Copyright 1996 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 27-Jun-96 ***
Title: ENVIRONMENT: Arctic Nations Coordinate Fight Against Pollution
by Barbara Borst
TORONTO, Jun 27 (IPS) - The Arctic wilderness still looks
pristine, but pollution accumulating in the sea, ice, atmosphere,
and food chain threatens the health of humans and animals.
The end of the Cold War was seen as an opportunity to tackle
serious environmental problems in what had been an area of
confrontation. But, to date, these cooperative efforts have been
lacking an important voice -- that of the people who have
inhabited the region for millennia.
Government officials, environmental activists and aboriginal
groups look to remedy the situation with the establishment of the
Arctic Council.
Set to be in place by next fall, the Arctic Council will seek
to strike a balance between protecting flora and fauna and
answering the development needs of indigenous peoples.
The region has been contaminated with everything from
pesticides that have drifted from the tropics to nuclear wastes
dumped in the Arctic Ocean. Holes in the ozone layer, persistent
contamination found in mother's milk and heavy metals in Russian
rivers warn of greater problems to come.
The eight Arctic states -- Canada, the United States, Russia,
Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark (Greenland) -- signed
declarations a series of declarations, beginning in 1991, under
which they agreed to coordinate research and policy, prevention
and clean up.
Those governments, plus three organisations of indigenous
people, plan to carry these initial efforts further by
establishing the Arctic Council.
Mary Simon, Canada's Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs, said
the council should do what the earlier declarations did not --
balance environmental protection with local development needs.
''We want not only to provide protection of the environment but
also new opportunities for people of the North,'' she said, noting
that when local resources are exploited indigenous people are
usually given only menial jobs. ''Our young people are desperate
for work.''
There is a ''critical link'' between the environment and the
region's social, cultural and economic viability, said Simon,
former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.
(The ICC, the Saami Council, which represents indigenous people
in Scandinavia, and the Russian Association of Peoples of the
North will be permanent council participants.)
Alan Saunders of the Canadian Polar Commission, a federal
agency, said native people have ''a very strong voice'' in North
America, but that most European states ''have a little more Old
World view - science through the academies.''
The 1991 declaration by the Arctic states established the
Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) and the Arctic
Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), which focuses on
persistent organic contaminants, heavy metals, radioactivity,
acidification and Arctic haze.
Major AMAP reports on the state of the Arctic will be delivered
next year. Terry Fenge, executive director of the Canadian Arctic
Resources Council, promised that his and other environmental
groups will not allow them to be shelved.
''The AEPS really is a network of fax and e-mail primarily
among civil servants,'' Fenge said. ''It's fine, important, but
the major step has yet to be taken from information exchange to
collective action.
''The rubber hits the road next year when the reports are
published,'' Fenge said.
The Arctic Council, Fenge noted, will bring together senior
politicians who can have an impact that the voluntary efforts to
date have failed to produce.
''We probably know less about the Arctic than any other
region,'' noted Saunders.
''Yet there are reasons to know more. It makes such a
difference to northern climate,'' he added. ''It's a fairly
sensitive environment up there and takes a long time to recover.''
The environmental degradation in the Arctic was exacerbated by
the Cold War, during which the Soviets conducted 90 atmospheric
and 42 underground nuclear tests at Novaya Zemlya, in the Arctic.
Additionally, there were more than 20 naval accidents involving
nuclear-powered or -armed warships or submarines in the region and
a Russian commission determined that at least 16 nuclear reactors
from submarines and 2.5 million curies of radioactive waste were
dumped into the Arctic Ocean.
Cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) leaked at
Western military installations in the Arctic. Canadian government
studies during the 1980s showed PCB concentrations in the breast
milk of Inuit women in northern Quebec to be five times as high as
in Caucasian women of southern Canada.
Because PCBs are stored in body fat, thus increasing in
concentration as one ascends the food chain, they pose a
particular threat to indigenous peoples, who live off fish and
mammals.
Chester Reimer of the ICC said the Arctic Council also will have
to take actions that have an impact far beyond the region because
much of the pollution originates in other climes.
Chemicals spewed into the water and air from agricultural and
industrial production often evaporate and are carried by winds to
the Arctic, where they condense at colder temperatures, polluting
rivers, oceans and ice.
Reimer illustrated the difficulty of addressing this problem,
by noting that some international agencies that seek to protect
the Arctic environment, also promote the use of DDT pesticide to
fight malaria in the tropics.
''The Arctic Council's work could go well beyond the boundaries
of the region to look where the source [of pollution] is,'' she
said.
However, Fenge reminds Arctic nations that they themselves are
responsible for the considerable pollution that results from
mining and petroleum production.
The Canadian Polar Commission's Saunders pointed out that budget
cuts in Canada and elsewhere threaten environmental research and
remediation. He added that these efforts are also thwarted by
lingering security concerns in Russia and the United
States.(end/ips/bb/pz/96)
Origin: Washington/ENVIRONMENT/
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[c] 1996, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
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