13-06-01 Up to 80 % of the planet's delicate Arctic region will be seriously damaged by the middle of this century if industrial development there does not slow down, says a ground-breaking new scientific report published in Finland by the UN Environment Programme. The report is the first analysis stemming from a powerful new scientific model that allows researchers to examine the accumulated effects of human development -- such as roads, dams, oil and gas exploration and mining -- in large regions of the Earth.
Over time, the model, GLOBIO, is expected to be able to map in great detail what industrial development has done to the whole planet, and to forecast effects. Until now, when the environmental impacts of a development have been studied, they have been looked at literally road by road or dam by dam, rather than as an ecological whole over a large area. "It's been fragmented into thousands, if not millions, of reports," Christian Nellemann, an Arctic ecologist at the Norwegian Institute for NatureResearch, said from Lillehammer.

Dr. Nellemann is the leader of the project. This new United Nations model brings together these small individual reports into a synthesized whole. And the findings on the Arctic region, published at an international meeting of the Arctic Council countries in Rovaniemi, Finland, are devastating.
Dr. Nellemann's analysis looks at the rate of industrial development across the Arctic between 1940 and 1990 and at the effects on the whole ecosystem over that time. Then the model assesses how much damage would occur in the Arctic if that rate of development remained constant until 2050. It concludes that between 50 % and 80 % of the area will be critically affected. That means, said Dr. Nellemann, that some species of animals, such as wolves and bears, will go into decline. Other scavenger species -- such as crows and ravens -- will do better.
And that will trigger what Dr. Nellemann calls a "chain reaction" throughout the Arctic system -- including on indigenous peoples -- and even much farther away. That is partly because so many species that live in the Arctic are migratory. When they are affected in the Arctic, that impact reverberates in other ecosystems the animals inhabit during other parts of the year.

Already, between 10 % and 15 % of the world's Arctic region is affected by industrial development. Even if the rate of development were halved over the next few decades, about 40 % of the Arctic would be critically disturbed by mid-century, the report says. Should it double, the damage would reach 90 % over the same span of time.
Far more industry is being planned for the area, including pushing roads and other transportation systems well into the Yamal Peninsula of Russia and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Year-round shipping routes through Arctic waters are on the books. Along with them would likely come human settlements and other types of secondary development that would affect wildlife and vegetation, the GLOBIO report says.
The report does not take into account the effects of climate change in the Arctic, focusing instead on industrial development. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, concluded in January that the Arctic is likely to experience dramatic warming and climate instability as it feels the effects of greenhouse gases emitted farther south.