In Greenland, potatoes thrive as seal hunting wanes

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In Greenland, potatoes thrive as seal hunting wanes
Global warming is a boon for farmers and fishermen but a hardship for ice-dependent Inuit.
By Colin Woodard | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 1, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 2
Reporter Colin Woodard discusses the impact of climate change in Greenland.


Qassiarsuk, Greenland - In this village of 56 people in southern Greenland, history has come full circle. It was here, in about 985, that Erik the Red, leader of a medieval Norse colony, built his farm and raised sheep, cattle, and barley.

But about 300 years later, the climate changed. The Norse's agrarian lifestyle began to unravel when the Little Ice Age arrived, dooming the colony.

Today the hillside overlooking Erik's Fjord is lush and green again. A crop of young potatoes and radishes await harvesting. The plot is surrounded by tall grass – food for thousands of sheep – blowing in the cool winds coming off the melting glaciers to the north and east. In a nearby village, residents have started growing broccoli.

"Spring is coming many weeks earlier now, and the last five winters have been very short and rainy," says Tommy Maro, mayor of Qaqortaq, the region's principal town. "It will be exciting to see how the land will change in the next 20 years. Maybe we will have more sheep farmers, more green areas, more things we can grow."

Perhaps nowhere else in the world are the effects of climate change as obvious as in Greenland, where warming temperatures have brought a mixed blessing to the 56,000 residents that live on this island, a self-governing territory of Denmark. As winter sea ice disappears, the traditional means that the indigenous Inuit people have developed to survive in the Arctic – sled dog mushing, seal hunting, ice-hole fishing – are rapidly becoming obsolete. Farming, an occupation all but unheard of a century ago, has never looked better.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1001/p01s02-wogn.html

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1. But Fearless Leader says there is no climate change.