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Article Excerpt
BACKGROUND: Canada has recognized that Aboriginal and northern communities in the country face unique challenges and that there is a need to expand the assessment of vulnerabilities to climate change to include these communities. Evidence suggests that Canada's North is already experiencing significant changes in its climate--changes that are having negative impacts on the lives of Aboriginal people living in these regions. Research on climate change and health impacts in northern Canada thus far has brought together Aboriginal community members, government representatives, and researchers and is charting new territory.
METHODS AND RESULTS: In this article we review experiences from two projects that have taken a community-based dialogue approach to identifying and assessing the effects of and vulnerability to climate change and the impact on the health in two Inuit regions of the Canadian Arctic.
CONCLUSIONS: The results of the two case projects that we present argue for a multi-stakeholder, participatory framework for assessment that supports the necessary analysis, understanding, and enhancement of capabilities of local areas to respond and adapt to the health impacts at the local level.
KEY WORDS: Aboriginal, adaptive capacity, Arctic, climate change, Inuit, vulnerability. Environ Health Perspect 114:1964-1970 (2006). doi: 10.1289/ehp.8433 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 11 July 2006]
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There is strong evidence that Canada's North is already experiencing significant changes in its climate (e.g., McBean et al. 2005). The climatic and environmental changes that have been observed during the last century require greater understanding and involvement by individuals and institutions to define effective adaptation strategies. Through signing the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2006) and ratifying the Kyoto Protocol (2006), Canada has shown its commitment to the global effort to slow the rate of warming, reduce emissions, conduct research, and initiate action at the national and regional levels to develop adaptation strategies to minimize the impact throughout the country (Government of Canada 2003). Canada has recognized that Aboriginal and northern communities face unique challenges and that it is necessary to expand the assessment of vulnerabilities to effects of climate change to all areas of Canada, including the North (Government of Canada 2003). This work is essential for the development of effective adaptive strategies to protect the health of Canadians in all regions of the country.
Assessing the impacts that these climate changes are having or may have on peoples' lives requires a combination of disciplinary approaches and methods (Patz et al. 2000). Research on climate change and health impacts in northern Canada is in its infancy (Furgal et al. 2002). It uses and focuses particularly on indigenous knowledge and local observations of environmental change along with scientific assessments of the impacts associated with these and other forms of change. In this article we review experiences from projects that used a community-based dialogue-oriented approach to identifying and assessing potential health impacts and vulnerabilities to climate change in two Inuit regions of Canada's North. These experiences build a strong case for a multi-stakeholder, qualitative, and participatory approach to identifying and assessing risks while enhancing the capacity of local areas to respond to the impacts of climate change.
The Canadian North
A common definition of Canada's North that we use here includes the three territorial administrative regions north of 60[degrees] latitude (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) as well as the region of Nunavik, north of 55[degrees] in the province of Quebec and the Inuit settlement region of Nunatsiavut within Labrador. The latter two regions comprise communities with large Aboriginal populations and share many biogeographic characteristics with the territorial Arctic. Together, this region covers approximately 60% of Canada's landmass (Figure 1).
The vast coastline, islands, and permanent multiyear ice found in Canada's North are rich in geography and biodiversity. The diversity of the regions' ecosystems, climate and cultures forms a socioecologic collage across the top of the country (Canadian Arctic Contaminants Assessment Report II 2003). Communities are spread along Canada's northern coastline and interior, and the land and sea provide northern residents with a primary source of nutrition and form a central part of their livelihoods and cultures (Van Oostdam et al. 2005).
Northerners have witnessed profound environmental, social, political, and economic changes in recent decades (Damas 2002; Wonders 2003). Research on contaminants, and more recently on climate change, has uncovered what many northerners have known for some time: the Arctic environment is stressed and irreversible changes are occurring. At the same time, many communities are transitioning economically, having become more permanent than they were 40 years ago. Many communities now have a mixed economy of traditional or land-based activities and wage employment, with many of the wage employment opportunities now associated with large-scale development of nonrenewable natural resources (e.g., mining). These increases in development and cash income have resulted in changes in local economies and increased accessibility to many market items typically available in urban centers to the south. Further, dramatic political changes have resulted in Aboriginal groups in many regions now leading regionally based forms of self-government or being currently engaged in negotiations to establish such arrangements that include land claim and resource settlements. One example of this arrangement is the establishment of the Territory of Nunavut in 1999 [Indian and Northern Affiars Canada (INAC) 1993].
Just over half of the approximately 100,000 northern residents are Aboriginal and belong to distinct cultural groups including the Yukon First Nations (Yukon), Dene, Metis and Gwich'in (Northwest Territories), and Inuit (Nunavut, Nunavik, the new Inuit land claim area of Nunatsiavut within the region of Labrador and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories). Many of the communities are characterized by an increasingly young and rapidly growing population: 54% of the population of Nunavut is under 15 years of age compared with the national average of 25% (Statistics Canada 2001). Many still experience lower health status than their southern counterparts. For example, life expectancy among Aboriginal people in some regions, such as Nunavik, is as much as 12 years lower than the national average for both sexes (Statistics Canada 2001). In addition, many remote communities are challenged by limited access to health services, lower average socioeconomic status, crowding and poor-quality housing, and concerns regarding basic services such as drinking water quality (Statistics Canada 2001). Despite these challenges, all northern cultures retain a close relationship with the environment and a strong knowledge base of their regional surroundings. Even today, the environment and the country foods that come from the land, lakes, rivers and sea remain central to the way of life, cultural identity, and health of northern Aboriginal people (Van Oostdam et al. 2005). More...
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