We know that rapid warming in the Arctic is harming polar bears. How is affecting the people who live there?
In fall 2007 I was freshly returned from Niger, in West Africa. Sunbaked and as tan as a child of northern Europeans gets, I was ready to return to the North. My memories of the difficult Nigerien hunger season in 2005 were still fresh, and I returned to a United States whose news media seemed to have been revolutionized in my absence.
Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth had suddenly transformed the invisible topic of climate change into a very public and prominent issue. Or, at least, the transformation seemed sudden to me, after a three and a half year absence from the U.S.
The combination of news media focus and my own awareness of the effects of climate change in Niger meant that I went to my new job in Alaska's Bering Strait primed to hear global warming stories. And global warming stories I found.
I went to teach science in a very small school. I arrived on Little Diomede ready for what my new principal described as another Peace Corps experience. What I found was in many ways not at all a reflection of my agricultural, low-tech existence for much of my time in Niger. Yet, the stories of changing climate had many echoes of those I heard in Niger.
Some of the stories I heard in Niger included the disappearance of the seasonal pond that had brought fishing and irrigation water to the village. The millet harvests on higher, drier ground were gradually diminishing. Rains were even more erratic. The devastating hungry season in 2005 was partly from lack of rain, partly from locusts, partly from poor coordination of resources.
On Little Diomede, there were more stories of water, but here most noticeable in the sea ice, not rain. Sea ice was freezing in later each fall. Declining sea ice means disappearing opportunities.
For some time, a major form of transportation to the island has been by small planes in the winter. Planes could land only when the sea ice was solid enough to bulldoze a runway down it. Less winter ice means increasingly difficult transport to and from the island in the winter. Especially when the helicopter goes out of service, as happened last winter. Dentists, scientific researchers, mail, replacement machine parts and more all travel by plane.
At least as importantly, though, the ice serves as hunting ground in the winter months. Residents of the village hunt seals, walrus and occasionally whales on the ice (They are one of only a few communities legally permitted to hunt whales). They fish for crab from holes in the ice.
Traditionally, the diet, shaped by the sea and supplemented with summer's greens and berries, was all that was available to those living in the village. It was highly nutritious. As among other cultures like the Pima in Arizona, the addition of processed foods has brought the island some health problems. Many families still work hard, though, to maintain a highly subsistence-based diet.
As the ice season shortens, hunting and crabbing become more difficult. The chance to acquire food during the winter is limited by the warmer seas.
Compared to other Alaska native communities, Little Diomede is doing fairly well. Shismaref is quite literally washing away. Newtok is flooding and eroding. Thinning sea ice threatens Kivalina's livelihoods. And despite plans noted on government websites and carefully developed by communities, funding for moving these villages to safe ground is not materializing.
Little Diomede is much better off than these communities that desperately need to evacuate. Nonetheless, Little Diomede's opportunities are changing. A tiny community whose subsistence depends heavily on sea ice. Yet whose transportation and heating depend on fossil fuels.
As climate change accelerates, the Arctic environment is becoming increasingly challenging for the humans who live in many of its communities. The future of communities like Little Diomede is uncertain.
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