A Project for the sustainable Scientific Research of Polar regions
To collaborate in the deepest knowledge of the most unfamiliar places on the planet and do so without affecting ecosystems. This is the philosophy that marks the Inuit Windsled Project, the only totally ecological vehicle designed for research in Polar lands.
Based on the ancient knowledge of the Inuit peoples, the Windsled developers have managed to create a means of transportation that combines tradition with modern means through kites that harness aeolian energy.
The WindSled offers scientists the possibility of bearing an active laboratory on ice while traveling at 20 km (12.42 mi) / hour on average. Thanks to the energy facilitated by photovoltaic panels, the laboratory can be kept active with scientific instrumentation and computers functioning on the go. Being a zero emissions vehicle, the WindSled allows scientists to collect samples not contaminating with the means of transportation. Samples may be accumulated in the storage module as well, up to a total of four tons in advanced designs of the vehicle. The WindSled is also the most suitable vehicle to manage periodic data collection sensors and automated stations which can be installed using the same means of transportation in the area without disturbing the delicate environmental equilibrium.
The people of Thule in northern Greenland are the last vestige of the Inuit culture, the only survivors of an ancient way of life that has disappeared in Canada and Alaska. Avoiding their extinction is the goal of Climate Change Patrol, which will take shape through the Inuit Climate Change Patrol.
In Thule today sled dogs are still used and the inhabitants go in search of their livelihood in skin-lined kayaks, but these people are between 45 and 50 years old and the next generation aren’t continuing in these traditions… Are we witnessing the last dynasty of the Kings of Thule? This fear, not to mention alarm, which Larramendi, glimpsed during the Three Years Across the Arctic Expedition between 1990 and 1993, is the germ of the current SOS Thule Project: “Young people are going to work in Denmark. In Thule there are only administrative jobs available and these pioneers, who are somehow the soul of Greenland, are in danger of extinction”.
Inuit Climate Change Patrol… Is a circuit of 3,000 km by dog sled, driven by the Thule Inuit themselves in the company of a team of scientists who, year after year during the spring, will tour northern Greenland doing checks on the state of the ice sheet and other effects of climate change (fauna and biological) that is more dramatic in this region of the world than any other. The patrol will depart from Thule to cross the ice to Cape Morris Jesup, the northernmost point of the Americas. The return will be direct via the Inlandis or inland ice of Greenland.
Obviously, the Inuit Climate Change Patrol will use ancient techniques still used today in Thule to travel and keep warm, a true “living museum” which could become a focus of global attention. The aim is that the project, authentic in form and objectives, is to communicate through the social networks and to raise the awareness of climate change and place this area and these people on the world map.
As a result of its operation, the Inuit Climate Change Patrol will involve a number of people in jobs related to traditional techniques, but the goal is to generate a new type of tourism: that the people of Thule, using this as a basis, will organize trips in the area, longer or shorter, but with very marked principles that preserve this traditional spirit and involving growing numbers of local people, allowing young people to take over.
“Our idea is that under the auspices of this Inuit Patrol a very specific type of tourism can be generated, fully aimed at maintaining their traditional lifestyle, in allowing this place, from where all the epic expeditions to the North Pole in the past set out, to be a small outpost of Inuit culture and have a future, which they have’t got at the moment. Only the past and the present, but no view of the future”.