Suffering badly from climate change, many Greenlanders don't blame humans

Suffering badly from climate change, many Greenlanders don’t blame humans

Worst-affected Aboriginal people least likely to be connected

A majority of indigenous people in Greenland are highly aware that the climate is changing and are more likely than people in other Arctic countries to say they are personally affected, according to a new survey. However, many do not blame human influence, especially those who lead traditional subsistence lifestyles who are most directly affected by the rapid waste of ice and dramatic changes in weather. Research in the magazine this week natural climate change.

“Greenland is unprecedented in terms of the proportion of its population that has witnessed and first-hand experienced the impacts of climate change. But there is a large mismatch between climate science and local understanding of anthropogenic climate change,” said the lead author Kelton MinorPostdoctoral Research Fellow, Columbia University Data Science Institute and Columbia Climate School. The researchers believe that educational and cultural factors played a role.

The Arctic is warming four times faster than the world average, and Greenlanders, who rely on cold seasonal conditions for hunting, fishing and travel, are at the forefront. Snow and sea ice, once a predictable platform for people to travel from place to place and make a living, are now dwindling. Rainstorms are increasing, even in winter; the permafrost is melting; the huge central ice sheet is rapidly losing mass. These changes have caused sea levels to rise slowly on far coasts, but for Greenlanders, the effects have been immediate.

The town of Ilulissat in northern Greenland. Many people live in small coastal towns and villages, and climate change affects both land and sea. (Little Kelton)

The study’s authors surveyed about 1,600 people, about 4 percent of Greenland’s adult population. They found that 89 percent believed climate change was happening—similar to other countries with at least some Arctic territory, including Sweden, Canada, Russia and Iceland. (The exception: the United States, at just 68 percent.) Still, the proportion of Greenlanders who said they had personally experienced the effects was more than twice that of other Arctic nations, at nearly 80 percent. Among fishermen, hunters and small country dwellers, the proportion was closer to 85 percent.

However, when asked whether these changes were caused by humans, only about 50 percent believed there was such a link, and only 40 percent in rural areas.

The researchers say the study shows that education plays an important role, noting that many people in rural areas do not have secondary education. “Villages don’t have the same access to formal education, especially beyond primary school, and that probably explains a lot,” Mina said. Climate researchers from around the world have been gathering in Greenland for decades, and much of the evidence for blaming humans for climate change has been drawn from their work, he noted. “One of the core insights of modern climate science stems in part from the Greenland ice sheet and may not be widely understood by the Greenlandic public,” he said.

Greenland’s rapidly changing environment is a major center of climate research, yet many residents seem out of touch with the findings. Here, researchers traverse the melting surface of Russell Glacier. (Kevin Krajik/Earth Institute)

A warming climate affects almost every aspect of life, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, many people live on narrow ice-free coastal lands next to towering interior ice sheets. In some areas the ice was melting so rapidly that it could be visibly seen sinking, as if a mountaintop had been bulldozed; as a result, some settlements gained more sunshine hours. And, unlike most of the world, sea levels here are mostly falling, not rising. Part of the reason is that as the ice is consumed, the pressure on the land disappears and the land is rising.In lands where there are essentially no roads, this can impede navigation in the heavily used but often already shallow coastal waters – which is separate investigation by Columbia scientists.

For many residents, climate change may not be all bad. First, melting glaciers are depositing vast swaths of sand, an increasingly valuable commodity that can be exported. This is the mouth of the Chingwa Takusua River southwest of the settlement of Konkruswak. (Kevin Krajik/Earth Institute)

cultural historian Manumina Lund-Jensen Ilisimatusarfik of the University of Greenland and co-authors of the study propose another dimension of beliefs about humans and the environment. “In Greenland, most people live with them, [the] The air and weather of the spirit of Greenland, [which] also describe our consciousness and our connection to the universe,” she said. “The knowledge about them Passed down from generation to generation through oral traditions and observations, one can have an impact on one’s own survival and the survival of others. Such views may “increase the psychological distance” from anthropogenic signals in the climate system, she wrote in the study. “In some ways, humans may not be seen as powerful them“.

People’s perceptions of nature in general may have real consequences, the researchers say. While it wasn’t part of the current study, Miner said, those who ignore human influence seem more likely to view the changes as primarily harmful — shorter hunting seasons, more dangerous storms, and less predictable weather. On the other hand, those who make human connections may see things differently. Case in point: the world is running short of sand, a key ingredient in concrete. As the glaciers retreat, Greenland is now swimming in them, leaving behind vast amounts of sediment. previous studies This suggests that those who are aware of human influence on climate are more likely to consider human adaptation actions and tend to export this suddenly available commodity, Minor said.

“Knowledge of the impacts and causes of climate change is a key driver for societies to mitigate and adapt to climate change,” said study co-author Minik Rosing, a geologist at the University of Copenhagen. Both climate change research and informing climate action are critical.”

Policymakers and civic institutions should “support the integration of highly adaptive Inuit knowledge,” the researchers wrote them The knowledge of climate scientists and local climate change”, and climate predictions and historical insights derived from ice sheets “should be integrated with Inuit knowledge, widely disseminated and incorporated into Greenland’s primary education curriculum. “