More and more tourists are flocking to Greenland, the magnificent ice island that is already threatened by global warming. “It’s a land that makes you dreamsays Yves Glaze, a sixty-year-old French man who wants to make discoveries off the beaten path. Leaving the airport of Ilulissat, the third city in the autonomous Danish territory, he discovers a landscape of raw beauty, sparsely vegetated gray rock contrasted with the puzzling sight of icebergs a little further on.
Exceptional blocks of ice that have escaped from a neighboring fjord are constantly emerging in the careless ocean, where whales occasionally show themselves. These postcard scenes attracted 50,000 people in 2021, ten times more visitors than the port city has residents. More than half make only a short stop on an Arctic cruise. This success, set to grow with the opening of the international airport within two years, is a welcome financial gain for the city’s mayor, but also an added challenge as he already has to deal with the daily effects of global warming.
Every day we can see the effects of climate change. icebergs are smaller, the glacier is retreating.
Palle Jeremiasen, Mayor of Ilulissat
Over the past 40 years, the Arctic has warmed almost four times faster than the rest of the world, according to a recent study on the topic. “Every day we can see the effects of climate change. icebergs are smaller, the glacier is retreating.“, explains city councilor Palle Jeremiahsen, who is also worried about the melting of the permafrost, which threatens the stability of certain infrastructures and residential buildings.
Pristine landscapes prized by visitors are withering, and the challenge is to protect the local ecosystem without distracting the curious. “We want to control the arrival of tourist boats”, Too polluting, argues Palle Jeremiahsen. To respect the community and the environment, we must “a maximum of one boat per day and one thousand tourists per boat– he thinks. Recently, three cruise ships arrived on the same day, bringing 6,000 visitors, which the mayor said was an overflow because the city cannot accommodate them or ensure they respect protected areas, especially in the fjord. Neighboring Iceland, where tourism has been flourishing for two decades, is a counterexample to him. “We don’t want to be like Iceland. We do not want mass tourism. We want to control tourism, that’s the key to findingHe says.
New habits
Meanwhile, the salvation of Greenland, a territory seeking independence from Denmark even if it means giving up Copenhagen’s subsidies (a third of its budget), lies by the sea. In Ilulissat, where every third resident lives by fishing. , climate change has serious implications for local practices. “When I was young, there was hard ice you could walk on“, explains Lars Noasen while sailing between the remains of the icebergs in Disko Bay. “Now the ice is not so strong anymore. You can’t use it for anything, you can’t dog sled and go fishing like you used to.– continues the sailor.
Over the past two decades, Greenland’s massive ice cap has lost 4.7 trillion tons, which alone has contributed to a 1.2 centimeter rise in oceans, Danish Arctic researchers estimate. Disappearance of ice affects fishermen. For better and for worse. “Ice conditions are changingsays Sascha Schott, a researcher at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. “The main fjord used to be blocked by huge icebergs and ice, and fishermen could not navigate it“, what are they doing now?
Source: Le Figaro
