How money will be spent

Follow the link to see the Canadian governments own webpage detailing how they plan to spend $85.9 million over 4 years to help Canadian's increase their capacity for adaptation due to climate change.

Government Webpage

Government Policy

Canadian government policy will prove key to the people of Northern Canada. Whilst the majority of governments are focusing on reducing their greenhouse gases, for the Canadian government something else needs to be done as just reducing emissions ‘is misplaced for northern Canadian residents’ (Newton et al, 2005).

Budreau and McBean (2006) argue strongly for the government to adopt a proactive approach as opposed to a reactive one. They liken climate change in Northern Canada to the collapse of cod fisheries in Atlantic Canada and say that many lessons can be learnt from this disaster. They say that the collapse of the cod fisheries did not come as a surprise and the government knew that fish stocks were on the decline. They argue that if the government had taken a proactive approach then they could have initiated schemes to relieve the effects of the collapse decades before it had occurred.

As well as this, McMahon (1996) suggests that the large amounts of spending after the collapse of the cod fishery hindered the economic growth which followed because it prevented innovation. This leads to the thought that maybe the government shouldn’t just throw money at the problem and could first of all see how adaptive the communities of the North could be.

The government need to plan in order to form policys which will build adaptive capacity in the North. Budreau and McBean (2006) again argue that the government need to start this as soon as possible, as cultural change is slow. They therefore suggest that a multi-faceted approach needs to be taken in order to build the adaptive capacity for impacts due to climate change. 

References (not online)

McMahon (1996) Looking the gift horse in the mouth: The impact of federal transfers on Atlantic

Canada, Bounty Press: Halifax

An Inuit using GPS to find his way: climate change adaptation?

Film : Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change

A very interesting documentary made by Zacharias Kunuk and Dr. Ian Mauro. Although the documentary is long, it is definitely worth a watch. It is made up of interviews with elders and hunters of Inuit communities and their  knowledge and experiences of climate change. It is an extremely insightful documentary which has been filmed in the Inuit language Inuktitut and subtitled in English.

Adaptations - Start now

Canada’s Northern communities are particularly susceptible to climate change because of their high dependence on the environment. Many communities have begun making adaptations to their lifestyle and will need to continue doing this in the future. The adaptations that they have or will have to make are far reaching and are likely to impact many parts of their lives.

However, it isn’t just up to the communities to make the adaptations; it is also the obligation of their government and the rest of the international community to help those who are feeling the first effects of climate change.

Some of the changes that will need to be made are summarised in the paper by Ford et al.(2010). They are wide ranging and I have detailed them in the table below.

Factor	Adaptations
Land Skills	Preservation and enhancement of skills through education programmes. Changing the current attitudes of younger generations towards harvesting.
Wildlife Resources	Governments and Northern Communities to co’-manage the wildlife in order to reduce current and predicted conflict between communities and with the government.
Search and Rescue	Give support and technology to the communities so that they can enhance their search and rescue operations.
Infrastructure	Invest in engineering structures to protect existing infrastructure. Identify sites at particular risk and plan to avoid future development near at risk areas.
Harvesting	Develop support mechanisms and provide economic support to give the ability to purchase extra equipment.

I believe that it is very important to let the communities ‘help themselves’. By this I mean that whilst funds and technology should be available to them, nothing should be forced upon the communities.

It is important to remember that many of the Northern communities only recently went through huge social changes. In the twentieth century they have seen the imposition of the western government, the introduction of the waged economy, legal system, hunting regulations and compulsory schooling (Ford, 2009). All of these factors have led to ‘chronic problems’ (Ford, 2009) within many communities including a high suicide rate and substance abuse.

It is with these current problems that the communities have to make further changes and adaptations to their livelihoods. It is important to start now in order to mitigate as many effects of climate change as possible and because social and cultural change within these communities is likely to take some time. 

Past Adaptations

I was hoping that in this blog post I could discuss at length the adaptations that had been made by Northern Communities in the past, particularly during the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age. However, there seems to be very limited literature discussing the adaptations that the population must have made.

The Medieval Warm Period is generally agreed to have occurred between 1000-1300 A.D. During this period in history, when the temperature was up to 2C above average, it is said that wine-making grapes were grown in England and the Scandinavian tree line was up to 100-200m higher than today (Crowley and Lowry, 2000). This was closely followed by the Little Ice Age from 16^th – mid 19^th Century, with a drop of temperature by 0.6C (Mann, 2002) .

Both of these time periods are of specific interest to me, in order to understand the adaptations that must have taken place in the communities of Northern Canada.

The Dorset Culture lived in the Canadian Arctic until 1500 A.D. when they essentially became extinct. It is said that they had trouble adapting to the temperature of the Medieval Warm Period and that they were driven out by the Thule.

The warming period reduced the annual extent of sea ice across central and eastern parts of the Canadian Arctic (Wenzel, 2009). This created a larger space of open water which then allowed for the arrival of bowhead and presumably other whales (Wenzel, 2009). The Thule culture, who originated from Alaska then followed their main food resource across into Canada. The Thule culture quickly displaced the Dorset Culture. The reasons for the demise of the Dorset Culture is unclear, however it is thought that they were unable to adapt to changes in wildlife and climate (Rigby). The Dorset culture are still the subject of popular folklore tales told by Inuit today (Rigby).

However, it is interesting to look at the adaptations of the Thule culture. They arrived in the ‘warm period’ and as the climate transitioned into the Little Ice Age, the Thule culture had to adapt their whole way of life. I’ve summarized the changes that occurred and the adaptations that they had to make.

During Medieval Warm Period	During Little Ice Age
Whalebone and boulder dwellings	Igloos
Large Thule villages	Smaller, extended family encampments of 20 or so people
Winter food security – harvesting 20 – 30 tonne whales	Hunting of smaller, prey species e.g. caribou, seals and Arctic char
Whale blubber for fuel and bone for hunting	Some whale blubber but from smaller whales
Fairly sedentary lifestyle	Less sedentary lifestyle – the resources they relied upon were smaller, highly mobile and seasonally restricted

(Wenzel, 2009)

The climate transition that the Thule culture went through demonstrated their ability to adapt. The modern day Inuit people descend directly from the Thule and they have already begun to demonstrate their adaptive capacity. The Dorset culture were unable to adapt to changes and this saw the eventual extinction of their population.