Description
LOCAL CLIMATE THEORIES IN THE DISKO BAY AREA. HUMAN ASPECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE Lill Rastad Bjørst Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Arctic Section, University of Copenhagen. Strandgade 102, 1404 Copenhagen K. Denmark To understand the human aspects of climate change in Greenland is also to understand the local perceptions of the environment and dominant discourses about climate change in Greenland. While nobody in Greenland is denying that the climate is changing tremendously, it is a fact that the local climate theories often diff er from the scientifi c ones. As a case study for the PhD dissertations “Arctic discourses and climate change”, I have collected interview data in the Disko Bay area from 2009-2010 as well as followed the discussions in the Greenlandic media.This material indicates that there is a diff erent causality about human’s impact on the environment in these North Greenlandic communities. The word for ‘climate’ in Greenlandic is ‘sila’, which also means weather, knowledge, sense, world and consciousness among other things. So in societies such as the Inuit, the separation of the idea of climate into distinct physical and cultural dimensions is linguistically prohibited. Embedded in ‘sila’ is the notion of uncertainty. To think of climate and nature as always changing is not a new thing in Greenland and it is also central in the local climate theories, which will be presented. However, risks and uncertainty expressed locally are much more linked to modernity and the industrial development. Drawing on the field work material from Disko Bay and inquiries into the Greenlandic discourses on climate change I will contest the notion of the human dimension of climate change in the Arctic and how climate change can be perceived locally.| Period | 3 May 2011 |
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| Event title | The Arctic as a messenger for global processes |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Copenhagen, DenmarkShow on map |