Green Groups Urge EU to Heed Arctic's Plight
Date: 17-Mar-04
Country: BELGIUM
The polar region, stretching across northern parts of Russia, Canada, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, is rich in resources but its native Inuit population is under threat from melting ice caps.
Russia has yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions. After the United States withdrew in 2000, Russia can effectively stop the treaty coming into force.
"Climate change is happening twice as fast in the Arctic as in the rest of the world," Svein Tveitdal, a senior official at the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) told a news conference, asking the EU to maintain its diplomatic efforts.
The EU cannot leave it solely up to Nordic states - Denmark, Sweden, Finland and non-bloc member Norway - to protect the Arctic people and landscape, he added.
The U.N. body and the European Environment Agency published a report listing the dangers facing the Inuit people where seal and pike, traditional food sources, can only be eaten sparingly by women as they contain toxic chemicals harmful to reproduction.
"The Arctic environment is clean," said one of the authors of the report, Norwegian Lars-Otto Reiersen. "The pollution is caused by pesticides and mercury in the south."
The toxic substances are carried north by air and water and though the EU has signed an international treaty to phase out the so-called dirty dozen - the 12 most polluting chemicals - they remain in the environment for decades.
Environmentalists also want the EU to invest more money in research related to the Arctic region and put pressure on Russia to exploit oil and gas resources in a sustainable way.
