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https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/16-3?print
dismay environmental activists, who fear the race to extract resources from an ice-free Arctic would ravish and destroy a fragile ecosystem already under stress from climate change. By some estimates, 90 billion barrels of oil and one-fifth of the planets untapped natural gas lie beneath the Arctic Ocean. At a news conference in Kiruna, Sweden, site of the worlds biggest iron-ore mine, Ms. Aglukkaq also promised big change at the Arctic Council. Gone will be the focus on science for its own sake. Instead, research to develop the North for the benefit of northerners such as her own Inuit and other indigenous peoples in Russia, Alaska and the Nordic countries will take priority, she said.
Despite Aglukkaq's emphasis on the support and benefit of indigenous people under her proposed development plan, a number of those indigenous groups present are siding against oil development in the fragile Arctic ecosystem by signing the Joint Statement of Indigenous Solidarity for Arctic Protection (pdf), which was drafted last August at the first annual Arctic Indigenous Peoples conference. Reacting to the growing rejection of the industrial push and "greenwashed" policies, Greenpeace writes:
Many of these people, who have an inherent right to the lands of the Arctic, are experiencing the difficulties caused by a changing Arctic. When these eight foreign ministers gather this morning to meet and greet and sign a greenwashed agreement on oil spill response and claim that they have done all they could they will do it in the shadow of this conference and these statements. Then they will go back home and continue to allow oil companies to continue their destructive rampage in the fragile Arctic. But the beacon of hope shines through the voices of those Indigenous Peoples who over the weekend, took a step toward rejecting Arctic oil. The movement is growing, and it is getting more and more difficult for the toothless governments in the Arctic Council to ignore.
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