Sustainable Development: The Past and the Future for Indigenous Communities of the Canadian Arctic

Sustainable use of natural resources - fish, forests, wildlife - is a way of life for the Indigenous communities of the Arctic. Indigenous peoples continue to rely on the sustainable use of renewable resources for their cultural, physical, and economic sustenance. This dependence puts them at great risk from industrial and agricultural pollutants that find their way into the Arctic food chain and from campaigns opposed to the harvesting of wildlife and the marketing of wildlife products. While Indigenous communities of northern Canada are exploring other avenues leading to economic development, at the same time they are seeking to balance these emerging opportunities with their desire to maintain values and traditional lifestyles attached to the land and wildlife. Innovative land and resource management regimes established through land claims, new self-government and public government arrangements, and a growing information base are all converging in northern Canada to help preserve and protect the relatively unspoiled northern environment.

The Changing Arctic

The Arctic is now recognized as a barometer for the global environment. As a sink for transboundary pollutants, it accumulates toxic contaminants originating largely from sources outside the North. Global climate change is having an impact on Arctic ecosystems and habitat, wildlife populations, and migration patterns. Increased ultraviolet radiation due to springtime ozone depletion presents serious risks to both ecosystems and people. These changes may have very serious long-term effects on the cultures and economies of Arctic Indigenous communities.

International campaigns against hunting and trapping have been successful in creating some market access barriers to traditional northern wildlife products. Although few in number, these barriers have severely limited the international movement of these products, with devastating economic and cultural impacts on many northern Indigenous communities. High unemployment, along with health, social, and economic problems, has become a serious issue. Currently, there are few employment alternatives for northern Indigenous communities. Only in the past 10 to 15 years have these communities begun to participate in significant ways in the public service, mining, and energy sectors. Nonrenewable resource development still causes tension within some Indigenous communities.

The Government of Canada and Indigenous peoples are forging partnerships, building local capacity, and working to improve efficiencies and alternatives in northern communities. They are also collaborating to focus on expanded participation in global decision making in the best interests of this potentially prosperous, yet vulnerable, region.

"Indigenous people and their communities.have a vital role in environmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and interests and enable their effective participation in the achievement of sustainable development."
-Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Principle 22.

Sustainable Development and the Global Community

Once Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission), appeared on the world stage in 1987, the concept of sustainable development resonated throughout the international community. Among Indigenous communities in Canada, it was heralded as a vindication of sorts - a recognition that living in harmony with the natural environment must become the lifestyle of the future, not just for now.

In June 1992, world leaders from 179 countries and hundreds of nongovernmental and Indigenous organizations attended the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development to discuss the critical relationship between the environmental health and the economic development of the planet. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, accompanied by Agenda 21: Programme of Action for Sustainable Development, a nonlegally binding commitment to take action, was signed by these leaders. Most of the leaders signed both of the legally binding global conventions on biological diversity and climate change and endorsed a set of forestry principles.

"For Inuit, sustainable development is not simply a nice buzzword. It's a concept that holds the key to survival for Inuit culture into the next century and beyond. The concept of taking only what you need of a resource and using all of what you take is one that is lost on industrialized societies. However, it is the guiding principle that allowed Inuit to survive individually and grow as a culture in the harshest environment on the planet."
-Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Agenda 21 from an Inuit Perspective

Canadian Indigenous Peoples and the Rio Summit

The Government of Canada supported the early involvement of Indigenous peoples in preparations for the Rio Summit in a number of ways. In 1991, national organizations representing Canadian Indigenous peoples were members of the National Report Steering Committee, which issued Canada's National Report: United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Brazil, June 1992. With funding support from the Government of Canada, the Indigenous communities were able to contribute to the substance of negotiations and debates leading to the conference documents and parallel events at Rio.

The Rio Declaration

The Rio Declaration contains 27 principles defining the rights and responsibilities of nations as they pursue human development and well-being and makes specific mention of Indigenous people and their communities. It states that the way to ensure long-term economic progress, beneficial to humanity, is to link it with environmental protection. This can only be achieved if nations establish global partnerships involving governments, their citizens, and key sectors of civil society.

Agenda 21

Agenda 21 is a blueprint of action for global sustainable development into the 21st century that flows from the 27 principles of the Rio Declaration. Of key interest to Indigenous people is the perspective that sustainable development is a concept in which human and environmental concerns are interrelated. Unlike some regions of the globe, the Arctic did not receive specific attention in Agenda 21.

While Agenda 21 contains 40 chapters, all of interest to Indigenous peoples, it is Chapter 26, "Recognizing and Strengthening the Role of Indigenous People and Their Communities", that is specifically directed at Indigenous people. Three main objectives provide a platform for Indigenous peoples, in partnership with governments, to work together to build a common approach to the challenge of integrating environment and development issues.

Agenda 21 has adopted an ecosystem and regional approach to environmental management that complements the perspective of northern Indigenous communities. Other chapters of Agenda 21 relating to integrated resource management, consumption patterns, human resources, and environmental education offer guidelines that are useful in furthering the aims of sustainability in the Canadian North.

"As people who have lived in harmony with nature and close to the land for centuries, aboriginal peoples of Canada have developed an immensely valuable information base and expertise which can be shared with the rest of Canadian society.These facts, coupled with the general recognition that decision-making should involve people affected by the decisions, have made governments. aware of the need to work together with aboriginal peoples."

-Canada's National Report: United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1991.