Tuktoyaktuk: Climate Change Personified

Once again the observations of Inuit, and the conditions rapid climate change have imposed upon us, are in the news focusing on one of our communities – Tuktoyaktuk in the Inuvialuit Region – where the ravages of climate change are graphically and physically evident.

• Since 1970, temperatures have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) in much of the Arctic, much faster than the global average
• People in Tuk say winters are less numbing, with briefer spells of -40 C temperatures
• "Them killer whales, first time people seen them here in the harbor, three or four of them this summer," said the 89-year-old patriarch of Tuk's biggest family, Eddie Gruben
• American robins moved into the Canadian Arctic this spring
• The land is shifting as permafrost melts, and eroding away as the sea rises
• Spring break-up is earlier, fall freeze-up is later, the ice isn’t as thick as it used to be, and these issues combine to make travelling on the sea ice increasingly more dangerous
• Unpredictable ice and weather combine with a changing animal world to make hunting and fishing more difficult, and this has an impact on diet as obtaining traditional foods to supplement expensive store bought food is made more difficult. Food security is no longer an issue that poverty stricken 3rd world countries grapple with, it is one that Canadian Inuit are now being forced by outside influences to contend with.

These are real world examples of how climate change is affecting our people and our homeland – how many times must they be repeated before the world takes climate change as seriously as we have been forced to?

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