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The Inuit Hold George W. Bush Responsible for Their Melting Ice World

Professor Bruce E. Johansen

The debate over global warming now turns more frequently to legal liability — which individuals, corporations, and governments are responsible, and how should they be held to account? The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which filed a petition and obtained a hearing March 1, 2007 before the Organization of American States, seeks to establish a legal basis for liability in world forums for violations of their human rights from activities that are warming the Arctic. The Inuit in this case are very conscious of their pivotal role in a natural world that will not survive climatic business as usual.

The ICC represents the interests of roughly 150,000 Inuit spread around the North Pole from Nunavut (which means “our home” in the Inuktitut language) to Alaska and Russia. Nunavut itself, a territory four times the size of France, has a population of roughly 27,000, 85 per cent of whom are Inuit. From the top of the world, having been exposed to atmospheric perils from toxic chemicals and global warming, the Inuit find themselves in an unwilling but necessary position of international arbiters in an emerging “law of the air” that will eventually govern our shared atmospheric commons.

The OAS responded affirmatively early in 2007 to a request by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier, president until 2006 of the ICC, and two environmental law organizations, Earthjustice and the Center for International Environmental Law.

The Petition seeks a declaration from the Commission that emissions of greenhouse gases from the United States — source of more than 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases during the last century — are violating Inuit human rights as outlined in the 1948 American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.

Culture Imperiled by Warming

The Petition asserts that practice of the Inuit’s rights to culture, life, health, physical integrity and security, property, and subsistence have been imperiled by global warming. With accelerating loss of ice and snow, hunting, travel and other subsistence activities have become more dangerous, and in some cases impossible, the Inuit assert. In addition, drinking-water sources have been threatened. Some coastal communities may be forced to move to escape rising waters provoked by rising seas and increasing storminess.

The Petition does not seek monetary damages. Instead, it seeks cessation of United States actions that violate Inuit rights to live in a cold environment — not a small task, since such action will involve major restructuring of the U.S.’s economic base to sharply curtail emissions of greenhouse gases. The Petition anticipates the types of actions that will have to take place on a worldwide scale, including the rapidly expanding economies of China and India, to preserve the Inuit way of life, as well as a sustainable worldwide biosphere.

Inuit Hunters’ Experiences

The Arctic’s rapid thaw has made hunting, never a safe nor easy way of life, even more difficult and dangerous. Many Inuit hunters’ statements in the Petition said that Arctic weather has changed significantly since roughly the mid- 1990s. Simon Nattaq, an Inuit hunter, fell through unusually thin ice and became mired in icy water long enough to lose both his legs to hypothermia, one of several recent injuries and deaths reported in the Arctic due to thinning ice.

Nattaq was one of 63 Inuit from Canada and Alaska whose testimonies are included in the Petition. All of his gear also was lost in the water, leaving Nattaq stranded for two days. He now walks with prosthetic feet, and believes that God kept him alive to warn the world about global warming. “Today I am here because the creator allowed it,” said Nattaq, 61, a city counselor in Iqaluit.

Pitseolak Alainga, another Iqaluit-based hunter, said that climate change compels caution. One must never hunt alone, he said (Nattaq had been hunting by himself). Before venturing onto ice in fall or spring, hunters should test its stability with a harpoon, he said. Alainga knows the value of safety on the water. His father and five other men died in October, 1994, after an unexpected late-October ice storm swamped their hunting boat. The younger Alainga and one other companion barely escaped death in the same storm. He believes that more hunters are suffering injuries not only because of climate change, but also because basic survival skills are not being passed from generation to generation as in years past, when most Inuit lived off the land.

Thinning ice is of particular danger to hunters and other travelers across the Arctic. Ronald Brower of Barrow, Alaska, said: “One of my sons… was going to visit the next [whaling] crew… and he fell right through the ice halfway to that camp. I’ve seen my fellow whalers trying to go whaling break through the ice, because it’s melting from the bottom, and our snow machines have fallen through the ice.” Inuit hunters’ dogs have an ability to detect thin ice, which they may refuse to cross. Snowmobiles have no such sense.

Eugene Brower, also of Barrow, said that while pack ice was visible from the Alaskan north coast year -round until a few years ago, it has now retreated well over the horizon, forcing hunters to journey off-shore as far as 90 miles to find bearded seals and walrus (Petition, 2005, 41, 48). Some polar bears have drowned after swimming long distances, 100 miles or more, in search of ice floes.

Heat Rashes in the Arctic

Other Inuit have reported painful heat rashes, a condition previously unknown. With increasing inability to hunt, Inuit are being forced to buy imported food at prices several times that paid for the same goods at lower latitudes. Diabetes and other problems associated with imported food have been increasing. Drinking water obtained by melting ice has become dirtier. A warmer climate increases risks for insect-vector diseases, even West Nile Virus.

“Talk to hunters across the North and they will tell you the same story,” said Watt-Cloutier. “The weather is increasingly unpredictable. The look and feel of the land is different. The sea-ice is changing. Hunters are having difficulty navigating and traveling safely. We have even lost experienced hunters through the ice in areas that, traditionally, were safe! Our Premier, Paul Okalik, lost his nephew when he was swept away by a torrent that used to be a small stream. The melting of our glaciers in summer is now such that it is dangerous for us to get to many of our traditional hunting and harvesting places… Inuit hunters and elders have for years reported changes to the environment that are now supported by American, British and European computer models that conclude climate change is amplified in high latitudes.”

Frederick W. Kayser Professor of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Johansen is the author of the three-volume “Global Warming in the Twenty-First Century” (Praeger, 2006).