Society for Threatened Peoples warned on the dangers of the climate change

Polar scientists and the Arctic Council deliberate on climate change at the Indigenous people of the Arctic fear for their survival In view of the Arctic Conference beginning today in Potsdam the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) warned on Wednesday on the dangers of the climate change for the 400,000 indigenous people of the Arctic. The more than 30 indigenous peoples are the first victims in the world of the climate change. They are threatened with the destruction of their means of subsistence. For years the indigenous people have been observing the catastrophic consequences of the climate change in their immediate surroundings. Scientists should pay more attention to this knowledge: this was the warning given by the GfbV to the Polar scientists from all over the world now meeting in Potsdam. The indigenous peoples in Siberia, Alaska, Labrador and in Nunavut (Northwest Canada) have lived for centuries from hunting ice-bears, walruses, seals and caribous, from breeding reindeer, fishing and collecting wild plants. The climate change has affected nature so fundamentally that the indigenous people are no longer able to adjust to the changed conditions. So the herds of wild animals have changed their migration paths and feeding-grounds. Ice-bears, walruses and seals are suffering from lack of food. The indigenous peoples of the Arctic face many threats to their survival as the climate change has enabled the opening up of ever more oil and gas fields. These massive interventions into the environment have made it all the more difficult for the indigenous people to survive. "The climate change must not be used to plunder the resources of the Arctic”, was the plea of the GfbV to the Arctic Council, which in the frame of the Arctic Conference in Potsdam is deliberating on the International Polar Year 2007/2008. The Arctic Council is an international forum of the eight countries bordering on the Arctic and the indigenous peoples living in the Polar regions.