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Conflicts Over
Land And Resources In The Modern World
Another Kind Of Cost: Local And Incoming Pollution
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The extraction of resources causes
pollution and environmental degradation. Valdez was the site of
a disastrous oil spill in 1988, when a tanker sailed onto the rocks
and thereby destroyed marine life over an enormous area. A representative
of the Khanty in the west Siberian oil fields has described the
cumulative long-term pollution caused by oil floating two inches
thick on the rivers, killing all life on the way. In this one small
area, he calculates that this has ruined 28 rivers which were previously
used for commercial fishing and 25 million acres of reindeer pasture.
Part of the tragedy is that oil and gas deposits often occur in
exactly the same places as the best fishing grounds. |
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Local military activity has also damaged
the environment. The Arctic became increasingly militarised during
the 'Cold War' between the early 1950s and the late 1980s. Military
bases have restricted the movements of Native peoples and in some
places have even forced them out of their homes altogether. They
have also often littered the landscape with rubbish. During this
period, nuclear testing on the Soviet island of Novaya Zemlya heavily
contaminated most reindeer pastures across the whole of Russia and
Scandinavia with pollution. |
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But not all the pollution in the Arctic
is created locally. Much of it is produced far away, in the industrial
cities of the temperate zones. These airborne pollutants may be
carried to the Arctic by prevailing winds or by the Earth's rotation.
An 'ozone hole', like the one discovered in the Antarctic, may be
forming in the Arctic too. Smoke drifting from industrialised countries
causes 'Arctic haze', while toxic chemicals are absorbed by plant
and animal life. The reindeer pastures in Scandinavia were contaminated
in 1986 by radioactive fallout from the meltdown at the Chernobyl
nuclear power station, far to the south in the Ukraine. |
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These poisons enter the food chain,
where they pass up from plankton to whales, or from lichen to reindeer,
and ultimately into the human body. At each stage, the toxic substance
becomes more concentrated. Along the coast, seals are now found
which contain a higher percentage of mercury than the ore from which
the mercury has been obtained in the first place. Heavy metals and
other toxins pass through Inuit mothers' milk into young babies.
Inland, radiation in the meat which they eat has caused a sudden
increase of cancer in the younger generations of Siberian reindeer
herders. |
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