Newswise — At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro this week, Greenpeace and several celebrities launched a campaign to preserve the Arctic as a “global sanctuary” protected from resource development.
Two Cornell University professors, whose expertise encompasses Arctic ecology and ecosystems as well as its indigenous peoples, are available to talk with the media about the potential impacts of this effort.
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Karim-Aly Kassam is the international professor of environmental and indigenous studies in Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He also is a professor in the Department of Natural Resources and the American Indian Program.
Kassam says:
"Of course we need to champion conservation, but conservation does not mean excluding human beings from nature. It means natural resource stewardship that is wise and guided by concern for all life.
“This can only be done with the participation of people whose homeland it is and not just by outside parties. That’s a fundamental democratic principal. Both natural resource extraction and conservation policies that are not thoroughly thought out will affect the food security and economic vitality of indigenous peoples of the Arctic.”
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Charles H. Greene is a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University and an expert on the protection of threatened marine ecosystems. His research expertise includes the Arctic environment.
Greene says:
“The impacts of a major oil spill in the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean are much greater and longer lasting than those of a comparable spill in a warm-water environment like the Gulf of Mexico.
“We just need to look to the long-term impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska and compare them to the impacts of the more recent and much larger Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf. A lot of oil still remains in the marine environment of Prince William Sound, 23 years later, because you don’t have the same rates of microbial activity in cold water to break down the oil. Furthermore, the Chukchi Sea is one of the harshest work environments in the world ocean, and I’m not overly confident in the assurances of the oil and gas industry that they can extract oil and gas safely in such an environment.”
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