Loss of Hunting Culture
For Inuit, warming is likely to disrupt or even desroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct.
Impacts on Society
Declining Food Security
Access to traditional foods including seal, polar bear, caribou, and some fish and bird species is likely to be seriously impaired by climate warming. Reduced quality of food sources, such as diseased fish and dried up berries, are already being observed in some locations. Shifting to a more Western diet carries risks of increased diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases.
Human Health Concerns
Human health concerns also include increased accident rates due to environmental changes such as sea ice thinning, and health problems caused by adverse impacts on sanitation infrastructure due to thawing permafrost.
Wildlife Herd Impacts
Caribou and reindeer herds will face a variety of climate-related changes in their migration routes, calving grounds, and forage availability as snow and river ice conditions change, thus affecting the people who depend on hunting and herding them.
Increasing Access to Resources
Marine access to some arctic resources, including offshore oil and gas and some minerals, is likely to be enhanced by the reduction in sea ice, bringing new opportunities as well as environmetal concerns. Increased ice movement could initially make some operations more difficult.
Enhanced Marine Fisheries
Some major arctic marine fisheries, including those for herring and cod, are likely to become more productive as climate warms. Ranges and migration patterns of many fish species are very likely to change.
Disrupted Transport on Land
Transportation routes and pipelines on land are already being disturbed in some places by thawing ground, and this problem is likely to expand. Oil and gas extraction and forestry will be increasingly disrupted by the shrinking of the period during which ice roads and tundra are sufficiently frozen to allow industrial operations. Northern communities that rely on frozen roadways to truck in supplies are also being affected.
Decline in Northern Freshwater Fisheries
Decreased abundance and local and global extinctions of arctic-adapted fish species are projected for this century. Arctic char, broad whitefish, and arctic cisco, which are major contributors to the diets of local people, are among the species threatened by a warming climate.
Enhanced Agriculture and Forestry
Agricultural and forestry opportunities are likely to increase as potential areas for food and wood production expand northward due to a longer and warmer growing season and increasing precipitation.
Expanding Marine Shipping
Shipping through key marine routes, including
the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage,
is likely to increase. The summer navigation season is
projected to lengthen considerably as the century progresses,
due to the decline of sea ice. Expansion of tourism and marine
transport of goods are likely outcomes.
Center for Environmental Education and Information
