The Stockholm Convention
Says No to POPs
The Stockholm Convention came into effect on May 17, 2004 and was
the fastest ratified UN treaty on record. It is a global commitment
to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic
pollutants (POPs). POPs can be categorized as pesticides, industry
chemicals, or combustion byproducts, and they include the 12 pollutants
often referred to as the dirty dozen: polychlorinated biphenyls,
DDT, furan, dioxin, lindane, mirex, heptachlor, endrin, toxaphene
and chlordane. They are long-lasting toxins which can accumulate
in the fatty tissue of living organisms and travel by wind and
water currents resulting in wide distribution globally impacting
regions far from the original source. They are subject to global
distillation, known as the “grasshopper effect,” where
they jump from warmer to colder climates contaminating both land
and aquatic ecosystems. These endocrine disrupting compounds can
now be detected in every living organism on the planet and are
capable of causing reproductive and developmental problems, permanent
neurological damage, cancer, and immune system disruption. In implementing
the Stockholm Convention, governments will take measures to reduce
and eliminate the production, use, and release of POPs into the
environment.—S.I.
As chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Sheila
Watt-Cloutier is both a local leader and a global champion for Arctic
indigenous
peoples and their way of life. She is the voice of the 155,000 Inuit
living in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Russia, and is tackling the
many issues indigenous peoples are facing today including environmental
pollution, sustainable development, preservation of culture, and the
current realities of global warming.
After returning home to Iqaluit, Canada, from Argentina where she represented
the Inuit at the tenth session of the Conference of Parties regarding the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change, Sheila Watt-Cloutier shared with Sangamithra
Iyer her thoughts on the connectedness of all of us and our actions.
Last month you were in Buenos Aires at the tenth session of the Conference of
Parties. I understand you announced there that the Inuit are seeking a ruling
from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights contending that the United
States, by contributing substantially to global warming, is threatening the existence
of indigenous Arctic people. Could you tell us about this petition?
In the next few months we hopefully will be launching the petition to the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights. We’re saying that it’s a violation of
our human rights that a country would consciously be continuing to emit the same
amounts when they know that as a result of greenhouse gases, the Arctic is struggling
enormously in terms of the challenges to our environment, to our climate, and
to our way of life.
There has been considerable research by scientists on climate changes in Arctic
environments. In addition, you have said that Inuit elders have been noticing
these changes for years. Can you describe some of the most notable changes that
have been observed so far and how it affects wildlife and the Inuit community?
There have been a lot of changes happening up here in the Arctic. It started
off with the realization in the mid-1980s that we were actually being poisoned
from afar. Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), whether they be byproducts of
industry or pesticides, were making their way in a very concentrated form into
the Arctic sink through the weather systems. These persistent organic pollutants
end up in the fatty tissue of our marine mammals. We are avid marine mammal eaters—we
eat the fatty tissue of all of our marine mammals—as a result, we’ve
ended up being poisoned. Our nursing mothers carry very high dosages of toxins
in their milk that are seven to ten times higher than anywhere in southern Canada.
This has been a problem that we have been addressing for some time, which put
us in an inter-governmental negotiating committee consisting of 150 countries.
This led to the Stockholm Convention, which now is turning POPs off at their
source [see sidebar]. We try to ensure that the world adheres to the Stockholm
Convention so that eventually our food will be safer and alternatives will be
found to some of these pollutants.
We have been witnessing an awful lot of change in our environment. It’s
so unpredictable these days—the weather patterns and climate and so on.
According to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, there is enormous evidence
that our climate is changing very rapidly. The Arctic is getting warmer a lot
quicker than anywhere else. And our hunters and elders have been noticing so
many changes in the last decade. The ice is depleting—forming later in
the year and breaking up earlier in the spring—leaving sea-ice hunting
time a lot shorter for us as well as for the polar bears who are also sea hunters.
That is quite an alarm for us.
The coast is literally eroding in Western Canada and Alaska, the permafrost is
quickly melting, and we’ve had to move people’s homes. The glaciers
are also melting quite rapidly. Streams that hunters used to be [able to] cross
have now become torrent rivers, and we’ve had drownings.
We’ve also been witnessing a lot of different species of insects, birds
and fish that are finding their way up into the Arctic because of the warming.
It seems as though looking at this from both an environmental and human health
perspective was an effective way of attacking this problem with respect to the
POPs. Do you think this similar approach will be helpful on the petition on global
warming?
It goes way beyond environmental concerns for us. It is health first and foremost
because of the toxins. With the Arctic sink warming, a lot of the POPs stored
are going to be released into the air, and more CO2 and methane are going to
go into the air as a result of the permafrost melting.
Our cultural survival is at stake as well. I’m much more hopeful now because
of the Stockholm Convention, but if it had come to the day where we were torn
between our country food and our cultural heritage, that would be a very sad
day. We have never lost that strong, strong connection to our way of life even
in terms of all the changes we’ve been going through in becoming wage earners
and institutionalized. We are trying to maintain our way of life that has sustained
us for millennia. We have never yet depleted one species of an animal in that
millennia, so we know a little bit about sustainability.
We are hoping [that with] this petition, the Inter-American Commission can come
north and see for themselves what we have to lose and what is happening, because
the Arctic is now considered the health barometer for the world. What happens
to the planet happens first up here. We are hoping that at the end of the day,
they can declare this as a violation of the human rights of the Inuit of the
world. Then we can be given a bit of an equal playing field when the two hemispheres
negotiate these things globally. Right now we are barely on the radar screen.
What is happening in the Arctic is very much a connectivity issue. I’ve
always said that the Inuit hunters falling through the depleting ice here is
connected to the cars we drive, and is connected to the disposable world that
we have become, and the industries that we’ve come to rely upon. [The fact]
that Inuit mothers have to think twice about nursing their babies should surely
be a wake up call. My hope is that we can have the world understand through our
story and our challenges that the planet and its people are one.
When you’ve mentioned global warming you’ve described it as another
blow to a sturdy but suffering culture. I’d like to talk about your work
with sustainable development. I was wondering if you could talk for a bit about
how other factors like globalization have impacted indigenous populations like
the Inuit.
It is a tough one for us Inuit because things have happened very quickly. I use
myself as an example—I’ve come from traveling on a dog team the first
10 years of my life and now fly jumbo jets to South Africa or Argentina to help
negotiate UN treaties or to participate in global processes. From the reeling
of this tumultuous change, there is a lot on our plate with regard to getting
back to our wise grounded place, where our cultural heritage can again be leading
us to this place of strength rather than this place of victim where we have come
to be in the last few decades, where many of our young people choose death over
life. There are a lot of struggles and challenges that our communities are faced
with [in this] transition. It’s more than meets the eye.
We’re trying to find ways we can transfer that wisdom that we’ve
always had to this more modern world. How do we deal with sustainable development
issues? How can we find good jobs and a good way of sustaining ourselves without
depleting our resources or harming our environment? It certainly is hard when
the backdrop of all that’s happening is coming so quickly to our doorstep
in the Arctic, to people who have lived so respectfully with our surroundings
and now have to deal with all of these issues. And because we are so few in number—155,000
Inuit in the entire world—it becomes a daunting task of trying to get the
world to turn around.
I know that the world can and has the insight, the wisdom and the compassion
to do the right thing because the Stockholm Convention has been signed, ratified,
and is being enforced.
And with climate change, I can understand that there is a lot more going on in
terms of economic issues and policies, and with a powerful country like the U.S.,
it is a lot tougher to get them on [board], because they are not willing to give
up their standard of living, their oil and gas consumption and their reliance
upon it for a few, and they don’t see the negative effects of much; they
don’t see it as being harmful to themselves. So it is a challenge.
We like to work on these issues engaging in the politics of influence rather
than the politics of protest. Adaptation, as we know, has its limitations, and
what are we to do as a people if one of the most powerful countries in the world
who is emitting the largest amount of greenhouse gases is not going to look at
these issues? We have to be able to stand up for our human rights. We are Inuit
who live and thrive on ice and snow. We thrive on it being frozen. That is what
our culture depends upon. In essence we are fighting for our right to be cold.
I found it interesting in your correspondence to me that you said, that
you (Inuit)
don’t like to be called animal protectionists or environmentalists. Yet,
because of the very nature of your lifestyle, you are guardians and protectors
of the land. Have you found that the environmental movement or animal protectionist
groups have marginalized or not fully incorporated the interest of indigenous
populations?
That’s right. There is a real history there in the last few decades. In
the 1960s, Greenpeace, through their animal rights and anti-hunting movements,
demolished the very little sustainable hunting of seals that we had. We weren’t
[hunting seals] to be commercial. We were doing it to feed our families. But
the byproduct of the hunt—[seal fur]—was able to bring what we consider
a good amount of money to our hunters and their families. It was certainly not
millions of dollars but for us, because we are so few in number, if we could
sustain five families per community, that’s big.
We know that environmentalists and animal rights people sometimes are not holistic
in their approach. For us it goes way beyond environmental issues, it’s
very much health related, very much culture related, and oftentimes some of these
groups do not see it in that way. More and more are learning as we try to bridge
those divides, but certainly history was very tough—in the 60s in particular—and
many of our elders still are wounded. As a result, they have a real caution with
environmental groups and with animal rights folks. The leaders of our regions
always caution me to be very careful as to whom I partner with out in the global
world when we are working on these issues.
Seal hunting is very controversial. In recent years, Canada has opened up to
seal hunting again, but many countries have put a ban on importing seal fur.
It is very unfortunate for the Inuit that they always stroke [us] with the same
brush as they do with other parts of the country that are doing the mass seal
hunting, for their own economic [benefit], but I’m not here to speak on
their behalf. We like to be able to market our sealskin products to the U.S.
and some countries in Europe, but we can’t because of the Marine Mammal
Protection Act. Certainly for us it becomes a real challenge, because of what
people have been led to understand as inhumane, if you can say that term—we
don’t use that term because we don’t consider our animals as human—but
we have a great deal of respect for the animals that we hunt and we have a connection
with them that goes beyond what most people would understand. What they consider
to be the killing of animals is, for us, life giving life, so it’s very
difficult for our way of hunting to be interpreted as the same as others people’s
hunt and kill.
And for the Inuit, is it more of a subsistence hunting than a commercial hunt
today?
Oh yes. Our hunters are out there every day to put food on the table. I had seal
stew last night myself and we have it very frequently up here. It is for subsistence
hunts that we go, but the byproduct becomes a nice way for our hunters to make
some extra money.
What is the typical Inuit diet?
It depends on the regions. But here in Nunavut, like other coastal people in
the circumpolar world, we eat seal and whale. I think we only have one or two
communities that are inland here in Canada and there is lots of caribou, geese
and duck there. There is lot of wonderful good country food.
I wanted to switch back to the work on the petition and other global alliances.
Are you also working with communities such as the small island states who also
represent those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change?
We certainly have been trying to link up with the small island states because
as the Arctic melts, they will go under and will be flooded; and that is already
being evidenced down there. We are the two vulnerable areas of the world, really.
I started connecting with people from the small island states last year, and
we talked with them [about] partnering with us to show the world what is happening.
We are making those linkages and learning more about each other.
A student from Dartmouth is in Mauritius observing the meetings of the small
island states. He will be spending a couple of months down there talking with
their elders about what changes they have seen and witnessed and documenting
this on video. He will be coming in March to do the same with our elders and
that will help with our testimonies for the affidavits for the petitions.
Do you have any final thoughts you wanted to share?
The wisdom of the land is something that has taught our children to be so wise
about life, to connect to life’s issues. The problems that we face in our
communities today are a result of that disconnect. And over the years institutions
have come in and taken over the education systems of our people, severing that
wonderful holistic way we teach and prepare our children for life. The power
of the hunt is extremely important and misunderstood. When our boys are taught
to hunt, they are not just taught how to aim the rifle and skin the seal. They
are taught to be patient, to be bold under pressure, to withstand stress, to
not be impulsive, to be wise, to be courageous. All of those things are absolutely
necessary in the modern world—to be able to say no to drugs and alcohol
and self-destructive patterns. The profound judgment and wisdom that the land
teaches is so transferable to the modern world. We are now starting to understand
all of this and are putting it into our institutions and training programs to
make sure that our young people are going to spend more time out on the land,
where there is a natural teacher.
The connection is so important to us. People must understand that it is not just
about contaminants on our plate, it is not just about buying our groceries and
assimilating, it’s the powerful process of the hunt. It’s not just
an issue of switching over to other kinds of foods that are very expensive to
ship north to the Arctic. This is not something we want to give up. We will fight
for it on a high moral ground; we will fight for it as a human issue. It’s
wrong policies that are not working for the betterment of the entire planet,
and we must address it as such.
