Wildfires in Canada & more– 5th Sep 2023

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is Rorshok Arctic Update from the 5th of September twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Devastating wildfires continue to rage across northern Canada. This wildfire season has already been declared the worst in recorded Canadian history, and it shows little sign of stopping soon. As of the 2nd of September, the total affected area is over 3.5 million hectares (over 35,000 square km or 13,000 square miles). The Federal Government initially declared a state of emergency on Tuesday the 15th of August and was then renewed on Tuesday the 29th. For evacuated residents, it is still not safe to return home. At least 200,000 people have been evacuated so far this year in Canada due to wildfires.

In order to effectively combat the cause of wildfires, the Government Agency Polar Knowledge Canada has announced $1.7 million Canadian dollars or $1.25 million US dollars in funding to be given to local Arctic communities to address the impacts of climate change and help them adapt to a quickly changing environment.

The Arctic Ocean is having just as hard a time as the land

A new study, published in Nature Climate Change on the 28th of August, shows that as the Arctic is warming the zooplankton are changing their behavior. Zooplankton are a key part of the ocean’s food chain, as a major source of food for everything from clams to blue whales. Zooplankton prefer the dark to avoid predators, normally migrating to the surface of the sea in the winter before retreating below in the summer when there is little darkness. As the climate warms and sea ice gets thinner, more sunlight will reach the upper ocean, with zooplankton migrating to depths earlier and they won’t return to the surface waters until later in the year. As a result, zooplankton will have less time to eat in the algae-rich surface waters, reducing their own survival chances. There is a real risk of the collapse of the Arctic food web.

Staying in the Arctic Ocean, Gazprom, the Russian Natural Gas company, has become the first company to ship gas from outside the Arctic along the Northern Sea Route. The Arctic Ocean has once again seen rapid sea ice melting in twenty twenty-three, and Russia has not wasted time taking advantage of this. Earlier this summer the country began exporting oil shipments to China via the Arctic Ocean and has now started shipping natural gas via the same route because it shortens the voyage by about ten days when compared to the traditional Suez Canal passage.

Russian actions are having effects beyond the environment. On Monday the 28th of August, the defense ministry of the newest member of NATO, Finland, pledged to spend six billion euros or around 6.5 US billion dollars on defense. NATO members agreed to spend two percent of their GDP on defense in July this year. For further reading on this subject, Reuters has published a detailed breakdown of the subject entitled Dark Arctic: NATO Allies Wake up to Russian Supremacy in the Region. You can read the article with the link in our show notes!

Finland isn’t the only Arctic European country having trouble with Russia.

An international incident has erupted between Norway and Russia this week. Forty-two reindeer wandered across the border from Norway into Russia in search of food, finding Pasvik Zapovednik, a Russian national park. After grazing, all but two reindeer returned to Norway. Normally fenced off but frequently in a state of disrepair, the consequences have become costly and tragic. The forty returning reindeer have all been slaughtered by the Food and Safety Administration under concerns they will return to Russia or bring disease over the border. The Russian government has sent two compensation claims to Norway for their damage, one claim for forty-seven hundred dollars and a second for $4.4 million dollars. The Norwegian response to the compensation claim is unknown, but Norwegian authorities have already begun repairing the border fence to prevent further incidents.

Taking us over to the US Arctic, in the Fairbanks region of Alaska a new gold mine held its official groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday the 29th of August. In addition to the criticism that resource extraction inevitably raises regarding environmental disturbance, locals near the community of Tetlin have highlighted the transport of precious metals as a serious concern. The mine, named Manh Choh, will transport ore to a processing facility while passing through a protected wildlife corridor. Ninety-five-feet-long trucks are expected to depart the mine every twelve minutes, twenty hours a day, seven days a week, with trial runs starting this summer. The move was called into question as this could pose a serious safety risk to residents, commuters, school buses, and vulnerable wildlife.

This wasn’t the only mining story coming out of Alaska this week. However, this had a very different outcome. Bristol Bay, southwestern Alaska, might have the largest untapped reserve of copper and gold in the world. However, it is also the home of the largest sockeye salmon. Michael Regan, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, blocked the proposed mine, citing the potential impact on the vast salmon reserves that provide key sustenance to the Indigenous residents in the region. The Alaska state has referred a complaint to the federal Supreme Court to overturn the block.

Indigenous populations in Canada have received some welcome news this week. Nunatsiavut is one of four Inuit homelands in Canada and hosts less than three thousand Inuit. Unfortunately, the region has the fastest melting sea ice in the country. To protect their fragile ecosystem, Nunatsiavut has joined with the Canadian government to co-develop the world’s first Inuit Protected Area, spanning nearly 15,000 square km (or five thousand eight hundred square miles), with the federal government announcing $3 million Canadian dollars or $2.2 million US dollars in funding this week. Johannes Lampe, president of Nunatsiavut, noted the funding will help protect natural resources while allowing participants “to keep their bond with the land that has sustained us since time immemorial.”

In further good news for the indigenous Canadians, American non-profit ‘The Internet Society’ announced on Tuesday the 29th of August they are launching the most northerly Community Broadband Network in the world, in the remote town of Ulukhaktok, in northern Canada. The goal of this project is to provide free access to a faster and more reliable Internet service. This project comes as a welcome relief to residents who previously could only call upon slow, and expensive satellite broadband services.

Next up, we travel to Iceland where on Thursday the 31st of August the Icelandic government declared that the ban on whaling would be lifted. The ban was first implemented on the 20th of June on animal welfare grounds. The ban has been lifted under strict new regulations to increase monitoring and oversight of hunting methods and meet new ethical standards to increase animal welfare. This ruling is causing internal tensions within the Icelandic government. A coalition of parties rule, with the Left-Green party accusing Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir of succumbing to pressure from the conservative Independence Party and the Progressive Party, the other coalition party members.

A hopeful note to end this week. Pope Francis announced he will be updating his twenty fifteen encyclical Laudato Si, or Praised Be, which is a letter to address his concerns regarding the environment. He cited the melting of Arctic glaciers as a key reason for his new edition. The new update will be published on the 4th of October, the date of the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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