Danger for indigenous people: Climate change enables plundering of the Arctic

The indigenous peoples of the Arctic are threatened through the climate change by a wave of destruction and the pillage of their natural resources. The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) issued this warning on Friday in the light of the Climate Protection Conference in Montreal (28.11.2005). "The Inuit, Evenks, Yakuts, Nenets and other indigenous peoples of the Arctic are suffering today already from severe effects of the climate change. But now western governments, raw oil and mining concerns want to make a profit from it and use the climate change to exploit the polar regions economically,” criticised the human rights organisation. This would be the deathblow for the more than 400,000 indigenous people of the Arctic, whose means of existence would be systematically destroyed. More than ten years after the beginning of the United Nations decade for indigenous peoples the threatening pillage of the Arctic shows that the international community has learned nothing from the serious consequences of the opening up of the natural resources for the indigenous peoples in the Amazon region.

It is estimated that about a quarter of the world’s resources of raw oil and natural gas, which have not yet been tapped, are to be found in the Arctic. In the north of Norway an installation is now being built in Hammerfest to liquefy natural gas, so that this can be exported from the Barent sea to the USA and other countries. Russia is opening up, with the support of companies from France, the USA and Norway, a gigantic natural gas field north of the Kola peninsular. China too, which is hungry for energy, is anxious to show the flag and has set up a research station in Norwegian Spitzbergen, which has been visited several times by Chinese research ships. The US government, without any regard for the indigenous peoples and the sensitive equilibrium of the environment, is in the process of opening up new raw oil sources in the north of Alaska. All the large international oil companies are at present investigating the possibilities of investment in the polar region.

The countries bordering on the Arctic give rise for concern with their attempts to extend their territorial waters in order to secure control over the lucrative natural resources. In accordance with the international convention of marine law the territorial waters are determined by the expansion of the continental shelf. Russia, the USA, Denmark and Canada are already measuring the continental shelf with the object of being able to extend their national frontiers to their advantage in the case of further melting of the ice. Russia does not even hesitate to declare half of the Arctic as its own territory.

Besides the natural resources what is also of interest for the neighbouring countries is the rich supply of fish and shrimps and the opening up of new sea-routes free of ice to the north of Canada and Russia in order to save energy and time in the transport of goods.

On account of the climate change in the Arctic herds of wild animals have changed their trails in the search for new feeding grounds and often hunting is not possible because of the breaking-up of the ice. Seals, walruses and ice-bears are suffering from lack of food and are threatened with extinction. The supply of freshwater fish is also declining, so that indigenous people in their tens of thousands are losing their means of sustenance. These massive changes are without precedent in the long history of the indigenous peoples.