POLAR LAND & LIFE DAY

IPY

On June 18th, 2008, the International Polar Year 2007-8 (IPY) launched its fifth ‘International Polar Day’ focusing on Land and Life: the plants and animals of polar lands and the changing permafrost and hydrologic systems. This Polar Day occurred as hundreds of researchers focus on Arctic environments. It has been timed in conjunction with the Ninth International Conference on Permafrost (NICOP) in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the UNEP TUNZA International Children’s Conference in Norway, part of IPY’s continued role in raising public awareness of polar science.

Polar landscapes and terrestrial ecosystems extend from the tree line of the continental tundra to the remote northern islands of the Arctic, and from southern cold maritime islands to the dry continental deserts of Antarctica. Ice, particularly in the form of permafrost and seasonal snow cover, plays a dominant role in all these environments. Biological communities survive through remarkable adaptations and extensive migration. A range of climatological and ecological pressures act on these northern-most and southern-most ecosystems. IPY research is assessing changes in vegetation (so-called greening) methane production (due to permafrost degradation), wildlife health and migration patterns, coastal erosion, and freshwater availability.

A special Land and Life webpage has been prepared with information for Press and Educators, details of current projects, profiles and contact details for scientists around the world, images, background information and useful links and resources. There will also be a wide range of educational and community activities, including classroom experiments, a virtual balloon launch, and three live web-conferencing events connecting polar scientists to students around the world.

About IPY and International Polar Days
The International Polar Year 2007-8 is a large international and interdisciplinary coordinated research effort focused on the polar regions. An estimated 50,000 participants from more than 60 countries are involved in research as diverse as anthropology and astronomy, health and history, and genomics and glaciology. This fourth IPY was launched in March 2007, and will continue through early 2009. During this IPY, a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions. These Polar Days include press releases, contacts to experts in several languages, activities for teachers, on-line community participation, web-conferencing events, and links to researchers in the Arctic and Antarctic.

The remaining schedule for International Polar Days:
September 24th 2008:

People social sciences
December 2008:

Above the Poles astronomy, meteorology, atmospheric sciences
March 2009:

Oceans and Marine Life marine biodiversity, physical oceanography

Contact For more information regarding this event:

Dr Rhian Salmon, IPY IPO Education and Outreach Coordinator ipy.ras@gmail.com, +441223221297

Dr David Carlson, IPY IPO Director, ipy.djc@gmail.com, +447715371759

Please visit the IPY Land and Life webpage.

Ninth International Conference on Permafrost: http://www.nicop.org/ International Polar Year http://www.ipy.org/

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HIGH ARCTIC EXILES

RESOLUTE BAY, NU

Here’s an op-ed piece from Michael Byers worth considering. In it he states that Prime Minister Stephen Harper should apologize to Canadians he calls “High Arctic Exiles”, something that Byers believes is not only the right thing to do, but it would help cement Canada's northern claims.

Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in global politics and international law at the University of British Columbia, is serving as a consultant to the Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans as it conducts hearings across Nunavut.

MICHAEL BYERS ARTICLE
Globe and Mail Newspaper
June 12, 2008

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has apologized for the behaviour of previous Canadian governments on three occasions now: the Chinese head tax, Maher Arar, and residential schools. Others are, or will, also be seeking apologies, but none is more compelling - both morally and politically - than a small group of Inuit who were arbitrarily relocated half a century ago.

Last summer, Mr. Harper asserted that, "Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty in the Arctic: either we use it or we lose it."

The statement prompted one Inuk to ask me: "What the hell is he talking about? We've been using it for thousands of years, and we're not going anywhere."

The anger is particularly intense in Canada's northernmost two communities. The Inuit call Resolute Bay "Qausuittuq," the place where the sun never sets, and Grise Fjord "Ausuittuq," the place where the ice never melts. These Inuktitut names reflect the fact that, historically, the Inuit did not live this far north.

The decision to relocate 17 families to the Queen Elizabeth Islands in 1953 and 1955 was motivated by concerns about possible Danish or American claims. The Inuit, identified by government officials by numbers rather than their names, were essentially treated as flagpoles. They were subsequently utilized as a resident source of cheap labour for RCMP detachments, and for the Royal Canadian Air Force Base at Resolute Bay.

There was, to be fair, some talk about the need to relieve the overpopulation of Inukjuak, the source Inuit community in Northern Quebec. But if the interests of the Inuit were paramount, why move them more than 1,500 kilometres northward to a High Arctic desert that bore little resemblance to their home?

There were reasons why the Inuit hadn't lived this far north before. Resolute Bay is an expanse of frozen gravel swept by persistent and powerful winds. Even in June, a stroll along the shoreline left me wishing that I'd brought my parka along. For the Inuit, it was like landing on the moon. Their traditional knowledge and hunting techniques were out of place, there was not enough snow to build igloos, and the total darkness from November to February was both unfamiliar and disabling.

Tuberculosis added to the misery. Those who survived the first few winters did so by scavenging for food from the Air Force dump, or bartering their bodies.

The survivors call themselves the "High Arctic exiles," and they include some of the Inuit's most influential leaders. John Amagoalik, the "Father of Nunavut," was five years old when he was relocated. So too was Martha Flaherty, who later became the president of Pauktuutit, the Inuit Women's Association. Senator Willie Adams, then a teenager, had the foresight to jump ship at Churchill.

In 1996, the Canadian government agreed to a $10-million compensation package. But it ignored the recommendations of three different bodies - the House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Canadian Human Rights Commission, and Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples - and refused to apologize.

The refusal was described by Mr. Amagoalik as a "real slap in the face for us." Although the agreement recognized the "pain, suffering and hardship," it also stated that "government officials of the time were acting with honourable intentions in what was perceived to be the best interests of the Inuit."

The Inuit who signed the 1996 agreement felt they were doing so under duress. Their overriding concern was for the financial wellbeing of the elders who, after 40 years of waiting, were running out of time.

Much has happened in the past 12 years. Relations between the Inuit and the Canadian government have soured over failures to implement the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, to address crises in housing, health and education, and to invest in basic infrastructure - such as a deep water port at Iqaluit and small craft harbours elsewhere.

At the same time, climate change and runaway oil prices have vaulted Arctic sovereignty to the top of Ottawa's economic, defence and diplomatic concerns. Mr. Harper has promised new ice-strengthened patrol vessels for the Navy and a polar icebreaker for the Coast Guard, and blocked the sale of Radarsat-2 - a satellite designed for mapping sea-ice and tracking oceangoing vessels.

Yet the Prime Minister has largely ignored the Inuit, which is a serious mistake indeed. As the Canadian government recognized in the early 1950s, Inuit use and occupancy of the Arctic is central to Canada's sovereignty claims. With the exception of Hans Island - an insignificant speck of rock between Ellesmere Island and Greenland - no country contests Canada's title to the islands of the archipelago today.

It's the status of the Northwest Passage that is now at issue. As the ice melts, foreign shipping is increasing and Canada's claim to control the waterway has come under renewed scrutiny.

Canada's position rests on two pillars: so-called "straight baselines" that were drawn between the outer headlands of the archipelago in 1985, and millenniums of Inuit hunting, travelling and habitation on the sea-ice.

The second pillar was given constitutional status when the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement affirmed that "Canada's sovereignty over the waters of the Arctic archipelago is supported by Inuit use and occupancy." It also carries weight abroad, with the International Court of Justice having recognized (in a 1975 case concerning the Western Sahara) that nomadic peoples can acquire and transfer sovereignty rights. But any argument based on a transfer of rights is weakened if the recipient fails to uphold the bargain, or to address other basic grievances held by the transferees.

The Inuit know the clock can't be turned back. They want to work with other Canadians to forge a better future. They seek to preserve the Arctic environment, protect our common sovereignty, and provide their children with a quality of life similar to our own.

But the Inuit also want respect. For a Prime Minister who cares about sovereignty, apologizing to the High Arctic exiles would be an excellent next step.

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WWF SAYS HALT SALE

OTTAWA

The World Wildlife Fund urged Canada to postpone the sale of oil and gas rights in the Beaufort Sea, wor­ried the drilling areas would overlap with key Arctic habitat for polar bears and whales. “This sale is premature due to the absence of a completed Beaufort Sea management plan that would protect sensitive habitats, which polar bears, beluga and bowhead whales need for their survival," Peter Ewins, director of species conservation at WWF-Canada, said in a state­ment. "In addition, there is no proven technique for recovering oil spills in such dangerous iced waters. "As such, the proposed June 2 sale must be delayed until a proper management plan for the Arctic region is in place, the group said. Alternately, an expedited environmental assessment for the region, with guarantees that oil spills could be quickly and easily mopped up, would satisfy both environmentalists and energy firms, it said.

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Content © Eric W. Manchester. All rights reserved. Any use without prior permission is prohibited. http://www.ewmanchester.com/

POLAR BEARS THREATENED

WASHINGTON (Canwest)

Rapidly melting sea ice led U.S. President George Bush's administration to put the polar bear on its list of threatened species, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne said in Washington.

Although Kempthorne said that the decision should not be used to open the door to regulat­ing greenhouse gas emissions from human activ­ity using endangered species legislation, the Harper government said the concerns raised are clearly linked to global warming and the urgency of addressing pollution from industry that is trapping heat in the atmosphere.

"Let's be clear that there's no doubt that global warming is a major factor and a major concern in this," Canada's Environment Minister John Baird told reporters after question period in the House of Commons. "It's not just global warm­ing, but it's human-induced global warming which is what we need to take action on."

Kempthorne acknowledged that polar bear populations have more than doubled since the 1960s, but he unveiled a series of satellite images of the North Pole from 1979 to last fall showing melting Arctic ice.

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UPPING ARCTIC ANTE

OTTAWA (Canwest)

The federal govern­ment boosted its bid to claim millions of square kilo­metres of Arctic and Atlantic Ocean seabed. Ottawa said it will double its spending on scientific research projects to $40 million over four years in an attempt to prove the North American con­tinental shelf extends far beyond Canada's 200-nautical mile limit. If Canada is success­ful with that bid, it can make the legal claim that its jurisdic­tion ought to extend over an area that some say could con­tain billions of dollars worth of oil and gas reserves.

Canada has until 2013 to make a case to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that it ought to be granted jurisdiction over the extended continental shelf, off the northeast coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's high Arctic and in a wide cres­cent off Canada's East Coast. Canadian scientists believe the extended continental shelf could be as large as 1.75 million square kilometres, about the combined size of Canada's three prairie provinces.

"We will make our claim in 2013 and it will be based on sound science. The rules are very clear. They're not ambigu­ous," said Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn.

Other polar countries, including the United States, Russia and Denmark, also are trying to prove their claim to some of the same area. The U.S. hopes to snag an extra 600,000 square kilometres off the coast of Alaska, an area that some U.S. researchers believe con­tains $1.3 trillion worth of oil and gas reserves.

The U.S. Geological Survey, in fact, believes that as much as one-quarter of the world's oil and gas reserves may be buried under the Arctic Ocean's floor. In August last year, a Russ­ian submarine planted that country's flag on the ocean floor under the North Pole, a gesture that was taken to be a symbol of Russia's aggressive stance toward extending its sovereignty in the Arctic. Russia also has boasted that, unlike Canada and some other polar countries, it has a fleet of heavy icebreakers that can operate year-round in all ice conditions.

But Lunn said the physical presence of one nation or another's assets will not be a factor under the UNCLOS sys­tem. You can have all the ice­breakers you want and you can put all the flags on the ocean floor you want," said Lunn. "It's not going to help your claim. It's not going to make an iota worth of difference. It is based on sound rules."

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Content © Eric W. Manchester. All rights reserved. Any use without prior permission is prohibited. http://www.ewmanchester.com/

ARCTIC BLOG

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

For anyone wanting to read my entries in chronological order, instead of the newest-to-oldest order appearing in my Blog, my daily journal is now posted at the bottom of the Arctic Expedition page of my website. There, you can follow my journey as it unfolded. There is also a link to galleries of photos from my 76-day voyage across the western Canadian Arctic. Bon Voyage!

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All content Copyright © Eric W. Manchester. All rights reserved. Any use without prior written permission is prohibited. http://www.ewmanchester.com/

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
Thursday, May 15, 2008

Something new, newsy and free.

If you want more free exposure for your marine-related organization, my website now includes a section dedicated to nautical news and coming events from all over British Columbia and nearby American states – and perhaps from farther away, too.

To view my news page, go to my website home page and click on the Nautical Notes photo icon.

www.ewmanchester.com

WHAT TO SUBMIT

What you promote about your group is limited only by your imagination:

On-the-water and land-based events or programs.

Results of regular club races, club-hosted and special regattas.

The accomplishments of your members and their boats.

A photo of something memorable, exciting or entertaining about your group.

News releases regarding your group.

Buy-sell-trade-wanted notices about boats, equipment and crew.

Membership and recruitment info.

Logo can be included.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Send your news tips via email to news@ewmanchester.com

Either embed your notice in the body of the email, or send it as an attachment.

Attachments must be Word or Text formats only. No pdf or video files.

Name, address, phone number and contact email address must accompany your submissions, for verification (contact info won’t be published, unless requested).

All photos submitted must identify who owns the copyright to the image(s) (including full contact information), and include specific written permission for the image to be published.

Photos must be in jpg format.

My news page includes subscription, forwarding and comment functions.

If you want to include a link to your group’s website in your submission, it will be fully-functional if you post and maintain my website link on your group’s website.

Material may be edited for space or content, and will be posted as quickly as volume, time and space permit. Submit as often as you like, BUT, remember that spammers are hunted and impaled.

Submit to: news@ewmanchester.com

MY PROMISE
I will not sell your links or contact information to any party. Images submitted will only be published on the news page, and will not be otherwise used without prior written consent.

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All content Copyright © Eric W. Manchester. All rights reserved. Any use without prior written permission is prohibited. www.ewmanchester.com