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An environment
at risk |
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It is difficult to travel far in the
Arctic without encountering the workings and effects of the global
capitalist industrial system, decades of socialist ideological excess,
or reminders of how strategically important the region was during
the Cold War. Vast oil producing complexes, such as Prudhoe Bay
on Alaska's North Slope, are linked to metropolitan centres by an
ever-increasing network of gravel supply roads. Oil and gas pipelines,
some of them rusting and leaking, snake across hundreds of miles
of tundra and mountain ranges, while seismic trails and the scars
of clear-cut logging are etched deep on boreal and tundra landscapes.
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Even in remote areas, far from any
human habitation, unwelcome encounters with rubbish and industrial
and military waste are reminders of the fragility, brittleness and
vulnerability of the Arctic, and of the intrusive nature of human
activity. In the northeast of Greenland, for example (an unpopulated
area within a protected national park), plastic bags, fishing nets,
barbed wire, fuel tanks and beer bottles are to be found washed
up on shores seldom visited by humans. On Alaska's Seward Peninsula
local people have discovered corroding aircraft batteries in rivers
which provide drinking water for summer fishing camps, vehicles
dumped by the United States military, and cannisters of mustard
gas half-buried in the tundra. And in 1994 five years after the
Exxon Valdez ran aground, spilling 11 million gallons of North Slope
crude oil into Prince William Sound, it was possible to talk to
fishermen from southern Alaska still trying to come to terms with
the impact of the disaster on their livelihoods. |
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The Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska's
Prince William Sound in 1989 illustrated the dangers of transporting
oil by sea, and recent leaks from Russian oil pipelines have raised
questions about their reliability and safety. Somewhere between
5-10% of Russian oil production is thought to be lost through leaks,
oil well blow- outs, waste and theft. Minor discharges from marine
vessels, such as tankers, freighters, fishing boats and coastal
ferries, operating in northern waters are also a source of pollution
and may not be readily monitored, but their impact on Arctic ecosystems
may be significant nonetheless. Polar bears, seals, sea otters and
sea birds are already frequent casualties of oil contamination,
while bowhead whale migration routes through oil and gas lease areas
in the Chuckchi Sea could be seriously disrupted if development
goes ahead. Scientists have described how the curiosity of polar
bears leads them to readily investigate unfamilar objects and smells,
including offshore drilling sites and oil cannisters in Arctic villages
and Inuit hunting camps. They also risk death by ingesting oil directly,
through licking oiled fur or through eating contaminated seals or
birds. |
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Oil persists for longer periods in
the Arctic because low temperatures result in low rates of evaporation
and relatively little light during most of the Arctic year reduces
ultraviolet radiation necessary for decomposition. The impact of
oil pollution on tundra environments may remain visible for several
years with lichens, which constitute the main source of food for
reindeer, and other plants especially vulnerable to contamination.
On land snow and ice cover may stabilise the oil during winter,
but spring melt only releases it (thus coinciding with the arrival
of migrating birds), while in marine environments Arctic sea ice
reduces wave action, which in more temperate regions would help
to mitigate the effects of oil pollution. Oil fires also produce
smoke clouds that are concentrated at very low atmospheric levels
by Arctic air inversions. Not only do smoke clouds from oil fires
reduce crucial levels of solar radiation, they contain pollutants
harmful to both human health and to the productivity of marine and
terrestrial environments. |
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Other threats to the Arctic environment
and on human populations are less visible, but no less real. UVB
radiation has effects on human skin, eyes and the immune system.
Atmospheric and marine pollution means organic contaminants enter
the food chain at every level. Because these persistent organic
pollutants break down more slowly in the Arctic than in warmer regions,
they pose greater dangers to human and animal populations. For example,
polychlorinated biphenyls (oily, man-made substances known more
popularly as PCBs, and which evaporate from rubbish dumps and burning
oil) have been found in the breast milk of Canadian Inuit women.
PCBs cause cancer and damage the neurological and hormonal development
of children. There is also high concentration of PCBs in some seal,
walrus and polar bear populations which threatens their reproduction.
High levels of mercury have also been found in the liver tissue
of ringed and bearded seals - both species constitute the primary
source of food for polar bears, as well as forming the basis for
the subsistence hunting culture of many Inuit communities. In Greenland,
one in six people have dangerous levels of mercury in their blood,
while other toxic chemicals found among Inuit include toxaphene
and chlordane. Tundra and marine ecosystems are also at risk from
the dumping of nuclear waste and heavy metal contamination. Nuclear
test explosions have been carried out near Novaya Zemlya in the
Russian Arctic, while radioactivity affects the northern Atlantic
and Barents Sea. The highest levels of radioactive pollution along
the Norwegian coast, for example, have not originated in Russia,
however, but from radiochemical plants in the United Kingdom and
France. |
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Global warming caused by increased
emissions of greenhouse gases also threatens to have a significant
impact on the Arctic and on the livelihoods of indigenous peoples.
Arctic ecosystems are extremely sensitive to climate change and
a likely increase in average winter temperatures of between three
to six times the global average is predicted. There is already evidence
that winters in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions are becoming warmer.
While the average temperature of the earth's surface is predicted
to increase by between 2°-5°C during the next fifty to one
hundred years, the Arctic regions are expected to have greater temperature
increases, of up to 10°C. Global warming could reduce the extent
of sea ice, permafrost would thaw more quickly in spring but take
longer to refreeze in autumn, fish stocks would fluctuate and the
migration routes of animals such as caribou would be disrupted as
forest, tundra and coastal habitats adapt to new environmental conditions.
Climatic change is also likely to disrupt millions of migratory
birds as they find less food at stop over points, wintering sites
and breeding grounds. Hunting, trapping and fishing activities would
be severely affected and the economies of small, remote communities,
already vulnerable to changes in global economic conditions, would
suffer drastically. |
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Arctic climatic processes influence
global conditions, which in turn contribute to further change in
the Arctic. Some scientists however are careful to point out that,
while global temperature data sets seem to suggest that there has
been a surface warming of between 0.3 and 0.6°C over the last
one hundred years, regional studies do not confirm that there are
any worldwide trends. Rather, atmospheric temperature trends in
the Arctic are seasonally and spatially variable. Nonetheless, there
is considerable alarm at the prospect of global warming, while affecting
the Arctic, melting the polar ice caps and resulting in a rise in
sea levels, thus threatening coastal towns and cities and low-lying
countries such as Bangladesh and the Netherlands. The melting of
Arctic permafrost will release huge amounts of methane which will
contribute further to the greenhouse effect. Climatic warming may
also result in greater cloud cover and higher levels of precipation
as a result of more water vapour (another greenhouse gas) in the
atmosphere. A hole in the ozone layer has been found over the Arctic
(as well as over the Antarctic) and if the ozone layer thins or
if the hole gets bigger, then scientists argue that there are a
number of implications not only for the Arctic but for the planet
as a whole. As ozone, a gas found between 20-50km up in the earth's
atmosphere, helps to reduce or filter high-energy ultraviolet radiation
from the sun, the thinning of the ozone layer means that more ultraviolet
radiation will reach the earth's surface. Possible consequences
include mutations in vegetation growth and an increased risk of
skin cancer in humans and animals. Ozone depletion may also contribute
to a gradual warming of the earth's surface. One of the main causes
of ozone depletion is the emission of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs),
human-made gases used in refrigerators and aerosols which are unreactive
and, once released into the atmosphere, help to thin the ozone layer.
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The Arctic has the unenviable advantage
of being a natural scientific laboratory for studying global environmental
issues. Some of the most alarming illustrations in recent years
that Arctic environmental problems are global rather than regional
concerns include the contamination of lichen and reindeer (which
eat the lichen) in northern Scandinavia in the aftermath of the
Chernobyl disaster, the discovery of PCBs in the breast milk of
Canadian Inuit women (which were found to be four times higher than
those found in women living in southern Canada), and Arctic haze,
which provides the best example of long-range transportation of
atmospheric pollution. A photochemical smog which is most problematic
during winter, Arctic haze contains pollutants which originate from
industrial activity such as coal and oil combustion and steel manufacturing
which are transported by air from Eurasia towards the north polar
regions where, because the colder air is more stable, the haze particles
persist. Sulphur particles are the most common component of Arctic
haze and not only do they threaten low-level ozone, they disrupt
atmospheric energy flows and contribute to acid rain. Other pollutants
include copper, lead, zinc and arsenic. They have been found in
lichens and mosses in Alaska, Sweden, Norway and Finland, but also
fall in some of the Arctic's prime fishing grounds. |
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