Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Feb 08/99) - An Inuit carving presented in Africa symbolizes the hopes of Canadian aboriginals and the progress made toward banning chemical pollutants.

The carving of a mother holding a child was a gift from a Canadian/aboriginal delegation to Klaus Topfer, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme, and became the mascot of a week-long United Nations' conference in Nairobi, Kenya, late last month.

"The carving personifies the very essence of what it is we are challenged with here... the health connection to the well-being and future of our peoples of the Arctic," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

The ICC, along with the Inuit Tapirisat, the Yukon First Nations, the Dene Nation and the Metis Nation NWT, made up the aboriginal delegation, which adopted the name Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples Against POPs, or CAIPAP, at the conference.

POPs, or persistent organic pollutants, result from globally-produced chemical emissions that, because of the trade winds, concentrate in the Arctic food chain. Humans take in POPs through country foods like fish, whales and seals, and can suffer long-term, hereditary health defects.

The purpose of the UNEP conference, the second in a series of three, was to negotiate a global convention to manage chemicals like DDT pesticide that produce POPs. UNEP hopes to produce a chemical management convention by 2001.

John Holman of the Metis Nation NWT attended the conference, and called it a success.

"Considering that 103 countries were present and NGOs (non-government organizations) and organizations like Greenpeace, the progress that was made was phenomenal," said Holman.

Holman said the conference involved raising awareness and negotiating the language of the proposed convention.

"CAIPAP's biggest contribution was to reaffirm the notion that it's not about the reduction of POPs but about the elimination," he said.

Both Watt-Cloutier and Holman said the contaminants issue, while universal and involving aboriginal people in particular, have different effects around the world.

In Africa, the biggest problem involves pesticides to control malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Without pesticide- use people are affected and children die, and with pesticides, longer-term POPs problems result. In South America indigenous women ingest the chemicals from the pesticides sprayed on crops and contaminate their children through breast milk. While the effects of POPs are, consequently, acute in the southern hemisphere, it is the chronic effect in the Arctic that CAIPAP addressed.

In her Nairobi presentations, Watt-Cloutier said published studies have confirmed the presence of more than 200 chemical contaminants in the breast milk of some Inuit women -- higher than anywhere else in the world -- and include DDT, PCBs, dioxin, lead and mercury. She said long-term effects include damage to human reproductive, neurological and immune systems.

Watt-Cloutier told her UN audience that six tons of foreign-produced PCBs fall on the Canadian Arctic annually and contribute to the high level of POPs in country food.

"In the Arctic we have few alternatives to the food we hunt -- as it is this same food through which we identify ourselves, bind us as family and community, which ultimately sustains us physically and spiritually," she said. "When our land and animals are poisoned so are we."

Holman said one of the biggest obstacles faced in creating a convention is how to curb the creation of POPs in poorer, third-world countries that lack the money to adopt healthier alternatives.

"It's impossible to solve this without first-world support," he said. "Canada is keyed in to these issues and is in a position to say what can be achieved in reality."

Holman said if there was a drawback to the UN conference it was a failure to more thoroughly cover this issue of enforcement.

"If you ask someone to eliminate DDT from their property and they say they can't, then you have to say, fine, we'll give you 10 years and we'll give you help," he said.

Canada had a particularly strong representation in Kenya, through CAIPAP, through the Canadian UN delegation and through Canadian John Buccini, who chaired the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (INC), that the conference was named after.

Watt-Cloutier vowed that the ICC and CAIPAP would remain active and vocal proponents of the total ban of all chemical contaminants.

"I hope you are hearing our wake-up call," she told her audience.