The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

by Laurence C. Smith

  466 Canada’s Constitution Act of 1982.

  467 The Dene of the Northwest Territories and the southern Yukon were signatories of Treaty 8 or Treaty 11, but these treaties were never fully implemented. Personal communication, D. Perrin, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, November 24, 2009.

  468 To make this map, multiple data sources from the Alaska Bureau of Land Management, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. National Atlas, Natural Resources Canada, and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada were combined in a Geographic Information System (GIS) as follows: (1) Alaska land claim data were extracted from the Alaska Bureau of Land Management’s Spatial Data Management System. Land claims are represented by Native Patent or Interim Conveyance zones and Native Selected zones, data accessed from http://sdms.ak.blm.gov/isdms/imf.jsp?site=sdms (2) Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Corporation boundaries were downloaded from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Geospatial Data Extractor. Boundaries were created from the Bureau of Land Management’s “Alaska Land Status Map” dated June 1987, data accessed from http://www.asgdc.state.ak.us/. (3) Indian lands of the United States were downloaded from the National Atlas and show areas recognized by the Federal Government as territory in which American Indian tribes have primary governmental authority, administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, data accessed from http://nationalatlas.gov/mld/indlanp.html. (4) Indian lands in Canada were downloaded from Natural Resources Canada’s GeoBase. These include surrendered lands or a reserve, as defined in the Indian Act, and Sechelt lands, as defined in the Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act, data accessed from http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/data/admin/alta/description.html (5) Canada land claims were extracted from the ‘Comprehensive Land Claims Map’ from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, updated through late 2009 at http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/al/ldc/ccl/pubs/gbn/gbn-eng.asp.

  469 After the bloody Pontiac Uprising in which nine British forts were captured, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which declared that Indians should “not be molested or disturbed” and only the Crown, not private citizens, was allowed to purchase land from them. To this day it is credited as a first legal acknowledgment of aboriginal land claims in Canada. Also, British Columbia refused to extinguish aboriginal title, as per note 462.

  470 A second type of modern agreement, called “Specific Claims,” exists in Canada to redress past grievances of aboriginal groups who did sign historic treaties. Many aboriginal groups have pursued, or are pursuing, Specific Claims. However these are typically cash settlements and do not relate to land title.

  471 From GIS analysis of aforementioned spatial data I estimate 284,247 km2 of Indian reservations in the conterminous United States and 4,358,247 km2 covered by Canadian land claims agreements as of 2009.

  472 As a rule, Lapp is now considered derogatory and should be avoided in favor of Sámi or Saami.

  473 Personal interviews with Aili Keskitalo, president, Norwegian Sámi Parliament (Tromsø, January 23, 2007); Nellie Couroyea, chair/CEO, Inavialuit Regional Corporation and former NWT premier (Tromsø, January 23, 2007); Lars-Emil Johansen minister of foreign affairs and former prime minister (Greenland, May 24, 2007); Mike Spence, mayor of Churchill (Manitoba, June 28, 2007); Elisapee Sheutiapik, mayor of Iqaluit (Nunavut, August 5, 2007); Eli Kavik, mayor of Sanikiluaq (Nunavut, August 7, 2007); Richard Glenn, vice-president, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (Barrow, Alaska, August 22, 2008); Tony Penikett, former Yukon premier (Ottawa, June 1, 2009); Mary Simon, president, ITK (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit organization, Ottawa, June 2, 2009); Ed Schultz, executive director, Council of Yukon First Nations (Ottawa, June 4, 2009).

  474 The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) produced the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the “most comprehensive statement of the rights of indigenous peoples ever developed, giving prominence to collective rights to a degree unprecedented in international human rights law,” adopted by the General Assembly September 13, 2007, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/ (accessed September 6, 2009). All five Nordic countries voted in favor of this declaration. Australia, the United States, and Canada voted against it; Russia was one of eleven countries abstaining.

  475 Norway’s Finnmark Act of 2005 transferred 96% of Finnmark County’s land ownership to a council called the Finnmark Commission, comprised of representatives from the Sámi Parliament as well as the local and central governments. Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples—Norway: Overview, 2007, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4954cdff23.html (accessed September 10, 2009).

  476 According to Aili Keskitalo, president, Norwegian Sámi Parliament, personal interview, Tromsø, January 23, 2007.

  477 J. Madslien, “Russia’s Sami Fight for Their Lives,” BBC News, December 21, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6171701.stm.

  478 M. M. Balzer, “The Tension between Might and Rights: Siberians and Energy Developers in Post-Socialist Binds,” Europe-Asia Studies 58, no.4 (2006): 567-588. See also A. Reid, The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia (New York: Walker & Company, 2002), 226 pp.

  479 However, outright land ownership is a backburner issue in Russia. Most Russians, including aboriginals, view private land ownership as nonessential and even inappropriate. Aboriginal people are more concerned with winning stewardship, protections from competing uses, and the ability to pass use of the land on to their descendants. G. Fondahl and G. Poelzer, “Aboriginal Land Rights in Russia at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century,” Polar Record 39, no. 209 (2003): 111-122.

  480 A very small aboriginal group called the Yukagir people successfully fought for the adoption of a special law guaranteeing them self-governance in the two townships of Nelemnoe and Andrushkino, where much of their population (1,509 people in 2002) lives. P. 97, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri, Iceland: Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2004), 242 pp.

  481 S. N. Kharyuchi, “Option (sic) letter by the delegates of the VI Congress of indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation” (open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev and Chairman Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin regarding the sale of twenty-year commercial salmon fishing leases in Kamchatka), May 12, 2009, RAIPON, http://www.raipon.org/RAIPON/News/tabid/523/mid/1560/newsid1560/3924/Option-letter-by-the-delegates-of-the-VI-Congress-of-indigenous-small-numbered-peoples-of-the-North-Siberia-and-the-Far-East-of-the-Russian-Federation/Default.aspx (accessed September 15, 2009). See also G. Fondahl, A. Sirina, “Rights and Risks: Evenki Concerns Regarding the Proposed Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline,” Sibirica 5, no. 2 (2006): 115-138.

  482 On September 7, 1995, Aleksandr Pika and eight others disappeared after setting out from the town of Sireniki, Chukotka, by boat. Five days later the overturned boat and five bodies were found, with Pika’s among the unrecovered. Quote is from p. 16, Aleksander Pika, ed., Neotraditionalism in the Russian North (Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press, and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 214 pp.

  483 Russian Federal Law 82-F3, April 30, 1999, O garantiyakh prav korennykh malochislennykh narodov Rossiyskoy Federatsii (“On guarantees of the rights of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the Russian Federation”); Russian Federal Law 104-F3, July 20, 2000, Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsii obshchin korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka Rossiyskoy Federatsii (“On general principles for organization of obshchinas of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation”); Russian Federal Law 104-F3, July 20, 2000, O territoriyakh traditsionnogo prirodopol’-zovaniya korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka Rossiyskoy Federatsii (“On territories of traditional nature use of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation”). Translations by G. Fondahl and G. Poelzer, “Aboriginal Land Righ
ts in Russia at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century,” Polar Record 39, no. 209 (2003): 111-122.

  484 P. 50, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2004), 242 pp.

  485 Unlike other NORC countries, Canada currently has no university in the far north, but there is growing pressure to found one. In general, the fights in North America and Greenland will move on from issues of property title and political governance to other problems of education, public health, and the devolution of natural resource revenues, which are beyond the scope of this chapter.

  486 E.g., conservation of mass and energy, gas laws, radiative transfer and cloud physics, fundamental geography like the positions and elevations of the continents and size and rotation rate of the planet, proper parameterizations for subgrid processes, and aerosols.

  487 R. B. Alley, The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 229 pp.

  488 K. C. Taylor et al., “The ‘Flickering Switch’ of Late Pleistocene Climate Change,” Nature 361 (1993): 432-436, DOI:10.1038/361432a0; R. B. Alley et al., “Abrupt Increase in Greenland Snow Accumulation at the End of the Younger Dryas Event,” Nature 362 (1993): 527-529, DOI:10.1038/362527a0.

  489 B. L. Isacks et al., “Seismology and the New Global Tectonics,” Journal of Geophysical Research 73, no. 18 (1968): 5855-5899.

  490 The project ended up with some interesting results after all, thanks in part to Richard Alley. It found that a mathematical technique called wavelet analysis is useful for detecting hidden climate signals in river flow data. L. C. Smith, D. L. Turcotte, B. L. Isacks, “Streamflow Characterization and Feature Detection Using a Discrete Wavelet Transform,” Hydrological Processes 12 (1998): 233-249.

  491 Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2, drilled between 1989 and 1993 near the center of Greenland.

  492 R. B. Alley et al., “Abrupt Increase in Greenland Snow Accumulation at the End of the Younger Dryas Event,” Nature 362 (1993): 527-529, DOI:10.1038/362527a0.

  493 The new CIA climate-change center will assess “the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.” CIA Press Release, “CIA Opens Center on Climate Change and National Security,” September 25, 2009, www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/center-on-climate-change-and-national-security.html (accessed November 26, 2009). See also J. M. Broder, “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security,” The New York Times, August 8, 2009.

  494 M.B. Burke et al., “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa,” PNAS 106, no. 49 (2009): 20670-20674, www.pnas.org/cgi/DOI/10.1073/pnas.0907998106.

  495 The most famous and dramatic reversal is the so-called “Younger Dryas” event, an abrupt return to nearly ice-age conditions that began suddenly about 12,700 years ago, then persisted nearly 1,300 years before resumption of warming. Its cause and also the cause of the 8.2 ka event is thought to be a shutdown in ocean thermohaline circulation owing to freshening of the North Atlantic, as will be described shortly. For reviews of the 8.2 ka event, see R. B. Alley, A. M. Ágústsdóttir, “The 8k Event: Cause and Consequences of a Major Holocene Abrupt Climate Change,” Quaternary Science Reviews 24 (2005): 1123-1149; and E. R. Thomas et al., “The 8.2 ka Event from Greenland Ice Cores,” Quaternary Science Reviews 26 (2007): 70-81.

  496 Peter Schwartz, Doug Randall, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security” (October 2003), 22 pp., www.accc.gv.at/pdf/pentagon_climate_change.pdf (accessed September 27, 2009).

  497 The flood path for the smaller 8.2 ka event was probably through the Hudson Strait. D. C. Barber et al., “Forcing of the Cold Event of 8,200 Years Ago by Catastrophic Drainage of Laurentide Lakes,” Nature 400 (July 22, 1999): 344-348, DOI:10.1038/22504. It is also hypothesized that the Younger Dryas event was triggered by a flood draining ancient Lake Agassiz through the St. Lawrence Seaway, or possibly a longer route through the Mackenzie River and Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic. L. Tarasov, W. R. Peltier, “Arctic Freshwater Forcing of the Younger Dryas Cold Reversal, Nature 435 (June 2, 2005): 662-665, DOI:10.1038/nature03617.

  498 The story begins with W. S. Broecker, D. M. Peteet, D. Rind, “Does the Ocean-Atmosphere System Have More than One Stable Mode of Operation?” Nature 315 (1985): 21-26. A recent development is Z. Liu et al., “Transient Simulation of Last Deglaciation with a New Mechanism for Bølling-Allerød Warming,” Science 325 (2009): 310-314.

  499 A. K. Rennermalm et al., “Relative Sensitivity of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to River Discharge into Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean,” Journal of Geophysical Research 112 (2007), G04S48, DOI:10.1029/2006JG000330. The IPCC AR4 (2007) gave >90% chance the thermohaline conveyor will remain functioning for the next century.

  500 Even at the lowest carbon dioxide scenarios, with stabilization at 450 ppm, this critical threshold is eventually crossed in thirty-four out of thirty-five stabilization scenarios. J. M. Gregory et al., “Climatology: Threatened Loss of the Greenland Ice-Sheet,” Nature 428 (April 8, 2004): 616, DOI:10.1038/428616a.

  501 Table 1, G. A. Milne et al., “Identifying the Causes of Sea-Level Change,” Nature Geoscience 2 (June 14, 2009): 471-478, DOI:10.1038/ngeo544. However, keep in mind the Earth had 70% more ice then than it does today, so a four-meters-per-century sea-level rise is not likely to be repeated.

  502 Ibid., 496.

  503 Ice sheets help to preserve their own existence by creating an elevated surface at high, cold altitudes and by reflecting back much of the sun’s energy. If Greenland’s ice sheet were removed, temperatures over its low, dark bedrock surface would be much warmer than today and the ice sheet unlikely to form again.

  504 Especially Shanghai, Osaka-Kobe, Lagos, and Manila. Also affected will be Buenos Aires, Chennai, Dhaka, Guangzhou, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Kolkata, Los Angeles, Mumbai, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Shenzhen, and Tokyo.

  505 Geological data suggests the WAIS collapsed 400,000 years ago, and perhaps even 14,500 years ago. P. U. Clark et al., “The Last Glacial Maximum,” Science 325, no. 5941 (August 7, 2009): 710-714, DOI:10.1126/science.1172873. It is also clear the WAIS is currently losing mass, and there is evidence this has been happening for the past 15,000 years in response to rising sea levels initiated by deglaciation in the northern hemisphere. Thus, even limiting greenhouse warming may not lead to the desired stabilization of the ice sheet. J. Oerlemans, “Freezes, Floes, and the Future, Nature 462 (2009): 572-573, DOI:10.1038/462572a.

  506 Sea levels are not the same everywhere but vary owing to water pile-up from currents, gravitational attraction, water temperature, crustal rebound, and other factors. The above-average sea-level rise along the U.S. coastline is shown by J. X. Mitrovica et al., “The Sea-Level Fingerprint of West Antarctic Collapse,” Science 323, no. 5915 (February 6, 2009): 753, DOI:10.1126/science.1166510; and J. L. Bamber et al., “Reassessment of the Potential Sea-Level Rise from a Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” Science 324, no. 5929 (May 15, 2009): 901-903, DOI:10.1126/science.1169335. The latter study also suggests a global average sea-level increase of 3.2 meters for a WAIS collapse, lower than the five-meter estimate by the IPCC AR4.

  507 For more, see D. G. Vaughan, R. Arthern, “Why Is It Hard to Predict the Future of Ice Sheets?” Science 315, no. 5818 (2007): 1503-1504, DOI:10.1126/science.1141111; and R. B. Alley et al., “Understanding Glacier Flow in Changing Times,” Science 322 (2008): 1061-1062.

  508 S. A. Zimov et al., “Permafrost and the Global Carbon Budget,” Science 312, no. 5780 (2006): 1612-1613, DOI:10.1126/science.1128908; E. A. G. Schuur et al., “Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle,” Bioscience 58, no. 8 (2008): 701-714; C. Tarnocai et al., “Soil Organic Carbon Pools in the Northern Circumpolar Permafrost Region,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 23, GB2023 (2009), DOI:10.1029/2008GB003327.

>   509 For more on the challenges surrounding this problem, see S. E. Trumbore, C. I. Czimczik, “An Uncertain Future for Soil Carbon,” Science 321 (2008): 1455-1456.

  510 By drilling cores to the bottom of peatlands and radiocarbon dating their age, we know that northern peatlands started spreading quickly about 11,700 years ago as the Younger Dryas cold period ended. This methane shows up in ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica. L. C. Smith et al., “Siberian Peatlands a Net Carbon Sink and Global Methane Source since the Early Holocene,” Science 303 (2004): 353-356; and G. M. MacDonald et al., “Rapid Early Development of Circumarctic Peatlands and Atmospheric CH4 and CO2 Variations,” Science 314 (2006): 285-288. Sweden study is E. Dorrepaal et al., “Carbon Respiration from Subsurface Peat Accelerated by Climate Warming in the Subarctic,” Nature 460 (2009): 616-619, DOI:10.1038/nature08216. The two West Siberia studies are K. E. Frey and L. C. Smith, “Amplified Carbon Release from Vast West Siberian Peatlands by 2100,” Geophysical Research Letters 32, L09401 (2005), DOI:10.1029/2004GL022025, 2005; and D. W. Beilman et al., “Carbon Accumulation in Peatlands of West Siberia over the Last 2000 Years,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 23, GB1012 (2009), DOI:10.1029/2007GB003112. Alaska study is E. A. G. Schuur et al., “The Effect of Permafrost Thaw on Old Carbon Release and Net Carbon Exchange from Tundra,” Nature 459 (2009): 556-559, DOI:10.1038/nature08031.

  511 In other words a large generation of parents born when fertility was still high. Population momentum also works in reverse—for example, elderly countries would continue to shrink even if fertility were increased, owing to a small generation of parents born when fertility was low.