Rethinking Greenland and the Arctic in the Era of Climate Change

New Northern Horizons

Frank Sejersen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317542513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

This ground-breaking book investigates how Arctic indigenous communities deal with the challenges of climate change and how they strive to develop self-determination. Adopting an anthropological focus on Greenland's vision to boost extractive industries and transform society, the book examines how indigenous communities engage with climate change and development discourses. It applies a critical and comparative approach, integrating both local perspectives and adaptation research from Canada and Greenland to make the case for recasting the way the Arctic and Inuit are approached conceptually and politically. The emphasis on indigenous peoples as future-makers and right-holders paves the way for a new understanding of the concept of indigenous knowledge and a more sensitive appreciation of predicaments and dynamics in the Arctic.

This book will be of interest to post-graduate students and researchers in environmental studies, development studies and area studies.

1 Introduction

Climate change and the emergence of a new Arctic region

The very landscape in which northern people have established societies is being shaken by the melting Arctic. Due to a changing icescape, hunters are experiencing greater difficulty gaining access to their prey. Due to changes in the temperature of the sea, fishermen are dealing with the fluctuating presence of fish. In certain places in the Arctic, communities are threatened by erosion when waves arise during storms, when rivers flood over and when the permafrost thaws. These natural phenomena carve out and undermine the very ground on which the dwellers have constructed their communities. It follows that communities in these locations are going to need to rethink their very existence, the way they perceive themselves and the way they organize their societies; indeed, they are going to have to anticipate new futures.

One of the stories circulating in the media that fosters a sense of hope is the story of Inuit people taking up and improving the harvesting of potatoes in Southern Greenland: Man may be in the midst of a crisis but he is nonetheless able to cope and adapt through change. Here, the constructed image of an Inuit turning into a farmer is used as a fantastic indicator of the possibilities of humankind to adapt and to pursue cultural change. Even though the Greenlandic potatoes are suggestive of a success story, in many ways it bespeaks only a minor portion of the sweeping social, cultural, economic and political changes that are taking place in the Arctic today, changes and developments that are being driven, to a certain extent, by climate change. Faced with a veritable procession of challenges, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain the stance that people (just) have to adapt, because the process is neither simple nor linear.

Issues of climate change have put the Arctic on the map in new ways, and have incited the world to reconsider how the region and its population are being approached. The melting sea ice and the shrinking Greenlandic ice cap challenge the Arctic’s special role in the imagination of the West. Now, the dominant understanding is that the Arctic is opening up. Its evident emergence has become, almost overnight, a powerful symbol of a new age. It is no longer distant but has become the focus, the concern and the interest of the world. Even within the Arctic itself, people’s experiences with the changing icescape and their new role on the world stage have given rise to new self-perceptions and to new kinds of discourses that are related to social and environmental change.

According to the Danish novelist, Jens Christian Grøndahl (2009), various reports about the melting Arctic, and particularly the news stories about the two German freight ships that in 2009 managed to sail the Northeast Passage without any help from icebreakers on their way to South Korea, have caused existential unrest and a feeling of disorder. For Grøndahl, the Arctic has always occupied a dual and dynamic place in our imagination, somewhere between ‘nature as the great other’ and the civilizing project of man. In this sense, he claims, the Arctic has borne a familiarity with the rainforest and the desert, but those regions, according to him, have come to be crosscut by highways and pipelines and have thus become accessible. Only the frozen North, on the edge of the world, has maintained its relative impenetrability and inhospitality – primarily due to its cover of ice. In this imaginative perspective, the Inuit have only been able to survive because of their strenuous efforts and ingenuity. Grøndahl argues that it is this strong image of the North as the negation of human existence that has made the polar explorers, who were often struggling in vain against the forces of ice and snow, stand out as heroes in the context of a mythology about the nineteenth century’s trials of strength that were played out between science and the wilderness (see also Bravo & Sörlin, 2002). This fascination or spell of the hostile and unconquerable Arctic was ruptured by the two German freight ships. He finds the consequences of this ‘deflowering’ of the Arctic myth, as he calls it, to be enormous and he compares it to a wall breaking down, allowing light to enter in and requiring us to re-orientate ourselves in space. He perceives it to be a state imbuing us with an alienated and homeless feeling that leaves us with a new and unsettling sense of the Earth as round. In many ways, he is addressing the concerns of a character and magnitude often expressed in the media. News from the Arctic about melting ice and news concerning the Inuit indeed create a sense of uneasiness about the stability of the planetary system. The research community has built a stronger and stronger case about how the Arctic ice and permafrost are disappearing, opening up the North while simultaneously challenging the existence of northern peoples’ livelihoods and the future of the globe as we know it. The risks and dangers of the far North are linked not only to exploration and exploitation but have also taken on new meaning because changes in the Arctic have been linked to images of ‘global tipping points’ and irretrievable global processes which threaten everybody on this planet. It is within this concept of an inhospitable cold wilderness and an unstable global system that a new Arctic emerges. New positions and roles of Inuit and other Arctic peoples are emerging as well. Although indigenous peoples compose only some 10 per cent of the Arctic population of 4 million, they have been the focus of the public’s interest and imagination. Considering the fact that indigenous peoples have gained land claims and self-governmental institutions in many regions, this places them in a highly influential position when it comes to influencing the direction of development in the Arctic.

This book is about how climate change in Greenland and the Arctic can be approached and about how strategies for dealing with these changes are entangled in complex webs of meaning, anticipations and politics of collective social goals to such an extent that it is hard to apprehend the challenges looming ahead. Moreover, the Arctic is facing an impending transformation. According to a scientific overview report produced by the Arctic Council, the diminished sea ice will very likely be concomitant with an increase in marine transportation, in the offshore extraction of oil and gas, and in the availability of access to other resources (ACIA, 2004, p. 11). This opening of the Arctic may have an impact on the economic, social, cultural and environmental spheres and may require that questions of sovereignty, security and safety will need to be revisited. A new landscape of risk and possibilities is emerging, indeed. This book’s central argument is that we are going to have to rethink how we approach and understand the Arctic, not only because the ice is melting but also because the political and societal scenes are changing — and they are changing rapidly. The Arctic peoples are taking up a new and prominent political position, both as stakeholders and as collective rights-holders, and the international political cooperation in region-building institutions like the Arctic Council lays out a completely new political agenda. Arctic peoples are actively changing, creating and anticipating the very world they perceive to be their homeland. This creative process cannot be understood purely as adaptation or simply in terms of coping with climate change. The Arctic peoples are reorganizing and transforming their societies, and are entering into new political and economic partnerships in order to further their societal visions. The talk about climate change and ways of adapting do not take place in a vacuum and Arctic peoples are now in a position where they have to relate climate issues to contemporary political, social, economic and cultural barriers and drivers as well as to different visions of the future. Because Arctic people’s societal visions are an important mover of anticipation and action, I consider them to be future-makers.

Climate change is certainly generating a new landscape of risk, which, in some areas, affects the life-nerve of communities and erodes the foundations of their way of life. In other areas, where climate-related changes are felt but understood to be transpiring as part and parcel of the world’s natural cycles, concern is also prevalent because the changes are increasingly regarded as becoming entrenched. Although the Arctic is generally presented in the media and in scholarly culture as one single climate region, the diversity of the challenges related to climate change phenomena cannot be underestimated. The same is true of Greenland. Despite the fact that the country has a population of only 57,000 inhabitants, this huge island encompasses a natural and human diversity. For some hunters, the changing ice conditions open up new hunting opportunities while other hunters are experiencing curtailed mobility and waning accessibility to animal wildlife. In some cases, even small changes in the extent and quality of the sea ice have a massive impact on human activities and safety. The landscape of risk is, of course, not solely related to environmental matters, but is also constituted by the interplay of multiple factors including social organization, technology, skills and economic opportunities. As a consequence, many hunters and fishermen typically relate climate change concerns to other societal issues like questions about quotas, market possibilities, public investments and governmental priorities, just to name a few of the areas that are integrated in their total understanding of their landscape of risk. In some cases, climate change may not be the most pressing problem for people inasmuch as they are able to diversify their activities and innovate. In fact it may be the prices they are getting for their fish and the wildlife management regulations that might be straitjacketing their resource flexibility. In Chapter 7, which focuses on indigenous practices and knowledge, these issues, in correlation with an aggregate social field, are examined with an eye toward challenging our understanding of what we habitually perceive as ‘local knowledge’ and ‘climate change problems’.

In this book, I aim to add a dimension to the climate change debate, a dimension that I find to be missing in much of the academic and public understanding of Arctic processes. Based on my studies in Greenland, I propose that the emphasis put on Arctic peoples as victims of climate change and on adaptation might be diverting our attention away from how people navigate a changed Arctic in multiple ways and from how climate change related issues may actually be emerging in unforeseen places and ways. It is not only a matter of commissioning more ethnographic studies but also a question of addressing the conceptual approaches with which we can try to understand life and change in the Arctic. The book redirects the focus away from the question of how to adapt to climate change in favour of the examining question of who to become when adapting to climate change. The point of departure is that who to become when adapting to climate change is tantamount to thinking of communities on another scale and to creating new images of social life. This perspective that I adopt here serves to redirect the focus away from the more environmentally based studies and away from vulnerability assessments.

By rethinking our approaches, we may catch sight not only of new problem-relations but possibly also of new human resources and how new routes and passages are anticipated and created. While some of the discussions and themes of the book are related to scientific and scholarly studies of community vulnerability, adaptation and resilience — primarily in Canada, where these studies are prevalent — the primary focus of the discussions relates to the hyper-industrialization of Greenland.

The political ambitions for a stronger and economically more self-reliant and self-governing Greenland fuel priorities and the societal changes that are taking place. In this perspective, some natural phenomena emerge as significant resources while other natural phenomena garner less attention. In Greenland, the increasing priority on the rapid development of oil and mining activities is immanent in societal discussions. However, one particular project stands out — and I have chosen this to be the focus of my discussions about societal change: it is the proposed construction of an aluminium smelter near the town of Maniitsoq on the west coast of Greenland. Even though its construction has not yet even been decided upon, this particular smelter has had an enormous impact on society and on the way the people living there understand the landscape of risk. It does so to such an extent that it stands out as a textbook case that clearly demonstrates how Arctic peoples, in their capacity as future-makers, are by the mere act of anticipation changing society as well as relating to — and making responses to — climate change. The emerging new Arctic may be understood as being driven by continuous constructions and negotiations of horizons of possibilities and expectations. In this perspective, the anticipation of futures stands out as the major driver and mobilizer of action. Moreover, emerging from this perspective is the fundamental question, ‘How do we want the future society to be?’ rather than ‘How do we adapt to these changes?’ By addressing the former question, the issue of climate change takes on another character and takes on a more socio-political and non-technical connotation.

The smelter can be understood as being entangled in climate change issues in many ways. First, the smelter is going to be powered by hydroelectricity that will be derived partly from the melting Greenland ice cap. Second, it will contribute significantly to Greenland’s increased emission of CO₂, and thus position Greenland in a political predicament with respect to global climate. Third, it will add problems to the pallet of climate-related issues experienced in communities, even those that are far away from the smelter itself, and will thus come to influence their life worlds, choices and opportunities. By focusing on how Arctic peoples creatively mobilize and perform new societal ideas, as well as how they perceive and address the problems at hand, the Arctic emerges as more than the ‘ground zero’ of climate change, as is so often presented in the media. Furthermore, this approach stresses that environmental and climate change related problems are not to be regarded as detached from political strategies, economic priorities, social dynamics and cultural aspirations.

Zoning a region, assembling a problem and anticipating solutions

The Arctic is often envisioned as the cold zone north of the polar circle or the zone around the North Pole where the most salient characteristic is the ice. The delineations or zonings of the region have therefore followed biophysical criteria, such as the extent of the tree line, the boundary of continuous permafrost, the areas measured according to the winter and summer solstices, or the areas where the mean temperature for all months of the year is less than 10° Celsius. When the Arctic is primarily understood as an environment, it sets a particular stage that may not only conflict with how the North is approached by different parties but also impacts negotiations of perspectives and the dynamics of region-building that are taking place.

Today, there is a widespread perception that the Arctic is to be approached and understood as one region. The Arctic as one region is a product of political and scientific representation as well as of other human practices like network construction, political cooperation and the dissemination of news, etc. The region evoked is the product of an effort and a systematic selection of features that are advocated as being genuine for the region (Keskitalo, 2004, p. 2) and are made relevant in institution building. The region is framed and practiced in ways that guide our attention in particular directions and influence how we formulate questions and answers. Thus, the framing influences what is considered to be relevant and valuable research and facts as well as what is to be seen as appropriate cooperation and networking. When the region is perceived in environmental terms, the environment becomes the framing device for the discourse posing both potentials and problems relevant to the way we understand agents and human relations. This further influences the role we assign to climate change in the interpretation of community dynamics.

The Arctic understood as one region is, according to Keskitalo (2004), a relatively new development. Historically, the North (as seen from the South) was — and particularly in North America — perceived not so much as a region but more as a place for explorers where fame and fortune were potential rewards (Delgado, 1999; Potter, 2007; Riffenburgh, 1993). The icy and barren North was a place to endure, overcome and fight against, with the ultimate purpose of returning home to the South. It was perceived as a sublime but fundamentally different and inhospitable environment that was not suitable for civilized human life. As pointed out by Brody, ‘[m]any [whites] believe that each degree northwards is a degree closer to the margins — or beyond them’ (Brody, 1975, p. 80).

Numerous diaries and representations from polar explorations describe the immense hardships faced by the various expedition teams’ members and depict the North as a region that is difficult to overcome and enter. Pictures of ships wrecked in — and taken down — by the ice, leaving the men exposed within an icy hell, are plentiful. Records kept by merchants and explorers also bear witness to catastrophic episodes, like the disaster in 1777 in East Greenland, when some 50 whaling ships were icebound and abandoned by their crews and the incident in 1835, where only 20 out of 70 whaling ships returned from the Davis Strait. These records and numbers similarly bespeak a history of intense European, Russian and American activity and resource extraction in the North with devastating consequences for the ecosystem and the indigenous people...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: climate change and the emergence of a new Arctic region
• 2 Resilience, human agency and Arctic climate change adaptation strategies
• 3 Mega-industrializing Greenland
• 4 Reforming a society by means of technology
• 5 Place consciousness and the renewal of Maniitsoq
• 6 The social life of globalization and scale-makers
• 7 Indigenous knowledge and indigenous future-makers
• Index