I FORGIVE you if you have never heard of my country.
At just 8 square miles, about a third of the size of Manhattan, and located in the southern Pacific Ocean, Nauru appears as merely a pinpoint on most maps — if it is not missing entirely in a vast expanse of blue.
But make no mistake; we are a sovereign nation, with our own language, customs and history dating back 3,000 years. Nauru is worth a quick Internet search, I assure you, for not only will you discover a fascinating country that is often overlooked, you will find an indispensible cautionary tale about life in a place with hard ecological limits.
Phosphate mining, first by foreign companies and later our own, cleared the lush tropical rainforest that once covered our island’s interior, scarring the land and leaving only a thin strip of coastline for us to live on. The legacy of exploitation left us with few economic alternatives and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, and led previous governments to make unwise investments that ultimately squandered our country’s savings.
I am not looking for sympathy, but rather warning you what can happen when a country runs out of options. The world is headed down a similar path with the relentless burning of coal and oil, which is altering the planet’s climate, melting ice caps, making oceans more acidic and edging us ever closer to a day when no one will be able to take clean water, fertile soil or abundant food for granted.
Climate change also threatens the very existence of many countries in the Pacific, where the sea level is projected to rise three feet or more by the end of the century. Already, Nauru’s coast, the only habitable area, is steadily eroding, and communities in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have been forced to flee their homes to escape record tides. The low-lying nations of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands may vanish entirely within our grandchildren’s lifetimes.
Similar climate stories are playing out on nearly every continent, where a steady onslaught of droughts, floods and heat waves, which are expected to become even more frequent and intense with climate change, have displaced millions of people and led to widespread food shortages.
The changes have already heightened competition over scarce resources, and could foreshadow life in a world where conflicts are increasingly driven by environmental catastrophes.
Yet the international community has not begun to prepare for the strain they will put on humanitarian organizations or their implications for political stability around the world.
In 2009, an initiative by the Pacific Small Island Developing States, of which I am chairman, prompted the United Nations General Assembly to recognize the link between climate change and security. But two years later, no concrete action has been taken.
So I was pleased to learn that the United Nations Security Council will take up the issue tomorrow in an open debate, in which I will have the opportunity to address the body and reiterate my organization’s proposals.
First, the Security Council should join the General Assembly in recognizing climate change as a threat to international peace and security. It is a threat as great as nuclear proliferation or global terrorism. Second, a special representative on climate and security should be appointed. Third, we must assess whether the United Nations system is itself capable of responding to a crisis of this magnitude.
The stakes are too high to implement these measures only after a disaster is already upon us. Negotiations to reduce emissions should remain the primary forum for reaching an international agreement. We are not asking for blue helmets to intervene; we are simply asking the international community to plan for the biggest environmental and humanitarian challenge of our time.
Nauru has begun an intensive program to restore the damage done by mining, and my administration has put environmental sustainability at the center of our policymaking. Making our island whole again will be a long and difficult process, but it is our home and we cannot leave it for another one.
I forgive you if you have never heard of Nauru — but you will not forgive yourselves if you ignore our story.
Disappearing sea ice enticing more killer whales to Arctic: researchers
By: Chinta Puxley, The Canadian Press Posted: 01/30/2012 11:29 AM
WINNIPEG - Researchers say melting Arctic sea ice is enticing more killer whales to Nunavut waters where they are competing with Inuit hunters for food and threatening to replace polar bears as the North's top predators.
Scientists from the University of Manitoba interviewed hunters from 11 of the territory's communities about their observations on the habits of killer whales seen in the area. The findings are published in the online journal Aquatic Biosystems.
Lead author Steven Ferguson, who is with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Freshwater Institute at the university, said the Inuit are seeing more killer whales. The powerful predators tend to avoid sea ice but that ice is disappearing.
Once in the Arctic, he said, killer whales have been seen to use a variety of hunting tactics to feast on belugas, seals and narwhals.
Sea ice often provides the only cover such mammals have to escape one of the Orcas. Seals can get out of the water onto the ice and other whales can manoeuvre into ice-packed areas where the killer whale's dorsal fin prevents it from following.
"If we lose that sea ice, they are now going to be out in the open water and don't have the kind of strategies to reduce the risk of a killer whale catching them and eating them," Ferguson said. "We just might see a lot of mortality in some of the more southerly areas."
He suggested the killer whales could be behind a massive transition within the whole Arctic ecosystem.
"This change of what animals live in the Arctic is likely going to happen with the warming but we didn't anticipate that...killer whales might be removing certain susceptible prey and maybe temperate species will move up to take their place."
Ferguson also suggests that while the population of other whales and seals is relatively healthy, killer whales could cause problems for the Inuit who will be increasingly competing against the giant mammals for food.
Inuit have long expressed concern about the apparent increase in killer whales. Sightings used to be rare — about six a year in western Hudson Bay — several decades ago. By 2000, that number had jumped to more than 30 annually.
Peter Ewins, director of species conservation at World Wildlife Fund Canada, saw a dozen killer whales during one outing near Churchill, Man., in August. Their influx into the North has been a steady trend, he said.
As the Arctic sea ice melts and threatens the home of polar bears, killer whales could very well replace the iconic mammal as the North's top predator, he said.
"When you take the ice away for longer and longer, then the killer whale just moves in and dominates."
Both people and Arctic animals will likely adapt to this new reality, but it's not going to be easy, Ewins said. Even a far-off presence of killer whales can drive animals away from traditional hunting spots, making it more difficult for the Inuit. New species may move in while others become more scarce.
"Some new mix of species is going to comprise the future food chain."
Study: Killer whales competing for Arctic food chain supremacy
Alaska Dispatch | Jan 30, 2012
Killer whales are migrating farther north as the Arctic sea ice melts. And they're competing with humans and polar bears for top of the food chain in the Far North.
A write-up on the study by Winnipeg Free Press notes that killer whales tend to avoid sea ice when they hunt. But as the ice disappears, the whales are finding great hunting conditions in Arctic waters full of beluga whales, seals and the mystical narwhals.
On the prowl. A pod of killer whales explores Admiralty Bay for narwhal. Credit: Gretchen Freund; Steven Ferguson (inset)
by Virginia Morell on 30 January 2012, 4:33 PM
What do killer whales dine on in Canada's remote Arctic waters? "Whatever they can catch," local Inuits say, recounting harrowing observations of pods of orcas drowning adult bowhead whales, tossing narwhals as though they were soccer balls, and ripping apart beluga whales. Normally, such stories might be considered just anecdotes. But in an unusual collaboration, marine biologists have helped confirm the tales by talking to the hunters who know the whales best.
To gather observations of killer whales (Orcinus orca), the world's top marine predator, two scientists working with an Inuktitut-speaking interpreter interviewed 105 Inuit hunters, who ranged in age from 30 to over 90 and live in 11 communities along the coastal edge of Nunavut, Canada's northernmost territory. The hunters' accounts proved to be "a gold mine," says Steven Ferguson, a marine biologist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Winnipeg who led the study. The vastness of the region, coupled with the low density of orcas, makes a traditional scientific study difficult. "It would take decades of work, with researchers identifying then following individual whales, to gain this kind of knowledge," says Ferguson, who, because the whales are so widely dispersed, has yet to see an orca in these Arctic waters.
Killer whales have been extensively studied elsewhere, particularly along Canada's west coast, where researchers have identified a resident orca population that eats only fish and a migratory population that targets only marine mammals, particularly gray whales. In the Antarctic, scientists have identified five types of killer whales, each having different habitat, prey preferences, and hunting strategies. Researchers have found a similar pattern among orcas in the Atlantic, tropical Pacific, and Indian oceans.
But "there was a complete vacuum in our knowledge of the ecology of killer whales" in northern Canada until this study, says Andrew Foote, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen who was not involved in the study. Since the Arctic sea ice is melting, orcas are moving into new regions, and scientists want to know more about their prey preferences and hunting behaviors. The hunters' information [ http://www.aquaticbiosystems.org/content/8/1/3/abstract ] will help researchers better gauge how this apex predator is likely to affect other species, particularly those that are recovering from the effects of commercial whaling, such as bowheads, narwhals, and beluga whales.
According to the Inuit knowledge, the Arctic killer whales "are primarily mammal eaters," Ferguson says. None of the Inuit who were interviewed had seen a killer whale eating fish. Instead, 73 of the hunters had watched orcas killing ringed seals; 24 had witnessed them hunting and feasting on narwhal (medium-size whales characterized by their single, long tusk); and 17 had seen orcas ramming and drowning adult bowhead whales—animals that are more than twice their size.
The killer whales arrive in the eastern Canadian Arctic as the ice begins to recede in July, just as the other marine mammals begin giving birth to their calves and pups. When hunting, the orcas work in highly coordinated pods, "like wolves," the Inuit said, herding narwhal and beluga whales into deep water and circling them to keep them from escaping. The prey sometimes attempt to get away by fleeing into shallower water. This response is so striking—with waves of animals rushing toward shore—that the Inuit have a specific word for it: "Aalirijuk," the fear of killer whales. Frightened prey might also try to hide in the ice, and the Inuit hunters have seen narwhal skewering killer whales with their tusks, sometimes killing their tormentors.
The study, published this month in Aquatic Biosystems, comes at a time when, as the Arctic sea ice melts due to climate change, killer whales are moving into new areas in Hudson Bay, where even the Inuit have not seen them before.
Although the data are anecdotes, they are "valuable and very interesting," says Robert Pitman, a cetacean expert at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in San Diego, California. "Killer whales are normally very careful about the way that they interact with live prey, and we almost never see or hear about the risks involved with hunting large mammals," he says. "Currently, there is considerable controversy within the marine mammal community about how successful killer whales are at taking adults of large whales. ... It seems pretty clear from Ferguson et. al. that killer whales in the Eastern Canadian Arctic are adept at taking adult bowheads."
"It is an excellent example of the role that [traditional knowledge] can play in ... informing traditional science," Alan Springer, a marine ecologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, adds in an e-mail. Researchers should also attempt to collect similar data in "northern Alaska and Chukotka, where climate change is likely creating opportunities for killer whales to exploit new seas," he says.
"We need a better understanding of the killer whales' role in this ecosystem to help with conservation and management," Ferguson says, noting that the local Inuit rely on the same species the killer whales like to eat. And two of these—the beluga and narwhal—are considered "near threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
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