Recently, the Canadian government asserted that NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) will ensure Canadian sovereignty of the Arctic. NORAD, however, is a U.S.-led organization headquartered in Colorado Springs. NATO, on the other hand, is headquartered in Brussels. This decision by the federal government gives disproportionate control over the Canadian Arctic and threatens Inuit sovereignty as well as the already fragile balance of the Arctic ecosystem.
In fact, the Inuit peoples of the Arctic have asserted sovereignty over their territory since the beginning of Canadian Confederation. But it was only in 2009 that Inuit leaders from Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia drafted and rectified the Inuit Circumpolar Declaration on Arctic Sovereignty, which affirms their rights to self-determination. It’s a truly exceptional declaration of sovereignty, and one that has been repeatedly endorsed by several heads of state.
What’s more, the project threatens to further weaken the Arctic ecosystem, which is hard hit by climate change.
At a seminar on the Arctic in 2022, organized by the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, ecologist Myers-Smith from the University of Edinburgh outlined several important facts about the effects of climate change in the Arctic.
A few years ago, we were saying (that the Arctic is warming) twice as fast as the rest of the planet, but last year, some studies showed that it’s warming three times as fast, and then, in December 2021, we noted that it’s warming four times as fast, » explained the scientist.
Since then, several scientific reports, published in the journals Nature and Geophysical Research Letters, have confirmed Myers-Smith’s studies: the Arctic is an extremely vulnerable ocean ecosystem, and is indeed warming four times faster than anywhere else on the planet.
According to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published last year, the Arctic is a crucial part of the cryosphere, the Earth’s frozen zone, and plays an important role in regulating the global climate system. The region is warming rapidly and is experiencing rising sea levels and coastal erosion. The IPCC report warns that climate change is having serious consequences in the North, such as more intense fires and flooding. For example, in the summer of 2023, the city of Yellowknife was evacuated due to a massive and virtually uncontrollable forest fire.
According to Myers-Smith, scientific studies in the Arctic focus on what’s happening on the surface, but most of the really important questions arise below the surface, where a large amount of carbon is stored in the Arctic.
It’s a sort of freezer for the planet, storing frozen carbon. So the expression used by climatologists – what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic – has become commonplace among scientists. With climate change, we’ve opened the door to this freezer, » explains Isla Myers-Smith. From one day to the next, the team’s scientists can attest to coastal erosion. Every day, we couldn’t walk where we had walked the day before, » says Isla Myers-Smith.
In fact, over the past century, global average sea level has risen by around 20 centimetres. The melting of Arctic ice is expected to accelerate sea-level rise even further. Experts estimate that sea levels will rise by up to 7 meters by 2100, if nothing is done to protect the polar circles, the Arctic and the Antarctic. These changes are likely to cause incalculable and irreversible damage across the planet. Indeed, all major coastal cities risk being submerged, along with several small island nations. (Greenpeace USA)
To limit the damage, the Inuit of northern Canada want to continue protecting their territory, culture and environment. They want to retain sovereignty over their territory, and refuse to allow Inuit Nunangat to be used as spoils of war, to be appropriated by the great military powers for the eventual extraction of its gigantic resources. Their ancestral homeland, which they call Inuit Nunangat, encompasses not only land but also water, sea and ice. Inuit Nunangat represents 40% of Canada’s surface area and over 70% of its coastline. Aboriginal peoples make up half the population of the Canadian Arctic, some 200,000 people, and live in over 51 communities throughout the territory.
Military damage during the Cold War
During the Cold War in the 1950s, the U.S. and Canada built three early-warning radar lines across the North American continent to detect nuclear missile strikes from the Soviet Union. Many of these sites were structured as military bases and occupied by U.S. and Canadian air force personnel. In the late 1980s, Canada and the U.S. abandoned most of these radar lines, including their buildings, fuel tanks, degreaser and antifreeze barrels, batteries, vehicles and landfills, simply leaving them to decompose and contaminate the surrounding land and water. It took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up these radar sites.
In addition, during this period, the Canadian government forcibly relocated 92 Inuit to isolated islands in the High Arctic. All these moves led to painful separations and trauma among Inuit families. These events were documented by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996. While the 2014 final report of the Qikiqtani Truth Commission describes the pernicious long-term impacts of colonial practices on the Inuit of the North. These commissions revealed that the federal government never consulted the Inuit on policies and decisions related to their territory, and neglected the needs of Aboriginal communities for several decades.
Militarization exacerbates climate change and biodiversity loss
At their joint press conference in Nunavut, Blair and Joly failed to recognize that Canada’s modernization of NORAD and NATO operations would have disastrous climatic and environmental impacts in the Arctic.
As permafrost melts and oceans acidify, Arctic wildlife is increasingly threatened. Canada’s Species at Risk: Nunavut report shows that climate change is causing more species to become endangered than ever before, including caribou, polar bears, fish, seals and whales. The deployment of military aircraft and ships in the region for NORAD and NATO will result in more noise, more invasive species and environmental damage, worsening the environment for species already at risk. The loss of biodiversity in the North will have a negative impact on Inuit hunting and gathering practices, and on their food security.
In speeches and interviews, Canadian Defense Minister Blair never mentioned the military’s impact on Inuit communities or the climate. Blair has only said that climate change is making the Arctic Ocean more accessible to Russia and China. In a way, this situation justifies Canada’s decision to militarize the Arctic.
Towards an Arctic zone of peace
Furthermore, the Canadian, European and Russian governments would do well to follow the example of the Inuit peoples of the Arctic, who cooperate and are committed to peace-building through the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) and the Arctic Council (AC). The ICC is a non-governmental organization founded in 1977. It represents some 180,000 Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia, and has consultative status with the United Nations. In 1989, Mary Simon, then President of the ICC, published an article entitled Towards an Arctic Zone of Peace: An Inuit Perspective in the Canadian magazine Peace Research. In this article, Simon warned her colleagues of a likely future:
Excessive military build-up in the North only serves to divide the Arctic, perpetuate East-West tensions and the arms race, and place our peoples on opposing sides. For these and other reasons, the militarization of the Arctic is not in the interests of the Inuit of Canada, the Soviet Union (Russia), Alaska or Greenland. Nor do such military preparations contribute to security or world peace.
At the time, Simon proposed measures to get the Arctic states to commit to rectifying a treaty to designate the region as a zone of peace and a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ).
In his article, Simon stresses that safeguarding the Arctic environment must take precedence over military exercises and activities.
Simon is now Governor General of Canada. His call to make the Arctic a zone of peace and a NWFZ must be urgently renewed as the climate crisis worsens and international conflicts intensify.
In the 2018 Utqiaġvik Declaration and the 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework, the Inuit have been explicit in their calls for peace and cooperation. The framework states:
Consistent messages on international issues were raised by participants from all regions. These included the desire to maintain the circumpolar Arctic as a region of peace and cooperation through efforts to strengthen the international rules and institutions that govern the Arctic. Preserving the role of the Arctic Council as the main forum for circumpolar cooperation was identified as a priority by many participants.
In February 2022, Russia took over the chairmanship, but following the invasion of Ukraine – the other seven permanent members (Europe and Canada) decided to boycott Council meetings. So, instead of supporting negotiations aimed at protecting the Arctic ecosystem and peace between the different peoples of the North, Canada and the other six permanent members of the Arctic Council want to militarize the territory. The warlike stance of these governments contradicts the Inuit approach. As the Inuit Circumpolar Council reminded the Arctic Council in a public statement on March 7, 2022:
Inuit are determined that the Arctic remains a zone of peace, (a phrase coined by former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev). ICC has repeatedly echoed this message in all its governing documents, most recently in the 2018 Utqiaġvik Declaration in which it was tasked with laying the groundwork for the declaration of the Arctic as a zone of peace.
Current ICC President Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk reiterated the Inuit right to peace and the priority of making their homeland a zone of peace in her presentation to the Senate Arctic Study in November 2022. She emphasized the ICC’s values:
disarmament,
non-violent conflict resolution,
international cooperation, including with Russia.
To protect indigenous communities and the Arctic ecosystem, conflicts between Arctic states must be resolved by diplomacy and international law, not by guns and warplanes. The Canadian government must work in collaboration with all members of the Arctic Council, and adhere to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Finally, the Canadian government must respect the Inuit declaration of sovereignty and their demand for peace, cooperation and sustainable development in the Arctic. Thus, the Trudeau government must cancel all plans to militarize the North for NORAD and NATO, as the effects on all humanity and on Inuit communities will be irreversible.
Source: Pressenza
