Publicity:

Most of the news about climate change is understandably gloomy.

But a little reported side of the debate is the unexpected positive effect for people living in cold climate countries.

Reporting from Greenland, Eric Campbell finds that farmers and fishermen couldn't be happier about the rising temperatures on their gigantic island.

It's the biggest island in the world (Australia is regarded as a continent), and 80 per cent of it is covered in an ice cap that's 3 kilometres deep at its thickest point.

Temperatures in Greenland have risen by two degrees over the past decade, and as a result, the ice cap is melting faster than previously.

For the rest of the world, this could ultimately present a problem - higher sea levels. But in Greenland, the warmer climate is a boon for many - allowing farmers to grow new crops and raise cattle, for the first time since the Vikings. And with the warmer waters come the cod.

The Foreign Correspondent team travelled around southern Greenland with an agricultural economist who is helping farmers adapt to the changed conditions.

Kenneth Hoegh accepts that rising sea levels present a problem for many countries. But he argues that for those living in the Arctic Circle, warmer temperatures are an opportunity to improve their lives, with Greenlanders possibly having access for the first time to fresh milk and vegetables.

He tells Campbell: "We're right on the limit of agricultural production, next to the Arctic desert. The cold desert is retreating and that's good for us ... there's always something good that comes out of something bad."

Iceberg and reflections in water

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00:00

CAMPBELL:  It is a land of towering ice and blinding snow called Greenland. Legend has it that Viking explorers called it green to fool settlers into coming here.

00:18

Horses grazing

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00:31

CAMPBELL: But 500 years after the Vikings abandoned it, southern Greenland really is turning greener.

00:40

Icebergs

Since the mid ‘90s, the average temperature  has risen by nearly two degrees, and the ice is melting.

00:50

Music

00:58

DAHL-JENSEN:  The Greenland ice sheet, it's losing mass now,

01:05

Dahl-Jensen. Super:
Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
University of Copenhagen

and that's not just important for Greenland, that's  important for all of us because it's the global sea level that's changing with that.

01:08

Fishing boat/ Fish catch

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01:14

CAMPBELL: What may be bad for the planet is turning out to be great for Greenland. Warmer seas are bringing huge catches of cod.

01:19

Tractor in pasture

Farmers are enjoying early springs, and growing seasons up to a month longer.

01:35

Sofus calls cattle

Cattle are being farmed for the first time since the Vikings.

01:47

SOFUS:   I really like my cattle.

01:55

They're very gentle and good-tempered.

01:57

Sofus crawls towards cows

CAMPBELL: Sofus Frederiksen introduced Greenland's first herd three years ago, a mere 16 cows and bulls. But he has visions of becoming a cattle baron if the temperature keeps rising.

02:00

Sofus walks among cows

SOFUS:  I hope so. Warming temperatures can't be bad when you're working with agriculture.

02:18

Plants

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02:27

Pan across landscape

CAMPBELL: Greenland is a vast island that's almost completely covered by an ice cap.   Fewer than 60,000 people live here, clinging precariously to a narrow coastal strip.

02:43

It's as far north as people have been able to farm, enduring freezing winters and late springs for a few short warmer months.

03:00

Plants

To many scientists Greenland is ground zero of global warming. A marker of the kind of changes that will eventually sweep the planet with potentially catastrophic results. Many sceptics argue that the proof isn't there that it's man made, that it's anything more than the cyclical changes of nature. But whatever the cause, Greenland does show is that a change of just a couple of degrees can fundamentally affect entire communities.

03:12

Hoegh on boat

Kenneth Hoegh is an agricultural economist and an advisor to the Greenland government, which enjoys autonomous rule under its old colonial power, Denmark.

03:50

He spends much of his time travelling around south Greenland trying to help farmers adapt to the changes.

04:01

CAMPBELL: So Kenneth, you can't get anywhere by road here.

HOEGH:  That's right, all the settlements is like small islands,

04:13

even though that  they're connected by land, but there's no roads in  between them.

04:19

CAMPBELL: So everywhere by boat?

HOEGH: Yeah, all transportation by boat or by air.

04:24

Ice in water

CAMPBELL: In summer, the sun shines for almost 20 hours a day. So the slight rise in temperature has meant a big rise  in productivity.

04:32

HOEGH:   Instead of ten tonnes per hectare of potatoes, you might be able to harvest 15 tonnes now.

04:42

Hoegh. Super: Kenneth Hoegh
Agricultural consultant

It's very nice for us now that we are getting more and more sure that this tendency that we have seen in the last ten to twelve years seems to be lasting.

04:49

Icebergs

CAMPBELL: But it's getting harder to reach the farms as the fiords fill with giant icebergs.

05:01

The warmer temperature means more ice is cracking off the glaciers

05:09

Captain on phone steering through ice to farm

CAPTAIN:   Which way would be the best to enter the bay? Right now, we are between the island and the mainland.

05:14

Okay, alright, we got it. We'll do it that way.

05:25

CAMPBELL: Eventually we make it through to Ferdinand Egede's farm.

05:31

Egede in vegetable patch

Like Kenneth Hoegh, he's descended from both Danish colonists and indigenous Inuits. But these days, they're all Greenlanders.

05:36

Egede's farm

It's a stunning location.

05:47

Sheep

But for generations, all they could farm here were these tough sheep that thrive on the harsh landscape.

05:50

Harvesting vegetables

Since the weather started warming in the ‘90s, they've been able to expand into commercial crops.

05:57

And they're doing very nicely.

HOEGH:  Now they are

06:03

willing to grow turnips and potatoes commercially.

06:07

Hoegh and Egede

It used to be only for the farm, and now they are willing to invest a lot of money and to grow them commercially on a larger scale.

06:12

Bags of turnips

CAMPBELL: But Farmer Egede isn't completely happy. In this land of frozen water, there's a new problem -- lack of rain.

06:20

Hoegh and Egede

EGEDE:  It's clear that the mountain has very quickly become free of snow. Usually there is some snow that feeds the creek, but now there's so little snow.

HOEGH: On the way out here I was thinking that you should have a permanent irrigation system.

06:31

Ice floe

CAMPBELL: Even so, Egede's sceptical about all this talk of global warming.

06:53

EGEDE:  I really don't believe that pollution is to blame for Greenland getting warmer.

06:58

Egede in turnip field

The eighties were very cold, while the nineties were a bit better - and now it's also good. That's the way it is.

07:06

Ice floating in bay

DAHL-JENSEN:  With increasing levels of greenhouse gases, temperature will increase, and I think at least 95 per cent of all the climate scientists that work with this will agree with me. This is something I think that is quite well known.

07:17

Dahl-Jensen

CAMPBELL: So you have no doubt that the warming of Greenland is at least in part a product of man made greenhouse gases.

07:32

DAHL-JENSEN:  Yes, I have no doubt there.

07:40

Photos. Dahl-Jensen with ice cores

CAMPBELL: Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is one of Denmark's leading climate scientists. She's spent 26 years extracting cores from Greenland's ice cap.

07:42

University cool room

The ice cores, kept in this cool room at the University of Copenhagen, are the source of much of the world's knowledge of climate change.

07:55

Dahl-Jensen handles ice core

DAHL-JENSEN:  We always try to keep part of the ice core for the future.

CAMPBELL: And how old is that ice?

DAHL-JENSEN:  Well the

08:04

ice here is 100 thousand years old.

CAMPBELL: A hundred thousand years old.

DAHL-JENSEN:  Yeah.

08:09

The ice from that period can tell us tales about how it was at that time when it was warmer over Greenland. And of course,

08:13

that's what we're interesting to know so we can make better predictions of what's going to happen with the warming that we expect in the future.

08:21

Water lapping/ ruins

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08:27

CAMPBELL: Greenlanders have been through massive change before.

08:34

The weather was even warmer in the early Middle Ages, when Vikings first settled on the south coast. But in the 14th century Greenland experienced a mini-Ice Age.

08:39

No one knows for certain what happened, but many speculate the Vikings failed to adapt to changed conditions. Everywhere we travelled we saw evidence of their abandoned farms.

08:57

Experimental vegetable farm

Now Viking land is being farmed again.

09:15

At this experimental station, Kenneth Hoegh and his colleagues are successfully growing crops that were once unthinkable so far north.

09:20

HOEGH: We are testing new things that we probably would have hesitated a little bit to test in the past,

09:30

Hoegh. Super: Kenneth Hoegh
Agricultural consultant

 like broccoli, like different types of cabbage.

CAMPBELL: But they're growing now.

HOEGH:  They're growing fine, yes.

09:36

Experimental farm

CAMPBELL: For the first time, Greenlanders have the prospect of fresh milk and vegetables, and there's even talk of exporting their organic produce.

09:43

Hoegh

CAMPBELL:  Bit of an irony there isn't there, if you've got an export market for organic meat that's as a result of global warming?

09:53

HOEGH:  Yes you could say so, but there's always something good that comes out of something bad.

09:59

Tractor

We are right on the limit of agricultural production, we are next to the Arctic desert and to the cold desert and the cold desert is retreating, and that's good for us.

10:07

Hoegh

CAMPBELL: But as a citizen of planet earth, do you worry about some of the potential effects elsewhere of global warming?

HOEGH:   Yes, I know very well what you think about.

10:17

I hope this greenhouse effect won't run out of control totally, but just a little bit of extra warmth, that would be good for us.

10:25

Stefan driving army ambulance to wharf

CAMPBELL: Stefan Magnusson is one farmer who's troubled by what he's seeing. With so little snow these days, Magnusson's finding it hard to get to the reindeer he farms for export meat.

10:42

Pan over countryside

MAGNUSSON:  The temperature is significantly warmer than it used to be ten, twelve years ago. We used to have three stable months of snowmobile conditions. Well now we can barely get three weeks.

10:56

Magnusson.

CAMPBELL: So what are you going to do?

11:08

Super: Stefan Magnusson
Reindeer rancher

MAGNUSSON:  Ah, I don't know, maybe lay down and put my four feet in the air! (laughs)

11:09

Magnusson and Campbell walk with dogs to edge of ice cap

CAMPBELL: His farmhouse is just a few kilometres walk and several million mosquitoes from the edge of the ice cap.

11:18

MAGNUSSON:  Three years ago we saw a new river coming from underneath the ice and the melting is going through the crevasses and I think there is a huge lake underneath the ice cap just over there yonder.

11:26

River

CAMPBELL: He took us there to show just how much the temperature rise has altered the landscape.

11:44

MAGNUSSON:  That's where the glacier was ten years ago.

CAMPBELL:  That was all ice?

MAGNUSSON: Yes, all ice.

11:50

CAMPBELL: So this a new river?

MAGNUSSON:  This is a brand new river here.

CAMPBELL: So how far has it gone back in the past ten years?

MAGNUSSON:  From here to there. Is close to a hundred metres.

CAMPBELL: Hundred metres...

MAGNUSSON: Yes, about 100 metres.

11:55

CAMPBELL: And even further down there?

12:05

MAGNUSSON: And down there it's even more. It's close to 200 metres has been melted away.

CAMPBELL: Wow!

Reindeer roam

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12:15

CAMPBELL: The 140,000 hectare leasehold supports 2,000 reindeer, but the warming climate is now threatening to put him out of business. Ten years ago, he could round up his herd by snowmobile.

12:20

Helicopter taking off

Now he has to do it by helicopter and it's devouring his profits.

12:35

CAMPBELL:  So Stefan, how do you know where the reindeer are?

MAGNUSSON: Well their natural habit,

12:41

Magnusson in helicopter

when we have warm weather like this, on a warm day, they like

12:46

Aerials. Reindeer

to go up to the glaciers to cool off to  get away from the mosquitoes and all the bugs. And they stay there mostly  during the day and then in the evening they will go down back onto the green land for the pasture.

12:51

Magnusson in helicopter

CAMPBELL: Magnusson, who's originally from Iceland and speaks six languages, takes obvious pride in his adopted home.

13:04

MAGNUSSON:  Yeah it's just fantastic -- I live in a great place, I think I live in one of the greatest places on the planet.

13:11

Aerials. Scenery

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13:19

CAMPBELL: But every year, it's changing.

13:39

Aerials. Lake

MAGNUSSON:   On older charts this lake here did not exist in 1952. It's unbelievable

13:44

Magnusson in helicopter

Nothing that is on the old map that is based on aerial photographs taken in 1953, nothing  on the map makes sense where the edge of the ice is.  There are new lakes that are formed, and the ice has retreated several hundred metres, in some areas. The global warming, and the climate change is a fact. You have the fact - physical fact right here in front of your eyes.

13:53

Magnuson herds reindeer from helicopter

MAGNUSSON:   Can we keep them together?  Right, right, right.

14:29

Yep... that's good.

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14:37

CAMPBELL: In the round-up season, it would take him five hours of flying time to get them back to the holding pen.

14:41

MAGNUSSON:   Those ones in the lake, we'll get them at the beach. 0738 Don't go any further that way, go to the right. And then we can make them swim across. We're going to try to make them swim.

14:48

Music

15:02

Ice cap

CAMPBELL: While Magnusson's  own problems are his immediate concern, it's the retreat of the ice cap that worries him most. It covers 80 per cent of Greenland's interior. At its highest point, it's more than three kilometres thick. But the view from the air is disturbing.

15:10

Magnusson in helicopter

MAGNUSSON:  All this land that you see here used to be covered up with ice ten years ago.

CAMPBELL: Really?

MAGNUSSON: Oh yes.

15:31

Ice cap

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15:37

CAMPBELL:  A year ago, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that melting ice could raise sea levels by 20 centimetres over the next 50 years.

15:48

But the latest research from Greenland suggests it could be far worse. The melt is speeding up, as newly formed  streams push out ever more ice.

16:01

Music

16:12

DAHL-JENSEN:  You might even double it so you are up 40, 50 centimetres of sea level change during the next 50 years. And that's quite serious. This will affect a lot of people that are living close to the ocean.

16:18

Dahl-Jensen

CAMPBELL: So the speed of the melt is actually increasing?

DAHL-JENSEN:  Yes that's right, and we would never have believed that just ten years ago.

16:30

Magnusson barbecues reindeer meat

CAMPBELL: Stefan Magnusson isn't about to let that spoil his dinner - which tonight is one of his reindeer.

16:43

Family share dinner

This hard-headed businessman can see the potential benefits for people living in the sub-Arctic.

16:54

MAGNUSSON:  We will just have to observe it and see how far it is going to go, and try to live with it.

16:59

I have to adapt. I am a fan for it, because the next generation is going to benefit from it. I'm not going to benefit from it, but the next generation is going to benefit at least the generation living around the Arctic Circle.

17:07

So you got to try to see the positives in the negatives.

17:20

CAMPBELL: But he also believes the world owes it to those future generations to find out why Greenland is warming.

17:27

MAGNUSSON:   I think we have to invest more money in science to monitor all this,

17:33

Magnusson at table

and we are already using billions of dollars on warfare, so why not reverse this a little bit and put some more money into science to make this planet a better place to be.

17:38

Man at dinner plays piano accordion

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17:51

CAMPBELL: It's a curious place to be experiencing rising temperatures, and one of the few nations that could genuinely benefit from global warming. But it could also teach the world invaluable lessons about what's really happening to the weather, and how we might all have to adapt if much more of Greenland turns green.

17:59

Credits:

Reporter: Eric Campbell

Camera: David Martin

Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen

Producer: Marianne Leitch

18:33