By Dr Palitha Kohona*
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 30 August 2024 (IDN) — The expedition ship, (Seabourn Venture) powers its way through icy waves and freezing winds further into the cold north, well past the Arctic Circle. Svalbard, with its stark landscape, discovered by accident by a Dutch expedition commanded by Willem Barentz searching for the North East passage to China in 1596, is the last land mass that will be encountered by the expeditioners.
The sun doesn’t set in this awe inspiring bleak northern land for months. It is the region of the mid-night sun. Although it is mid-summer, the temperature remains below zero Celsius and it is light at two in the morning—an unchanging melancholic, dull glow.
Climate Change and Polar Bears
In this bleak region, there are signs everywhere of a global environmental catastrophe in the making and life is ebbing out for a magnificent creature, the white and fluffy polar bear, that had reigned supreme in these snow-and-ice covered wastelands for eons.
Polar bear numbers probably provide a good indication of the visibly receding polar ice cap, warming oceans and the consequential sea level rise which will affect many coastal regions and island states around the world, and, of course, major cities and population centres.
The global environment is already experiencing frightening changes. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2024 was the hottest July on record.
Today the polar bear population is estimated at around 32,000, but their number is expected to shrink to some 8,600 animals over the next 35 to 40 years. Pagophilic polar bears, the biggest of bears, which look fluffy and cuddly in photographs, are known for their ferocity, and some could weigh more than 1000 pounds.
Their natural habitat (the ice sheet) is disappearing gradually with little or no signs of recovery, and their food sources, unique to the region, are diminishing. Glaciers which had hovered over the cold ocean only recently have receded far from the shore leaving behind a barren landscape of polished stones and rocky outcrops.
Climate change and global warming are seriously threatening the continued existence of polar bears. The other animals that these magnificent animals feed on are also dwindling in number.
Impact of Hunting
Earlier, hunting (over hunting?) was a key factor in the decline of the population of bears and it was a major livelihood occupation for some and a sport for others until hunting was banned in 1973 under the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears. The Agreement, however, permitted continued limited hunting to indigenous people and to sports hunters.
Originally, the hunters came mainly from Norway and Russia. During that time, bear numbers decreased significantly. Early hunting of these ferocious animals in the ice-covered polar wasteland was a high-risk occupation undertaken by tough, hardened men but with the development of increasingly sophisticated firearms, the polar bear numbers suffered tremendously.
Not only were they shot with high powered rifles from afar, various contraptions were invented to trap and kill these fluffy large bears. Bear traps began to be used extensively by hunters. Trapped bears could suffer for days before their misery was ended. The Svalbard Arctic Museum displays, in addition to stuffed bears, some of the ghastly instruments of death employed by hunters for centuries. One in particular caught my attention.
A sturdy wooden tray with a trap gun hidden inside which was set up with some meat as bait. When the bear, with its highly refined sense of smell detected the meat, (a polar bear could trace the smell of a seal on the ice from 20 miles away) it would approach the tray and tug at the bait setting off the gun which resulted in the bear’s face being plastered with hot lead. It was an easy way to kill a bear.
Early hunters targeted bears for their valuable skins and the meat. The skins would later adorn the shoulders of the high and mighty in the courts of Europe. The hunters were mostly loners, but intrepid souls. To make a living in this barren icy wasteland where the temperature could drop down and stay at minus double digits for days and weeks required a special sort of person. Some of the wooden shacks that they built as shelter with a bare minimum of amenities still survive.
Women Hunters
Originally, an essentially a male occupation, a few intrepid females also joined them on this bleak land, some alone, some with their men. Wanny Waldstad was the first female hunter in the region. She and her partner claim to have killed 77 bears.
The Warming of the Polar Regions
Polar bears now seem to provide a stark warning sign of the warming globe. Their traditional habitat is disappearing as global warming is contributing to the melting of the polar ice cap, the ice sheets, the sea ice and the glaciers which had existed since the ice age.
Glaciers with their blue ice shelves which had extended over or ended by the ocean only a few decades ago now have receded hundreds of meters from the sea leaving behind naked rock and piles of polished stones. Melting ice pours out in rushing streams and gushes into the sea. All the while adding to sea level rise.
Calving glaciers crash thunderously into the ocean creating a fairyland of floating chunks of ice of different sizes setting off mini tsunamis. These are ice bergs, some tiny, others huge. The ice breaking away from the glaciers contain bubbles of air trapped within from hundreds and even thousands of years ago.
This compressed air escapes making a gasping sound as the ice melts. It gives an eerie feeling to touch the glassy pale blue glacier ice and feel and breathe the very air that extinct woolly mammoths had breathed. Large swaths of sea ice is cracking into smaller pieces and floating away. The expedition ship ploughs in to the breaking ice floe which appears like a vast sheet of shattered smoky glass.
As the bears mournfully watch their sea ice home break up and slowly drift away to melt and disappear and as their food sources steadily diminish, man who has contributed significantly to global warming and polar melt in recent years, is agonising over what to do. As to whether we could even afford the luxury of endless debate and procrastination is open to question.
UNFCCC COP 29
Warning bells of global warming and sea level rise have been ringing with increasing intensity at least since the 1970s. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change created in 1988, consisting of scientists and other experts from around the world, is overwhelmingly of the view that anthropogenic factors are a major contributory factor in climate change, global warming and sea level to rise.
The international community which had been struggling to address this issue, at least since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, solemnly agreed in Paris in 2015, through the Paris Accords, to cap global temperature rise to 2.0% of preindustrial levels, but also to make the best efforts to keep the temperature rise to below 1.5%.
Developed countries also agreed to assist developing countries in their efforts to achieve this goal, through additional funding and technology transfer. The Accords also recognised the need to address loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change in developing countries. COP 27 established the loss and damage fund while COP 28 operationalised it.
The climate fund of a targeted $100 million that was agreed to enable developing countries to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change remains seriously unrealised. The consensus is that we have not even come close to realising the voluntary targets established under the Paris Accords, and mirrored in the SDGs, although most countries have publicly declared their targets for carbon peaking and becoming carbon neutral.
The US, which until recently was the largest emitter of Green House Gases (GHG), pulled out of the Accords in 2020 despite having been one of its major proponents under President Obama. China is now the major emitter of GHGs.
UNFCCC COP 29 to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan is getting ever closer. Azerbaijan, the land of fire and perhaps the earliest exploiter of petroleum, will be hoping to steer the conference towards more tangible commitments to phase out fossil fuel use, especially from the main GHG emitters.
The pressure is on with July 2024 earning the dubious distinction of being the hottest summer on record and unusual weather pummeling many countries, especially in the economically stressed South. It is probably a forlorn hope that the economically advanced countries, will readily compromise on their living standards which are dependent on cheap fossil fuel based energy.
Oil and gas production comprised half of Azerbaijan’s own GDP and 92.5% of its export revenues in 2022. As the polar bears in the North sadly watch their home slowly melt and disappear, mankind will still be talking about the need to adopt more ambitious targets to cap GHG emissions or, is it already too late. Are we just engaged in an exercise of rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking? [IDN-InDepthNews]
*Ambassador Dr Palitha Kohona, formerly the Sri Lankan Permanent Representative to the UN, and most recently the Ambassador to China, travelled to the Arctic recently on the expedition ship, Seabourn Venture.
Photo credit: Palitha Kohona
