Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. If I'd known we had more time, I would have brought my three-hour presentation. This will be mercifully shorter.
I want to say thank you to the committee for inviting me here today. By way of background, I work for a Norwegian foundation called GRID-Arendal, which is based in a very small town in Norway called Arendal. We do collaborative work with the United Nations Environment Programme. I'm in the polar centre, and we do a lot of other work dealing with the Arctic.
With regard to a bit of my background, I have been a journalist in both the north and south of Canada. I have lived in the Yukon, and a couple of my kids were born there. Most of my work in my adult life has involved northern policy issues of one form or another.
My most recent job before this was as the executive secretary of the Indigenous Peoples' Secretariat, in Copenhagen. The IPS supports the permanent participants who are members of the Arctic Council.
As I said, GRID collaborates with a number of organizations and the United Nations Environment Programme. We carry the UNEP flag, so to speak, at the Arctic Council. UNEP/GRID has been an observer at the Arctic Council since its inception. Our mandate is to take science and research and turn it into material that can be useful for decision-makers of all kinds.
One of the primary connections of our work is the link between the Arctic and the rest of the planet. It's really the idea that what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic; it has global implications. As you know, no other part of the world is warming as fast as the Arctic. This was the message in the 2004 “Arctic Climate Impact Assessment”, and it's been reinforced in literally hundreds of scientific studies since that time.
In the last couple of months, UNEP has released its annual yearbook, and in that yearbook there is a chapter reviewing the latest science dealing with the Arctic. I thought that a quick look at that would be useful to frame the discussion we're having today. It will also help to frame the chairmanship of the Arctic Council that Canada is going to be taking over in just a few months.
A few main points from the yearbook are that 2012 saw the most extensive melting of multi-year sea ice ever recorded; the region could be free of sea ice as early as the end of this decade. A study came out yesterday saying it might be 2015, which would put it at the end of Canada's chairmanship of the Arctic Council. Last summer, 97% of the Greenland ice sheet showed surface melting. This is a dramatic increase over any previous year.
Melting of snow and ice in the Arctic is accelerated by short-lived climate pollutants. Among these are black carbon or soot, which accumulates on snow and ice surfaces and absorbs heat. A reduction of black carbon would actually help slow the warming in the Arctic and have a major health benefit as well. The pollutants that are generated are thought to be responsible for the deaths of two million people around the world annually.
Earlier this month, a new study showed that climate change is triggering an increasingly green Arctic, with noticeably lusher vegetation found at more northern latitudes. Thirty years of satellite observations show the conditions today resemble those that were four degrees to six degrees of latitude further south in 1982; that's around 400 to 700 kilometres, depending on where you're measuring. Of course, habitat fragmentation, pollution, industrial development, overharvesting of wildlife, etc., are all having impacts at a regional and wider basis.
Reductions of glaciers in the region will have a major effect on sea-level rise in other parts of the world. The declining ability of the region to act as the planet's cooling system has long-term implications for weather patterns in this country and around the world, potentially today. That may be a debatable point, on a day-to-day basis.
To illustrate, GRID-Arendal is one of the lead partners in a program called Many Strong Voices, which links the Arctic and small island developing states—kind of an unlikely alliance. It was developed out of joint efforts to raise awareness about the effects of climate change in these regions, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified as among the world's most vulnerable. We have brought a bit of information about that program that we will leave with the clerk.
The main message in this program is that there is a common interest among people in far-flung regions. It recognizes that societies and livelihoods in both the Arctic and small island states are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their close ties to land and sea environments. These regions have been barometers of environmental change. The fact that people in small island states want to work with people in the Arctic demonstrates that what happens in the Arctic really doesn't stay in the Arctic.
Canada's foreign policy cannot just look at the north; it must also see the Arctic as a key driver of global environmental change. Policy responses must take into account both domestic concerns and international obligations.
As Canada assumes the chair of the Arctic Council, it has an opportunity to take the lead on Arctic issues that have a global reach. To illustrate what I mean, I'd like to look at three areas that have already been identified as part of Canada's mandate.
Number one is support for indigenous peoples. The Arctic Council was the first international body to bring indigenous peoples' organizations to the table. In this way it actually served as a model for the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. It has been discussed in many other places around the world; it's seen as a model. The permanent participants, the indigenous peoples' organizations at the Arctic Council, have repeatedly carried Arctic messages to international fora in which they work. This includes the UNEP Governing Council meeting, which took place last month in Nairobi.
The Government of Canada has signalled its interest in supporting traditional lifestyles and knowledge. Three of the permanent participant organizations at the Arctic Council are Canadian and have Canadian offices: the Inuit Circumpolar Council, the Arctic Athabaskan Council, and the Gwich'in Council International. Canada could take a lead in figuring out a way to enhance the role of these and other indigenous peoples' organizations at the Council. Ten years ago, with the support of Canada's senior Arctic official and the Icelandic Arctic Council chair, we developed a proposal that would have provided financial support for the permanent participants in an ongoing way. It wasn't much money, but unfortunately the rhetoric of support, which is often effusive, wasn't matched by any commitment. Canada now has an opportunity to encourage all Arctic states to provide the necessary sustainable funding in an ongoing way.
The second point is short-lived climate forcers or climate pollutants. Canada's Minister of the Arctic Council has said that Canada will advance work on short-lived climate forcers like black carbon. This is an important statement. While deep cuts in CO2 remain the backbone of efforts to limit the long-term consequences of climate change, as I said a moment ago, rapid reductions in emissions of short-lived climate forcers such as black carbon and methane have been identified as perhaps the most effective strategy to slow warming and melting in the Arctic over the next few decades.
Sweden, the outgoing chair of the Arctic Council, has proposed that the eight Arctic countries show global leadership and take significant measures on the reduction of black carbon. As the new chair, Canada could work with its partner nations and the permanent participants to support the adoption of strong Arctic Council measures. This would include establishing a negotiating body on a circumpolar black carbon instrument to be adopted by the next ministerial meeting. This body could be directed to consider for inclusion a number of things, including a common circumpolar vision for black carbon emissions reductions, the development of national mitigation action plans for black carbon, and procedures for reporting and consultation on national mitigation action, using the Arctic Council as a forum.
Most of the Arctic countries are members of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition that's been assembled by the United States. Canada was one of the lead countries on this. There is a precedent; there is work already happening. It's important that the Arctic Council be seen to be in the forefront of this work. Needless to say, work on black carbon needs to be done as well as, and not instead of, reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The third point is oil spill prevention. While rapid change is under way in the Arctic, the Arctic can still be a global model for sustainable development. Preventing oil spills could be part of this scenario. The January 2013 document outlining Canada's plans for its chairmanship states that an international instrument or related initiative on marine oil spill prevention is a logical next step to the Council's current work on prevention practices and the agreement that has just been negotiated on cooperation on marine oil spill preparedness and response. This agreement takes important first steps by requiring each country to maintain emergency response plans and to identify areas most important to protect for ecological reasons. However, in a January letter to the senior Arctic officials a number of organizations taking part in the Arctic NGO Forum stated, “The agreement does not commit the parties, together or individually, to increase their level of preparedness through greater investment and placement of personnel and equipment.”
The NGOs, some of which are observers at the Arctic Council, have made a number of suggestions in this letter about how the agreement could be improved, and concluded by saying they encourage the Arctic Council member states to endorse a process through which ongoing work under the agreement can continue and gaps can be filled.
So there are many ways that Canada could take the lead in strengthening the Arctic Council, and these are just three.
In conclusion, I want to say there's a really important precedent to keep in mind here. In the 1990s, Canadian data assembled through the national contaminants program, combined with the moral force of the Arctic indigenous peoples and the desire of all Arctic states to participate, contributed to the negotiation and signing of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.
This was the first international environmental instrument that actually banned toxic substances and it is seen as a major precedent. This was the result of sound research and the alliance of indigenous peoples' organizations and Arctic states, something that's always possible at the Arctic Council. It led to an important step forward in global environmental governance. It's the kind of success that clearly demonstrates that what happens in the Arctic matters globally.
Thank you very much.