Aqqaluk Lynge, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greeland. (Daily Mail)

It was Inuit and Arctic Indigenous Peoples Day at the conference, so the show of unity was important, Jane George reports here in the Nunatsiaq News.

Inuit from Canada, Alaska and Greenland vowed to work on reconciling economic development and the threat posed by global warming, George writes

“We all agree that we deserve a good life. And we all agree that the Arctic and other vulnerable parts of the world are areas of special concern and should be treated as such by those wielding the most power,” says Aqqaluk Lynge, the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greenland.

Jimmy Stotts, the chair of ICC, Alaska, finds its “ironic” that Inuit are now being told to scale back their industrial development when they did not contribute to global warming. And, George writes, he cautioned against alliances with environmental groups because that could undermine traditional whale and seal hunts.

Lynge says there’s “a paradox of development” among Inuit.

“Those that are the most vulnerable, in particular indigenous peoples, are the ones that need sound sustainable development the most,” he says. “And we are told by the colonizers and the developed part of the word we can’t.”

Gwen Florio

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