A pair of academics stressed environmental challenges at a gathering of Arctic parliamentarians Wednesday in Whitehorse, suggesting governments are not doing enough to stem climate change or encourage sustainability.

Annika E. Nilsson, a senior research fellow with the Stockholm Environment Group, said the Far North is being hit disproportionately hard by rising temperatures and their repercussions.

“We know without doubt that the impact of climate change is going well beyond what might be expected from past experiences of natural fluctuation,” she said.

Climate change repercussions include melting sea ice, morphing habitats and more temperamental weather that can result in forest fires and mid-winter thaws, Nilsson noted.

Toxic chemicals from around the globe, meanwhile, “tend to accumulate where it’s cold” and in fat-heavy northern animals — and thus the humans who eat them. This reduces the amount of available drinking water and viable hunting grounds, among other implications, she cautioned.

“We can’t drink money; we need the water.”

Speaking to the parliamentarians Wednesday afternoon, Nilsson added that serious discussion of climate change and environmental issues was “conspicuously absent in the discourse here over the last couple of days, considering the impact it will have.”

She stressed their pivotal role in the debate: “You sit between the local and the global.”

Her remarks came during the closing day of the 11th Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, held at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre.

Gail Fondahl, a professor of geography at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, B.C., noted that climate change could have a disproportionate impact not only on the North, but within it.

“It matters where you are and who you are in terms of how you experience these challenges.”

Fondahl called “sustainable mining” an “oxymoron ... because sustainability is about re-use.”

Fondahl’s address carried an portentous undertone. “Be prepared for changes and be prepared for surprises,” she warned.

The conference, which occurs every two years among the eight member nations of the Arctic Council as well as indigenous governments and observer states, wrapped up with a collective conference statement.

It included a pledge to support the development of renewable energy “suitable for the Arctic region to drastically reduce black carbon emissions.”

The conference also stated it would encourage governments to ensure development of natural resources “is based on principles of sustainability” and “closer co-operation on challenges related to oil drilling and transportation of oil and other hazardous goods in Arctic waters.”

The politicians also vowed to promote use of renewable resources and continue to identify “particularly vulnerable Arctic areas that require special management to secure biodiversity.”

The conference delegates are sightseeing in the Haines Junction-Kluane National Park area today.