Archive for February, 2009

The Jokkmokk Winter Conference brought together students, policy makers, and youth from all over the North to discuss the changing Arctic and what we, as young decision makers can do about the situation.

Over three days we had presentations from environmental specialists, local representatives and academics from the Circumpolar world, followed by intensive workshops. The workshops resulted in a concrete list of recommendations for policy makers in the north.

Our last day at Jokkmokk began with a short presentation by a Sami representative about the Laponia World Heritage Site. Laponia is a large part of Swedish Lapland, which is one of the few heritage sites including an indigenous people, as well as the environment in which they live.

The conference closed with a panel discussion between the participants and government representatives from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada, the United States, and the Swedish Sami Parliament.

Despite experiencing frustrations with the workshop process, we felt that the discussion with government representatives was for us, one of the most rewarding parts of the conference. It was then that we had to chance to see how our efforts were received. It was satisfying to address our concerns directly to politicians and to have them so well received. The governmental representatives, as well as the conference organizers encouraged us to keep voicing our concerns and ideas.

Below, we have included a list of the recommendations that came out of the conference.

Summary of Recommendations from Young Arctic Professionals and Youth

With the changing climate in the Polar Regions comes an increasing need for better cooperation between residents, scientists and policy makers. As early career professionals and youth, we want to take this opportunity to share with you, the policy makers, our views on various aspects of changes occurring in the Arctic. You are making policy that will affect our generation and our children and grandchildren, therefore it is critical for you to know our thoughts, desires and needs on these issues.

We recommend that you:

• Develop communities sustainably with subsidies to increase energy efficiency, encourage community gardens and recycling programs, and cleaner public transportation;

• Preserve the environment and diversity through National or International Parks that are managed to maintain native plant and animal diversity;

• Encourage volunteer and community paid positions that will clean up contaminated area and work toward protecting nature;

• Develop and fund research in the North where indigenous peoples work directly with industry to share knowledge, breed new plant types to sustain in the Arctic, and other research initiatives that will ensure the protection of intellectual property rights related to the use of traditional knowledge for commercial purposes;

• Create a fund to help funnel a percentage of the profits from resource extraction in the circumpolar Arctic towards sustainable community development and education initiatives;

• Promote public education on the ongoing changes and how we can sustainably adapt

• Fund initiatives to share knowledge on best practice techniques across the Arctic;

• Encourage Arctic States to build economies on renewable/alternative sources of energy; oil and natural gas exploitation must be conducted in a sustainable fashion without environmental harm;

• Develop protective protocols for the transportation of toxic or radioactive waste in the Arctic seas;

• Support technology as a means to promote communication between circumpolar communities.

• Strengthen dialogue between policy makers and citizens, in this vein we request the inclusion of young delegates to the Arctic Council and other important policy making conferences (eg. COP 15) and bodies, and to integrate these delegates into the main delegation’s decision making

We realize policies need to be developed to protect the Arctic and the rights of the residents. We encourage you as policy makers to work with residents and youth when developing such legislation. Incorporating indigenous and young people on committees and through action groups is one method to ensure collaboration and effective policy development.

Hello!

Here are some of my thoughts about today’s events at the conference…….

So today’s hot topic was a ‘Green Revolution’ in the Arctic. I found the topic fascinating to consider and I really enjoyed the presentations from two Swedish academics on the subject. In their presentations, Beatrix Alsanius (Swedish University of Agricultural Studies) and Peter Sylwan (Lund University) introduced us to the basic factors behind a ‘Green Revolution’ and how this could be feasible in the Arctic. Dr. Alsanius especially focused on the Arctic and outlined the types of crops it would be possible to grow in the Arctic in the future (according to current climate change predictions), as well as the scientific and technological challenges involved in the implementation of the concept. According to their presentations, I learned that the Green Revolution they were referring to was an imagined movement of sustainable agriculture and horticulture that would use modern technology to increase yields per square hectare. The warming of the Arctic, projected to continue long into the future, would allow for a number of southern crops to be raised in the Arctic.

I found it strange that in both the presentations and in the workshop on the subject, we were all working from the basic premise that a Green Revolution in the Arctic would be a ‘good’ thing. For me it was difficult to focus on the discussion in the workshop especially because the discussion covered a range of questions about how best to implement the Green Revolution, such as how to deal with fertilizer pollution, before I felt we had even established that a Green Revolution ought to be implemented in the Arctic.

Strangely enough, it was only the Canadians in my workshop who brought up questions relating to whether or not a Green Revolution is the right thing for the Arctic and for Arctic residents, or not. This was strange because there were also Arctic youth from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia and Iceland. The Canadians brought up questions of whether or not this imagined new wave of sustainable agriculture, suddenly possible due to the warming effects of climate change in the Arctic, would be financially viable, socially relevant, or environmentally sound.

Our questions ran along these lines:

Would the purpose of the Green Revolution be to make Northern residents self sufficient in producing their own food supplies, thereby ending the need to import food?

Would the purpose of the Green Revolution be to supply jobs for Northern residents by creating a specialized industry growing, for example, ingredients for pharmaceutical drugs?

How would the traditional knowledge of the Arctic’s indigenous peoples be integrated into the Green Revolution and be protected from potential exploitation?

What would be the Green Revolution’s structure: large-scale, centralized commercial format or small-scale, community gardens dispersed across all the Arctic communities?

What would the environmental impact be of importing a large number of new plant species that risk becoming invasive and disrupting the local ecosystems?

Where would the funding for the initial set-up of these greenhouses come from? What about the funding to maintain the set-ups?

Unless these economic, environmental, cultural, political, financial and social aspects are addressed, then the discussion of a Green Revolution is only relevant in the wider global context, and not in the specific context of the Arctic.

Or so I think…..

Listening to a talk by Mark Lynas (Oxford) about Global Warming, at the Jokkmokk Winter Conference right now. He just concluded that the first thing we’ve got to do is stop burning coal.

Won’t write much right now, as I’d like to listen to him, but wanted to log in and start blogging.

I arrived in Jokkmokk, Sweden Saturday (Jan. 31) afternoon, with prof. Lassi Heininen (University of Lapland), a student from Yellowknife and my boyfriend Ben. We checked into our cabin at the camping centre, caught a ride into town and ate some greasy schnitzel. In the morning, we awoke to brilliant sunshine, and walked the half hour into the lovely, little town of Jokkmokk. I must say, I am smitten, it is an utterly charming town and I am very happy to be here. After finding some breakfast at a sweet, little cafe and wandering around town a bit, I borrowed a kick sled form the local hotel, and kick-sledded my way back to our cabin, where the rest of the students from the University of Lapland where also just arriving.

We all headed to the Jokkmokk City Hall for the inauguration of the conference, welcoming from a variety of Mayors, and a delicious spread of smoked salmon, reindeer meat and other tasty foods. Was very happy to see Carolee, Laura and the other interns arrive and am looking forward to catching up with them.

—-1 pm—-

This morning we had presentations from Mark Lynas, a journalist living in Oxford, who is the author of “Six Degrees”, and ‘High Tide – news from a warming world”, he gave us a great, easy to understand and digest talk about Climate Change. This afternoon we’ll view his film “Six Degrees”.

After Mark’s talk, we listened to Thomas Ries, the Director of the Institute for International Affairs, in Stockholm. Ries gave us a fantastic talk about the Global Ecological Crisis and the Nordic Far North. He was able to provide a comprehensive outlook on where we’ve come from, our current situation and where we may be headed, from a political perspective, as well as environmental and social perspectives. It was refreshing and realistic to hear things from a broad perspective, not just an environmental one.

We’ve just returned from a lunch break and will be breaking up into parallel workshop groups for the afternoon.

—7 pm—

Well, I joined the “East and West workshop on future perspectives in the North – how will the next 20 years change our way of life in Northern Europe, North America and Northern Russia”. Unfortunately, I found it quite unproductive. We immediately broke into small groups of between 5 and 8 people and were asked to discuss topics of concern for northern areas in terms of climate change. We were to come up with recommendations, which will be presented to governmental reps at the end of the conference. My group was to discuss adaptation. Pretty vague. And it was rather like pulling teeth. We all babbled a bit about random topics, but came to no conclusions. At the end of the workshop, the break-away groups all came together to share our recommendations and narrow them down to two or three. Some groups seemed to have pretty fruitful conversations and had lots of recommendations, but nothing seemed concrete in my mind. Eventually the moderator, Mark Lynas pushed us to discuss the option of an Arctic Treaty, similar to the one for the Antarctic. Then there was discussion about such a treaty taking influence away from already existing organizations such as the Arctic Council, and taking power away from new, self-governing First Nations and indigenous groups. Lynas seemed to think that such a treaty wouldn’t interfere with subsistence needs and rights of indigenous people, but I think that is assuming indigenous people won’t and haven’t changed and their subsistence needs have not developed and they are not concerned with development such as oil and gas development, which any northern Canadian knows is not true.

Harry Borlase argued for giving the Arctic Council more power, as an alternative to an Arctic treaty.

Anyway, we came up with a couple of rather vague recommendations, which I think we will try to refine in the next couple of days.

After the workshops, we had a short presentation from Michelle von Gyllenpalm, of Vattenfall, which (as I understand) is the state-owned power company in Sweden. The poor lady got an ear-full from a couple of the students, who seemed well-informed about Vattenfall’s investment practices.

Then we watch Mark Lynas’ film “Six Degrees”, which was, as he warned us, pretty Hollywood.

Then dinner. Now Swedish Dancing: “You are the Dancing Queen. Oh Yeah!”