One of the most isolated villages in the world, 'Ittoqqortoormiit' on Greenland's east coast is 500 kilometres from the nearest human settlement. Cold winters, ice and snow are vital for both food and water for the Inuit of the Scoresby Sound, who live deeply intertwined with the natural world, but climate change is causing the ice to melt, putting their livelihoods at risk.
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00:12 - This remote village in Eastern Greenland
00:37 is 500 kilometers from the nearest human settlement.
00:41 At the mouth of the largest fjord system on the planet,
00:45 cargo ships visit only once a year
00:47 with supplies for its 300 residents.
00:51 Locals therefore live deeply intertwined
00:53 with the natural world,
00:55 relying on meat provided by Inuit hunters
00:58 to survive the months-long polar night.
01:00 But as rising temperatures weaken the ice
01:04 and reduce winter snowfall,
01:06 hunting is getting harder and harder.
01:08 Glaciers, which locals rely on for drinking water,
01:12 are also slowly melting away.
01:15 - Making water is maybe a problem in the future
01:18 because of lake where we get the water from
01:23 for the whole city back in the fields.
01:28 It's laying beyond a water glacier,
01:33 but it's melting, so maybe in a few years,
01:37 it's gone.
01:38 It can be a problem.
01:40 - Greenland's ice sheets may hold 1/12
01:44 of the world's freshwater,
01:46 enough to raise the sea level up seven meters
01:49 if they were to completely melt.
01:51 Scientists are rushing to the area
01:53 to understand the situation before it's too late.
01:56 - You hear about the global warming,
01:59 but here, you see it.
02:02 That's the main point.
02:03 So people who are living here every day
02:07 will come often like us.
02:08 We see the glacier.
02:10 We can see from a mission to another
02:12 what is the impact of the global warming.
02:15 Here, it's really the laboratory of the climate change.
02:20 - The scientists are protected from polar bears
02:22 by an armed escort,
02:23 but it's not their prints they're here to investigate.
02:27 What they're looking for is much smaller,
02:29 a microscopic algae known as glacier blood.
02:33 It was only formally identified for the first time in 2019,
02:37 but is already having an unprecedented effect on the ice.
02:41 The remoteness and extreme conditions
02:58 of the Scoresby Fjord
02:59 means it's one of the least studied locations
03:02 on the planet.
03:03 They're not the only ones arriving.
03:24 Around 60 vessels came this summer to the region,
03:27 carrying tourists curious to get an insight
03:30 into the local way of life.
03:32 - Always wanted to come to the Arctic and Greenland,
03:36 something remote.
03:38 It's something that for me
03:39 is a once in a lifetime experience.
03:43 - Some view tourism as a way of bringing funds to the area,
03:46 but others are concerned that it could destroy
03:48 what the travelers came here to see,
03:50 one of the last surviving Inuit hunting communities.
03:54 - One week ago, there was hunters out there.
03:58 They trying to cut now is,
04:01 but there was a couple of ships going into them.
04:06 People from around the world
04:10 have a need to show some respect for the hunters.
04:14 It's okay when they come to the domain,
04:18 researching the domain.
04:20 That's not a problem with me.
04:22 But the problem with the hunting place,
04:26 when they come and make a machine gun,
04:28 that's not okay for hunters.
04:33 - And it's not just the increase in marine traffic
04:37 that is worrying the community.
04:39 Temperatures in the region are increasing
04:41 up to four times faster than the global average,
04:44 posing a direct threat to the Inuit way of life.
04:48 (wind whooshing)
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