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Sami people adapt to climate change

10 Mar

www.guardian.co.uk
As global warming and habitat degradation accelerates, people indigenous to the Arctic circle say they have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive
Elina Helander-Renvall comes from Utsjoki, a place so obscure that even many Finns have little idea where it is. Utsjoki, or Ochejohka, Uccjuuha, and Uccjokk, depending on which local language you are speaking, is Finland's northern-most municipality. Straddling the border with Norway, it shivers, unregarded, deep inside the Arctic circle, a few icy miles from the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Utsjoki, population 1,034, is home to Finland's largest concentration of Sami speakers, the indigenous people once loosely known as Lapps who have eked out an itinerant existence herding reindeer across the frozen wastes of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and western Russia since the last Ice Age. Nearly 50% of Utsjoki's population are Sami. In Finnish terms, it's the closest this eternal minority has got to being the majority.
Born and raised on the margin though she was, Helander-Renvall's message these days is strictly mainstream. As accelerating climate change and other man-made environmental degradations create growing alarm across the planet, the Sami people have much to teach the world about how to adapt, survive, and thrive, she says.
"There is a lot to learn from the Sami, they have the traditional ecological knowledge, they really know about nature," said Helander-Renvall, head of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples Office at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi. "They have the most precise knowledge about the weather conditions, about the plants, the diet, the resources. The Sami people have an ethical relationship with nature; a respect for nature that also has a spiritual side."
The Arctic region is uniquely vulnerable to global warming, but if it is to weather the storm, it would do well to adopt Sami methods of land and resource management, communal co-operation and communication, local knowledge and best practice, she said.
In order to keep a reindeer herd out of trouble, for example, a knowledge of different types of snow could be decisive, Helander-Renvall said. Muohta (ordinary snow) or oppas (untouched snow) might be safe. But the presence of sievla (wet snow), skarta (thin, ice-like snow layers) or ceavvi (a hard layer that the reindeer cannot penetrate in search of lichen) could dictate a life-saving change of route or decision to move camp.
Local knowledge will also be vital to the large-scale industrial development on the fast-expanding oil and gas fields of western Russia's Yamal peninsula, and for the burdgeoning commercial and tourism industries in the Scandinavian north. Knowing where it is safe to build, how to site the foundations for a new road, airstrip or pipeline, what terrain to avoid, and how to do so responsibly while protecting biological diversity will all be increasingly important. "We need to preserve and transfer indigenous knowledge to future generations," Helander-Renvall said.
Professor Monica Tennberg of the Arctic Research Centre in Rovaniemi said the Sami had shown notable ability to adapt to changing climate conditions. "We've seen how the community adapts, for example finding new ways to deal with floods. We've seen better co-operation, better municipal leadership, better communications, better early warning systems," she said. Adverse effects of climate change on pasture and traditional herding trails had been met with new rotation and migration patterns and also by a tighter communal discipline.
The Arctic as a whole faces enormous challenges. Broadly speaking the region is warming at double the rate of the rest of the world, said Paula Kankaanpaa, director of the Research Centre, with local "hotspots" that fare even worse.
Symptoms include reduced sea ice; the opening of blue-water sea passages both east and west in summer, north of Canada and Russia; increased levels of carbon-carrying organic waste in the Arctic Ocean caused by melting tundra; coastal erosion due to increased wave activity; loss of habitat for large mammals such as seals and polar bears and growing disruption of indigenous human communities.
Governments still resist the idea that Arctic indigenous peoples have something unique to contribute. Canada announced this month that it will convene a foreign ministers' meeting of the five Arctic Ocean states (Canada, Russia, the US, Norway and Denmark/Greenland) in March "to encourage new thinking on responsible development" and "reinforce ongoing collaboration in the region".
To their dismay, Arctic indigenous people's organisations, including the Sami, Inuit and Inuvialuit, were not invited.
Simon Tisdall

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Climate-change sceptics no help

10 Mar

Independent.ie

I think Dr Alan Rogers ('Climate claims need evidence', Letters, March 8) is missing the point. There may be arguments or evidence disproving man-made climate change, but 'deniers' misuse facts, propose non-sequiturs and postulate conspiracy theories.

Read more over at www.independent.ie
Climate change: Berlin for tough action

8 Mar

ExpressBuzz

Germany called for tough action to combat climate change following new warning from Maldives.

Read more over at www.expressbuzz.com
Climate Change Funds: The IMF Has Ideas For Combating Climate Change

8 Mar

The Huffington Post

Strauss-Kahn proposed that countries adopt a quota system similar to the one the Fund uses to raise its own money, which could bring in money faster than proposals to increase carbon taxes or other fundraising methods. He only provided a broad outline of the plan, as the organization will release a paper later this week with full details. It is unclear how the proposal will be received.
The IMF raises funds from its 185 members mainly through a quota system that is based broadly on each country's economic size. The United States is currently the largest shareholder.
"We all know that (carbon taxes and other fundraising methods) will take time and we don't have this time. So we need something which looks like an interim solution, which will bridge the gap between now and the time when those carbon taxes will be big enough to solve the problem," Strauss-Kahn said. "And that is exactly what the IMF proposal is dealing with."
He said a climate change accord reached last December estimated $100 billion a year will be needed by 2020 to fund programs, including those to help poor nations deal with droughts, flooding and food shortages expected to be caused by climate change.
Nations failed to reach a binding deal in Copenhagen in December, but agreed on a voluntary plan to control greenhouse gas emissions which are blamed for the gradual heating of the Earth that scientists predict will worsen weather-related disasters. The accord, however, included collective commitments by rich countries to provide billions of dollars to help poor countries adapt to climate change, a major demand the poor nations had made.
The more than 190 nations will reconvene in Cancun, Mexico, later this year for another attempt to reach a binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which sets emissions targets for industrial countries and expires in 2012.
More on Climate Change

Read more over at www.huffingtonpost.com
Climate Change as an Act of Faith?

7 Mar

Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel

There's no question that 2009 was an interesting year for the science and politics of climate change. Both this report and this one provided new syntheses of the issue, two of the most recent summaries of an ongoing and growing ...

Read more over at dsc.discovery.com
Climate change debate grows heated

5 Mar

L.A. Times - Entertainment News

Less than a month after CNN proclaimed "Last Decade Was Warmest Ever," a headline in Britain's Daily Mail shouted that a top climate scientist had taken a "U-turn" and now "Admits: There Has Been No Global Warming Since 1995."

Read more over at www.latimes.com
Painting climate change

5 Mar

The Scientist

Artist Diane Burko collaborates with scientists to bring global warming to the canvas, blending data with brushstrokes

Read more over at www.the-scientist.com
Romney: ‘Climate Change Is Occurring’

5 Mar

The Washington Independent

Skepticism about man-made climate change — once seen as a fairly fringe belief, now a pretty big topic of political debate — is increasingly the norm among Republican voters. A December 2009 Ipsos/McClatchy poll found only 57 percent of GOP voters saying climate change was happening at all, and a 42 percent minority chalking it up to human activity.
In “No Apology,” Mitt Romney sets himself up in the shrinking “climate change is happening but we don’t need a carbon tax” camp.
I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor.
Again, this issue is evolving so fast, with people like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) becoming Tea Party folk heroes and sites like Pajamas Media demanding that Al Gore return his Academy Award, that by the time Iowa caucus-goers come out, Romney might be in the deep minority of GOPers.

Read more over at washingtonindependent.com
'Case stronger' on climate change

4 Mar

From BBC News

The UK Met Office says evidence that human activity is causing climate change is stronger now than in a 2007 assessment.

Read more over at news.bbc.co.uk
Humans to blame for climate change - scientists

4 Mar

New Zealand Herald - World

Climate scientists have delivered a powerful riposte to their sceptical critics with a study that strengthens the case for saying global warming is largely the result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.The researchers found...

Read more over at www.nzherald.co.nz