Inuit must adapt to climate change: Study

James Ford has spent eight years researching the effects of climate change on the lifestyles of Inuit people living in the Far North. He's seen evidence that local temperatures are rising and there's a lot less sea ice floating around, for a much shorter time period each year. Along the Northern Foxe Basin, for example, the ice is taking as much as four weeks as long to freeze than it did 40 years ago, said Ford. That means it is harder for Inuit people to hunt, fish, and eke out a livable existence, according to their traditional ways. "Hunting is not just a hobby to Inuit, it's a way of life," the McGill University professor explained in a recent telephone interview from his Montreal office. In a new study published in the Global Environmental Change journal, James Ford and a group of Canadian colleagues have concluded that Inuit must adapt to coming environmental changes that are inevitable and unavoidable. Climate change, the researchers report, is threatening many aspects of Inuit life, including access to food, the integrity of local infrastructure and the ability to maintain their traditional lifestyles.