Standing at the edge of the Porcupine River, sticking out of the partially frozen water, were the trees of Jack Pine, following each other off the cliff. “Drunken forests”, says Dana Tizya-Tramm, holding a cigarette in between the fingers and pointing upstreams at the stand of the trees, which looked like a group of lemmings marching down the cliff.
According to Tizya-Tramm and some elders, no one has ever witnessed such a pronounced lean in the past before, and since the earth is not in its frozen state all year round, not even in the farthest northern lands, the slant at least comes in parts.
The porcupine stretch runs pst through the 250-person community of Old Crow. The town, being the most northwestern habitat of Canada, situates about 80 miles above the arctic circle and lies in the heart of the Vutnut Gwitchin First Nation. The dropping September temperature has finally forced Tizya-Tramm to put on his black puffy jacket, with “chief”, embroidered on the right sleeve.
The 34-year-old, rising through the elected ranks, is the youngest leader in the history of the First Nations. And with his newly acquired power and position, is all set to combat that one major threat been posing towards his people: Climate Change!
Migration patterns of Caribou have become less predictable, causing some villages to go without a successful hunt for years. And the steep drop in certain salmon species during recent years caused a severely restricted ban on fishing and related activities.
In 2019, The Vutnut Gwitchin came into the international limelight after becoming the first indigenous community in Canada to declare a climate emergency and set a goal of attaining net-zero carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. And working towards the same, the First Nation is all set to build the largest solar farms in the whole Arctic.
The efforts of Tizya-Tramm and his community to combat climate change have put them at the forefront of setting examples of models and mechanisms that the rest of the world can practically follow. “Imagine having the first community that is completely off-grid. We’re dropping a stone in the water and it’s creating a ripple effect.”, he adds.
“Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.”, says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists are confident that this trend of increase in the temperature is going to continue for decades to come, mostly due to the emissions of greenhouse gasses produced by human activities. As a result, more frequent droughts, heatwaves, changes in the precipitation patterns, lengthening of the frost-free season, and stronger and more intense hurricanes won’t be something very uncommon. And the critical changes include the rise of the sea level by 1-8 feet by 2100 and the ice-free Arctic.
The earth’s average temperature has already increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century and the magnitude is expected to grow and continue the change throughout the century and beyond. Two degrees might not seem like a big deal, but it’s not something very usual for our planet. Smallest changes in the temperature are corresponding to massive ones in the environment and habitat. Such being the scenario, we, with no doubt, need more people like Tizya-Tramm and his vision, who understand that it’s not just a subtle change, but an actual state of emergency.