Eskimo leader slams Stansted expansion plans

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An Eskimo yesterday added his voice to campaigners protesting against the expansion of Stansted Airport.

Aqqaluk Lynge, 59, spoke out as a planning inquiry started into the British Airport Authority's proposal to increase the number of flights by 72,000 to 264,000 each year.

He said the increase in carbon dioxide emissions will add to the global warming that is wreaking havoc on his people, known as the Inuit.

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Pressure group Stop Stansted Expansion, which includes residents living nearby the airport in its 6,500-strong membership, gathered outside the public inquiry

Homes and hunting grounds of the 155,000 Inuit living between Greenland and the Bering Strait in Russia are already disappearing as the seaice melts, he said, and could vanish altogether within 60 years.

>Mr Lynge is president of the Inuit Circumpolar and former minister of the Government of Greenland

BAA claims expanding the aviation industry is vital to the British economy - a view supported by the Government.

Mr Lynge, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and a former government minister in Greenland, was raised in a log cabin and hunted by kayak as a child.

He said: "Our side of the story has to be told to the people of England. It is important because the Arctic is also your backyard.

"Everything we do, particularly industrial plans, should be looked at in terms of how it impacts on climate change."

He will give evidence in person to the inquiry in July, but will have to fly to the UK via Denmark.

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Aqqaluk Lynge will show evidence that a 'low-flying cost culture' is one of the causes of the increasing loss of Inuit villages and hunting grounds across the Arctic

He accepted this would leave him open to criticism. but said: "There's a long way to go and I couldn't do it by kayak."