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Hunger in the Arctic With climate change, Inuit food supplies may come up short. Story and photography by Isabelle Groc 38 Planning February 2013 LAST summer, James Simonee, a resident of Pond Inlet on Canada’s North Baffin Island, went out seal hunting. He heard that killer whales were in the area chasing narwhal—also called narwhale—and decided to investigate. He saw a large group of narwhal very close to the shore seeking refuge from the killer whales in shallow waters. All Simonee had to do was to wait on shore and shoot. “The killer whales helped me get the narwhal,” Simonee says. In the eastern Canadian Arctic, climate change and the resulting loss of sea ice during the summer have opened new hunting territory for the killer whales, which can now compete more easily for food that they and the native people both favor. Simonee catches about three narwhals a year, sells the tusks, and shares the muktuk, the vitamin-rich outer layer of skin and blubber, with family and friends. Simonee got lucky this time, because climate change most often works against Inuit hunters, who have increasing difficulty bringing home species such as caribou or Later and shorter ice freezes make getting to Inuit hunting grounds harder and more dangerous. American Planning Association 39 Narwhals (above), whales, fish, ringed seals, and caribou are all important food sources for Inuits, but harvesting them is becoming more difficult. 40 Planning February 2013 nities are not necessarily in a position to go out hunting and exploiting other species at that INUVIALUIT time of the year if they do not NUNAVUT have the financial resources to buy boats and gasoline. “Opportunities don’t translate into Yukon NUNATSIAVUT Newfoundland actual harvesting,” Ford says. Northwest & Labrador Terrorities On the other hand, changNUNAVIK ing environmental conditions create unprecedented opporCanada Quebec tunities for industrial development projects—and they could further impact the Inuit’s local due to difficult wind conditions. He also food supply. One of the biggest resource notes a significant delay in ice freeze-up in extraction projects ever proposed for the the Iqaluit region of 1.7 days per year dur- eastern Arctic, the Mary River iron ore ing the same period. project, could have significant impacts on Younger hunters are even more vulner- caribou habitat and migration movements able as they don’t have the knowledge and as well as on marine species including bowskills to cope with dangerous ice conditions. head whale, narwhal, beluga, and walrus. “They still hunt, but they hunt less,” James The open-pit mine, owned by Baffinland Ford says. Iron Mines Corporation, would be built Conversely, the open water period has about 100 miles south of Pond Inlet, along extended in the summer, but local commu- with a railway and port that would allow A US lask A a Inuit communities Map courtesy Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, www.itk.ca ringed seals that are part of the traditional Arctic diet, along with whales, fish, plants, and birds. “Inuit live and breathe climate change. There are significant impacts to the ability of Inuit to get food and access the animals,” says Terry Audla, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, a group that represents Inuit (about 55,000 people) living in 53 communities in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Northern Quebec, and Northern Labrador. “It is becoming tougher to navigate the ice,” Audla says. With warmer temperatures, the sea ice takes longer to form in the fall and breaks up earlier in the spring. Because of stronger winds and more unpredictable weather patterns, it is becoming more dangerous for the Inuit to travel along the ice, which they use as a platform to access their hunting grounds. James Ford, assistant professor of geography at McGill University and head of the Climate Change Adaptation Research group, has estimated that for the Iqaluit region, the hunting season has been reduced by nearly 45 days between 1982 and 2010 James Simonee with a narwhal tusk. American Planning Association 41 it—19.2 percent between 2001 and 2011— puts increasing pressure on the availability of food and on sharing networks that the Inuit have always traditionally relied on. “In Iqaluit, there are not as many ringed seals as there were, [and] caribou are not as close as they used to be,” says Leesee Papatsie, an Iqaluit resident. “There are lots of people so it is harder to harvest compared to some communities.” Papatsie, a mother of five children, is one of the founders of the Facebook group “Feeding My Family,” started in May 2012 to protest the high cost of food in Nunavut. In just a few months, the group grew to more than 20,000 members, and was used to organize food price demonstrations in several communities across Nunavut, as well as in Ottawa in the summer and fall. Access to traditional foods is shrinking, thanks to climate change, while store-bought food remains economically out of reach. icebreakers to ship the ore through Arctic waters year round via Foxe Basin and Hudson Strait. In September 2012, the project was approved by the Nunavut Impact Review Board and in December by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. Negotiations are under way toward finalizing an Inuit Impact Benefit Agreement, which would clear the way for the corporation to apply for permits. Close to the bone It is still unclear what these industrial development projects will mean for the Arctic in the long term, but the Inuit are already feeling the effects of global pollution. The Inuit Health Survey, conducted by the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment at McGill University, found that 43 percent of Inuit women of childbearing age in Nunavut have blood mercury levels above Health Canada guidelines. That finding led to the Nunavut Department of Health recently advising women of childbearing age to avoid ringed seal liver due to its high mercury content. Mercury can affect brain development in children and unborn babies. “When we look at where the mercury is coming from, it is global pollution because everywhere we are using more energy,” explains Laurie Chan, a toxicologist with the University of Ottawa. While indigenous food types are still important to Inuit cultural and social identity, 42 Planning February 2013 the lack of financial resources and time severely constrains their ability to secure traditional food sources. Hunting gear, snowmobiles, and powerboats are expensive to acquire and maintain, which drastically reduces the number of people who can go out hunting. “Hunting is always a gamble. There is no assurance that you are going to be successful, and what is being gambled is money. It is no longer just time and energy but scarce dollars as well, so you either have to be very confident in your skills and the environment or have sufficient money that if you guess wrong you can go out and hunt another day,” says George Wenzel, a cultural ecologist in the department of geography at McGill University. Those who have the money to hunt typically hold full-time jobs and can only hunt on the weekends, and those who have more time to go out hunting cannot afford to do so. Consequently, traditional foods have significantly declined in the last few decades in the North. According to the Inuit Health Survey, traditional food makes up only about 16 percent of the caloric intake of Inuit in Nunavut, down from over 23 percent in 1999. Wenzel, who studied the local community of Clyde River on Baffin Island, indicates that in 2001 there were 233 grams of traditional food available per person and per day in that region, down from 843 grams in 1980. The rapid population growth of Inu- Challenges Changing environmental conditions combined with difficult socioeconomic conditions severely impact food security. Not only are the Inuit less able to bring traditional food to the table, but they often cannot afford store-bought foods, either. Food imported to the region is quite expensive because of the distance it must travel. Sara Statham, who recently completed her master’s degree at McGill University, discovered that 54 percent of public housing residents did not have enough money for groceries and could not get traditional food during the winter of 2010–2011, when the sea ice froze two months later than the long-term average in Iqaluit. In 2010, data released from the Inuit Child Health Survey found that nearly 70 percent of Inuit preschoolers in Nunavut live in food-insecure homes. This food crisis has prompted the government of Nunavut to announce plans to establish a food security coalition with Inuit organizations. “We need to make sure that the resiliency of [traditional] food that is harvested locally remains strong and at the same time ensure that the right foods are being stocked and shelved in the stores and that they are made affordable,” says Terry Audla, whose group ITK has formed a National Inuit Food Security Working Group. ”If Inuit lived in the south, they would be amazing farmers and harvesters. But they live in the north and they prefer to live in the north.” n Isabelle Groc is a freelance writer and photographer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. See more of her work at www.tidelife.ca. ON A RELATED TOP IC Photo courtesy Joyce Rowley Lobsters Under Threat The American lobster, a New England icon and the focus of a multimillion dollar fishing industry, is believed to be disappearing due to increasing ocean temperatures caused by climate change. In a recent study, researchers Robert Glenn, senior biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and Richard Wahle, marine biologist at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center, found that the young-of-the year or “crickets” were “The nonexistent in the area forecast is between eastern Long dire. Island and Martha’s There is Vineyard in 2010 and no happy 2011. ending to “The trends in this.” population abundance Robert Glenn, senior biologist with are not localized the Massachusetts but are happening Division of in Buzzards Bay, Marine Fisheries Rhode Island Sound, Narragansett Bay, Long Island Sound, and the offshore canyons south of Cape Cod. All show similar declines in population abundance,” Glenn said. Epizootic shell diseases, oil spills, and fishing mortality, on the other hand, have local impacts. The first year of a lobster’s life is spent as a larva drifting in the top three feet of the ocean. It then settles as a tiny five-millimeter cricket in the shelter of bays and estuaries, where it will spend the next five years growing to adulthood. At water temperatures higher than 68°F, egg-bearing females seek cooler, deeper water offshore. If eggs hatch offshore, currents may not bring larvae to their usual habitat, the study found. And if the crickets make it inshore these days, they are reaching sounds, bays, and estuaries with record temperatures. Glenn said that for the first time in over 70 years of data collection, water temperature in the study area exceeded 68°F for more days than Rhode Island lobsterman Lanny Dellinger with a cricket. These young lobsters are disappearing. the longterm average in 13 of the last 16 years. Surface temperatures hit a record 78°F in parts of Buzzards Bay in 2009. Gulf of Maine lobsters are doing better, Wahle said, perhaps because the Labrador Current offsets higher ocean temperatures. But this past summer saw increases in water temperatures there as well. And loss of lobster crickets now means depletion of adult lobsters in five to seven years, or by 2020. “The forecast is dire. There is no happy ending to this,” said Glenn. n Joyce Rowley Rowley is a freelance writer and a former planner. A version of this article was originally published in the March 2012 issue of Commercial Fisheries News. American Planning Association 43