Two European Catholic commissions warned that Arctic warming is intensifying competition over the region’s resources and urged tougher policies to protect its biodiversity and indigenous communities.
As exploration, mining, investment and military activities increase, predatory practices also can increase, said the Brussels-based Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, or COMECE, and Justice and Peace Europe.
“Such exploitative tendencies may not only exclude local communities from a fair share in the profit, but also lead to grave human rights violations and cause irreparable environmental damage,” said the joint statement, issued in mid-November.
The statement, issued as a contribution to the European Union’s current Arctic policy review, said the region’s 4 million inhabitants included at least 40 indigenous ethnic groups, whose “social, cultural, religious and linguistic rights” needed greater protection.
“Climate change, along with rapid Arctic warming and ice melting at an unprecedented rate, have opened the region to business, and this has accelerated geopolitical change – the EU has a natural role and responsibility to ensure a sustainable and peaceful Arctic that puts its people in the focus,” the Church statement said.