Feeding Nunavut

Mark Andrew Boyer

Produced for the Earth Journalism Scholars Program in partnership with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Arctic communities are struggling to adapt as the ground beneath their feet melts away

Scandanavia

By Felix Gaedtke and Gayatri Parameswaran 

Sami reindeer herders of Scandanavia are facing an external threat to keeping their centuries-old tradition alive – climate change. According to scientists, the Arctic region, home to the Sami people, is warming at a rate 2.5 times faster than the global average and the effects of increased temperatures are already visible on the frozen landscape. Sami Jonna Andreas Utsi is quick to diagnose the impact on his herd: “there’s snow on the surface and then ice at the bottom, above the ground. The reindeer can get through the snow, but not through the ice. They can’t get to the food.”

North Canada

By Christopher Arsenault

Indigenous hunter Jim Antoine has watched the decline of caribou herds with alarm, convinced that global warming is at least partially responsible for the crisis in Canada's far north. An important food source for the Dene people, an indigenous group living in the northern boreal and Arctic regions of Canada, as well as for other northern communities, the caribou population has crashed in recent years.

Siberia

By Olga Dobrovidova

The vast industrial Russian Arctic is home to some 2 million people who produce around 4% of the country’s GDP and 20% of its exports. There is a one in three chance the palladium in your mobile phone was mined here. But as the permafrost, the foundations of human habitation are literally crumbling under the weight of climate impact and a legacy of neglect.