Welcome to the PCO website

by admin

last update: Jan 06, 2010

To find out more about the PCO follow this short animated explanation below. If you are looking for educational information about the Polar Regions, check out the Education section.

Mission statement

The Polar Conservation Organisation (PCO) is a Brussels based and registered non-profit foundation, committed to ensuring a sustainable future for both Polar Regions.

Objectives

• To create awareness, inform and educate the public, business/industry and political leaders about the significance of the Polar Regions and their influence on global issues.
• To create a platform for the global exchange of knowledge and expertise for the benefit of the Polar Regions.
  To promote international cooperation and civic engagement, and to advocate collaborative action by all sectors of society.
• To support the establishment, maintenance and monitoring of relevant international agreements, thereby ensuring a sustainable future for the Arctic (Arctic Treaty) and Antarctic (Antarctic Treaty) Regions.

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Few G7 participants at side events

by Raven

last update: Feb 09, 2010

From various articles: To the dismay of some organisers, the group of finance ministers, central bankers and other delegates in Iqaluit did not attend many of the side events organised around Nunavut's capital city.

The Deputy premier, Peter Taptuna (Minister of Economic Development and Transportation) said he was disappointed to see not many G7 officials and international journalists had shown up to talks organized by the Nunavut government to provide information about the territory. He told CBC News "We had some speakers here, but due to all these press conferences and whatnot, there's a turnout that we didn't quite expect. It's a smaller turnout than we expected."

They had organised dog sledging, where only one journalist signed up for and when the two-day G7 meeting wrapped up on Saturday, none of the international finance ministers and central bank governors attended a community feast that had seal or caribou meat, Arctic char and muktuk on the menu.

The only officials taking part in the community feast, which was attended by about 600 people, were Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada.

Why the other officials and foreign leaders did not attend the event is not clear, maybe because of the feast's culinary offerings, given that the European Union is banning the trade of seal products. When asked at a news conference Saturday, European representatives looked clearly uncomfortable when a reporter asked if they had learned about the importance of the Inuit seal hunt in Canada's North. Jim Flaherty, Canada’s finance minister, said “The European Union makes a specific exemption for Inuit people, who for thousands of years have relied on the seal as part of their survival. That is the view of the European Union, and certainly our view in Canada, as you know.”

Taptuna and others said hosting the G7 gathering in Iqaluit attracted a lot of attention to the city and the territory and  Okalik Eegeesiak, president of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, said "They're busy people and some of them are 20 hours away by flight, so it's understandable [that they didn't stay]."

Read more:

CBC. Canada, 8th February 2010

Nunatsiaq Online, 8th February 2010

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Aboriginals push back over hunting rules in the North

by Raven

last update: Feb 08, 2010

From a "Canadian Press / Google" article: Aboriginal hunters across the North of Canada are pushing back against attempts to conserve wildlife, launching court actions and legislative measures to stop the three territories from regulating the harvest of caribou and polar bears.

Bill Erasmus of the Dene Nation in Yellowknife, who faces legal action for hunting in defiance of a ban on taking caribou from the declining Bathurst herd in the central Arctic tundra, said "Aboriginal people are very aware of their rights. We may let other things slip, but when you go to the core of who we are, we determine there is a limit."

Northern Peoples are heavily dependend on game for food and as such the wildlife issues are among the most politically sensitive in the Arctic. A series of land claims and co-management agreements is supposed to give them control over animals on their own lands.  

The three territorial governments of Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon, on the advice of biologists, are trying to restrict hunting.

Meanwhile, while the Inuvialuit Game Council and the Gwich'In Tribal Council are taking Yukon to court, asking a judge to declare the territory has broken their land claims by not consulting them adequately, the N.W.T. legislature will consider a motion that calls on the government to rescind its controls on the Bathurst herd.

Norman Yakelaya, the legislative member from the area affected by the hunting ban who tabled the motion, said "It's about aboriginal rights for their means of survival and food. We jumped the gun on this. We should have waited to have aboriginal people deal with it."

World Wildlife Fund's Craig Stewart, the conservation organisation which supports both wildlife conservation and subsistence hunting, says the problems arise from different ways of looking at the natural world. "What seems to be behind it is a completely different view of what's normal," he said.

While aboriginals tend to view animal population changes as part of a cycle, scientists have grown increasingly alarmed at the size and speed of the declines. Stewart added that science lacks long-term historical data for many animals including caribou and polar bears. "Governments need to make the investments in science to a broad enough scale so we can close the gap," he said.

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The Canadian Press / Google, 7th February 2010

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