Opel Project Earth: Learning from the Inuit

For the past few days they’ve been visiting Pond Inlet, on northern Baffin Island, to learn more about how climate change is affecting lives in the Arctic.  They’ve been hosted by WWF-Canada, with the logistics taken care of by David Reid of Polar Sea Adventures.   (See our first blog for an introduction to Opel Project Earth.)
Much of our time in the Arctic was spent at a field camp set up on the stunning shores of Eclipse Sound about 15km west of Pond Inlet.  The trials and tribulations of getting to and from the site by boat – past a picturesque iceberg as well as through dangerous and rapidly-shifting sea ice patches – provided an initial lesson in the uncertainties introduced by climate change.  While there, we spent time exploring changes in the tundra and marine ecosystems, and hearing from local experts, including Elijah Panipakoochoo, Sam Omik, Titus Alooloo, Ham Kadloo, and Mathias Qaunak.

(c) WWF-Canada/Martin von Mirbach
What have they learned? Well, the answers to that are starting to show up on the Opel Project Earth blog site as well as their Facebook page.  Our overall impression is that the participants have been enthusiastically receptive to the message that we’ve been sharing with them – that solutions to the climate change-induced challenges facing the Arctic require close attention both to the best science as well as the wisdom and experience gained by local Inuit residents.  Through the sharing of multiple perspectives we tried to convey the complexities of grappling with an issue that unfolds simultaneously at a variety of scales, from local to global.

We were especially pleased to be joined by Opel Project Earth’s “Arctic Ambassador,” the singer-songwriter Katia Melua.  Along with her star power (coming straight off a four-month sold-out concert tour across Europe), she came with a tremendous curiosity and enthusiasm (not to mention tolerance for the rigours of camp life in the Arctic).

For our part, we learned that the participants that visited us – from Germany, UK, Austria, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Belgium and Mexico – were ready, willing and able to leave any preconceptions about the Arctic on the plane (along with their luggage, but that’s another story).  They wanted the “real” story about the Arctic, and they definitely got it first-hand!  Like the Inuit, we hope that these ambassadors will now be able to take these realities back to Europe, and help improve understanding of the solutions the planet urgently needs now!