‘We’re in meltdown’

Sea ice in the Arctic is approaching a record low – and the locals wear T-shirts in the summer. Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier tells Louise Johncox how climate change is threatening her people’s way of life

In the remote frozen outpost of Iqaluit on Baffin Island, northern Canada, Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a local celebrity. My Inuit taxi driver talks with pride about her as we crawl along the snow-covered roads to her home. This is no picturesque Christmas card scene with children throwing snowballs. It is -25C, a blizzard is blowing and the empty streets resemble frozen rivers. I’ve arranged to talk to Watt-Cloutier about global warming and I am shivering in the back of a cab despite three layers of extreme- weather clothing.
Since 1995, Watt-Cloutier has been involved in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), the international body that represents the 155,000 Inuits in Canada, Greenland, Alaska and the Russian far east. She was elected president of ICC Canada in 1995 and international chair in 2002, a position she held until 2006. She is bringing serious issues of global warming and environmental degradation to the world’s attention: issues that are having catastrophic effects on her own people. The latest research, by University of Colorado climatologists, forecasts that the extent of the Arctic sea ice is likely to have melted to a record low this September, following a rapid disintegration of the ice in July.

She appears like any ordinary 53-year-old grandmother, with a house full of extended family and something boiling on the stove. The view from her living room window is a classic Arctic vista of snow. It is pure white as far as the eye can see – a perfect contrast to the cosy, colourful room, where family photographs mingle with awards and trophies. As the blizzard rages outside, she offers a steaming cup of tea and a plate of homemade Arctic berry pie. Not surprisingly, the subject turns to the weather.

“The weather here is always unpredictable and variable. It was an unusually long, cold spring, the summer has been very cold and wet and the warmth has just arrived now,” she says. “I speak to the Inuit elders and they are constantly telling me how unpredictable it is. As a result, traditional knowledge is being challenged.”

She talks with passion about the fact that increasing numbers of hunters are falling through the ice, citing her neighbour, Simon Nattak, who had to have his legs amputated below the knees. “He fell through the ice and they found him two or three days later when his legs were frozen. It’s a remarkable story because he is an experienced hunter yet even he couldn’t read the condition of the ice. What you see on the surface of the ice may look like what you’ve been taught for generations, but the ice is forming differently because the Arctic sink is warmer.”

The Guardian