February 7, 2003
Leaders agree to clean
up Kola Peninsula
At recent meeting in Kirkenes,
Norway, prime ministers from the Nordic countries and Russia agreed to help
clean up the Kola Peninsula, where rusting Russian submarines and nuclear waste
threaten the region’s Arctic environment. The agreement should be ratified
by the Russian parliament this year.
The deal was stalled until
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov finally agreed to grant tax exemptions
for the equipment and technology used in recycling radioactive material.
"I think that this
is the critical breakthrough for which we have been waiting many years ... to
contribute in the Kola peninsula," Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson
told Swedish Radio.
Leaders also pledged to
help reinforce Russia’s nuclear facilities, where security is often slack.
There are more than 100 nuclear submarines at Russian’s Northern Fleet
bases on the peninsula, where northwestern Russia borders Norway.
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February
7, 2003
ICC
establishes new advisory body
Aqqaluk Lynge, vice-chairman
of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and president of ICC-Greenland, announced
the creation of an Inuit advisory body on United Nations concerns last week.
The new body will advise
the ICC Executive Council on human rights issues and on the newly created UN
Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues. Its members will also follow and advise
ICC on the UN’s Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
a UN document intended to protect the rights of native people throughout the
world that is still under discussion.
The UN advisory body members
are all Inuit, and experts on human rights and international issues related
to indigenous peoples. Lynge heads the group comprised of Dalee Sambo Dorough
of Alaska, Henriette Rasmussen of Greenland and Minnie Grey of Kuujjuaq. A Russian
member has yet to be appointed.
Dorough was recently awarded
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Law from the University of British Columbia,
while Rasmussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament, former cabinet
minister and publisher, has a strong background in human rights matters that
includes a four-year assignment to the International Labour Organisation as
its chief technical advisor on indigenous peoples’ issues.
Grey, of Nunavik, is a
former member of the ICC Executive Council and one of the self-government negotiators
for Inuit in Nunavik.
ICC has consultative status
at the UN, where it has been active for many years. ICC Greenland will be taking
the lead role in coordinating the advisory body’s work, as well as ICC’s
UN work. Hjalmar Dahl of ICC Greenland will coordinate the work of the advisory
body.
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February
7, 2003
North
Slope oil key to Alaska’s prosperity
Alaska’s North Slope
has enough oil to support 50 to 100 more years of production, creating a flow
of money that could solve the state government’s fiscal problems, the new
governor said in his recent state-of-the-state address.
"What’s our plan
for increasing revenue? Well, ladies and gentlemen, the single word is oil,"
Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski told a joint session of Alaska’s legislature.
Alaska has no personal
income tax and no state sales tax. Most of its revenues come from oil royalties,
taxes and fees.
But with North Slope oil
production at half its 1988 peak of two million barrels a day, Alaska’s
budget deficit has grown to $1 billion, and by 2005 this deficit will wipe out
a special savings account used to balance annual budgets.
The new governor outlined
a series of steps he hopes to take to reduce state regulation of oil development.
He plans to strip one agency, the Department of Fish and Game’s Division
of Habitat, of its permitting authority.
He said he was optimistic
that Congress would approve oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge in northeast Alaska, a goal of President George W. Bush, which environmental
groups have opposed.
Murkowski also said he
was optimistic about prospects for building a new pipeline to transport the
North Slope’s natural gas reserves to new markets.
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February
7, 2003
Hamlet
on ice
"Eallit dahje ii eallit?
Das dat jerro."
That’s how the famous
soliloquy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, from Act III, Scene I of Shakespeare’s
play — in sounds in Sámi.
The world première
of Hamlet in the Sámi language took place on an ice stage, when the 70-minute
version of the play opened at the Jukkajärvi Ice Globe Theatre.
The scale-model ice replica
of a theatre in London, England, is located at the Jukkajärvi Ice Hotel
near Kiruna, a small community in the Swedish Sámi territory. The 100-bed
Jukkajärvi Ice Hotel is in its 13th year of operation and features an ice
chapel and an "Absolut Ice Bar."
Alex Scherpf’s Beaivvás
Sámi Teáhter, a group of actors based in Kautokeino in northern
Norway, performed the play. Performances are due to run until April, and to
date 12,000 tickets have been booked— ice doesn’t constitute much
of a fire risk, so local fire officials have not set an upper limit for the
number of spectators who can attend performances.
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February
7, 2003
Alaskan workers receive
compensation
People who fell ill as
a result of atomic testing in Amchitka, Alaska, may finally get some financial
assistance.
About 3,000 workers were
employed on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Island chain during the period of
atomic warhead testing from 1964 to 1971. To date, a federal program has paid
more than 100 claims of US$150,000 each. Many of the workers now suffer from
cancer or lung ailments related to exposure to radioactivity.
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February
7, 2003
Fermented
food season in Iceland
The "Thorri"
season started last Friday in Iceland, and Icelanders are now chowing down their
traditional "Thorri" foods — meat pickled in sour milk.
"Thorri" —
a celebration that started in pre-Christian times — is traditionally held
during the fourth month of winter.
During "Thorri,"
Icelanders eat foods such as sheep heads and Greenland shark, which have often
been stored in sour milk for months.
Rams’ testicles are
particularly popular during the celebration Nordlenska, a major Icelandic retailer,
says the company is facing shortages of the delicacy. Nordlenska prepared more
than eight tonnes of rams’ testicles last fall.
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February
7, 2003
Finns shiver while Alaskans
warm up
Temperatures in Finland
have been 4 ° C to 6 ° C cooler than the average temperatures recorded from 1971
to 2000. The first week of 2003 was, in fact, the coldest ever recorded in the
past 40 years in Finland, and since then temperatures have been running as low
as – 42 ° C.
Meanwhile, Alaska’s
temperature has risen by an average of 1.5 ° C since 1971. The average temperature
in Barrow, Alaska, has gone up by more than 2 ° C in the past 30 years, with the
highest temperature rise noted in the spring months.
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February
7, 2003
Icelanders protest over
hydro project
A large crowd of people
gathered outside the Iceland’s House of Parliament in Reykjavik last week
to protest against the Kárahnjúkar hydroelectric dam and project
that’s planned for eastern Iceland.
A man who threw a snowball
at the Parliament was immediately arrested by police. The arrest angered the
other protesters, and they began to pitch more snowballs. Police didn’t
arrest the other protesters, who remained outside the Parliament most of the
day shouting slogans and demanding a national vote on construction of the power
plant.
The $3-billion Karahnjukar
hydro project calls for the damming of two rivers, draining them through 24
miles of tunnels, and then pouring the water through turbines to generate 700
megawatts of electricity. When finished, the plant would sell power to an aluminum
smelter owned by Alcoa, the world’s largest aluminum company.
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