Hey it's Olympia!

Hey its Olympia!!!! Today we were supposed to go to the Arctic Circle, but the bad weather blocked us from going, so instead we are in Iqualuit. Today we also met Beth. She is an Inuit. We had a lot of fun today. And I hope you did too…

Kuria welcomes Beth to the team!

Just arrived at Iqaluit airport (from Ottawa). An hour later, Beth arrives from Resolute. our group of children is now complete.
Unfortunately, the weather is very poor, so probably no departure for the Soper River today. That's the Arctic, you never know, and the bush planes (Twin Otter) we fly with need relatively good weather to take off...
So, stuck in Iqaluit overnight... [Luc]

July 5 - Ottawa

There is energy on this expedition, nine young adults from different parts of the world coming together to witness. I ask myself what exactly does the word witness mean – to observe something with your own eyes and to meld what is seen to the personal experience of the individual? Is this why we can all see the same thing yet describe the experience with unique points of view? Nine young adults with nine sets of eyes, all here to witness the Arctic and bring back to their communities personal versions of what we’ve seen. This is the wonder that I see in Pax Arctica 2008! [Mary]

July 5: Ottawa – a beautiful capital. Big buildings that were built to last are made of thick stone walls. Their spiraling turrets lighten the structure as they reach toward the sky. The oxidized copper roofs create an organic green contrast against the blue sky. The weather is perfect. The air is the temperature as our skin. We drive from the airport along a beautiful canal that creates a meandering lifeline through the city. Bicycles and runners and strollers move along the sidewalks share by walkers intoxicated with the peaceful mood. We toured the city with John Coo, our host from GreenCross Canada, as he drove us from the airport to the hotel and appointed out those ‘not to miss spots’ like only a local can do.
At the hotel our group begins to take shape as members of the expedition arrive through out the day. The tasks are delegated as we rush to take advantage of our last opportunity to gather supplies. Nicole coordinates the arrivals of Mark and the Zangrillos; Luc, Sebastian and Mary shop for food; Flaam and Ainhoa manage the fitting of gear from Napa Pijri and distribution of sunglasses from Oakley; Olympia is our meet greet master (since she has already met all of the young explorers) she handles introductions wth ease while Brian interviews the explorers about their expectations of the adventure that is about to unfold.
Meanwhile the Coo family has spent the day preparing a feast. At 8 pm, we sit together at a long narrow candle lit table decorated with flags representing our many nationalities brought together at a long narrow candle lit table decorated with flags representing our many nationalities brought together by GreenCross and Pax Arctica. Sebastian leads our toast – to our hosts and the beautiful Arctic we are about to encounter! [Mary]

Welcome from Green Cross Canada!

Many thanks to John Coo, his wife Alex and children Malcolm and Victoria. All disappointed they cannot come with us to the Arctic... but they were fantastic hosts for our only evening in Ottawa. John is president of Green Cross Canada and has been very supportive of our effort as part of the GC organization.
Pictured here, the children team at John & Alex's house. Missing is Beth, our Inuit friend, whom we'll meet tomorrow in Iqaluit. but beofre that, lots of packing tonight, organizing the food we spend the day purchasing in Ottawa's surburbs...

Pax Arctica kick-off

That's it, we are about to leave for the Arctic!
Tomorrow morning, off to Ottawa, where the rest of the group has already arrived.
From there, we'll leave for Iqaluit the next day, at the southern tip of Baffin island.
More to come soon, from me (Luc) but also the rest of the group (that's 15 of us!).
So you'll hear different voices, emotions, opinions...
Stay tuned!

Pax Arctica kick-off

Treaty on Ice

As you may know, one of the goal of the Pax Arctica initiative will be to increase protection of the Arctic via new agreements and/or reinforcement of existing ones.

It is interesting (and sad) to see that the position of the US (explained below in a recent New York Times Op-Ed arcticle by an official from the US Secretary of State entourage) is that the US "should do nothing to advance a new comprehensive treaty for the region"... With "legal" advice of this kind, we should all be worried about the impact on Arctic populations, ecosystems and wildlife of the increased US interest for "one of the largest and most resource-rich continental shelves in the world"...

Full Arcticle below...

" Treaty on Ice

By JOHN B. BELLINGER

Published: June 23, 2008

Washington

WITH the Arctic ice melting, anticipated increases in Arctic shipping, tourism and economic activity, and Russia’s flag-planting at the North Pole last summer, there has been much talk in the press about a “race to the Arctic” and even some calls for a new treaty to govern the “lawless” Arctic region.

We should all cool down. While there may be a need to expand cooperation in some areas, like search and rescue, there is already an extensive legal framework governing the region. The five countries bordering the Arctic Ocean — the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia — have made clear their commitment to observe these international legal rules. In fact, top officials from these nations met last month in Greenland to acknowledge their role in protecting the Arctic Ocean and to put to rest the notion that there is a Wild West-type rush to claim and plunder its natural resources.

Existing international law already provides a comprehensive set of rules governing use of the world’s oceans, including the Arctic. The law enshrines navigational rights and freedoms for military and commercial vessels. It also specifies the rights of coastal nations in offshore marine areas. Setting aside the unfortunate flag-planting on the North Pole (a stunt with no legal significance), Russia has been following international procedures for identifying the legal extent of its boundaries, including its continental shelf.

Other solid international rules also apply in the Arctic. In instances where the maritime claims of coastal nations overlap, international law sets forth principles for them to apply in resolving their disputes. As for protecting the marine environment, the law spells out both national and internationally agreed pollution control measures.

As one example, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization has produced treaties that limit pollution from various sources, including ships and ocean dumping. It has also developed safety guidelines for ship operations in hard-to-navigate ice-covered areas. What’s more, the Arctic Council, an eight-nation diplomatic forum, is working to strengthen its already existing guidelines on oil and gas activities.

Some nongovernmental organizations and academics say that we need an “Arctic treaty” along the lines of the treaty system that governs Antarctica. Though it sounds nice, such a treaty would be unnecessary and inappropriate. The situations in the Arctic and the Antarctic are hardly analogous. The Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959, governs a continent surrounded by oceans — a place where it was necessary to suspend claims to sovereignty in order to promote peace and scientific research. The Arctic, by contrast, is an ocean surrounded by continents. Its ocean is already subject to international rules, including rules related to marine scientific research, and its land has long been divided up, so there are few disputes over boundaries.

So what should the United States do about the Arctic? For starters, it should do nothing to advance a new comprehensive treaty for the region. Instead, it should take full advantage of the existing rules by joining the Law of the Sea Convention. The convention, now before the Senate, would codify and maximize international recognition of United States rights to one of the largest and most resource-rich continental shelves in the world — extending at least 600 miles off Alaska.

Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia are parties to the convention and they are already acting to protect and maximize their rights. The United States should do the same. Signing on would do much more to protect American security and interests in the Arctic than pursuing the possibility of a treaty that we really don’t need.

"

John B. Bellinger is the legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Departure date approaches...

July 5, we'll all meet in Ottawa. That's where we'll all assemble for a welcome dinner with John Coo, President of GreenCross Canada. The next day we'll be off to Iqaluit (southern Baffin), where we will meet Beth Idlout, our new (but yet unmet) Inuit friend.
Five days left and a million things to do. Always like that. Last year for Greenland, we did get the Park permit the day before departure (true)!

Wise Words...

“Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet”
- Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist

Canada Apologizes for Abuse of Natives...

After Australia... Canada Offers an Apology for Native Students’ Abuse...

OTTAWA — The government of Canada formally apologized on Wednesday to Native Canadians for forcing about 150,000 native children into government-financed residential schools where many suffered physical and sexual abuse. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/world/americas/12canada.html?scp=1&sq=canada+native&st=nyt

Launch of the Pax Arctica Initiative

Paris, France - June 4th 2008, the Pax Arctica Initiative was launched during a kick off press conference. Among the participants of the event were Former Prime Minister of France Michel Rocard, expedition leaders Luc Hardy, Bertrand Charrier, and President of Green Cross France Yves Paccalet. Prime Minister Michel Rocard related the diplomatic mobilization that resulted in the adoption of the Protocol on Environmental Protection of the Antarctic Treaty in the early 1990s.

Expedition leaders Luc Hardy, Sebastian Copeland and Bertrand Charrier officially launch the Pax Arctica Initiative and announce the northern tip of the Canadian Arctic as the first destination in this series of Arctic missions. The Pax Arctica Initiative is a series of expeditions undertaken by environmental advocates in collaboration with Green Cross France and Global Green USA, designed to alert public opinion of critical environmental issues that endanger the Arctic region. Spanning a period of three years from July 2008 to 2010, Pax Arctica will emphasize focused research by ecological scientists and environmental advocates to explore and assess the ecological conditions and the geopolitical climate of the Arctic. The ultimate goal is to determine the steps needed to preserve the Arctic ecosystem for generations to come and to encourage the ratification of international policies to ensure the preservation of the Arctic habitat.

5 Arctic nations say they will obey U.N. rules...

... interesting to see if the US will really follow through on this commitment if the UN were to rule in favor of Russian claims for seabed under the north pole (Luc Hardy)

ILULISSAT, Greenland (Reuters) - Five Arctic coastal nations agreed on Wednesday to let the U.N. rule on conflicting territorial claims on the region's seabed, which may hold up to one fourth of the world's undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves.

"We affirmed our commitment to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a news conference.

Ministers from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States met in Greenland for a two-day summit to discuss sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean seabed.

Under the 1982 U.N. Law of the Sea Convention, coastal states own the seabed beyond existing 200-nautical mile (370-km) zones if it is part of a continental shelf of shallower waters. The rules aim to fix shelves' outer limits on a clear geological basis, but have created a tangle of overlapping Arctic claims.

The United States has not yet ratified the convention, but Negroponte urged Congress to do so as soon as possible.

The countries, most major oil exporters, agreed to settle conflicting territorial claims by the law until a U.N. body could rule on the disputes.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller called the meeting in his country's self-governing province to try to end squabbling over ownership of huge tracts of the Arctic seabed, although it will be several decades before oil drilling in the deep Arctic sea is feasible.

Also attending were Greenland Premier Hans Enoksen, Russian and Norwegian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Jonas Gahr Stoere and Canadian Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn.

Ward Hunt ice shelf cracking...

This will be one of the destination of the Pax Arctica /Green Cross expedition this summer. our group, comprised of adults and children will witness the cracking of the oldest polar ice: 3000 years old, 40 metre deep...

watch the VIDEO: http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/413677


New cracks in the largest remaining Arctic ice shelf suggest another polar landmark seems destined to break up and disappear. (April 11, 2008)

Ward Hunt Ice Shelf destined to disappear

THE CANADIAN PRESS

WARD HUNT ISLAND, Nunavut–New cracks in the largest remaining Arctic ice shelf suggest another polar landmark seems destined to break up and disappear.

Scientists discovered the extensive new cracks in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf earlier this year and a patrol of Canadian Rangers got an up-close look at them last week.

"The map of Canada has changed," said Derek Mueller of Trent University, who was amazed to find how quickly the shelf has deteriorated since he discovered the first crack in 2002.

"These changes are happening in concert with other indicators of climate change."

Mueller and his fellow researchers were expected to release their findings on Saturday. But a patrol of Canadian Rangers travelling west last week from CFB Alert at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island saw the cracks first-hand.

"We're looking at the possible demise of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf," said Doug Stern, a Ranger and Parks Canada employee, who was on the patrol and has been helping Mueller with his research.

Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean's surface. Ellesmere Island was once ringed by one, but that enormous shelf broke up in the early 1900s.

At 443 square kilometres in size, the Ward Hunt shelf is the largest of those remnants – even bigger than the Antarctic shelf that collapsed late last month, and seven times the size of the Ayles Ice Shelf chunk that broke off in 2005 from Ellesmere's western coast.

The Ward Hunt shelf's characteristic corrugated surface, described by Mueller "like a giant Ruffles potato chip," is now fractured by dozens of deep cracks in the 3,000-year-old, 40-metre thick ice.

Mueller found evidence of one of the new cracks in satellite images. Then he and Stern followed up with an aerial survey earlier this year.

"We were expecting to see one new crack," said Stern. "But when we flew over, all of a sudden...there's one, there's another one.

"There are not just a couple of parallel cracks. It's multifaceted cracking going on. I was just totally amazed to see them all."

The Rangers found even more, and as part of their patrol they measured and documented as many of the new cracks as they could. One was 10 kilometres long and up to 40 metres wide.

The cracks, easily large enough to swallow a snowmobile, presented an extra hazard for the patrol's scouts as they picked a route across the ice between CFB Alert and Ward Hunt Island.

The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, one of the last five remaining in Canada, has been shrinking since the 1930s. But after a period of stability during the '80s, that deterioration seems to picking up, said Mueller.

That suggests climate change in the area has crossed some kind of threshold, he added.

Other data on the shelf is also not encouraging.

As far back as the 1960s, poles were sunk 2.5 metres deep into the ice. Annual measurements of how much those poles protrude from the surface indicate whether the ice is thickening or thinning.

This year, several poles couldn't even be found by the Rangers, suggesting the ice had completely melted out from under them.

Pinned in place by islands and landfast ice, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is unlikely to drift out to sea, said Mueller. It's more likely to become increasingly fractured and deteriorate where it sits.

The bottom line is the vast plain of ice is now on "life support," he said. Ice shelves are not replenished by glaciers. Cracks in them are permanent.

"You can't go back," said Mueller. "It's broken."

On its own, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf represents only a tiny fraction of the Arctic Ocean's ice. But its loss is another example of the slowly shrinking ice cover, a loss that scientists suspect will permanently change the Arctic ecosystem and add to global warming, since open water absorbs more solar heat.

The rapid changes point to the need for more research to understand what's going on, Mueller said.

"We're trying to gather clues as to what's in store and what's the significance overall. We know very little about this coastline. It's important for us to get out there and take real measurements."

new Expedition - Canadian Arctic - July 2008

Just to let you know that our partnership with Green Cross International has been reinforced, and that we have agreed to work together on a major program over the next few years: Ambassadors from the Arctic. M. Gorbachev himself has encouraged and approved this strategic initiative specifically designed to alert public opinion of critical environmental issues that endanger the Arctic region.

Led by renowned photographer Sebastian Copeland of Green Cross / Global Green US our program and myself, the program will span three years: 2008, 2009 and 2010. Our goal is that within this time frame, a unique consortium of environmental advocates and ecological scientists - with the
support of corporate sponsors and individuals - will explore and assess the conditions of the Arctic region, and determine what steps are required to guarantee its preservation for generations to come. Y&R/Young & Rubicam, one of the world’s leading marketing communications agencies has agreed to partner with us to provide marketing and PR services for this multi-year project.

The first mission will be in the Canadian Arctic in July 2008, more specifically starting from Resolute Bay onto Ellesmere Island, reaching the highest peak in Nunavut and Cape Columbia, the northernmost area of Nunavut.

Our expedition members, adults but especially children, will be interacting with scientists doing field work in these regions.

Green Cross - New Campaign

This year’s focus is on greenhouse gas emissions reduction. The campaign offers alternative lifestyle choices that promote low carbon economies, such as investing in improved energy efficiency, using renewable energy sources, conservation of forests, and eco-friendly consumption.