Is Climate Change in the Arctic a disaster or an opportunity for Canada’s North?

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CLIMATE CHANGE IN ARCTIC:
DISASTER OR OPPORTUNITY FOR CANADA’S NORTH?
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Background
Change is key to understanding political, economic, social, cultural and, more recently, environmental developments. Contextualized, understanding change in given systems helps inform not only management processes but, more important, response and, should needs arise, mitigation measures. Understandably, climate change has come front and center of global discussions in more recent years. Informed by a variety of political, economic, social, cultural and, of course, physical environment opportunities and challenges, climate change is perhaps world’s most pressing issue. The approach to climate change remains, however, largely intermittent, driven primarily by passing expressions of climate change (e.g. natural disasters, rising temperatures, and disappearing species), not by consistent – and concerted – efforts for understanding, let alone proper management. The complexity of climate change is perhaps best captured in Canada’s North.
For half a century, Canada’s North has been experiencing dramatic ecological shifts. Triggered by climate change effects, human and natural habitats are under growing existential threats in Canada’s vast most northern territories. From a conventional perspective, undergoing changes in Canada’s North represent challenges only to all stakeholders, particularly wild and marine life, experiencing such changes. From a more innovative perspective, however, Canada’s North, despite all challenges, involves unprecedented opportunities promising new horizons of international cooperation, more public-private partnerships, wider development (political, economic, and social) for Aboriginal communities, and not least, radically changed industries, particularly in oil, gas, shipment, fishery and hospitality. To understand Canada’s North, accordingly, opportunities and challenges should inform current and future research and
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development efforts. That is, Canada’s North, just as all early underdeveloped areas, should be understood not only in a context of risk, particularly climate change, but, more important, in a parallel, if not overlapping, context of risk management or opportunities.
Canada's North Opportunities and Challenges
The cryosphere (i.e. permafrost, sea ice, lake ice, and snow) changes brought about by climate change in Canada’s North is well document in literature (Frugal and Prowse 2008) For one, biodiversity shifts and increasing unavailability and inaccessibility of resources as well as loss of established, native ways of life (Frugal and Prowse) are most common concerns and risks cited as a result of climate change in Canada’s North. Moreover, rapidly changing natural environments, aggravated by further destabilization of wild and marine life, are shown to pose growing risks for native communities, particularly in Nunavut, including, most notably, inability to provide emergency response due to remoteness, on one hand, and inaccessibility to medical care and response, on another hand (Clark and Ford 2017) This is not to mention, of course, confirmed cases of water contamination due to changing nature of stable platforms of permafrost responsible for pond and lake retention (Frugal and Prowse). In so understanding Canada’s North, most discussions are focused on damages and, as a consequence, means to recover and/or mitigate losses. The growing global awareness of climate changes issues, moreover, combined by, or resulting in, growing pressures on governments and private companies, particularly in oil and exploration industry, is, moreover, making a case for a dystopian situation in Canada’s North. These are, understandably, legitimate concerns confirmed by a growing body of research over decades. Little attention is starting, however, to emerge about how a changing Northern Canada could be an asset, not just a liability. That is, whilst climate change challenges are fairly
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acceptable – and obvious – dismissal of potential opportunities, perhaps largely amplified by citing economic exploitation and political manipulation, causes, one strongly believes, more damage.
Canada’s North has, for millennia, been a natural preserve maintained as is, as if con...