Tag Archives: greenland

#5ArcticActions: Protect the Arctic’s Last Ice

General, , ,

This week, Arctic governments are meeting in Norway to talk about Arctic biodiversity. But they need to do more than talk. They’ve invested in reams of excellent research on life in the Arctic – now they need to act! They’ll make commitments this April, when the United States begins its chairmanship of the Arctic Council. Will they commit to Arctic action? This week, we look at #5ArcticActions nations can take to protect Arctic life:

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Map of the Last Ice Area, 2040.

Map of the Last Ice Area, 2040.


Sea ice is the foundation of Arctic marine life.  WWF’s Mette Frost is working to shape the future of a region where Arctic sea ice is likely to persist the longest – the Last Ice Area.
What is the Last Ice Area, and why is it important for Arctic life and livelihoods?

As the climate warms, Arctic sea ice is disappearing.

Almost every summer, the amount of remaining sea ice gets smaller. That summer sea ice is vitally important to a whole range of animals from tiny shrimp to vast bowhead whales, and to local people. One stretch of sea ice, along the northern coasts of Canada and Greenland, is projected to remain when all other large areas of summer sea ice are gone. This is the Last Ice Area.
WWF is supporting research on this vital Arctic habitat so Arctic people and governments can ensure life on the sea ice continues long into the future.

What can Greenland and Canada do in the next year?
We’d like to see them develop plans to establish a UNESCO World Heritage Site connecting Quttinirpaaq National Park in Nunavut with the National Park of North and East Greenland.
Are there lessons here for other Arctic states?
Unlike many of the ecosystems we work in, the Arctic is still relatively undeveloped.  However, a warming climate means it’s opening up to industry very quickly. Arctic states have an opportunity to make smart conservation decisions now, before development happens, focusing on the areas that will be most resilient to climate change.
What can the public do?

  1. Learn more about the Last Ice Area
  2. Share this page
  3. Support conservation work in the Last Ice Area through Arctic Home
  4. Ask your politicians what their plans are to protect an area of remaining summer sea ice.

A lifetime in two weeks

From the field, ,

Labrador, Canada

Tat, Sue and Paninnguaq in Torngat Mountains National Park, Labrador, Canada.


WWF took part in the 2014 “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny blogged from the expedition.
It feels like we wrapped a lifetime of experiences into 2 weeks. We bobbed in the water with a polar bear, hiked mountains few people have visited, saw the evidence of climate change first hand, heard the stories of elders, and made lifelong friends.
Now we’ve all headed home, but both students and staff are keeping the expedition spirit going with the busy sharing of photos, videos and well-wishes on Facebook. I spoke with our WWF-sponsored students one last time before we parted ways (but hopefully not for long!).

What was your favourite part of the expedition?

Paninnguaq:
I really loved to see Canadian people [who] really look like Greenlanders. I really saw the connection between our people, and I’m surprised that we aren’t connected that much as people.
Tat:
When we were on the land exploring Greenland. It was very exciting to perform [in the community centre in Nanortalik].

Excerpt from “This is who we are”, written and performed by Tat on the expedition

 

It’s a beautiful scenery
I live in the arctic, complicated, beautiful
…We go hunting often going with no flow
Loving, caring, all we know
Inuk pride, broken lives, fixing struggles
Adapting, catching, nothing but survival rights
No hate, living cycles, crafts and arts
This is who we are.

 

Highlights from Greenland, including Tat’s performance:

What did you learn?

Tat:
I learned that there are many opportunities if you step in.
Paninnguaq:
I learned a lot about nature, vegetation and birds in Canada, but also in my own country.

What’s next?

Tat:
I’m probably going to school.
Paninnguaq:
To get more life experience. I want to be able to write books. This helped me to think about Greenland’s future and how it can look.

Sea ice stories

From the field, , ,

Students on Ice, checking out ice. Photo: Sue Novotny / WWF

Students on Ice, checking out ice. Photo: Sue Novotny / WWF


WWF was part of a “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny is blogging from the expedition.
While talking with the students about climate change and the future of sea ice, I asked them to raise their hands if they saw sea ice for the first time on this expedition. Over half of the 85  students were new to sea ice, and to the Arctic.
Along with them, I saw sea ice for the first time last week – hundreds of bergy bits at dusk. We’ve since encountered much more ice, from enormous icebergs to calving glaciers to a thin stip of fast ice under the water at high tide, seeming to glow like a modern art installation.
Then I asked who lived in a place where the sea freezes up every winter – 25 more hands. These students from northern Canada and Greenland shared their stories about life with sea ice.

One student said it’s a difficult time to be away from home, because it’s when his family goes out to the floe edge to hunt.

Another talked about jumping a snowmobile across cracks in the ice during the summer breakup. (I asked if this was dangerous. The answer: it’s fun!)

And another said moving his snowmobile from the ice onto the land is a sign that spring is coming.

Sea ice is clearly part of life and full of life. And viewed from satellites over time, it almost looks like a living thing.

This video elicited some gasps from the audience. Within their lifetimes, both the extent of the ice and the amount of multi-year ice has shrunk dramatically. What ice is left is pushed by prevailing currents to northern Greenland and Canada – the “Last Ice Area“. Ice models project that this will be the only place sea ice remains in the summer by 2040.
Many of these students will go on to be scientists, advocates, and leaders in Greenland and Canada. They’ll be making decisions on the Arctic’s future. If they want to focus on regions that will be important to the Arctic in the decades to come and beyond, the Last Ice Area is a good place to start.

Putting the green in Greenland – and the rap in rapport

From the field, ,

WWF is part of a “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny is on board, and is sending blogs about the expedition.boat prow
After four days exploring Labrador, southern Greenland seems both familiar and new to the students. The mountains are more jagged, icebergs are far more frequent, and valleys have turned to glaciers. But as we rounded the corner of a fjord, a sight new to almost everyone on board – Greenland’s ice cap, rising almost as high as the enormous mountains.
When Students on Ice visited this site five years ago, the glacier was calving directly into the water. Today, we hiked about a kilometer from shore to the glacier’s edge. The retreat has been so rapid that the area uncovered by ice is still scrubbed free of vegetation.
green mountainOur next stop, “Paradise Valley”, is one of the few places in Greenland where trees can be found.  The plants here are now familiar – willow and birch – but far more like shrubs than the tiny plants we saw in Labrador. Paninnguaq (the WWF student from Greenland) was excited to find a much larger piece of birch than she’s seen in her hometown of Sisimiut, above the Arctic Circle. She’s now busy whittling it down to create a traditional Greenlandic toy.
Finally, we dock in Nanortalik, Greenland’s southernmost town. In Greenlandic, the name means “place of the polar bears”, but there are no bears here today, just a collection of colourful little houses on a rocky landscape. greenland villageCulturally, the northern students feel at home here. Despite the occasional language barrier, the students traded performances with the local teenagers, from rap to Inuit games, throat singing and drum dancing, and Greenlandic rock. Tat (the WWF student from Nunavut) has been writing his own rap songs in English and Inuktitut, and performed publicly for the very first time for the Students on Ice. His second performance was to an appreciative crowd in Nanortalik’s youth centre. It’s good to see Inuit youth sharing their culture like this, maintaining ties stretching back thousands of years.

Waiting to cross

From the field, General,

We head out again on the morning of August 12 after a windy night at anchor.   After several hours of rain and wind, we find a relatively safe place in Mac Cormick fjord. Here the wait begins for the crew – waiting for the wind to die down, and ideally the sea too, so we can leave. The night is calm but in the morning, and against all odds, the wind increases and we are stuck here. We take our shifts on watch: if anything changes, wake the captain!
So here we are on this beautiful Monday, waiting, well anchored, and listening to the wind to tell us our schedule.
Next Stop: Canada. We leave Greenland with a great desire to return to the many beautiful places and wonderful people we’ve encounter along the way.

Ancient sandstone, oil futures, and odd sounds from the gearbox

From the field, General, , ,

Pointing across the bay, Christian Knudsen, a geologist working for the Danish geological survey, enthuses over the ancient sandstone cliffs. These cliffs, he says, date from Precambrian times. Christian is in Qaanaaq, part of a survey team looking at many aspects of Greenland’s geology, but right now, they’re focused on implications of that geology for oil and gas potential.
We’re in Qaanaaq for another day because the Tern’s gearbox has been behaving a little oddly. Grant, the captain, wants to be sure that the boat is up to the long crossing to Grise Fiord before venturing further out. He’s getting a second opinion from a local mechanic, Mads, who operates the town’s diesel-fired electricity plant.
West of here, a consortium of oil companies led by Shell is preparing to do some ‘research drilling’ that further assist in assessing the likelihood of oil and gas potential. These companies have all received claim blocks from the Greenland government, allowing them to explore for oil.
Although our trip is partly powered by oil products, and the town obviously relies on an oil product also for its light and heat, the prospect of drilling in these waters is alarming. Watching the constant procession of large icebergs drift by, it doesn’t take too much imagination to picture what might happen if one of them were to hit a drilling rig. And seeing the connection of the local people to these surroundings, the pride they take in continuing a viable hunting culture that stretches back over generations is a reminder of what stands to be harmed.
That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to what the geologists are doing. If we truly want to respect the interests of local people, we might wish them to conserve this area as far as possible, but we also believe that their decisions should be informed. That information includes what lies beneath the local rocks, as well as what lives within their waters.

The narwhal hunt

From the field, General, , ,

We had just stepped ashore in Qeqertat when the small boat approached the beach, dodging its way in between icebergs. Strapped across its bows was a traditional hunting kayak, with a harpoon and sealskin float attached. Trailing behind the three men in the boat was a narwhal, the fruit of the hunt.
We had come to Qeqertat, a small island community several kilometers from Qaanaaq in Northwest Greenland in our search for wildlife on the fringes of the Last Ice Area. We were told in Qaanaaq that narwhal were to be found in the area at this time of year. We were also warned off going further into the Fjord than Qeqertat, as people were worried that we would disrupt the hunt by our presence.
Clive Tesar of WWF and Nick Clark of Al Jazeera English
on the Last Ice Area and visiting Qeqertat:
On our way in yesterday, we scanned the waters, but saw no sign of the famous tusked whales. Now here in front of me was evidence that they not only inhabit the area, but also help support this community in pursuing a traditional lifestyle and economy.
Some of the whale was shared out immediately with the small cluster of people who ran down to the beach.  Other parts were cut and hung from platforms to dry. A final portion was packed up and set aside for transport to Qaanaaq, to be frozen and sold.
When people took a break from their chores, I took the opportunity to pass out some information on our trip, and on the last ice area in both Greenlandic and Danish. I also spoke with a couple of the local people who spoke English.  One of the women, Nina, read out parts of the information to the other people on the beach. She later told me that they would like to talk further to WWF about the information we had brought, but they would first like some time to absorb it. In the months and years to come, we certainly hope to speak more with the people of Qeqertat, and with the other people living on the fringes of the last ice area.

To the ice edge

From the field, General,

Houses in Qaanaaq, Greenland. © Clive Tesar / WWF-Canon


After the relative lushness of southern Greenland, the first glimpses of the north of the island are shocking. Here about 1400 kilometers from the North Pole is a virtual polar desert. Ice cascades off the top of barren rock domes, glowing gown to the sea as glaciers that sometimes become sudden turbulent rivers for a brief span. In the sea, tall icebergs sail past, not as thickly packed as in Ilulissat, but still hazardous to shipping. We’re sitting now just offshore of Qaanaq, a community of about a hundred buildings perched on what seems to be the single patch of greenery.
Our mission for this second leg is not so much to interact with the communities – there is only one tiny community north of here, and our only Greenlandic speaker has just left the boat. Our mission instead is to explore this edge of the last ice area.
The ice at present is only several kilometers to our north, where we hope it will stay, not just this year, but for many years to come. We will explore around the edges of it, to see how much life is using it now. We’ve heard that we may see both narwhal and walrus in the area. In the days to come, we will try to track these elusive creatures, and watch the Arctic desert come alive.

Bringing the Arctic to the desert

From the field, General,

Nick Clark and Maurice Roper from Al Jazeera film on the voyage to the Last Ice Area in August 2012. © Clive Tesar / WWF-Canon


Through the helicopter’s open door, several kilometers of fractured ice stretch to the horizon – leaning into this landscape is Maurice, a cameraman for Al Jazeera. Up front beside the pilot is Nick, the reporter. Al Jazeera is a relatively new international television network based in the middle-eastern country of Qatar.
The television crew is coming along on the second leg of the Tern trip, but beforehand, they’ve flown with me from Iqaluit to Ilulissat. Juggling scarce northern flights has meant a two-day stopover in Ilulissat, but this is no hardship. The town on the west coast of Greenland is right next door to a world heritage site, the Ilulissat icefjord.
This glacier, about 9 kilometers wide, and 1.5 kilometers high at the face is the most productive in the northern hemisphere. Recent measurements have shown the glacier speeding toward the sea at a rate of 60 meters per day, a sprinter by glacier standards. When it hits the sea, it hurls down massive chunks of ice. Some are the size and shape of a supermarket, while others form fantastic shapes like cathedrals of ice with jagged glittering spires.
The Al Jazeera crew avidly films the frozen landscape. They will likely use some of this footage later this year. In November, the next round of international negotiations takes place in Doha, home base for the network. This coverage is part of what we had hoped for from this trip; to bring Arctic observations and voices to the attention of the global community.
As the Greenlandic ice cap speeds toward the sea,  the glacial pace of international climate action must also pick up, if we are to preserve the unique character of the Arctic.

The end of leg 1

From the field, General,

Lars Jeremiassen


Building on two days of community visits, Sascha and I had coffee with the former mayor of Qaanaaq, Lars Jeremiassen. Lars explained to us that even if this community lives off hunting, the rich stocks of Greenland Halibut in the waters may bring more fishing to this community. The small fish and meat processing plant on the beach has become too small and investments are made to increase production here.
Lars also told that more and more corporations are coming here for mineral exploration activities. Currently there are activities in Washington Land further north. Zinc is being mapped, and Lars was hopeful that these activities may eventually bring new jobs to the community. The current rate of unemployment is 20%, and job opportunities are few.
In a blue house on the main road lives Mamasu Kristiansen with his wife and a daughter. Hansigne was happily showing us that she could write the names of her entire family at the age of four. And while busy preparing for school, her father told us about his life as a hunter. He explained how he has witnessed changes in sea ice cover since her took up hunting as a 16 year old man. But he still enjoyed the free life of a hunter even if changes and Government quotas make it difficult to make a living at hunting.
Travelling home I leave a bit of my heart in North Greenland and another bit onboard the Arctic Tern. I will check this site for news and follow the adventures of skipper Grant and his lovely crew – Pascale and Valentine and the new group of guests onboard – Clive, Nick, Maurice and Paul.