WWF Maps Ambitious Arctic Conservation Plan
© Environment News Service (ENS) 2001
September 10, 2001
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada, September 10, 2001 (ENS) - The Arctic's fragile ecosystems are facing what the World Wide Fund for Nature is calling "major accelerating threats." The international environmental organization, known as the World Wildlife Fund in the United States and Canada, held a meeting of WWF leaders from the eight Arctic nations last week to map out an Arctic conservation plan.
Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States were represented at the meeting September 6 and 7 in Toronto, Canada.
Host of the gathering, Monte Hummel, the longtime CEO of WWF-Canada, sees the international collaboration as essential to the conservation of this threatened region. "To safeguard Arctic ecosystems, wildlife and indigenous cultures, we must establish a representative network of protected areas prior to any industrial development," he said.
The threats are numerous - oil and gas development, pipelines, mining and roads. The summit emphasized three major threats: ill-planned development, uncontrolled climate change, and toxic pollutants.
Polar bears are struggling for survival on rapidly thinning ice, and the high levels of toxins in their bodies are causing reproductive and immune system problems. The migration of vast caribou herds is now threatened by plans for major pipelines and roads, the WWF group recognized.
"Development has already degraded most of the world's pristine habitats; the Arctic is one of our last chances to put conservation first," said Hummel.
The Arctic contains the largest inhabited natural ecosystems left on earth, as shown by a United Nations Environment Programme map released Friday detailing the 25 largest remaining wilderness areas in this region. These are critical for the healthy functioning of many of the Earth's key physical and chemical processes - ocean currents, freshwater supply, moderating climate.
During a meeting in Finland last June, scientists with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned that up to 80 percent of the Arctic will be affected by mining, oil and gas exploration, ports, roads and other developments by 2050 if the industrialization of one of the world's last wilderness areas continues at current rates.
Even at lower growth rates of infrastructure there will be damage. UNEP scientists conclude that 40 percent of the region's wildlife and ecosystems will be critically disturbed by 2050 if growth occurs at half the levels seen since 1990.
"The Arctic's rich and abundant wildlife will suffer with birds and larger mammals such as reindeer, caribou, polar bears, wolves and brown bears at greatest risk," UNEP said in a statement after the meeting which marked 10 years of Arctic Environmental Cooperation.
Taking this warning to heart, the WWF leaders last week resolved to help accomplish by 2010 a number of far-reaching Arctic conservation targets.
In cooperation with northern residents, they will attempt to complete a circumarctic network of protected areas, covering marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats.
They will conserve or restore viable populations of caribou, muskoxen, bears, wolves, wolverines, walrus, whales and migratory waterbirds.
The WWF leaders intend, by 2007, to eliminate or dramatically reduce the levels of 30 of the most hazardous industrial chemicals and pesticides found in the Arctic.
Lars Kristoferson, CEO of WWF-Sweden, said, "Toxic chemicals threaten Arctic wildlife and the people who depend on them. In May, over 90 nations signed the Stockholm Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Convention, a global agreement which will rein in and ultimately halt the proliferation of POPs chemicals. We urge the world's countries to ratify the Convention before September 2002 to ensure rapid implementation."
They pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in industrialized countries to 10 percent below 1990 levels, "as a first step" to reducing this major threat to the Arctic's sensitive ecosystems. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the major greenhouse gas linked to global warming, a phenomenon that is already in evidence in the Arctic as the icy masses shrink back towards the North Pole.
WWF's 10 percent target is roughly in line with the target adopted by most of the world, except the United States, through the Kyoto Protocol, an addendum to the United Nations climate change treaty.
Igor Chestin, CEO of WWF-Russia, said, "Arctic countries, whose very backyards are at risk from global warming, must take the lead in tackling climate change by being among the first to implement and ratify the Kyoto Protocol."
"The fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an urgent example of what is at stake," said Brooks Yeager of WWF-US. "The American people don't want to sacrifice the wilderness, wildlife and human heritage of this area for six month's supply of oil."
President George W. Bush and other proponents of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge say exploration and oil production there will create jobs and increase America's domestic oil supply, while the oil would be produced in an environmentally safe manner.
Threats to the region are accelerated by well advanced plans to open up a vast new seaway around the roof of the world. The Northern Sea Route, a 3,475 mile stretch of water running from the Barents Sea in the west to the Bering Strait in the east, could reduce the sailing time from Europe, Scandinavia and Russia to the Far East.
But conservationists fear that the development of the route is primarily intended to exploit the rich oil, gas and mineral resources of Siberia. The start of just part of the route will result in a previously unknown level of industrialization of Siberia.
This will add to pressures on the Arctic generally as a result of a sharp rise in the number of ships operating in the region, port and road developments and improved access to new oil, gas and mineral fields.