Greenland – an icon rising to the challenge

The challenge
Man’s existence in Greenland has always been a struggle, the conditions varying from harsh to sometimes inhumanly harsh. Everything happens in an interplay with nature, the implacable and ever-present friend and foe. Man has been the small player, but has always managed to cope with the impossible by adjusting, adapting, changing, inventing. And that is also a fact now! Greenland sees climate change as a massive challenge that comprises both problems and opportunities. The strategy is double-sided and involves both climate responsibility and industrial development.


Climate responsibility
Greenland both can and will take its share of the responsibility for protecting the environment and maintaining sustainability. Despite the small population which lives in a harsh climate and is spread across enormous distances, Greenland’s CO2 emissions are no more than Denmark’s. Even so there is still space for improvement, the most important in this respect being renewable energy in the form of hydropower that will soon account for more than half of the country’s total energy supply.

Greenland is also looking at other renewable energy sources, while the country’s own energy utility company is researching into hydrogen technology for energy storage. Energy savings are also on the national agenda. For example, in 2012 Greenland will be the first country to have 100% coverage with remote monitoring of energy meters, which help end users keep control of their energy consumption and encourage them to reduce it.



Green industrial development
The virtually inexhaustible supplies of energy from hydropower, obtained from fresh water lakes on the inland ice, means that Greenland can supply energy-demanding industry with green energy. One such project currently under way is the establishment of an aluminium smelting plant. In the future, the people of the world will continue to require industrial products, but they will demand cleaner and more environmentally friendly products. Greenland can deliver this, and even though the new industry will increase the country’s own emissions of CO2, it will be an advantage in a global context.

Other aspects of industrial development relate to prospecting and possible extraction of oil and minerals in the sea and below ground, which is now becoming more accessible due to the melting ice. Increased shipping north of Greenland can also result in the country becoming an international transport centre.


Climate change – leveraging greater self-government
The people of Greenland have voted in favour of selfgovernment, which will take over more and more areas of responsibility from Denmark. But it requires that Greenland creates a more stable and healthy economic foundation than it currently has. Today, fishery is the most important source of income, followed by a block grant from the Danish state. The hope is that the country’s management of climate change in the long term will be the leveraging factor that gives autonomous government greater meaning.

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Playing an active role
Parallel event and website Taking COP15 as its cue, the Government of Greenland is opening the exhibition “In the Eye of Climate Change” at Nordatlantens Brygge on 11 December 2009. The exhibition will be officially opened by HRH Crown Prince Frederik and Kuupik Kleist, Premier of Naalakkersuisut, and will be open to the public from 12–20 December 2009. The purpose of the exhibition is to foster an appreciation of and insight into how Greenland deals with the challenges and opportunities afforded by climate change.

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