Post by Okwes on Oct 12, 2006 15:01:08 GMT -5
Warming, melting Arctic forces native Alaskan village to move
SHISHMAREF, Alaska, Oct 10 (AFP) Oct 10, 2006
www.terradaily.com/2006/061010052730.h481he99.html
The Inupiaq of Shishmaref have lived in this island village for
generations, but with the waters rising all around and ever fierce
storms blasting the settlement, they are being forced to move far away
from the seas they have always depended upon.
The Alaskan village's plight is a stark example of the dramatic effects
of global warming as it challenges an entire community's way of life.
Winds sweep across the island from the broad, endless waters of the
Chukchi sea, north of the Bering Strait and just 150 kilometers (90
miles) from Russia.
Battering waves have destroyed boats, fish reserves and storage
buildings once well away from the water's threat, said an official
overseeing the village's move. A house collapsed and about 20 households
had to move away from the shore.
"Every year ... we agonize that the next storm will be the one that
wipes us out," Luci Eningowuk, chairwoman of the Shishmaref Erosion and
Relocation Coalition," told AFP.
About 600 people, mostly Inupiaq, live on the island, which is about 200
kilometers (125 miles) north of the closest Alaskan city, Nome, from
where a small plane flies visitors to the island.
The village, at the tip of a 600-meter wide and five-kilometer long
island, sits on frozen sand called "permafrost," which is vulnerable to
erosion as temperatures rise.
"There is a significant warming in Alaska for at least 30 years. Air
temperatures are increasing and temperature in permafrost is warming,"
said Vladimir Romanovsky, professor of geophysics at the University of
Alaska Fairbanks.
The thawing makes permafrost more vulnerable to floods triggered by
melting ice-floes and glaciers that cause the sea to rise, he said.
Deborah Williams, the former executive director of the Alaska
Conservation Foundation, warned last year that the US state was in trouble.
"Alaska is the tip of the melting iceberg, or the canary in the coal
mine with an impending heat stroke," she said in April 2005.
Robert Corell presented to a US Senate committee in 2004 a study on the
impact of climate change in the Arctic.
"Climatic changes are the largest and are being experienced most
intensely in the Arctic region," Corell told the panel.
For the people of Shishmaref, the effects of climate change are
painfully real.
The village voted in 2002 to move to the Alaska continent and nine
locations are being considered.
"Once the community decides on the site, it probably won't be another
five years until we actually start moving something," said Village
Transportation Planner Tony Weyiouanna.
Weyiouanna estimated the move would cost between 160 million and 200
million dollars, and that more money would be needed to build a new village.
The Inupiaq have lived on the island for 4,000 years, he said. "We are
coastal people. The sea is our main diet".
To Eningowuk, the relocation chairwoman, integrating into another
community was unacceptable.
"Relocation of our community to an area away from our home territory
would have a devastating impact on how we exist and who we are," she said.
"Consolidation with another community is not acceptable (because)
dissemination of our community is the annihilation," she said. "We are a
community tied together by family, common goals, values, and traditions.
We are different from our neighbors."
For village resident Ardith Weyiouanna, moving to the mainland will be
"a very big change. Another way of life, a new life with lots of
connections with the land."
All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse.
SHISHMAREF, Alaska, Oct 10 (AFP) Oct 10, 2006
www.terradaily.com/2006/061010052730.h481he99.html
The Inupiaq of Shishmaref have lived in this island village for
generations, but with the waters rising all around and ever fierce
storms blasting the settlement, they are being forced to move far away
from the seas they have always depended upon.
The Alaskan village's plight is a stark example of the dramatic effects
of global warming as it challenges an entire community's way of life.
Winds sweep across the island from the broad, endless waters of the
Chukchi sea, north of the Bering Strait and just 150 kilometers (90
miles) from Russia.
Battering waves have destroyed boats, fish reserves and storage
buildings once well away from the water's threat, said an official
overseeing the village's move. A house collapsed and about 20 households
had to move away from the shore.
"Every year ... we agonize that the next storm will be the one that
wipes us out," Luci Eningowuk, chairwoman of the Shishmaref Erosion and
Relocation Coalition," told AFP.
About 600 people, mostly Inupiaq, live on the island, which is about 200
kilometers (125 miles) north of the closest Alaskan city, Nome, from
where a small plane flies visitors to the island.
The village, at the tip of a 600-meter wide and five-kilometer long
island, sits on frozen sand called "permafrost," which is vulnerable to
erosion as temperatures rise.
"There is a significant warming in Alaska for at least 30 years. Air
temperatures are increasing and temperature in permafrost is warming,"
said Vladimir Romanovsky, professor of geophysics at the University of
Alaska Fairbanks.
The thawing makes permafrost more vulnerable to floods triggered by
melting ice-floes and glaciers that cause the sea to rise, he said.
Deborah Williams, the former executive director of the Alaska
Conservation Foundation, warned last year that the US state was in trouble.
"Alaska is the tip of the melting iceberg, or the canary in the coal
mine with an impending heat stroke," she said in April 2005.
Robert Corell presented to a US Senate committee in 2004 a study on the
impact of climate change in the Arctic.
"Climatic changes are the largest and are being experienced most
intensely in the Arctic region," Corell told the panel.
For the people of Shishmaref, the effects of climate change are
painfully real.
The village voted in 2002 to move to the Alaska continent and nine
locations are being considered.
"Once the community decides on the site, it probably won't be another
five years until we actually start moving something," said Village
Transportation Planner Tony Weyiouanna.
Weyiouanna estimated the move would cost between 160 million and 200
million dollars, and that more money would be needed to build a new village.
The Inupiaq have lived on the island for 4,000 years, he said. "We are
coastal people. The sea is our main diet".
To Eningowuk, the relocation chairwoman, integrating into another
community was unacceptable.
"Relocation of our community to an area away from our home territory
would have a devastating impact on how we exist and who we are," she said.
"Consolidation with another community is not acceptable (because)
dissemination of our community is the annihilation," she said. "We are a
community tied together by family, common goals, values, and traditions.
We are different from our neighbors."
For village resident Ardith Weyiouanna, moving to the mainland will be
"a very big change. Another way of life, a new life with lots of
connections with the land."
All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse.