Heritage status for Arctic sites possible
NWT areas up for nomination for UNESCO protection
Kirsten Fenn
Northern News Services
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
An area of the Canadian Arctic that includes parts of the NWT has the potential to gain UNESCO world heritage status.
That's according to a report released earlier this month by the International Union for Conservation of Nature that outlines seven marine sites in the Arctic Ocean that could qualify.
One of those sites is the Remnant Arctic Multi-Year Sea Ice and the Northeast Water Polynya Ecoregion.
It includes the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, which covers Sachs Harbour, Ulukhaktok and an area just west of Tuktoyaktuk.
"There are hardly any world heritage sites in the Arctic and those that there are, are mostly on land," said Clive Tesar, head of communications for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Arctic Programme, which supported the report.
"You've got this entire region of the world where there is very little recognition of the value of those places to the rest of the world.
According to UNESCO, the World Heritage Convention is intended to protect cultural and natural sites around the world.
While there are hundreds upon hundreds of sites on the World Heritage list, Tesar said there remains a gap in sites that are in the Arctic.
That's when he said the idea came about to host a workshop with representatives from UNESCO, the Natural Resources Defense Council in the U.S., Parks Canada, WWF and Northern Canadian representatives to discuss which areas of the Arctic are deserving of global stewardship.
"The two that were identified in Northern Canada, you can see that both of them have particular species attached to them," Tesar said.
The North Baffin Bay Ecoregion is the second Canadian site the report suggests could qualify for world heritage status. The presence of multi-year ice in those regions, for example, is critical to wildlife like polar bears, walrus and some seals, Tesar said.
According to the WWF, this kind of ice is predicted to last the longest and be able to support Northern wildlife amid global warming.
"That's its core value," Tesar said of the Canadian sites.
According to him, World Heritage status is only granted where conservation management efforts already exist.
"Part of what we were trying to do with this report was to highlight some of these areas and suggest that there has to be some more conservation planning," Tesar said.
While the two Canadian sites have been nominated to go on a list of tentative World Heritage sites, the waiting game continues. Tesar said the federal government will choose from nominated Canadian sites in December, after which point UNESCO will make a final decision for world heritage status.
"The identification of these places is certainly intended as an incentive to government to look carefully at whether they've done enough to conserve these areas," Tesar said.
