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Ujarneq Egede’s farm sits among a cluster of compact houses and squat barns on the snowy slopes of Equaluit Ilua in southern Greenland. The trip from Narsaq to the nearest town involves a 30-minute boat trip across the fjord. Once moored on a sheet ice, you will take a snowmobile ride up the hill to the farm.
This is the biggest island in the world, yet Greenland’s population is tiny – less than 57,000 of whom nearly 90% are Inuit, concentrated around the jagged coastline. The country’s Remoteness is extremeThere are no roads and railways between towns or settlements. Transport is only by boat, helicopter and propeller planes – ice, winds and storms permitting.
Narsaq is a small town with approximately 1,300 residents. The main industries are fishing, farming, and summer tourism. Since 1991, its population has declined 25%.
Egede, who also farms potatoes, raises 750 sheep. He huddles in barns in winter and runs wild through the grassy mountains in summer.
Greenland has a farmer. Front row seat for the climate crisis. Egede tracks the changes – “summer is sometimes really dry, other times there is too much rain. This winter was really late”. He said that once they could drive on frozen fjords in winter, but now it is impossible.
However, it is not just the climate that worries Egede. Egede’s farm is in the shadow of Kvanefjeld, a proposed open-pit uranium and rare earth elements mine. Fearing the effects it might have on his farm and environment, Egede was relieved when plans were halted for the mine by the new government. It was banned by the new government in April 2021. The threat remains. Egede isn’t sure it’s over.
The southern part of Greenland, which has the main sources for employment as fishing, tourism and farming, is now facing a dilemma: how to grow the economy without compromising the environment and the livelihoods of the people who depend on the Arctic landscape. It is a microcosm, in Greenland, of the problem facing large parts the world.
Melting ice sheets Temperatures rapidly warmingGreenland: A totem for climate crisis. Ironically, as the ice melts, there are opportunities: not only is it easier to access raw materials, but Greenland is becoming more accessible, and tourist season are expanding.
The relatively young government, which was elected in April 2021, promised pro-environmental policies and has pledged to join the Paris climate agreement And has No new licensesFor oil and gas drilling.
But Greenland’s abundant minerals have attracted the attention of countries that are currently dependent on China and Russia for the raw materials needed to build the batteries and wind turbines of the low-carbon economy. Greenland may be able to move away from Denmark’s financial dependency, thanks to mining. 3.9bn Danish krone (£440m)Every year, and eventually towards independence.
Narsaq was approached by Greenland Minerals from Australia, who pitched the Kvanefjeld Mine as a source for local opportunity. Egede, a farmer, and Naasu, a mother of two, lived on a sheep ranch with her husband. Inneruulalik, near Narsaq. Lund was part in the anti-mine group Urani? Naamik (Uranium). No).
Farmers were afraid they would have to leave farms that were in their families for generations. Lund, who also runs horse riding tours out of her hydropowered farm, said that farmers thought this would happen. She says the main concern was the tailings-pond that holds the mining waste. This would be there for all time. People feared it could spill in Greenland’s fierce weather, reaching the fjord in minutes.
Urani? Naamik protested – at public consultations, through local campaigning and finally through votes. It worked. “This is the first time I can sit in my home and think about a future that is not involved with mining,” Lund says.
It is unclear if the mine will close. Greenland Minerals has launched arbitration proceedings to “clarify the company’s position and to protect our shareholders’ considerable investment in Kvanefjeld”, according to a spokesperson, who added that a Detailled environmental impact assessmentAll concerns were addressed about the mine. “Even under the most extreme assumptions there would not be any exceedance of WHO drinking water standards resulting from dispersal of tailings material during foehn winds [strong gusty winds].”
While Greenland’s government may be saying no to uranium, it is open to other mining and the warming climate may make projects more feasible. “Mineral deposits are exposed that had previously been under ice,” says Josephine Nymand of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.
Kobold Minerals was founded in March with investment from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. AnnouncementThey would start exploring for nickel, cobalt, copper, and platinum group metals. Bo Stensgaard, the CEO of Bluejay Mining, says the project will operate to the “highest standards” environmentally and benefit Greenlanders through jobs and training. There is no time frame for when mining might get underway.
Herein lies the problem, says Lill Rastad Bjørst, associate professor at Aalborg University – there is a lot of talk but “close to nothing is happening”. Greenland has two current mines: one producing rubies and the other producing diamonds. anorthosite. Despite claims about how Greenlanders benefit from mining, “at the moment, there might be people who benefit from this development, but it’s not the people living in Greenland”, Bjørst says.
Could tourism be the answer to all our problems? “We advocate for tourism,” says Idrissia Thestrup, of Visit Greenland, “because we believe by preserving nature, we can actually avoid taking the resources in the land and potentially destroying landscapes.”
Tourism was one of the country’s Fastest growing industriesIt was halted by Covid lockdowns. But 2022 will be a boom year, says Henrik Ebbe Nielsen, a tourism teacher at Campus Kujalleq, in Qaqortoq, south Greenland’s largest town. Qaqortoq alone anticipates seeing 41 cruise ships this year, bringing up to 47,000 tourists along its winding, pavementless streets.
An expansion project at the airport could increase visitor numbers. Construction will begin this spring at Qaqortoq’s new airport. New runwaysLarger, international planes will be allowed to land in Nuuk, the capital, and Ilulissat. Ilulissat is a town famous for its iceberg calving glacier as well as dog sledding.
However, bigger airports can mean more tourists, more pollution and more aeroplanes. In some areas, “the local landscape is very much affected by too many tourists already”, says Bjørst.
Thestrup says framing Greenland’s airport growth as a climate problem ignores its tiny contribution to the climate crisis and its extreme remoteness. She acknowledges that caution is necessary. “We want tourism to be a driver for economic growth but we want to do it at a pace that respects the nature and culture of our destination.”
Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, His vision was recently laid out for a “resilient economy”, one that would ultimately phase out fossil fuels. Alongside fishing, rare earth mining and tourism, he predicts a future for far less tested industries, including using Greenland’s abundant hydropower resources with captured CO2 emissions to create green fuels for export. “As the ‘face’ of climate change,” he wrote in an editorial, “Greenland wants to lead by example.”
For now, the country is trying out a path to greater economic freedom and claiming climate leadership. It is a path filled with uncertainty, especially as the climate crisis starts to alter people’s way of life, but uncertainty is something Greenlanders are used to.
“You cannot sit down and cry, it doesn’t help, you have to just adapt,” Lund says. “We can do it right,” she adds. “Greenland is a very sustainable country but it’s also the Arctic – nature doesn’t fix itself very fast after being destroyed, you have to be careful, it’s very fragile.”
The Craig Newmark Graduate School for Journalism at CUNY provided travel support for this piece.
