• 
• 
• 

• Park Program
  • People and Places
  • Risks, Challenges & Opportunities
  • Benefits of Parks & Special Places
• Park Establishment
  • Feasibility
  • Planning
  • Establishment
  • Operations
• Park Projects
  • Coral Harbour
  • Kugaaruk
  • Clyde River
  • Hall Beach
  • Kekerten
  • Sylvia Grinnell
• Land Claims
  • Parks and the NLCA
  • Parks and the IIBA
• Publications
  • Nunavut Parks
  • Planning Studies
  • Technical Reports

Risks Challenges & Opportunities

Nunavut is part of a unique, circumpolar landscape that is almost 30 million km2, including an ocean, multiple seas, glaciers, icecaps, and rivers. It is a landscape shared by people of eight different countries and over 50 different indigenous communities. This Arctic contains vast natural resources including oil, gas, minerals and forests. Despite this wealth, the Arctic has, until recently, remained relatively immune to major development pressures. However, this is gradually changing and the Arctic is increasingly a focus for industrial development.

Nunavut’s landscape is threatened by numerous stresses. From explorers and European whalers in the sixteenth century, fur trappers in the 1800s, and miners, oilmen and even tourists in the twentieth century, profit-seekers and adventurers have looked to the north leaving threatened or disrupted wildlife populations, loss of habitat, contaminated lands requiring clean-up, overused trails, and damaged archaeological and cultural sites. Today, Nunavut’s population growth, which is more than three times that of the rest of Canada, is placing new demands on the landscape and its resources. Mineral exploration and development is ‘removing’ lands from protection - over 1,000 exploration permits were issued in Nunavut in 2005 and more than 1,500 in 2004 committing more than 400,000 km2 (more than 20% of Nunavut) to development. Nunavut’s landscape is also being altered by rising temperatures, retreating sea ice, and thawing permafrost – changes no one could have predicted even ten years ago.

Inuit have long been stewards of the fragile arctic environment, and the practice of development in balance with environmental protection is enshrined in the new territory’s government and land claim agreement. Accepting the importance of these economic activities, the challenge is how to develop without such effects, and importantly, in a way that respects the importance of protecting the landscape and resource itself, and its inherent worth.

In Canada, the idea of parks and special places is not new. It has been around since Banff National Park was established in the late 1800s, and in Nunavut, since the Thelon Wildlife Sanctuary was first recommended for protection in the 1920s. In parts of the country where expanding economic activity has left few areas untouched, the designation of protected areas is obviously important for environmental and other reasons. However, most of Canada’s north, including Nunavut, remains close to its natural state, which invites important questions regarding parks and special places.

Historically, and not unlike anywhere else in North America, the growth of Nunavut’s parks, conservation areas, and other protected areas was driven more by opportunity than design, scenery rather than science, and economy rather than ecology. However, our increased knowledge and understanding of conservation and wildlife, cultural landscapes, tourism, and recreation; combined with the continued recognition of other valid land uses mandates a new approach to parks and special places.