The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future (48 page)

469
After the bloody Pontiac Uprising in which nine British forts were captured, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which declared that Indians should “not be molested or disturbed” and only the Crown, not private citizens, was allowed to purchase land from them. To this day it is credited as a first legal acknowledgment of aboriginal land claims in Canada. Also, British Columbia refused to extinguish aboriginal title, as per note 462.

470
A second type of modern agreement, called “Specific Claims,” exists in Canada to redress past grievances of aboriginal groups who did sign historic treaties. Many aboriginal groups have pursued, or are pursuing, Specific Claims. However these are typically cash settlements and do not relate to land title.

471
From GIS analysis of aforementioned spatial data I estimate 284,247 km
²
of Indian reservations in the conterminous United States and 4,358,247 km
²
covered by Canadian land claims agreements as of 2009.

472
As a rule,
Lapp
is now considered derogatory and should be avoided in favor of Sámi or Saami.

473
Personal interviews with Aili Keskitalo, president, Norwegian Sámi Parliament (Tromsø, January 23, 2007); Nellie Couroyea, chair/CEO, Inavialuit Regional Corporation and former NWT premier (Tromsø, January 23, 2007); Lars-Emil Johansen minister of foreign affairs and former prime minister (Greenland, May 24, 2007); Mike Spence, mayor of Churchill (Manitoba, June 28, 2007); Elisapee Sheutiapik, mayor of Iqaluit (Nunavut, August 5, 2007); Eli Kavik, mayor of Sanikiluaq (Nunavut, August 7, 2007); Richard Glenn, vice-president, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (Barrow, Alaska, August 22, 2008); Tony Penikett, former Yukon premier (Ottawa, June 1, 2009); Mary Simon, president, ITK (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit organization, Ottawa, June 2, 2009); Ed Schultz, executive director, Council of Yukon First Nations (Ottawa, June 4, 2009).

474
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) produced the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the “most comprehensive statement of the rights of indigenous peoples ever developed, giving prominence to collective rights to a degree unprecedented in international human rights law,” adopted by the General Assembly September 13, 2007,
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/
(accessed September 6, 2009). All five Nordic countries voted in favor of this declaration. Australia, the United States, and Canada voted against it; Russia was one of eleven countries abstaining.

475
Norway’s Finnmark Act of 2005 transferred 96% of Finnmark County’s land ownership to a council called the Finnmark Commission, comprised of representatives from the Sámi Parliament as well as the local and central governments. Minority Rights Group International,
World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples—Norway: Overview, 2007,
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4954cdff23.html
(accessed September 10, 2009).

476
According to Aili Keskitalo, president, Norwegian Sámi Parliament, personal interview, Tromsø, January 23, 2007.

477
J. Madslien, “Russia’s Sami Fight for Their Lives,” BBC News, December 21, 2006,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6171701.stm
.

478
M. M. Balzer, “The Tension between Might and Rights: Siberians and Energy Developers in Post-Socialist Binds,”
Europe-Asia Studies
58, no.4 (2006): 567-588. See also A. Reid,
The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia
(New York: Walker & Company, 2002), 226 pp.

479
However, outright land ownership is a backburner issue in Russia. Most Russians, including aboriginals, view private land ownership as nonessential and even inappropriate. Aboriginal people are more concerned with winning stewardship, protections from competing uses, and the ability to pass use of the land on to their descendants. G. Fondahl and G. Poelzer, “Aboriginal Land Rights in Russia at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century,”
Polar Record
39, no. 209 (2003): 111-122.

480
A very small aboriginal group called the Yukagir people successfully fought for the adoption of a special law guaranteeing them self-governance in the two townships of Nelemnoe and Andrushkino, where much of their population (1,509 people in 2002) lives. P. 97,
Arctic Human Development Report
(Akureyri, Iceland: Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2004), 242 pp.

481
S. N. Kharyuchi, “Option (sic) letter by the delegates of the VI Congress of indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation” (open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev and Chairman Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin regarding the sale of twenty-year commercial salmon fishing leases in Kamchatka), May 12, 2009, RAIPON,
http://www.raipon.org/RAIPON/News/tabid/523/mid/1560/newsid1560/3924/Option-letter-by-the-delegates-of-the-VI-Congress-of-indigenous-small-numbered-peoples-of-the-North-Siberia-and-the-Far-East-of-the-Russian-Federation/Default.aspx
(accessed September 15, 2009). See also G. Fondahl, A. Sirina, “Rights and Risks: Evenki Concerns Regarding the Proposed Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline,”
Sibirica
5, no. 2 (2006): 115-138.

482
On September 7, 1995, Aleksandr Pika and eight others disappeared after setting out from the town of Sireniki, Chukotka, by boat. Five days later the overturned boat and five bodies were found, with Pika’s among the unrecovered. Quote is from p. 16, Aleksander Pika, ed.,
Neotraditionalism in the Russian North
(Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press, and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 214 pp.

483
Russian Federal Law 82-F3, April 30, 1999,
O garantiyakh prav korennykh malochislennykh narodov Rossiyskoy Federatsii
(“On guarantees of the rights of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the Russian Federation”); Russian Federal Law 104-F3, July 20, 2000,
Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsii obshchin korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka Rossiyskoy Federatsii
(“On general principles for organization of obshchinas of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation”); Russian Federal Law 104-F3, July 20, 2000
, O territoriyakh traditsionnogo prirodopol’-zovaniya korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka Rossiyskoy Federatsii
(“On territories of traditional nature use of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation”). Translations by G. Fondahl and G. Poelzer, “Aboriginal Land Rights in Russia at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century,”
Polar Record
39, no. 209 (2003): 111-122.

484
P. 50,
Arctic Human Development Report
(Akureyri: Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2004), 242 pp.

485
Unlike other NORC countries, Canada currently has no university in the far north, but there is growing pressure to found one. In general, the fights in North America and Greenland will move on from issues of property title and political governance to other problems of education, public health, and the devolution of natural resource revenues, which are beyond the scope of this chapter.

486
E.g., conservation of mass and energy, gas laws, radiative transfer and cloud physics, fundamental geography like the positions and elevations of the continents and size and rotation rate of the planet, proper parameterizations for subgrid processes, and aerosols.

487
R. B. Alley,
The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 229 pp.

488
K. C. Taylor et al., “The ‘Flickering Switch’ of Late Pleistocene Climate Change,”
Nature
361 (1993): 432-436, DOI:10.1038/361432a0; R. B. Alley et al., “Abrupt Increase in Greenland Snow Accumulation at the End of the Younger Dryas Event,”
Nature
362 (1993): 527-529, DOI:10.1038/362527a0.

489
B. L. Isacks et al., “Seismology and the New Global Tectonics,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
73, no. 18 (1968): 5855-5899.

490
The project ended up with some interesting results after all, thanks in part to Richard Alley. It found that a mathematical technique called wavelet analysis is useful for detecting hidden climate signals in river flow data. L. C. Smith, D. L. Turcotte, B. L. Isacks, “Streamflow Characterization and Feature Detection Using a Discrete Wavelet Transform,”
Hydrological Processes
12 (1998): 233-249.

491
Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2, drilled between 1989 and 1993 near the center of Greenland.

492
R. B. Alley et al., “Abrupt Increase in Greenland Snow Accumulation at the End of the Younger Dryas Event,”
Nature
362 (1993): 527-529, DOI:10.1038/362527a0.

493
The new CIA climate-change center will assess “the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.” CIA Press Release, “CIA Opens Center on Climate Change and National Security,” September 25, 2009,
www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/center-on-climate-change-and-national-security.html
(accessed November 26, 2009). See also J. M. Broder, “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security,”
The New York Times,
August 8, 2009.

494
M.B. Burke et al., “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa,”
PNAS
106, no. 49 (2009): 20670-20674,
www.pnas.org/cgi/DOI/10.1073/pnas.0907998106
.

495
The most famous and dramatic reversal is the so-called “Younger Dryas” event, an abrupt return to nearly ice-age conditions that began suddenly about 12,700 years ago, then persisted nearly 1,300 years before resumption of warming. Its cause and also the cause of the 8.2 ka event is thought to be a shutdown in ocean thermohaline circulation owing to freshening of the North Atlantic, as will be described shortly. For reviews of the 8.2 ka event, see R. B. Alley, A. M. Ágústsdóttir, “The 8k Event: Cause and Consequences of a Major Holocene Abrupt Climate Change,”
Quaternary Science Reviews
24 (2005): 1123-1149; and E. R. Thomas et al., “The 8.2 ka Event from Greenland Ice Cores,”
Quaternary Science Reviews
26 (2007): 70-81.

496
Peter Schwartz, Doug Randall, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security” (October 2003), 22 pp.,
www.accc.gv.at/pdf/pentagon_climate_change.pdf
(accessed September 27, 2009).

497
The flood path for the smaller 8.2 ka event was probably through the Hudson Strait. D. C. Barber et al., “Forcing of the Cold Event of 8,200 Years Ago by Catastrophic Drainage of Laurentide Lakes,”
Nature
400 (July 22, 1999): 344-348, DOI:10.1038/22504. It is also hypothesized that the Younger Dryas event was triggered by a flood draining ancient Lake Agassiz through the St. Lawrence Seaway, or possibly a longer route through the Mackenzie River and Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic. L. Tarasov, W. R. Peltier, “Arctic Freshwater Forcing of the Younger Dryas Cold Reversal,
Nature
435 (June 2, 2005): 662-665, DOI:10.1038/nature03617.

498
The story begins with W. S. Broecker, D. M. Peteet, D. Rind, “Does the Ocean-Atmosphere System Have More than One Stable Mode of Operation?”
Nature
315 (1985): 21-26. A recent development is Z. Liu et al., “Transient Simulation of Last Deglaciation with a New Mechanism for Bølling-Allerød Warming,”
Science
325 (2009): 310-314.

499
A. K. Rennermalm et al., “Relative Sensitivity of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to River Discharge into Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
112 (2007), G04S48, DOI:10.1029/2006JG000330. The
IPCC AR4
(2007) gave >90% chance the thermohaline conveyor will remain functioning for the next century.

500
Even at the lowest carbon dioxide scenarios, with stabilization at 450 ppm, this critical threshold is eventually crossed in thirty-four out of thirty-five stabilization scenarios. J. M. Gregory et al., “Climatology: Threatened Loss of the Greenland Ice-Sheet,”
Nature
428 (April 8, 2004): 616, DOI:10.1038/428616a.

501
Table 1, G. A. Milne et al., “Identifying the Causes of Sea-Level Change,”
Nature Geoscience
2 (June 14, 2009): 471-478, DOI:10.1038/ngeo544. However, keep in mind the Earth had 70% more ice then than it does today, so a four-meters-per-century sea-level rise is not likely to be repeated.

502
Ibid., 496.

503
Ice sheets help to preserve their own existence by creating an elevated surface at high, cold altitudes and by reflecting back much of the sun’s energy. If Greenland’s ice sheet were removed, temperatures over its low, dark bedrock surface would be much warmer than today and the ice sheet unlikely to form again.