A las 11.30 de la mañana esto es lo que hay de luz. Universidad de Tromso.

El sol no aparece durante meses en el invierno ártico y los días son noches completamente en obscuridad. En estos días celebran en Tromso que el sol “asome” un poco en el horizonte, bebiendo chocolate caliente y galletas especiales.

Mi cólega noruego y periodista Wilhelm preparado para ir a la galera a trabajar. Entra de noche y sale de noche.

Break-coffe time.

Aburrida jornada la de ayer y la de hoy va por el mismo camino. Blablablabla. Se reparten el pastel del Ártico.Los VIP´s incluyendo a militares “hablaron” del Ártico, pero no llegaron a ninguna conclusión para salvarlo. La nota más destacada fué el representante de Greenpeace que hizo una pregunta que se alargó lo suyo y el moderador tuvo que cortarle. Más que una pregunta era un speech. Hay bastantes bajas entre los casi 500 asistentes inscritos. El auditorium se ve vacío y dicen que el viajecito en el barco (1.700 NOK, unos 184 euros! una pasta, por una cena con corbata obligatoria y  posterior desembarco en un viejo pub de la ciudad). El press officer de la conferencia no responde a los emails que le envié en nombre de los miembros fotógrafos de Save the Arctic! para que nuestro proyecto pueda ser incluído en la newsletter.

Participantes en el coffe-break a las 10.30.

Rusia propone crear un National Council para la preservación del Ártico.

Plan ruso para el ártico.

Los temas urgentes del Año Polar. Se han cumplido?

Inauguración de The Age of the Arctic por el rector de la Universidad de Tromso, Mr. Jarle Aarbakke.

Concienciar al mundo y exigir compromiso a las empresas que explotan el Ártico.

Elizabeth Walaas habló en nombre del ministro de Asuntos Exteriores en nombre del ministro de Asuntos Exteriores noruego Jonas Gahr Store sobre la  necesidad  de mentalizarse y tener muy en cuenta sobre el cuidado del planeta en los próximos años. El deshielo es una amenaza y una clara evidencia de que las potencias mundiales deben trabajar unidas.

“Rusia  es la nación que tiene mayor interés en la explotación de recursos del Ártico y la que cuenta con mayor número de rompehielos”, y evidenció, casi como regañándoles, los incidentes que continuamente provocan y la actitud que muestraron al intentar fijar una bandera de su país en el fondo marino. Con ejemplos como estos no se va a ayudar demasiado a una preservación del ártico, dijo.

El transporte, la ciencia, el medio ambiente marino y terrestre son algunos de los tópicos que preocupan a los científicos y que en ésta conferencia internacional ocupan un protagonismo esencial. Sin embargo hizo mucbo énfasis como una mayor razón en el cambio climático. y su problema mundial. Hay que reducir la emisión de gases tóxicos a la atmósfera ya que fomentan el deshielo del ártico, entre otros motivos. “Se derrite el hielo, y las mareas suben., se pierde terreno para los pueblos índigenas que viven desde hace siglo de la riqueza del ártico y debemos. Es muy dramática la situación. Tenemos que concienciarnos para proteger el ecosistema”.

En cuánto a la explotación de los recursos naturales del ártico son las grandes emrpesas las que deben de estudiar los métodos menos agresivos con la naturaleza. Es u serio compromiso que tienen que asumir si quieren ir adelante con sus propuestas de actividades.

Joe Borg, European Commission.

Under the org of Arctic Frontiers more of 500 participants will assist to the Arctic Age conference held in Tromso (Norway). I will be there covering the conference daily and updating the most important subjects of the meeting with interviews and fresh info. As well members of Save the Arctic! we will try to find the orgs that can believe in the project and get one more step to the documentary of the Arctic project.

Hi, welcome to Save the Arctic photo project!

This photo documentary project want to be a essay in the Arctic area and used as document of climate change in the environment of the Arctic and in the life of the indigenous tribes.

As a documentary photojournalist and filmmaker, the author wants document the changes in the daily life in the indigenous communities, wildlife and environemnt.

The climatic change and the natural process of defrosting in the Arctic are an evident reality. In 2007 scientists alarm when they verified the photographies of the satellites that process was very different from the forecasts with which they worked.
This one new situation waked up the interest of the countries that of natural form own substantial part on the land, beginning a dispute of how as to distribute the pieces of the succulent pie whose limit is the North Pole (the 90 North º), a physical point in the ice that will get to materialize itself in salt water to half-full or final of this century according to the scientists.

To becomin an important route of maritime transport when the ice disappear, is of interest to more countries in dispute as there is the natural wealth that is hiding. Like treasures, immense deposits of gas and petroleum sleeping and waiting the men to drill them, full of Gas, petroleum or diamonds, have waken up the old chimera of his first explorers. This new adventure in the search of deposits and a navigable route between Europe and Asia that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would shorten the trips of the great ships in at least 7,000 kilometers,  and improve tourism, as in the last years the visits to this zone.

Scientists assure that the climatic change is the greater threat for the survival of the planet, but also has something positive for others. The Arctic, the ice sea, is melting, and opening a new border that promises to change the Great North: fabulous deposits of before inaccessible gas and petroleum and profitable ocean lines. In Hammerfest (Norway) this fascinating challenge is staged already.

In recent years it has undergone an important increase from tourism to the North Pole and the Arctic Circle, because the icebreakers find less problems to break the ice that every time has less thickness. The scientists assure that the climatic change is the greater threat for the survival of the planet, but also has something of positive for others. In Hammerfest (Norway) this fascinating challenge is staged already.
The process of life in the zone of the Polar Circle is a chain: the animal that live in the ice and follow it like life means (example of the white Polar Bears, Ursus Maritimus, formerly Thalarctos maritimus) are the subsistence of the Eskimos, as well as other species like the polar Caribou, reindeer, seals and if all of them go away or disappear the inhabitants of those zones they also go.
The main affected in this process of defrosting will be the thousands of people who live in the Arctic Circle, member of indigenous groups: Saami, Aleuts, Athapaskans, Chukchi, Inuit, Inupiaq, Nenet and Yupík, that live between Norway, Sweden, Finland, Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland.

These communities that live from the sea and the animal hunting, the majority of them, are losing his culture by the necessity to have to adapt to surroundings in which their ancestors lived. The polar natives feel very sad and powerless before this tragic situation: The CO2 emissions, that are the main cause of the heating of the planet.

EXAMPLES OF THE TRAGIC EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING
Kivalina Island, Alaska
The village of Kivalina has never been very secure. A ramshackle settlement of 100 buildings, it includes a school, a post office, a health clinic, a grocery store, a laundry, two churches, and a bingo parlor, all perched on a thin strip of permafrost between the Chukchi Sea and the mouths of the Wulik and Kivalina rivers. Just off the northwestern coast of Alaska, it’s truly a town on the edge. For most of the year, Kivalina is surrounded by ice; when it melts during the brief summer, waves gnaw the shore from the west and rivers tug at it from the east.

Shishmaref in N. Alaska
The village of Shishmaref in N. Alaska, inhabited for 400 years, is facing evacuation due to rising temperatures, which are causing a reduction in sea ice, thawing of permafrost along the coast. The reduced sea ice allows higher storm surges to reach shore and thawing permafrost makes the shoreline more vulnerable to erosion. Erosion at Shishmaref is somewhat unique along the islands because of its fetch exposure and high tidal prism, relatively intense infrastructure development during the 20th century, and because of multiple shoreline defense structures emplaced since the 1970s.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROJECT

My proposal to continue working in this project is based on the documentation following the developing process, assuring like subjective witness the process in the daily life the indigenous Communities the Arctic Circle, traveling to the places at certain times of the year there where the climatic change already is being pronounced with great effects and of evident way, forcing its inhabitants to change towards other perspective of life, generating new situations of which we could emphasize the following:

1. The process of accelerated defrosting (by NASA and other authors).
2. Opening of the Passage of the Northwest or Straits of Ainán to navigation (first explorer to discover the pass, Amundsen, 1906).
3. Operation of new deposits of gas and petroleum (In the actuallity, Gazprom, Statoil).
4. Litigation of Borders (Canada, USA, Russia).
5. Population increase of individuals and appearance of other races (ethnic groups) of the planet in inhospitable zones and floods of enigmas that will generate increase demographic and mixes ethnic (fixed temporary migrations or like personnel for the operating companies of the deposits of petroleum and gas).
6. Changes and disappearance of the cultural structure and social native (until the total eradication of heritage) of the old Eskimo settlers, Inuits, Sami etc…

FIELD WORK

In order to develop my work of field I consider visits to certain population centers (maintaining contact with scientists and anthropologists that also study this problem of the indigenous communities and with the representatives of these communities) and zones of present risk of changes in the different countries experience that it.

From 2003 I am documenting the changes in the Baltic Sea, through the life of the icebreakers in the Gulf of Finland, or the flight control of the Finnish Surveillance Squadron besides visits in  different seasons around the year in localities of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. In all these countries -near the Arctic Circle- already it has been experienced in both last winters the loss of companies and jobs due to the global heating when being generated temperatures that prevent the natural phenomenon of the snow. In this case there is a general crisis in the planet.

Intentions
1. Daily life in canadian and russian icebreakers
2. Daily life of Polar bases of scientists working on the field
3. Daily life in the Indigenous tribes
4. Daily life in the spots where the climate change is a risk
5. Daily life of Polar organizations working in the research and studies of the climate change
6. Daily life in the spots of gas and oil exploitations

ROUTE OF WORK

For the accomplishment of my field-work I will use digital and analogical cameras due to the lowest temperatures in winter (-20º to -30º C) causing the mechanisms do not work correctly.

I am developing the route. It would begin documenting Hammerfest (Norway), Rovaniemi (Finland), and Murmansk (Russia), Nenets in Yamal Peninsula, and there the main cities and indigenous Communities of Eskimo are based, Alaska, Canada, Greenland.

The work of documentation will be from the Scandinavian coast to Alaska, going through Greenland, and Canada. Once documented, in my way and on the land it will be appearing new data and places that will take to me to photograph an important part of the development process and changes in the societies and life of the people. I calculate that it will be six to nine months to complete all a small at night austral part (winter and total darkness) and the white nights (spring-summer).

DOCUMENTING TO EDUCATE

No doubt that throughout the History the photography has been the tool helpful for sociologists, anthropologists, scientists, historians and investigators of the semiotics, to  study the human societies in constant change and development. The documentary photography discovered opening its great doors to the study and knowledge of the Humans and its behavior in the society.

With this project I propose to document and to educate, showing the documentary photographic material as a visual document and spread the word (photographer+images+educator) between children, adults, educators and politicians trying to fulfill the environmental norms and requesting a effort in the fight to preserve the wildlife in the planet Earth.

We must regain consciousness all together every day more, helping to the Mother Nature, to conserve the wealth that gives to us, learning of the errors in which we sailed and not to end up destroying other cultures. The indigenous communities of the Arctic Circle and the species that live there feel threatened their lives and traditions by the danger of our egoism.

I propose that the images that are obtained of this project can be traveling by schools and all those places where people want to listen, approaching the voice of which those are living in remote places to learn from them and how they love the nature.

CONCLUSIONS
Indigenous communities, animals, all the planet will undergo the great climatic changes in all their surface with rainy or very warm summers and warm winter or Siberian winter. The surface of Greenland -to mention only an example-, it rises little by little by defrosting. The polar mass in the north practices an enormous weight where no longer there is ice. If the ice of Greenland melts the level of the sea it will increase 7 meters and many cities will be buried by the water. The polar bears already are invading continental land crossing among others species different from their condition. This will mean the total losses of the polar species and the biodiversity. Really a world-wide chaos to which we must face up with the knowledge. The rich countries have forgotten the planet and will have to change their budgets for the defense of the climate and the environment and without forgetting that there is to stop contaminates it of the planet. It is a warning, not a message and we still are in time.

Arctic, the aftermath is a non profit documentary project to use as educational tool using the multimedia.

2008 © Delmi Alvarez

go here to see the page of this statement in the project site