for Inuit stewardship of the land, but rather animal rights measures that have prevailed, as the present EU ban on seal skin products clearly demonstrates.
Neither the Greenland Government, nor the ICC, Mr. Lynge said, have done enough in the way of maintaining relationships with their partners south of the sixties like the International Union for the Conservation of Nature or the United Nations’ Environment Program.
Time has come, he concluded, for ICC to relate also to people and organizations within environmental policy networks that mobilize ambivalent feelings on the part of Inuit:
“Go out there, meet them, understand them.
And give them to understand our world.
Create a meeting of the minds.”
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