MONTREAL - Inuit indigenous peoples formally accused Washington on Wednesday of violating their human rights by failing to do enough to fight a thaw of Arctic ice undermining their hunting culture.
"Climate change is destroying our environment and eroding our culture," Sheila Watt-Cloutier, head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, said on the sidelines of a 189-nation meeting in Montreal, Canada, on ways to fight global warming.
"Our hunting culture is based on the cold. We want it to remain cold," she said.
In a groundbreaking case, the Inuit filed a petition to a commission of the Organization of American States that said climate change was tantamount to human rights abuse.
The petition urged the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to "recommend that the United States adopt mandatory limits to its emissions of greenhouse gases" from power plants, factories and cars.
The commission has scant powers - it cannot award any damages - but the Inuit hope that any of its findings might be a factor to embarrass Washington into action.
The petition urged the commission to declare that Washington's climate policies were a breach of the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other instruments of international law.
In 2001, the United States, the source of about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, pulled out of the UN's Kyoto Protocol, under which about 40 industrial countries have promised to cap their emissions.
HUNTERS SUFFERING SUNBURN, FALLING THROUGH THIN ICE
Watt-Cloutier, 51, lives in northern Canada. She said climate change meant that Inuit hunters were suffering sunburn, falling through thinning ice and having difficulty tracking prey like polar bears, seals and walrus.
Indigenous settlements along the coast are experiencing erosion because the sea ice that once protected the land from battering waves is melting. The 163-page petition was backed by testimony of 63 Inuits in Canada and Alaska.
The US declined comment on the petition.
"We need to review it and then we will respond to it," said Paula Dobriansky, US undersecretary of state for global affairs, who is heading the US delegation in Montreal.
The Inuit Circumpolar Conference says it represents about 155,000 people in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia.
Environmentalists said the petition broke new ground as a cross-border attempt to address climate change. Some Pacific island states, threatened by rising seas, have threatened lawsuits against the United States. Lawyers say such a case would be extremely costly and very hard to win.
A report by more than 250 experts last year said the Arctic was warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, threatening indigenous livelihoods. It said Arctic sea ice could disappear in summers by 2100.
It said the Arctic melt was accelerating because darker sea or ground, once exposed, soaks up more heat than ice or snow.
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
