Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France and a former leader of the Socialist Party, is a member of the European Parliament.
Duane SMITH is the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference of Canada and Vice-President of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, actively defends the cultural rights of “natives” by disseminating their...
WWF, which originally stood for World Wildlife Fund, then for World Wide Fund for Nature and became simply WWF in 2001, is the world’s leading NGO devoted to the protection of Nature. Based in Gland...
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established to determine, in a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent manner, the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic findings...
The Arctic region is highly sensitive to global changes in the environment. Acting as a barometer, this region illustrates the numerous problems caused by continued and increased human activity and its impact on ecology and geomorphology, as well as indirectly on geopolitics and society.
International experts have warned governments and public opinion for several years now about the alarming rise of temperatures in the Arctic. According to expert predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summer temperatures in this region will rise on average by 2 to 11 degrees before the end of the century. The experts have also observed a rise in average temperatures of 1 degree per decade since 1980. This global warming is also accompanied by a change in local hydrologic and river system atmospheric currents, as well as a thawing of the permafrost in certain areas.
The World Wide Fund (WWF) notes that the diffusion of contaminating substances in the water and soil (especially heavy metals) provoke the kind of geological modifications mentioned above which have a direct impact on the biodiversity of this polar region.
Duane Smith, the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, emphasises that in addition to the environmental impact, the economic and political future of local populations is set to change, due to the opening of new commercial lines creating easier access to numerous natural resources. The indigenous populations want to keep control of their destiny whilst maintaining their way of life, which is threatened with assimilation by western civilisation.
Ilulissat - Groënland: photo d'icebergs le long du fjord. © AFP- photo Michael Kappeler
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