Arctic climate challenge starts

By Glenn Morris Arctic Explorer

Explorer Glenn Morris has started the second leg of an expedition which is attempting to assess how climate change is affecting the Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic.

A rain-damaged street in the town of Kugluktuk last year

He is leading a team on a 3,000-mile (4,827 km), three-year journey to kayak along the Northwest Passage.

Here he explains the aim of the second leg of the Arctic Voice Expedition and what he witnessed during the first phase last year.

Mr Morris, from Llanbadarn y Garreg, near Builth Wells, Powys, takes up the story...

We came to the Arctic to talk to the Inuit about climate change: What was happening to them?

What changes had they seen? What message had they for us in the UK? What could we learn from a culture such as theirs?

After all, we thought, they had a deep understanding of the land and their fellow creatures, the animals that they hunted - they were still hunter gatherers.

Europe rejected the hunter gatherer way of life in favour of the concept of land and agriculture over 7,000 years ago, so was it possible that they, the Inuit, were in touch with a basic knowledge long forgotten by us?

Right now I see little hope for the people of the north - like most indigenous peoples of the world the grinding wheel of commerce pays scant regards to the needs of the people Glenn Morris

Perhaps they could tell us where we were going wrong, how we could live sustainably, how could we stand, like Nanook of the north, smiling next to our igloos.

We did ask these questions and we did see for our own eyes the evidence of the planet's power as it struggles to find some equilibrium in the face of man's breathtaking destruction of its elements.

As we paddled on the first phase of our 3,000-mile (4,827 km) journey from Inuvik to Kugluktuk we saw the coastline crumbling as the storm tides surged in, where in past years the ice would have acted as a protective barrier.

The hunters told us of changing migration patterns - bears were moving north as, interestingly, were certain species of birds and flowers. Caribou no longer used the routes which for thousands of years were known to the hunters.

Kugluktuk, the town at the end of our 2007 journey, technically a desert, experienced astonishing flash floods just before we arrived. The water washed whole streets into the sea and undermined houses.

Glenn Morris paddling the Northwest Passage in a kayak

In Herschel Island houses were sinking into the land as the permafrost melted. And perhaps worst of all our route, the infamous Northwest Passage had in 2007 for the first time in living history become ice free - yes the Arctic is changing - and now.

So what do the Inuit think, are they worried? One rather telling comment came not from an Inuit elder or hunter but from the librarian in Kugluktuk.

She was a white Canadian and said simply: 'It's not the Inuit you need to worry about - they will adapt - it's you guys down south and in the cities.'

Of course she was right. Just what would we hunt if (as is starting to happen) food does become scarce? It would be entirely wrong to think that the Inuit are not aware of climate change, after all, it is the Inuit who is watching his house slowly collapse, it is the Inuit hunter who drowns along with his dogs as the thinning ice gives way beneath him, but what can he do?

Since we reached the end of our journey last year and up until this point - the next leg from Kugluktuk, 600 miles (965 km) east to Cambridge Bay, I have pondered this question.

Right now I see little hope for the people of the north - like most indigenous peoples of the world the grinding wheel of commerce pays scant regards to the needs of the people, their values, their environments and the creatures they share the land with - any chance to turn a profit and they take second place.