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Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arctic sovereignty? Inuit would like a word
This story was originally published on The Narwhal on April 22, a publication about the natural world in Canada. Dustin Patar The Narwhal Iqaluit has long been a stop on federal election campaigns. But over the last few months, as Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh each visited the Nunavut capital, something was different. While the stops still offered snowy photo opportunities, they seemed like more than a ticked box for an election campaign. In 2025, Nunavut, and the Arctic more broadly, is a serious talking point. Front-runners Carney and Poilievre have made splashy promises about Arctic sovereignty, which for them means increased military might and resource development, both requiring new infrastructure they promise will be a boon to local communities. But this isn't the first time residents of Inuit Nunangat — the Inuit homelands in Canada — have been under a spotlight wielded by politicians and industry leaders. Like other Arctic states, Canada's interest in its northern territories ebbs and flows, driven by geopolitics and trade. While increased attention can be a boon, it can also cause significant harm. Since 1977, the Inuit Circumpolar Council has provided Inuit across Canada, Alaska, Chukotka (Russia) and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) — the circumpolar North, or Inuit Nunaat — with a unified voice on the global stage. Today, it represents approximately 180,000 Inuit and is chaired by Sara Olsvig of Kalaallit Nunaat. Sara Olsvig of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, left, with Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, in 2024. (William Alan Swanson / UN Environment Programme) Olsvig spoke with The Narwhal last week about this current geopolitical moment, what those on the ground think about all the Arctic talk right now and how sovereignty for Inuit means self-determination is non-negotiable. 'We are here as Inuit and we will be here in the future. We've been here for time immemorial,' Olsvig said. 'We are working every day, step by step, to develop our societies in the way that we want to see them develop. Home rule and self-government arrangements — those are things that we are not backing down from.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The Inuit Circumpolar Council was founded during the Cold War to provide Inuit across the circumpolar North with a platform to present a unified voice on issues ranging from the climate to global affairs. Yet here we are nearly 50 years later and Arctic Sovereignty is back in the spotlight in a big way. How is what is happening now different? Or is it? It is different. When the Inuit Circumpolar Council was founded in 1977, we were able to meet as Inuit from Kalaallit Nunaat, Canada and Alaska. And one of the first things that Inuit did was to call on the then-Soviet Union to allow Inuit from Chukotka to become members of our organization. What Inuit were able to do was to work through diplomacy, sometimes quiet diplomacy, to create those connections. Our shared organization, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, has been an extremely good diplomat, so to speak. We have conducted Indigenous diplomacy to re-establish those connections people-to-people, human connections between Inuit across four very, very different nation states, with four or more very, very different self-government arrangements. 'Self-government of Inuit was never something that dropped down from heaven to us. It was not something that was granted us. These are achievements that we built ourselves through our own diplomatic efforts,' Sara Olsvig of the Inuit Circumpolar Council said. (Dustin Patar, The Narwhal) That's the big difference today, I would say. We have a Kalaallit Nunaat which has its own parliament and government, strives to become an independent state, is asserting its rights as a nation. We have other arrangements across Inuit Nunaat in Canada, different arrangements in Alaska and a whole other arrangement in Chukotka. And I think it's really important to say that all of these arrangements and self-government of Inuit was never something that dropped down from heaven to us. It was not something that was granted us. These are achievements that we built ourselves through our own diplomatic efforts. Today we also have an international recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and our right of self-determination affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We live under very different international institutional and legal frameworks than we did 50 years ago. Talk around Arctic sovereignty can come from a country wanting to assert its dominance over its Arctic territories, or from Inuit sovereignty and self-determination. Which Arctic sovereignty are we hearing about right now? There's always been some level of pressure from the nation-states that do approach the Arctic as some kind of new frontier, more as a source of resource and expansion than an inhabited region where peoples have lived for for time immemorial. When we talk about sovereignty seen from an Inuit perspective, it's always important for us to reconfirm and assert the fact that we were here for time immemorial. We have been here before state borders were drawn on maps, before different waves of settlers came in and out of the Arctic. Inuit have thrived and survived and lived here, regardless of whatever kinds of acts of securitization or acts of sovereignty in a state-centered way have happened. I always get quite proud to know that Inuit leaders for many, many decades have had the skills to navigate those different spheres of how you view the world, how you can act side-by-side with states who pursue a certain kind of sovereignty at the same time as not losing our inherent Indigeneity and Inuit way of living, an Inuit way of conceiving and thinking of sovereignty. Those things can coexist. We have bandwidth in our heads and as Inuit to navigate those things. States and others think that Indigenous Peoples don't think about hard security issues or Westphalian state sovereignty and so on. But that's not true. That's exactly what we have been navigating in our assertion of our rights. Much of the driving force behind the Arctic sovereignty and security conversations comes from southerners, extraction and shipping industry leaders and politicians who live outside of the Arctic. No one community across the Arctic is the same, but when you speak with Inuit around the circumpolar North, do your conversations sound remotely similar to what we're seeing in headlines? It's exactly correct what you're saying, that no Inuit community is the same. We have very different relationships with the states within which we live, very different relationships with the military organizations of those states. Some Inuit organizations and rights holder organizations and so forth work in close partnerships with the defense of the state they live in, making a lot of their income from servicing the defense and military presence in those regions. In Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland, the agreements about U.S. military presence here were done before we had any say in international relations. Nevertheless, the government of Kalaallit Nunaat has paved its way into making this not a bilateral U.S.-Denmark relation, but a trilateral relation between Kalaallit Nunaat, Denmark and the U.S. A snowmobile with qamutiik in tow passes by the St. George's Society Cliffs outside of Arctic Bay, Nvt. 'Inuit have thrived and survived and lived here, regardless of whatever kinds of acts of securitization or acts of sovereignty in a state-centered way have happened,' Sara Olsvig of the Inuit Circumpolar Council said. (Dustin Patar, The Narwhal) Across Inuit Nunaat broadly from Chukotka, Alaska, Canada, we have quite different views on nationhood. When I speak to Canadian or Alaskan Inuit, they might have a different view on their sense of nationality [or the] presence of military in our homelands. What is cross-cutting for all Inuit is our right of self-determination. That we ourselves are those to decide what relationship we want with the military presence. We do not want to see repetition of historical events, such as forceful displacement of people of Inuit in relation to creating new military installations. We do not want to see a militarization where we are not included in decision-making. The bottom line is that there is no such thing as saying, 'You have a self-determination, but only to this line'. We also have self-determination on those areas that states would consider hard security or sovereignty, and therefore we still have some way to go in terms of working with our states to fully implement our rights of self-determination. Countries are driving a global Arctic security conversation, but what is being discussed on the local level? Are there different priorities, such as health, housing, and food security? That's a question that speaks to the importance of remembering that we have the bandwidth to encompass both. We do conceive of other forms of security in our societies as being related to our human security — access to health services, access to infrastructure and so forth. All of those things are deeply related to our human security, as are the more hard security issues. One thing does not exclude the other. And if we as Inuit do not continue to have our focus on both, we know that, especially on the hard security issues, these decisions will continue to be taken without us. In 1977, when the council was founded, one of our first resolutions, 7711, talked about how we as Inuit want our region to be peaceful, to be used for peaceful purposes only. We reaffirmed that resolution in 2022. And I think if we as Arctic Indigenous peoples didn't say so, who would? But we do say it with open eyes and open ears, knowing what's going on around us. These past months here in Kalaallit Nunaat, I can say that hard security issues are also something that people talk about on the streets and over coffee. Discussions about access to 'critical minerals' and Arctic shipping routes — like the Northwest Passage, which itself is a 175-year-old conversation — are not new. How much of today's dialogue about these topics are driven by the clear effects of climate change in the Arctic? I often see the narrative that, you know, ice is melting and the resources are suddenly available. That's not how it is here in Kalaallit Nunaat. There's been mapping of the resources of Kalaallit Nunaat for centuries. We have a high degree of knowledge about what resources are here. I think the big difference across Inuit Nunaat is, again, the level of how concretely we can exercise our right of self-determination into terms of deciding to utilize those resources, extract those resources or not. We here in Kalaallit Nunaat have full self-determination on whether to mine or not. The whole resource extraction question became a cornerstone in the economic relationship between Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark with the self-government agreement from 2009. That's not the case for all Inuit. The basic principle of the questions of resource extraction is that no projects go ahead without free, prior, informed consent obtained before starting. I would say the same about shipping. Inuit are ship owners. Inuit are big fish company owners. We are dependent on being able to navigate the seas we have, which we have done for millennia and we have transitioned into huge, successful businesses. That's also why Inuit Circumpolar Council worked so hard to become part of the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement, to sit with states and make sure that no decisions are taken without us. So when we talk about shipping lanes, I think that on one hand, in some mainstream media it's a bit exaggerated and on the other hand, it sounds as if it's another one of those, Arctic frontiers where people will go because nobody's ever been there. But that's not true. What we need to do is to make sure that everybody who goes to the waters across Inuit Nunaat do so in a way that least harms the environment, biodiversity, our flora and fauna. We are working to influence that through the International Maritime Organization, demanding that ships make less noise, because underwater radiated noise will affect our marine mammals and then that will then affect our access to hunting. This is about us asserting our seat at the table to inform the regulations on how shipping is conducted. Part of the global push for critical minerals is an economic response to climate change. Government and industry says mining is essential to extract minerals such as high-quality ore that requires less energy to turn into steel, or the components needed for electric vehicles. On one hand, this resource extraction could potentially help efforts to curb climate change globally, while providing jobs and increasing infrastructure locally. On the other hand, such projects have significantly harmed culture and the environment in the past and pose similar risks now. How can situations like this be navigated in a meaningful and respectful way? I was honored last year to take part in the United Nations Secretary General's panel on critical energy transition minerals, as one of two Indigenous persons on the panel, together with the former chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum, Mejia Montalvo. It was a tough job, but we got the outcome document of this panel's work to include full recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples— the right of self-determination, regardless of the world's pressure. Even calls from other places in the world saying 'you have better regulation, so we will do less human rights violations if we mine in your region than in this region'. In spite of all this pressure, and maybe even exactly because of all this pressure, what we must remember is that we have a right to say no. If we don't want a uranium mine, we'll say no, like we did in Kalaallit Nunaat, or the people in south Greenland did. If we see that there's a need for a specific mineral, let's talk about it. In the end, if the Indigenous Peoples in mind are saying, 'That's not the road we want to take,' that needs to be respected. At the Conference of Parties last year, in Baku, there was a fellow Indigenous woman from Belize, who represents a people that want to transition over to solar panels. And she raised a really interesting question — how can she make sure that the minerals that were used to produce the solar panels have not been extracted by violating other Indigenous People's rights? And that question, to me, pinpointed the issue: we have to work with an industry which has a terrible track record. So we need to change the industry, make the industry accountable. And how do we do that? Well we make sure that we can trace where the minerals come from, that those who are involved in producing and exporting and so on are made accountable in terms of human rights. That's going to be a huge task, but that was the recommendation coming out of the panel. And of course, to ramp up circularity. Remove some of the pressure by ensuring that we have reuse of minerals. The point of departure in this panel's work was that 55 per cent, at least, of the known deposits are on or near Indigenous Peoples' land, so we have no option but to address it. We all know as Inuit that our lands are rich. So this is something that we will have in front of us to discuss and decide upon in many years to come. What I hope for everyone is that we find ways of doing this that doesn't divide us. We've been through tough times here in Kalaallit Nunaat discussing that possible uranium mine. I belong to those who do not want to do uranium mining, but I've met with fellow Inuit and citizens who did want to do uranium mining, who were in trouble in terms of employment and income. So these paradoxes and dilemmas we will meet time and time again, and we need to approach them in a good way where we can reach a common understanding of what our different positions are and find the best way ahead. Over the last few months, the world has become a little more volatile. The Inuit Circumpolar Council operates in four countries, with some projects, like protecting the waters of Pikialasorsuaq, or the North Water Polynya, literally spanning borders. How impacted has the council been by this shift? It's different from case to case, so particularly on the Pikialasorsuaq initiative between Kalaallit Nunaat and Canada, it seems that our governments are pursuing a positive development. We are supporting that. It might be different in other areas of Inuit Nunaat — we have yet to see exactly what's going to be the situation. As you know, elections have taken place, are taking place and new administrations or old administrations are getting in place. I do want to point to Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska, which recently convened an Alaskan Inuit leadership summit with very, very strong and clear statements coming out of it. It's important to say that there is no such thing as a better colonizer. Each of us have very complex relationships with the states around us and you cannot compare and say that it's better to be Inuk here or there. This is the time where we stand side by side, shoulder by shoulder, and do not allow ourselves to be pitted against each other. Was there anything else you'd like to add? These are the times where we should all consider increasing our international engagement. This is the time where we go to the international venues and make our voices heard, assert our seat at the table. That's something that I hope to see more of in the future, more Inuit youth, more Inuit leadership, more Inuit knowledge-holders to go out there and speak on behalf of our interests so that we can implement what we have been saying for so many years — nothing about us without us.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The Canadian government raised doubts about a climate scientist's LNG research. He says they sounded like fossil fuel lobbyists
Edward Burrier chuckled as he told his colleagues what he thought about an academic paper written by a prominent U.S. climate scientist. Burrier, a director of public policy at Canadian fossil fuel giant TC Energy, said the study was largely to blame for public skepticism about whether liquefied natural gas (LNG) is as environmentally friendly as the oil and gas industry claims. "One quoted study that drove a lot of this initial activism … said that LNG is worse than coal," Burrier said. "I asked the team to dissect this and of course they found it was written by a long- time anti-natural gas advocate," he continued, identifying the author as "a Cornell professor." Burrier didn't mince words during that lunch-time meeting in February 2024, a recording of which was leaked to The Narwhal. His comments are among a number of statements made during two internal company calls that highlight how the fossil fuel industry is sensitive to the public's awareness of the environmental impacts of LNG. The study in question, by Cornell University biogeochemist and ecosystem scientist Robert Howarth, did in fact demonstrate how the total greenhouse gas emissions from exported U.S. liquefied natural gas is higher than U.S.-produced coal used in power plants. But Howarth told The Narwhal he's no anti-gas advocate. As a professor and a highly cited research scientist, he said he has "an ethical obligation to communicate the results of my research to the public and decision makers"—laid out in the codes of several scientific societies to which he belongs. "My research, which underwent extensive peer-review by a respectable journal using anonymous expert reviewers, clearly shows that LNG is bad for the climate," Howarth, who is Cornell's David R. Atkinson professor of ecology and environmental biology, said in an interview. Howarth's research casts doubt on the industry's common talking point that using natural gas can help address climate change. His work shows how methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, leaks into the atmosphere during LNG processing, transport and storage, as well as from oil and gas fracking operations. Addressing climate change can lead to fewer deaths and injuries from extreme weather, fewer asthma attacks and fewer disease outbreaks. U.S. President Donald Trump is moving ahead with LNG export approvals and has launched a major assault on science, disrupting U.S. scientific research that over the years has helped the public interpret climate and health threats from fossil fuels like LNG. That has led to uncertainty over academic funding, including for Howarth's own lab and a key atmospheric monitoring site it runs, and provoked thousands of protesters, including Nobel laureates, to take to the streets in defense of public science. LNG is a hot-button issue in Canada too, and documents obtained by The Narwhal show the federal government has been reluctant to accept Howarth's findings, leading Howarth to conclude the Government of Canada is adopting industry "talking points." An internal Canadian government briefing note, released to The Narwhal under access to information law, shows some of Howarth's research was questioned by the federal energy department. Natural Resources Canada has been on the hunt for evidence that could demonstrate "social license" for Canada's new LNG export industry, taking shape in British Columbia. Canada's first LNG export project, LNG Canada, is fed by the Coastal GasLink pipeline, built by TC Energy, that will transport fracked gas from the province's northeast to a Pacific Coast facility that plans to start shipping LNG this year to countries in Asia. The briefing note shows the department used Howarth's work to suggest Canadian LNG sent to Asia would have a comparatively low emissions intensity—a term that compares the amount of carbon pollution generated when producing a given amount of a fossil fuel. Written in the fall of 2024 for the federal minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, the briefing note states, "using Howarth's methodology," Canadian LNG sent to Asia would have "up to half" the emissions intensity of American LNG fed by fracked gas from the Permian Basin, a major oil and gas area around Texas, and shipped from the U.S. Gulf Coast. The documents try to make the case for Canada's "strict regulations" around methane leaks, as well as better leak detection and repair surveys, better methane reduction technology and other environmental advantages. The briefing note for Wilkinson also accuses Howarth of basing his work on assumptions that may not reflect the industry's true state of affairs. For example, it said Howarth's use of U.S.-based coal emissions intensity "is not an adequate substitute" for the emission intensity of coal used in Asia to generate power. It instead cited another figure, picked from a consulting firm, that was 85 per cent higher, saying it "may be more appropriate." The consulting firm's figure, the briefing note added, took into account other factors like the type of coal power technology in Asia and the quality of coal there. It also claimed Howarth used a calculation about how much heat methane can trap in the atmosphere that was based on a shorter timespan than the one the United Nations requires for country reports on emissions. Howarth said his work is based on academic research and his estimates were in line with most of the other scientific literature in this field. The consulting firm's figure, he said, was "very much out of step" with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, considered the world's top scientific climate authority. And he argued using a longer timespan for emissions "greatly underestimates the actual influence of methane on the climate." While methane doesn't stick around in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, it can trap much more heat over a shorter period. Scientists have projected Earth will cross a critical threshold of warming in the coming decades, meaning the potency of methane over the short term is of immediate concern. Under a list of "key findings," the briefing note states that "Howarth has used several assumptions in his analysis that may overstate the difference in emissions intensity." Howarth told The Narwhal that this line "sounds like talking points directly from the PR folks in the oil and gas industry." The briefing note about Howarth indicates it was written by three officials from Natural Resources Canada with input from a fourth departmental official, and approved by an assistant deputy minister. Asked for comment, departmental communications advisor Maria Ladouceur said briefing notes are "developed by public servants, with no role from external stakeholders." "Industry and public relations consultants did not have a role in drafting or providing input into this briefing note, or any other briefing note prepared by Natural Resources Canada," Ladouceur said. She said the department engages with a "wide variety of industry stakeholders on numerous topics of mutual interest as part of day-to-day business" and draws information from a "range of sources such as technical journal publications, news articles, environmental impact assessments, and various reports such as governmental contracted studies." "NRCan's policies continue to be informed by science and evidence-based decision-making," she said. Ladouceur also defended the briefing note's composition, arguing the department used a figure at "the lower end" of the consulting firm's estimate which she said was "in line with other scientific literature," while the department provided emission estimates for both methane timespans. The oil and gas industry has often forged a close relationship with the government, including when the environment department allowed oil and gas lobbyists to discuss decarbonization at a national pavilion during an international climate event in 2022. It's unclear how close this relationship runs. At one point during the leaked TC Energy calls, for example, a company official claimed the firm was "given opportunities to write entire briefing notes for ministers and premiers and prime ministers." In another instance, Burrier, a former administration official during Trump's first term in office, claimed TC Energy "literally did the government's homework for them" by briefing Canadian bureaucrats on how to get LNG export projects built. TC Energy previously told The Narwhal that some claims made on the leaked recordings were inaccurate, without specifying which ones. TC Energy did not respond to The Narwhal's requests for comment about Howarth, Burrier or the briefing note that were sent by email on March 6, March 11 and March 19, and by voicemail on March 19. Burrier did not respond to a request for comment sent through LinkedIn on March 11. The briefing note was written while the U.S. presidential election campaign was in full swing. Since then, the B.C. government has cited repeated threats from Trump that he wants to annex Canada as one reason why the province wants to speed up approvals for major energy projects. B.C. will soon decide whether to approve another major LNG export project, Ksi Lisims LNG, and its feeder pipeline, the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) line. South of the border, the Trump administration has banned grants mentioning the term "climate" and reportedly blocked U.S. government participation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's next report. It has also threatened to deal huge blows to the workforces of U.S. academic science funders like the National Science Foundation and attempted massive purges of federal departments working on climate science, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Howarth said funding for study-abroad programs has been frozen while indirect grants may be slashed, leading to a hiring freeze at Cornell. He said he has two vacant research scientist positions in his lab that he can't fill, as well as a third position for a visiting scholar from the Fulbright program—an international academic exchange founded in 1946—who is supposed to work on harmful algal blooms. The Trump administration froze funds for the Fulbright program in February. On March 14, Howarth said he heard the U.S. is ending funding for a key atmospheric monitoring site run out of his lab, one of the oldest in the country that measures pollutants like acid rain. "The Trump administration seems hell-bent on destroying environmental research in the U.S.," he said. This story was produced by The Narwhal and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
International inquiry details plan to investigate severe, long-standing water pollution: 'We're really in a historic time right now'
Coal mines in southeastern British Columbia have been polluting waterways in the U.S. and Canada for decades, but a new international inquiry is investigating the issue and seeking solutions, The Narwhal reported. Contaminants from these mining operations, such as selenium, have seeped into local waterways, moving downstream into the Elk and Kootenay rivers, the publication explained. These rivers flow through Ktunaxa Nation territory in British Columbia, Montana, and Idaho. According to the new proposed plan from the International Joint Commission, a regulatory group established under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, an expert panel will compile existing data on water quality and impacts to human and ecosystem health and look at potential solutions to reduce the flow of pollution from the mines. The commission has already established a study board and is looking to create four technical working groups focusing on water quality, human health, ecosystem, and mitigation. "Historically, we've allowed industry to set the tone on what should be done and how quickly it should be done," Simon Wiebe, a mining policy and impacts researcher for the Kootenay-based conservation group Wildsight, told The Narwhal. "So, we're really in a historic time right now where we're getting a third-party, independent review of these issues." The Narwhal reported that while all living things need small amounts of selenium, too much of this element can be toxic. For instance, small amounts of selenium in fish have been tied to deformities and reproductive failure. The publication pointed out that this is of particular concern for at-risk fish species living downstream from the mine such as the westslope cutthroat trout, burbot, and white sturgeon. Meanwhile, mining contamination is just one of many threats to our waterways. For instance, one study found that tiny microplastics are more common in our seas than what was once believed. Plus, oil and gas spills are a threat to many water bodies such as the Peruvian Amazon. One important way to reduce the impacts of coal mining is to reduce our dependence on this planet-heating fuel in favor of more modern technology that is safer for both humans and animals. For instance, towns in rural Virginia are adding over 1 million new jobs by focusing on solar energy instead of coal. And a West Virginia town that has historically relied on coal is transitioning to clean energy. How often do you worry about the quality of your drinking water? Never Sometimes Often Always Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. You can help out by taking actions like enrolling in community solar or installing rooftop panels. Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
