The Arctic’s Baffin Bay and Davis Strait region is home to seals, bowhead whales, polar bears and up to 90 per cent of the world’s narwhals. The area’s marine waters also provide habitat for 116 species of fish, such as Arctic char, an important dietary staple for Nunavut’s Inuit communities.

Although the area is crucial to Inuit for hunting and other traditional activities, the federal government has approved underwater seismic blasting by a consortium of energy companies. They plan to fire underwater cannons from boats to map the ocean floor for oil and gas deposits, in preparation for offshore drilling.

The blasting, approved by Canada’s National Energy Board in 2014, is meeting fierce opposition.

A lower court affirmed the NEB decision in 2015, claiming Inuit were adequately consulted on the project — something Inuit dispute. To prevent destruction of their hunting grounds, the remote hamlet of Clyde River in Nunavut and the Nammautaq Hunters and Trappers Organization appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which agreed to hear the case later this year. A positive decision could halt seismic blasting and affirm the right of Indigenous peoples to decide their own future regarding resource development in their territories, which is central to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of which Canada is a signatory.

This case is in an isolated region. But the threat of massive development in yet another traditional territory is not an isolated case. Indigenous peoples are on the front lines of environmental change around the planet. Ever-expanding resource developments are degrading traditional territories that have sustained communities for millennia, from Arctic tundra to primeval rainforest to arid desert. They’re criss-crossed with roads, transmission lines and pipelines, and pockmarked by pumpjacks, flare stacks and other infrastructure for drilling, fracking and strip-mining fossil fuels. Most developments proceed without consent from local communities and with minimal benefit to them in terms of jobs, training and economic prosperity.

Numerous studies show that Indigenous communities usually bear the brunt of resource development, from declining water quality to destruction of traditional hunting and fishing grounds. The social consequences are devastating. Earlier this year I participated in the Canadian Indigenous Health Conference, which brought public health experts together with Indigenous elders, political leaders, youth, hunters and trappers. Many First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities’ social problems — including alcoholism, physical abuse, depression and suicide — are linked to the vacuum left when communities can no longer hunt, fish, trap, gather berries and otherwise live off their lands as their ancestors did.

Despite living in one the world’s wealthiest countries, Inuit face chronic food insecurity. Nearly 70 per cent of households in communities like Clyde River struggle with getting enough nutrition to stay healthy, compared to eight per cent for the country as a whole.

Traditional activities like hunting and fishing are critical to Indigenous communities’ food security, but they also support a holistic approach to the overall health and well-being of Indigenous peoples. A David Suzuki Foundation study on the importance of caribou hunting to First Nations in the boreal forest found “harvesting as a practice is not solely a process of obtaining meat for nutrition. With each hunt a deliberate set of relationships and protocols is awakened and reinforced. These include reciprocity, social cohesion, spirituality and the passing on of knowledge to future generations.”

Scientists fear high-intensity sounds from seismic blasting in the Arctic could adversely affect marine wildlife, exacerbating the food-insecurity crisis. Inuit hunters have observed altered migration patterns of some species, and reported horrific damage to the internal organs of seals and other animals exposed to underwater seismic blasts.

Clyde River’s resistance to big oil is classic David versus Goliath. On one side, powerful corporations with money and access to politicians. On the other, one of the world’s oldest cultures, which has survived for millennia in harmony with the environment. Former Clyde River mayor Jerry Natanine said, “Inuit do not live on the land; we are part of it. We form an indivisible unity with the Arctic environment that we are fighting to preserve for our people and our culture to survive and thrive.” 

Let’s stand with Inuit and stop seismic blasting in the Canadian Arctic.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Ontario and Northern Canada Director Faisal Moola.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: Christian Aslund, Greenpeace

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Seismic airguns are being fired underwater off the east coast of Greenland to find new oil reserves in the Arctic Ocean. But this activity “could seriously injure” whales and other marine life, warns a new report conducted by Marine Conservation Research and commissioned by Greenpeace Nordic.

The oil industry is increasingly looking towards the region, as oil and gas reserves become more accessible as climate change causes large areas of Arctic sea ice to melt.

Global oil companies including BP, Chevron and Shell all own drilling rights in the Greenland Sea and are the likely customers for the data gathered by the Norwegian geophysical company conducting the seismic testing, TGS-Nopec.

Wildlife Impacts

However, this seismic operation is taking place adjacent to ‘closed areas’ and overlaps with ‘areas of concern’ that have been appointed by the Greenlandic authorities, for the protection of narwhals, walruses and a critically endangered population of bowhead whales.

According to Greenpeace, the airguns emit 259-decibel blasts towards the seabed in order to find possible oil reservoirs. Above water, this sound intensity would be perceived by humans as approximately eight times louder than a jet engine taking off.

As the report details, seismic testing can damage marine mammals’ hearing and their ability to communicate as well as disrupting behaviour, feeding and migration patterns. This is because these mammals, and whales in particular, rely on sound to navigate, communicate and search for food.

There are also increasing indications that seismic testing can cause reproductive failure and increase the risk of strandings and ice entrapments.

Seismic Activity

Seismic testing has been conducted every summer in Greenland since 2011. And in April, TGS announced it had also begun doing seismic testing of the Barents Sea. As DeSmog UK has reported, Norway is leading the charge in Europe for Arctic oil development as production at its first offshore oilfield is set to begin “in a few weeks”.

The report's author, Dr Oliver Boisseau, a senior research scientist at Marine Conservation Research, said: “It is alarming to consider the vast amount of seismic activity being planned and conducted in the High Arctic, given the fragile nature of the ecosystem and the potential for disturbance and harm to whales.

“It seems justified to urge for extreme caution given both the lack of data and the limited understanding of the short and long term impact of seismic noise on sensitive Arctic species, especially the narwhal.”

Photo: Glenn Williams via Wikimedia Commons

As Boisseau highlights, the narwhal is particularly vulnerable to seismic testing. While some whales react to seismic sounds tens of kilometres away by trying to avoid them, narwhals are unique in their tendency to "freeze and sink" in response to a threat.

The report explains: “This means narwhals are more susceptible to damage from airgun blasts as they are not inclined to avoid regions impacted by noise.”

Narwhals are also more susceptible to becoming trapped in the ice in response to blasts from seismic vessels. Between 2008 and 2010 three entrapments of narwhals were reported coinciding with seismic activities in Greenland during the summer period. The narwhals delayed their autumn migration from Baffin Bay, leading to them travelling while winter sea ice started forming, causing thousands of narwhals to become entrapped in the ice and die.

This was the first time narwhal entrapments had ever been reported in this area.

Research Gap

However, the Marine Conservation Research report stresses that there is a “massive research gap” in this field. To date, no strandings of Arctic whale species have been reported, “which could mean they have not occurred or that they have not been reported due to the remoteness and extremely thin population density,” the report explains.

“Based on available data, the authors ‘urge for extreme caution’ amongst decision makers before allowing seismic activity in the Arctic,” the report argues. “From the research at hand, it is clear that noise from seismic activity impacts whales.”

Arctic campaigner Sune Scheller, on-board Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise headed to Greenland, said: “Seismic blasting in icy waters is just one of the horrific practices the oil industry is doing in the Arctic, firing airguns into this important and beautiful ocean.

“Shell and other oil companies are hoping the world won’t know that seismic blasting exists, even less notice the danger it poses to endangered whales and other marine life, but we’re here to expose this madness and keep eyes and ears on a harmful operation.”

@kylamandel

Photo: Greenland Travel via Flickr

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This week the federal government was legally obligated to establish protected habitat for threatened North Pacific humpback whales. Instead the Harper government suddenly moved to take the humpback off the “threatened species” list. That would eliminate the legal requirement under Canada’s Species At Risk Act for protecting habitat along the British Columbia coast.

The government based the downgrade on a recommendation made by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), the independent scientific body that designates which wildlife species are in trouble, in 2011.

Critics have noted the decision eliminates a major obstacle to both the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. After the conditional approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline by the National Energy Board's joint review panel, the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre launched a legal complaint on behalf of B.C. Nature requesting the government's recovery strategy for humpback whales be taken into consideration.

A federal recovery strategy for humpback whales on the B.C. coast released in October cited potential increased oil tanker traffic as a danger to dwindling populations. The recovery strategy, released after a five-year delay, also noted the danger toxic spills posed to critical habitat.

If built, the two pipeline projects would increase oil tanker traffic from eight to 28 per month, increasing the risks of collisions with whales, potential spills in vital habitat and excessive noise.

The good news is that the North Pacific humpbacks are recovering after nearly being wiped out by whale hunting, Marty Leonard, chair of COSEWIC, told DeSmog Canada.

The whales were listed as a species of “special concern” back in 2011, Leonard said. “Their numbers are increasing which is good to see. But they still face threats.”

Those threats include oil spills, collisions with ships, entanglement in fishing gear and overfishing of their food sources.

The Pacific Ocean is the largest feature on the planet — bigger than all land areas combined. After 250 years of whaling, an estimated 1,400 humpbacks remained in the North Pacific. They’re among the largest marine mammals reaching 14 metres in length and weighing up to 40 tonnes. Hunting was banned in 1965 and today there are about 20,000 in the entire region. Perhaps 3,000 are found seasonally in B.C. waters.

The Species At Risk Act took affect in 2003, prior to which Canada had little endangered species protection.

In 2005, COSEWIC listed North Pacific humpbacks as a “threatened” species. COSEWIC defines “threatened” as a species likely to become endangered if nothing is done. “Endangered” means about to go extinct. The government’s move will demote the status of humpbacks to “species of special concern.”

The federal government is required to produce an official “recovery strategy” for all species on the endangered and threatened lists, including legal protection of essential habitat.

Despite its legal obligation, the Harper government has persistently failed to do so for humpbacks and another 170 species.

In September 2012, Ecojustice lawyers filed a lawsuit in response to the Harper government’s delay on behalf of five environmental groups, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace Canada, Sierra Club BC, Wilderness Committee and Wildsight.

In February 2014, the Federal Court ruled the Harper government was breaking the law and was very critical of the government’s delay.

“We took the federal government to court and won,” said Caitlyn Vernon of the Sierra Club BC. 

“There is clearly an enormous systemic problem within the relevant Ministries,” Justice Anne L. Mactavish wrote in her judgment.

Justice Mactavish also noted that when it comes to protecting species, delay can lead to extinction.

The lawsuit prompted the Federal government to develop a recovery strategy for North Pacific humpbacks in September 2013, eight years after being listed as threatened.

The recovery strategy required legal protection of designated feeding grounds to be in place by this week, Vernon told DeSmog.

But rather than implement such protections, the government moved to downgrade the status of the whales to eliminate the need for legal protection of habitat.

“It’s good news humpback numbers are increasing, but their recovery is fragile. The science is clear that increased tanker traffic from the proposed pipelines will affect that recovery,” said Vernon.

“One oil spill and they’re back on the endangered species list.”

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By David Suzuki

The Arctic may seem like a distant place, just as the most extreme consequences of our wasteful use of fossil fuels may appear to be in some distant future. Both are closer than most of us realize.

The Arctic is a focal point for some of the most profound impacts of climate change. One of the world’s top ice experts, Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, calls the situation a “global disaster,” suggesting ice is disappearing faster than predicted and could be gone within as few as four years.

“The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer,” he told the U.K.’s Guardian.

Over the past 30 years, permanent Arctic sea ice has shrunk to half its previous area and thickness. As it diminishes, global warming accelerates. This is due to a number of factors, including release of the potent greenhouse gas methane trapped under nearby permafrost, and because ice reflects the sun’s energy whereas oceans absorb it.

With all we know about climate change and what’s happening in the Arctic, you’d think our leaders would be marshalling resources to at least slow it down. Instead, industry and governments are eyeing new opportunities to mine Arctic fossil fuels. Factoring in threats to the numerous species of Arctic creatures – including fish, seabirds, marine mammals such as whales and seals, and polar bears – makes such an approach even more incomprehensible.

Royal Dutch Shell has been preparing to drill in the Arctic, spending $4.5 billion on operations and lease purchases. But its record shows how risky this is. First, a spill containment dome failed a routine safety test and was crushed by underwater pressure. More recently, a drilling rig, which was being towed to Seattle so Shell could avoid paying some Alaskan taxes, broke free during a storm and ran aground on an island in the Gulf of Alaska. The disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 showed how dangerous ocean drilling can be even in relatively calm waters and how bogus the claims of the industry are that it can contain or even clean up a spill.

Responding to climate change and vanishing Arctic ice by gearing up to drill for the stuff at the root of the problem is insane. Unfortunately, many fossil fuel companies and governments are engaged in a mad rush to get as much oil and gas out of the ground – no matter how difficult – while there’s still a market. The ever-increasing devastation of climate change means we will eventually have to leave much of it where it is – or at the very least, substantially slow the pace of extraction and use the resource more wisely – if we want to survive and be healthy as a species.

In Ecuador, knowing that exploiting the country’s massive oil reserves will fuel climate change and cause massive environmental destruction in one of the world’s most biologically diverse rainforests, leaders are taking a different approach. The government plans to leave oil fields in Yasuni National Park untouched if other countries help compensate for some of the lost revenue. So far only about $300 million has been raised toward the $3.6 billion over 13 years that the government believes would make up for half the oil’s value, but the idea is gaining momentum.

The Guardian notes the money won’t go to government but will be “held in trust funds and administered by the UN Development Programme working with a board made up of indigenous peoples, local communities, academics and others.”

Ivonne Baki, head of the negotiating committee of the Yasuní-Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini, told the Guardian Ecuador does not want to become overly dependent on oil. “Oil countries are cursed,” she said. “Developing countries depend on it so much that they do not develop anything else. It breeds corruption and the poor pay the price.”

With Arctic ice melting, Australia on fire and increasing droughts, floods and extreme weather throughout the world, it’s past time to get serious about global warming. It remains to be seen if a plan like Ecuador’s will work, but surely a developed country like Canada can at least learn that wastefully exploiting precious resources as quickly as possible isn’t the only option.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Manager Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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