The Future of the Canadian Arctic
An interview with ecology Professor Paul Martin
Beliz Berge
January 29, 2023
Credit: DALL-E
Climate change has directly impacted the Arctic and the individuals that inhabit it. From ice storms to changing resources, the Indigenous community has been and continues to be significantly affected.
Due to human action, species face increasing risks, including habitat loss, extreme changes in climatic conditions, and an increase in global temperature. To explore the effects of ecosystems on climate change, The Observer spoke to Paul Martin, an associate professor of Biology at Queen’s University.
To better understand the effects of climate change, he said collaborative efforts and partnerships around the world is critical.
The Observer: Who has been impacted by climate change so far?
Paul Martin: Well it certainly seems to be accelerating as there are some regions that have really demonstrated change. The Arctic is the one that stands out. We've seen massive changes interacting positively, so permafrost melting ends up emitting more gases that enhance future climate change and the impacts in local regions in the Arctic. As the melting continues it frees up nutrients and changes things. Acceleration of these cycles hasn't been equal across the planet, some species in some regions have been dramatically impacted but the Arctic certainly seems to be leading the way and will probably tell us how other regions will respond in time if climate change continues as we project.
TO: What are some ways climate change is impacting Canada?
PM: All of Canada is impacted, there isn't a place where I think people couldn't just see it for themselves. The impacts are due to climate and phenology, but also to biology, with the arrival of new species of birds and butterflies. The Arctic is challenging because there's not much we can do, we're kind of sitting by watching it happen. In the Arctic, people are dependent on natural resources and so it is impacting ecosystems, and people at the same time. If things continue along these same trajectories, we're going to see other regions of Canada impacted to the same extent.
TO: How has the Indigenous population in Canada been affected by climate change?
PM: I am not Indigenous and not living within these communities, but my observations of what's gone on is Indigenous people have borne the brunt of a lot of the climate change impacts.
In Canada, the Arctic has close ties with Indigenous peoples, due to [their use of] natural resources. One of the main resources for the indigenous population are animals. With climate change, animals’ behaviours and phenology[1] are changing, so the community are doing things differently at different times of the year making it more challenging.
Even just ice cover and storms and the dangers of going out on the ocean are impacting them as well. When we think about Indigenous peoples more broadly in Canada, we find there are a lot of communities in poverty. As we see climate change impacting those communities with droughts and floods and other disasters, they are going to bear the brunt.
TO: What are some ways researchers and scientists understand or could understand the impact climate change is having on species?
PM: Monitoring, documenting, and understanding the impacts of climate change is one important area where researchers can play a role. It’s important for the public to understand the impacts and hopefully convince them to do something and respond collectively.
The other thing researchers can do is to project into the future and based on what we know what can we expect to happen. It's difficult to do because the systems are so complex it's difficult to know how much species are going to evolve in response to climate change and whether they can manage against it or end up going extinct. We just don't understand them in their normal state which makes it really difficult to predict what's going to happen.
The one extremely useful thing researchers have done is partner up with community scientists. There isn’t enough funding to monitor the earth by ourselves, but partnering with others who have had the knowledge can allow for better document changes and better impact the response of the public.
There are some great initiatives that have been moving forward. I've got my eBird hat on – a great community science initiative with millions of records of birds, involving hundreds of thousands of observers. That becomes a powerful tool for documenting change.
Collaborative efforts and partnerships with communities that have this long term knowledge of natural systems can help us achieve a whole lot more I think then we can just acting on our own.
TO: What are some of the effects climate change has left on organisms and the ecosystem?
PM: Already climate change has impacted all ecological processes in nature from things like genetic composition[2] of species to global patterns of primary productivity.
The impacts across species and ecosystems are highly variable so we have seen some small-range species go extinct already and some ecosystems have been hugely impacted like the Arctic.
However, other species have shown minimal impacts or some have had positive impacts of climate change and some ecosystems haven't shown much of an impact so far. Generally, it's difficult to know the impacts of climate change because most species are undescribed to science and most ecosystems haven't been studied nor monitored and so we're really in a weak position to assess the impacts of climate change.
TO: What does the future of ecology look like in the next 50 to 100 years, and how can understanding ecology help us to understand climate change?
PM: There's two parts to it. We're certainly in trouble as human beings and I don't think people fully appreciate the extent of the trouble and we see with species and ecosystems.
Different regions of the world are differently impacted and there's going to be some regions that have serious impacts to the point where we'll start to see climate change refugees and major movements of people fleeing areas of drought and flooding for example.
This is going to create all kinds of pressures that we’re just beginning to see. Natural ecosystems clean our water, provide pollinators for our crops, and protect against flooding, so as we see the kind of interactions between humans and the environment intensify, I think we're going to start to see greater challenges for biodiversity and ecological systems.
We're seeing species shifting, loss of biodiversity, species meeting other species for the first time, new ecological communities forming (as some species disappear and others move in), and compounding challenges like invasive species and habitat loss. These aspects interact with climate change and so we can't really consider any of these things as separate or independent.
The challenge will be in conserving and maintaining what we care about for our own well-being.
TO: What role does Canada play in the global fight against climate change?
PM: It’s a difficult challenge, climate change is global and unlike so many things we face. If Canada tomorrow stopped all their greenhouse gas emissions, it would still have virtually no impact on future climate change without other countries doing it together.
I think the role of Canadians moving forward is collaborating with other countries and negotiating and convincing all of these countries to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately. This needs to happen quickly.
I do think Canada can play a role in other ways in terms of new technologies which can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and then be kind of exported or used by other countries to reduce carbon emissions globally that could really be beneficial and then protecting things, like broad areas of forests like arboreal forest are so important for buffering against climate change.
Time is running out.
[1] Phenology: the events in an organism’s life cycle.
[2] Genetic Composition: the genes that exist in an individual and the commonality of those genes in a given specie.