The Arctic Messenger - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 18

al and biological well-being - had been invisibly compromised. They had played no role
whatsoever in the cause, and as with the ozone situation, there was no prospect for a “quick
fix”.
Details of the POPs and mercury stories will form an important portion of this topic,
but at this stage, I want only to note that international action has been taken over the last 20
yearstocurbthereleaseofozone-depletingsubstances,POPsandanthropogenicsourcesof
mercury from entering the global environment. Therefore, although the ecosystem is slow
to purge itself of these substances, Arctic indigenous peoples could be forgiven if - at the
turn of the century - they felt some cautious optimism for their future. Sadly, this was not
to be and the most difficult challenge of all began to emerge.
At the same time that the United Nations was establishing the Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the late 1980s, indigenous peoples in the Arctic began to
speak about their observations on weather and climate. There were common themes across
the circumpolar Arctic. They could not predict the weather in the same way they could
in earlier years. In addition, times of snow buildup and melt seemed to be changing, as
were the behaviours of freshwater and marine ice. Even the quality of snow suitable for
igloo construction was changing. Weather was becoming more variable and extreme con-
ditions seemed to be occurring with greater frequency. Summers appeared to have many
more warm days and to be generally wetter. However, because of melt patterns, in some
regions, lakes were growing smaller. The list went on.
Since then, there has been an explosion of scientific research devoted to climate
change. This has built a widespread scientific consensus that the global climate system has
been warming since at least 1950. The observed warming is attributed to increased atmo-
spheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and certain other gases since the onset of the in-
dustrial era in about 1750. As we will see in later chapters, this information is periodically
reviewed and assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2 .
A large part of this topic is devoted to the Arctic dimension of climate change and we
will notice a remarkable convergence of the observations coming from indigenous tradi-
tional knowledge and that being generated by classical science. It turns out that the Arctic