By Slim Allagui – Thu Jul 9, 2:13 am ET NUUK (AFP) – From his trawler that motors along the Nuuk fjord, fisherman Johannes Heilmann has watched helplessly in recent years as climate change takes its toll on Greenland. Global warming is occurring twice as fast in the Arctic as in the rest of the world. Heilmann, in his 60s with a craggy, rugged face from years of work in the outdoors, says he and his colleagues can no longer take their dogsleds out to the edge of the ice floes to fish because the ice isn’t thick enough to carry the weight. And yet the freezing waters with large chunks of ice are too difficult to navigate in their small fishing boats, making fishing near impossible. “We can’t use the sleds any more, the ice isn’t thick enough,” laments Heilmann, saying he now has to rely on bird hunting, and sometimes seal hunting, while waiting for the summer months to go fishing. At Ilulissat, more than 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, Emil Osterman tells local daily Sermitsiaq how “in 1968, when I was 13, we went fishing in December in the fjord and the ice was several metres thick.” Now, more than 40 years on, the ice at the very same location at the same time of year “is only 30 centimetres thick.” The head of Nuuk’s fishing and hunting association, Leif Fontaine, explains how climate warming is also affecting the region’s shrimp industry — Greenland’s main export and biggest industrial sector. “When the water gets warmer, the shrimp become rarer as they move further north,” he says. “And the melting ice is worrying, especially for the residents of isolated villages in the north and the east who only have sleds and no boats to hunt, fish and survive,” he adds. That has forced some hunters to let their sleddogs starve to death, since they can’t provide them with the seals and fish they need to eat. Polar bears that roam the ice also have an increasingly difficult time finding food, especially seals, as the ice floes melt. As a result they end up approaching villages in search of nourishment, presenting a danger to the locals and themselves. …
Global warming impacting Greenlanders’ daily lives
