30 May 2007Cahal Milmo
One of the most prominent members of the Inuit community will today plead for an end to the expansion of Stansted Airport and deliver a devastating critique of the link between Britain's cheap flights culture and the effects of climate change on his people.
Aqqaluk Lynge will present evidence of the increasing loss of Inuit villages and hunting grounds across the Arctic. His testimony will be given to the public inquiry opening today into plans to dramatically increase the number of passengers using London's third airport.
The Government and British Airports Authority (BAA), the owner of Stansted, argue that expansion of the aviation industry is vital to the UK economy. BAA is seeking to raise the number of flights leaving Stansted by 80,000 to 264,000 a year and increase the number of passengers from 25 million to 35 million a year.
But a coalition of environmentalists and residents are aiming to deal a blow to the Government's strategy by putting climate change at the heart of its argument against the rise in flights and passengers - alongside local concerns about noise, pollution damage and economic benefits.
Mr Lynge argues that the effects of flying from Stansted, where 80 per cents of flights are on no-frills carriers and eight out of 10 passengers are travelling on holiday or for leisure, are felt far beyond Britain in the vast Inuit ice fields stretching from Russia's Bering Straits to Greenland.
The Inuit politician, who is the head of Greenland's indigenous population and the former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, told The Independent: "When I was a boy in north Greenland, the sea ice formed in November. Now we don't see it for months after that. All our certainties are being changed by global warming, from the location of hunting grounds to the loss of our homes to the rising sea.
"This is caused by pollution from the South. There is now a connection between our backyard and your backyard and we would like to you to question some points of your lifestyle such as flying and creating more emissions.
"That is why Stansted is important. Getting on a plane in England for a cheap holiday is felt here on the ice today and for you tomorrow. We are not even 160,000 people but global warming is not just threatened polar bears and melting ice. It is about our right to a viable existence."
Inuit communities are already having to deal with the reality of global warming. In written evidence to the Stansted inquiry before he attends in person at the end of July, Mr Lynge, who was invited to appear by the Stop Stansted Expansion group, details how one Inuit village in Alaska has already lost 10 homes to the encroaching sea, which has moved 300ft inland since 2000. Engineers predict all 600 houses face being swallowed by 2050.
An authoritative report on climate change compiled by 250 scientists published in April found that the Arctic is disproportionately affected by global warming. The United Nations-sponsored Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which took four years to complete, found that warming in the region would be between 4C and 7C over the next 100 years, about twice the global average.
The unusual scenario of the Inuits' plight being put before a British planning inquiry coincides with a ground-breaking conference for populations in the front line of climate change. Delegates in Belize in central America heard testimony yesterday that increasing numbers of Inuit hunters are being killed by falling through thinning ice field in pursuit of their prey. Nicodemus Illauq, an Inuit from northern Canada, told the gathering in Belize of representatives of Arctic peoples and island states: "My people have been hunting on the ice for 5,000 years but now you risk death around every turn."
The focus on global warming at the Stansted inquiry, which is due to last six months, follows a decision four years ago in the Government's aviation White Paper that environmental issues must be taken into account in airport expansion proposals. It is first time that planning inspectors will have to consider ecological issues, which include Hatfield Forest, an ancient woodland just a mile from the airport.
BAA, which is also facing a second separate planning inquiry into its proposal to build a second runway at Stansted as part of the Government's plans to cater for up to 460 million passengers at UK airports by 2020, has said the expansion is vital if aviation in the South-east is not to grind to a halt. Research has shown that congestion at Heathrow and elsewhere is already costing the economy £1.7bn a year whereas increasing capacity will boost it by £13bn.
A BAA spokesman said: "We are confident of the case that we will be presenting to the inquiry."
Campaigners claim there is a flat contradiction between airport expansion and Labour's vow to cut carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the extra flights at Stansted if the expansion is permitted will increase from five million tonnes to seven million tonnes a year - the equivalent of the emissions that would be saved if every home in the UK switched all its lightbulbs to energy saving bulbs.
Carol Barbone, campaign director at Stop Stansted Expansion, said: "If Stansted were permitted to expand to maximum use of the existing runway, the local environment would suffer, the national economy would suffer and we would have taken a giant step backwards in the battle to combat climate change."
Stansted facts
BAA is appealing against a decision by Uttlesford District Council to refuse its request to exceed the legal limit of 25 million passengers a year.
* Annual passenger numbers stand at 23.7 million. BAA estimates its "maximisation plan" will increase passengers to 35 million. Campaigners say it is more likely to be 50 million
* 78 per cent of passengers at Stansted travel for leisure; 18 per cent are on business.
* No-frills airlines Ryanair and easyJet account for 80 per cent of flights from Stansted.
* A planning application to build a second runway at Stansted, as proposed by the Government, is expected this year. The runway could be in operation by 2015.
* If the second runway is built, 68 million passengers are forecast to use Stansted by 2030.
* Flights from Stansted produce five million tonnes of CO2 a year.
* Aviation accounts for 13 per cent of UK carbon emissions.
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2594163.ece
