Adapting when everything has changed - Climate Change Adaptation in Nunavut
By Arno Ratzinger
“Thinking back, everything… Everything has changed” this is Joanasie Karpik’s answer to how he experiences climate change. The Inuit elder from Pangnirtung, a small village in Canada’s North East, features in the short film “Nunavut: Changing Times” by Tim Harrison. The film gives an impression of how indigenous communities are experiencing climate change first hand. Joanasie describes how clouds are not as white as they used to be during winter time and how the ice has changed.
Joanasie Karpik is an elder of the Pangnirtung community. In the short film “Nunavut: Changing Times” he shares his personal observations of climate change.
While many people around the world share the observation of changing weather patterns, including me who writes this article in a t-shirt on an alarmingly warm November day, Inuit communities experience these changes in a much more impactful way. Joanasie explains how his community used to predict more or less the weather which is vital for their fishing and hunting activities. The starkly changing weather system has made these practices more difficult, some even impossible. Also the practice of cultural traditions has been impacted, as it is often dependent on natural phenomena. For example, Arctic hunting has become more difficult due to changing habitats.
Inuit communities’ adaptation to these changes have been the interest of researchers for many years. Studies have found a great flexibility and adaptation capacity, as indigenous communities changed their hunting patterns and developed food sharing mechanisms[1]. Researchers identified several reasons for this pronounced adaptation capacity. Inuits’ traditional knowledge, flexible use of resources and the group’s diversity and mobility all helped to smooth weather extremes and its consequences on Inuit livelihoods. Furthermore, the strong social network within and among communities has helped to adapt to new weather conditions[2]. Hence, the community’s resilience stems from its combination of hard skills and social network. I saw the effectiveness of this union in adaptation scenarios first hand when social media was used to source specialists in the aftermath of the Ahrtal flooding in Germany. Inuit communities are especially well equipped to leverage their skill sets in times of crisis.
While these successes in adaptation make one hopeful, many challenges for Native Americans in the Arctic are already visible and can only be expected to become bigger. As it is true for many forms of adaptation to climate change around the world, the most vulnerable parts of the community are finding it especially hard. A study on the vulnerability of Inuit food systems found that those with constrained financial resources have trouble substituting losses in hunting with store bought food. Also folks who are more reliant on hunting and other traditional forms of food sourcing struggle more during events of weather variability. This poses a dilemma for Inuit elders who want to pass on their knowledge of hunting and nature based diets, while knowing that these diets pose a risk in a changing climate.
Arctic fishing is an essential component of Inuit food systems. Climate change makes it an increasingly risky food source.
The struggle to pass on the knowledge that is essential for the group’s adaptation capacity is intensified by the changing climate. Many traditional practices are based on natural phenomena. For example many Inuit families do weeks-long camping trips during the winter to teach their children about hunting and cultural traditions. The short film shows a scene in which fishermen stand on ice while pulling out the fresh catch. In a warming world these trips become increasingly dangerous, as the travel routes on thinning ice become unpredictable. Additionally, animal populations are moving as part of their response to climate change. This adds to the uncertainty, making parents more and more unable to pass on their knowledge.
Intending to address these challenges, Inuit communities are also supported by policy making and Inuit self-governance. Nunavut was created as a federal territory in 1999, resulting in a majority Inuit constituency. A systematic analysis of adaptation policies found that adaptation is on the agenda across levels from the local to the federal level[1]. It also finds that there are large discrepancies among communities in their adaptation efforts. Some communities were found to have zero published adaptation measures, while others had over 200. The researchers find solid coordination across government levels, but criticize them for their lack of consistency over time. They also flag the fact that many plans do not explicitly integrate IQ into adaptation initiatives. IQ (Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit) encompasses the canon of indigenous knowledge and traditional values. As Inuit communities’ adaptation capacity partially stems from these practices, they should be explicitly included in adaptation initiatives. Lastly, they also find that many projects lack a measurement and evaluation phase. This makes it hard to learn from previous projects and to share best practices. These shortcomings are not limited to adaptation plans in Inuit communities. In fact they are common for adaptation projects around the world, making the region an interesting case study to learn from.
While adaptation in Nunavut is well on its way, it will eventually run into limits. Since the Canadian Arctic is one of the places most impacted by climate change, further changes can be expected. Although scientists have a hard time estimating exactly at what temperature arctic ice will retreat to an extent that would make Inuit livelihoods impossible, these scenarios do not solely exist in the most pessimistic scenarios. The possibility of losing their land due to climate change is a main argument in the debate around loss and damage. A topic that continues to divide world leaders, as we saw at COP27. Most discussed solutions propose payments made from developed countries that have polluted a lot to developing countries that are facing the starkest impacts of climate change without having caused the problem. This raises the question whether communities in Nunavut would see any of this money since Canada rather falls in the former of these categories.
For someone working on climate change and discussing it everyday at Fletcher, Native American history month has been an opportunity for me to educate myself about a unique frontline community and its adaptation efforts. Indigenous voices and climate realities still remain at the margins of the climate debate and I hope this blogpost can be an entry point for you to learn more about Native American communities, their experience of climate change and what they can teach the world about adaptation when everything has changed.
This is the first post in the Native American Heritage Month commemorative blog series.
[1] Ford, James D. "Vulnerability of Inuit food systems to food insecurity as a consequence of climate change: a case study from Igloolik, Nunavut." Regional Environmental Change 9.2 (2009): 83-100.
[2] Ford, James D., et al. "Vulnerability to climate change in Igloolik, Nunavut: what we can learn from the past and present." Polar Record 42.2 (2006): 127-138.
[3] Labbé, Jolène, et al. "The government-led climate change adaptation landscape in Nunavut, Canada." Environmental Reviews 25.1 (2017): 12-25.