This is Greenland journalist Nuno Isbosethsen,currently visiting Bonn and photographed here on Greenland’s “national day”. She was taking part in a panel at the “Global Media Forum” on “Indigenous peoples and the race for resources”. She was telling us how difficult it is for indigenous people to have their say when it comes to exploiting the natural resources becoming increasingly accessible in a warming climate.

You can’t get much higher-profile than this. The International Executive Director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, has scaled the controversial Arctic oil rig currently 120 km off the coast of Greenland. He is breaching a court injunction against his organisation imposed by a Dutch court a week ago at the request of Cairn Energy, the company operating the oil platform. The court order, sought by the company a week ago after 20 Greenpeace activists were arrested for stopping the rig operating, means a 50,000 Euros a day fine and the risk of jail for the Greenpeace chief.

Covered glacier in Swiss Alps.

Most of what I’ve been hearing recently doesn’t make me optimistic that we can really limit global warming to 2 degrees. So I was all the more interested to read a press release distributed today at the climate talks in Bonn.A UNEP/WMO study says while reducing CO2 emissions continue to be a key factor, there are other measures which might help us keep below 2 degrees and benefit human health at the same time.

(Climate change video shoot Alaska 2008)

The 2°C limit for global temperature rise seems to have slipped a bit further into the realm of impossibility. Figures published by the International Energy Agency indicate that CO2 emissions from energy reached a record high during 2010. This probably reflects the economic recovery.

Greenland iceberg

A comprehensive new report on the the extent of climate change in the Arctic indicates that change is happening even faster than scientists were expecting. There is more on the Science Daily website.
WWF Arctic says the report shows Arctic states have to take urgent measures to protect the Arctic environment – and should take on a leading role in tackling the roots of the problem by radically reducing the production of greenhouse gases.
One thing that makes it clear just how important the Arctic is for the world as a whole is that the report says global sea level could rise through ice, snow and permafrost melting on land by up to 1.6 metres by 2100.