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OSLO - Inuit hunters threatened by a melting of the Arctic ice plan to file a
petition accusing Washington of violating their human rights by fueling global
warming, an Inuit leader said on Wednesday.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), also
said Washington was hindering work to follow up a 2004 report by 250 scientists
that said the thaw could make the Arctic Ocean ice-free in summer by 2100.
Watt-Cloutier, in Oslo to receive an environmental prize, said the Inuits' planned
petition to the 34-member Organization of American States (OAS) could put pressure
on the United States to do more to cut industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases.
"It's still in the works, the drafting is still going on," she said
of a long-planned petition to the OAS' human rights arm, the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights.
She said the Inuit aimed to file it before a U.N. meeting in Montreal in December.
The OAS represents 34 nations in the Americas, from Chile to Canada, promoting
cooperation and common interests.
Its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights analyzes and investigates petitions
which allege human rights violations. It has no power to sanction the United
States but it could issue a report agreeing with the Inuit.
The Inuit hope that the commission will agree that climate change is tantamount
to a U.S. abuse of their human rights by thinning the ice on which hunters depend
and by threatening species ranging from polar bears to seals.
Watt-Cloutier said that Washington, the world's top polluter, was doing too
little to limit emissions of carbon dioxide from factories, cars and power plants
that are widely blamed by scientists for driving up temperatures.
Washington says it is investing heavily in energy research and clean hydrogen
fuel but has not joined almost all its allies in signing up for the United Nations'
Kyoto protocol, which sets caps on carbon dioxide emissions.
U.N. studies forecast that global warming could bring more extreme weather
with disastrous droughts, floods and storms. It could also melt icecaps and
drive up sea levels, swamping coastal areas and low-lying islands.
The Inuit total about 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.
The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe because water or bare
earth, once uncovered, soak up more heat than ice or snow.
Watt-Cloutier collected the $100,000 Sophie Prize on Wednesday for her work
for Inuit rights. The prize is named after "Sophie's World," a teenagers'
guide to philosophy that was a 1990s bestseller written by Norwegian author
Jostein Gaarder.
She said she would use the prize to help write a book about the Inuit to be
entitled: "The Right to be Cold."
