A frontline tussle over interests of climate and commerce

As Greenland eyes tourism and mining to secure its economic future, it is also mindful of controlling costs

- Laura Paddison

Ujarneq Egede’s farm sits among a cluster of compact houses and squat barns on the snowy slopes of Equaluit Ilua in southern Greenland. The journey from Narsaq, the nearest town, involves a 30-minute boat trip across the fjord, mooring on a sheet of ice and a snowmobile ride up to the farm.

This is the biggest island in the world, yet Greenland’s nearly 90% Inuit population, concentrated around the jagged coastline, is tiny – less than 57,000. The country’s remoteness is extreme: there are no roads or railways between towns and settlements. Transport is only by boat, helicopter and propeller planes – ice, winds and storms permitting.

Narsaq is a small town of about 1,300 people, where jobs revolve around fishing, farming, a slaughterhouse and summer tourism. Its population levels have fallen 25% since 1991.

On his farm Egede grows potatoes and raises 750 sheep – huddled in barns during the winter and ranging across the grassy mountains throughout summer.

To be a farmer in Greenland is to have a front-row seat to the climate crisis. Egede tracks the changes – “summer is sometimes really dry, other times there is too much rain. This winter was really late .” Where once it was possible to drive on the frozen fjord during winter, now that never happens, he said.

It’s not just climate that worries him, however. Egede’s farm is in the shadow of Kvanefjeld, a proposed open-pit uranium and rare earth elements mine. Fearing what it might do to the surrounding environment and his farm, he was immensely relieved when plans for the mine were recently halted after the new government, elected in April 2021, banned uranium mining. But the threat still simmers.