Greenland

Arctic ICCE Project
Inuit Climate Change Enthnographies

Inuit Nation

Greenland is a country with many distinctions. It's the largest island on earth. It has the largest glacier in the northern hemisphere. Since 70 percent of Greenlanders smoke, they have the fastest growing rate of lung cancer in the world. It's home to almost mythical animals, like the single-horned narwhale, albino-like beluga whales and bedraggled musk ox. It has one of the best telecom systems on earth. And it is also the first and only country on earth run by an indigenous people.

Well, almost.

Even though the Greenland Parliament is run by Greenlanders, the nation is still a territory of Denmark. Denmark pays heavily for the privilege of maintaining this remnant of its old empire, providing 3.5 billion Danish Kroner in 2007 subsidies and support to the Greenlandic economy. Which is a good thing because there are only 58,000 people in the country, clinging to the coastal fringes of the island since the center of the land mass is covered with ice. Villages can be hundreds of miles apart and there is little infrastructure. In other words, providing educational and medical services is extremely expensive.

GREENLAND
Kalaallit nunaat

Crown of the World

If you look in the upper left hand corner of this map, you'll see where I have been record stories for the past four years. It's called the Thule region, encompassing the town of Qaanaaq (in red), Savissivik (in black) and about four other towns that are too small to show up on this map. The most important of these towns — for my purposes — is Siorapaluk, the most northerly, constantly inhabited village on earth. Apart from the Post Office and school, there is almost no cash economy in Siorapaluk

The Thule region and the even more remote southeast coast of Greenland are the only two spots left where most residents still live

almost-completely from subsistence hunting and fishing. The hunters travel by dog sled in winter in search of seals, narwhale, belugas and walrus. In the spring they're off in search of polar bear. In the summer there are birds to be had and the men continue to hunt seal in the open water from boats and kayaks. Year round they also catch small halibut and other fish in the fjords near their villages. In the rest of Greenland, from Illulissat to the Narsaq at the southern tip of the island, residents mix hunting and fishing with paying day jobs. But outside the Thule region and the Tunu region in southeast Greenland, the cash economy has become more important than subsistence hunting.

Taking the Heat

As much as any people on earth, Greenlanders are attuned to and dependant on the land beneath their feet. And they've begun to feel that land change. And not just land, but sea ice. The elders say they first noticed a decline in shorefast sea ice around the year 2000. That decline now appears to be accelerating. I would be surprised if the Greenland children now in elementary school are able to survive off full-time hunting by the time they reach adulthood.

The Project

Amid all the debate over climate change, one thing is incontrovertible. The Arctic is melting.

Fast.

According to the international Panel on Climate Change, warming is occurring at the poles ten times faster than it is in temperature regions.