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Sunday 05.02.2012

Alaska to Greenland

Looking at Greenland to understand climate change or more...Mary Hiratsuka's newest commentary....

Environmental scientists, climatologists and
glaciologists flock to Greenland in the name of
climate change research to analyze the increase of
temperatures, the movement of ice and snow
reflectivity.

Most of the research is conducted on uninhab-
ited regions of the Greenland Ice Sheet – where
ice cores reveal an invaluable climate history dat-
ing back 110,000 years – and the common
assumption is that the rest of the island is equally barren.

Interesting new forms of attention are broadening global awareness of Greenland as an inhabited, self-governed territory – and not just an ice sheet showing the
effects of climate change. Reporters from the Washington
Post, BBC News, the Economist and the Guardian and Al-
Jazeera, among others, have been calling the Inuit
Circumpolar Council’s office inquiring about climate change
and its visible effects in Greenland.

Most frequently, reporters ask how climate change affects
Greenland, but what isn’t addressed is how the media’s cov-
erage of climate change is affecting Greenlanders.

“Greenland is being invaded by the world’s politicians and
journalists to get the story on climate change,” said Lene
Holm, director of environment and sustainable development
for ICC, Greenland and also the appointed chair for
Greenland’s Institute of Natural Resources, Pinngortitaleriffik.

While much of the media frenzy surrounds the melting
ice sheet that covers approximately 80 per cent of the world’s
largest island, foreign research teams focus pri-
marily on the geological and biological changes
while neglecting to take note of how these glob-
al implications and attention are affecting the
people who live on this island and have resided
here for the past four and a half millennia.

Holm’s most recent research project, Sila-Inuk,
a study on the impact of climate change in
Greenland, focuses on the observations made by
Greenlanders, which are based on the concept of
traditional ecological knowledge.

Similar to other indigenous people who have
depended on traditional knowledge since time
immemorial, Greenlanders such as Holm contin-
ue to assert its equivalence to Western knowledge.

“For many years Greenlanders have struggled to have their
knowledge acknowledged by scientists, especially by the man-
agement of living resources, of the home rule government.”
Holm said.

“The ideal situation would find a way to make use of those
two different knowledge bases,” Lena said. If such coopera-
tion were more frequently applied in Greenland, it would
better benefit researchers and hunters, thus eliminating the
tension between the two groups.

As Greenland becomes a popular destination for scientific
research, the resulting media attention is slowly altering inaccu-
rate notions of Greenland: fewer see it as an uninhabited iceberg
and more understand it to be a geographically rich land occupied
by a unique group of 55,000 people with a fascinating culture.

Malik Milfeld, information coordinator for Greenland
Tourism, said a few thousand more tourists have visited
Greenland this summer. Estimates of visitors from 2005 to
2006 increased from 16,500 to 22,000, and the numbers are
expected to continue to rise.

“People come because tourism is booming worldwide, and
people are going to remote destinations,” Milfeld said.

“We think that climate change is one of the reasons people
are interested in visiting Greenland, but we like our tourists
to visit other regions in Greenland than the Disko area, which
receives most of the tourists. Greenland is the world’s largest
island, and we have a lot of space and land to be explored and
discovered by more tourists,” Milfeld said.

Sermitsiaq, Greenland’s national newspaper, recently print-
ed an article about the response of Ilulissat residents to the
increase of tourism.

“Tourism is good, but good tourism is even better,” Kirsten
Strandgaard, museum director of Knud Rasmussen’s home,
told Sermitsiaq.

Residents complain about how intrusive tourists have been
when special events such as weddings or confirmations have
occurred. Some tourists have asked family members to pose
for pictures when it should be evident that these are intimate
family events.

As a result, Strandgaard posted 10 guidelines for how
tourists should approach Greenlanders.

Without mutual understanding, a gap of misunderstanding
will separate Greenlandic people from the rest of the world in
more than the physical sense.

Mary Hiratsuka of Dillingham is a 2007 graduate of Dartmouth College.
She is the recipient of the Lewin Post-Graduate and the Stefansson fel-
lowships and an intern at the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Nuuk.