That's a great question.
Shoreline erosion is also impacting towns as small as Tuktoyaktuk. It's critical for the people who live there.
When we talk about climate change, we often talk about warming, but also about losing biodiversity. However, every time we lose biodiversity, we lose chemodiversity. Plants contain natural substances that have extraordinary properties.
Forty per cent of the drugs in our medicine cabinets come from plants. With global warming, plants are adapting their metabolism. Some will go extinct. For example, we may lose the first medication developed to treat Alzheimer's disease.
We've shown in our research that a small microscopic fungus in Iqaluit Bay or Frobisher Bay, if you will, has the ability to neutralize malaria in the south.
We were especially interested in the Whapmagoostui and Kuujjuarapik communities, which use a plant called Labrador tea for their traditional medical needs. This plant is abundantly used. The problem is, in the past few years, members of these communities have noted that this traditional herbal tea has side effects. So they asked us if we could help them understand that. With warming, the plant has a summer cycle in its metabolism that produces different substances at different times. One of those substances is toxic. So the goal is to determine the best time to harvest the plant so that the therapeutic effects are at their peak and the side effects are minimized. This is an extremely meaningful factor caused by global warming that is being forgotten.
When we talk about biodiversity—