7 August 2002 Arctic environment melts before our eyes
Svalbard/Norway:
We all do it. We return to a spot from our childhood or youth, stand
it that same spot and marvel at how the world has changed. Sometimes
the changes are subtle, even unnoticeable, other times, we are appalled
and alarmed by how the world has changed around us, seemingly overnight.
But what if you could visit one of
the most remote areas of the planet a hundred years later and see
how it has changed? How activities that take place far from sight
have a lasting impact on our environment. Would the changes be so
subtle?
Not in the far reaches of the Arctic
circle, the changes are obvious. Almost a hundred years later, standing
where researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute took photos
documenting glaciers on the island Svalbard, we can see that there
have been remarkable changes, and not for the better.
The island is
more than 600 kilometres from the northern coast of Norway. The
name Svalbard means "the land with the cold coasts" and
about two thirds of the landmass is covered in glaciers. It is a
sad irony that temperature increases due to climate change means
that the glaciers of Svalbard are retreating.
It doesn’t take specialised scientific
instruments or even a long measuring tape to know that the landscape
has changed dramatically on Svalbard over the last hundred years.
The glaciers in the Kongsfjorden area,
where we documented the landscape during our voyage, began an almost
continuous retreat around 1900. Blomstrandbreen has retreated around
two kilometres in the last 80 years. Since 1960, the average retreat
of the glacier has been about 35 metres per year, and even higher
in the last decade.
The results of our research came
as no great surprise. Glaciers in this spectacular Arctic region are
showing an overall retreat because of higher temperatures. And it
fits the pattern of mountain glaciers around the world. Glaciers are
on the wane and we risk losing them altogether if we don’t massively
reduce greenhouse emissions.
Glacier
retreats are one of the most visible and reliable signs that warming
and climate change is real – not just figures in a scientific
report. In this way, they are also important indicators of global
climate change.
The blame can be put squarely on human
activity. Our addiction to fossil fuels releases millions of tonnes
of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and this is what is causing
temperatures to rise, and our future to melt before our eyes.
Glaciers are more than just magnificent
landscapes of ice and snow. Around the world glaciers provide water
for millions of people, animals and plants. Increased temperatures
brought about by greenhouse polluting fuels like coal, oil and gas,
are destroying glaciers. Unless we break our addiction to fossil
fuels, we risk the wholesale destruction of glaciers, which would
have a huge impact on billions of lives.
Climate change is a global problem
- not only do we risk losing the world's glaciers, but we face many
other impacts such as increased floods, droughts and storms, loss
of coral reefs, sea level rise and rapid spread of vector borne
diseases.
World leaders are slow to take up the
warning so we have come to the ends of the Earth, literally, to
remind governments of what is at stake if they do not take action
at this month’s Earth Summit in Johannesburg. Climate change
is hurting the whole world, not just the Arctic, and clean renewable
energy is a crucial. They must get it right now, or there will be
many places we won’t be able to stand and ponder the past.
Note to Editors:
For
more information or interviews contact Louise Fraser, international
media officer +61 409 993 568
Contact media officer Erika Augustinsson on + 46 703 217 364 or
+31653464289 (Swedish, English)
Contact Jon Ove Hagen, University of Oslo on +47 22854038 (w) or
+47 9064 7908 (English, Norwegian)
In the USA contact Kitsy McMullen on +1 202 413 0313 (English)
In the UK contact Benedict Southworth on +44 780 1212 972 (English)
In Chile contact Rosa Moreno on +56 9 8256800 (Spanish, French,
English
Greenpeace at the Johannesburg Earth Summit - 2002
Svalbard/Norway:
We all do it. We return to a spot from our childhood or youth, stand
it that same spot and marvel at how the world has changed. Sometimes
the changes are subtle, even unnoticeable, other times, we are appalled
and alarmed by how the world has changed around us, seemingly overnight.
Glacier
retreats are one of the most visible and reliable signs that warming
and climate change is real – not just figures in a scientific
report. In this way, they are also important indicators of global
climate change.