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Inuits take climate case to human rights tribunal

As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the US has come under heavy criticism, now including from people who live almost on top of the world.

The Inuits of Northern Canada and beyond were to take their case against the US yesterday to an international human rights commission. They have scant chance of a breakthrough but hope to score moral and political points against the US, which is responsible for one-fourth of the world's greenhouse gases.

"The point here is that our way of life is at stake," says activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who has been nominated with former US vice president Al Gore for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.

She was preparing to make the Inuit case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the 34-member Organization of American States. The commission is holding a hearing on their complaint.

The Inuit population hails from Canada, Russia and Greenland, as well as Alaska, where they are known as Eskimos. They have been trying to tell the world for more than a decade about the shifting winds and thinning ice that have dramatically hurt the hunting patterns their people have followed for thousands of years.

Watt-Cloutier spoke this week in Iqaluit, the capital of Canada's Arctic Nunavut Territory about 320km south of the Arctic Circle, before leaving for Washington.

Simon Nattaq, a hunter, blames climate change for the loss of his feet in February 2001. His snow mobile and all his gear plunged through unusually thin ice, leaving him stranded for two days. He now walks with prosthetic feet and believes God kept him alive to warn the world of global warming.

Most scientists agree the Arctic is the first place on Earth to feel the impact of rising global temperatures. Many say that unless developed nations do not dramatically reduce emissions the Arctic ice probably will have melted by the end of the century.
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