| Summary: | National audience Identify contaminants and contaminations on the Umiujaq territory The U-SCAN (Umiujaq - System & ContaminANts) project studies contaminants and contamination processes to contribute to the analysis of dualist Western and holistic indigenous ways of thinking in Umiujaq, southwestern Nunavik. In Inuktitut vocabulary, the phenomenon of contamination is polysemic, describing changes in the Inuit living environment disturbed by an external element. The term contamination is understood in a broad meaning, common to the complex human-environmental and indigenous holistic thinking: a foreign body of an anthropogenic (land-planning, culture, pollution, etc.) or environmental (climate, animal or plant species, virology, etc.) nature that is introduced or that enters the existing socio-environmental system. This new presence generates a disturbance (contamination), where the foreign body: (i) can be rejected by all or part of the system, (ii) can be absorbed (voluntarily or involuntarily) and condemn the system to generate a new one, (iii) can be absorbed (voluntarily or involuntarily) and give rise to a resilient system. In Umiujaq, the population is supplied in drinking water solely by surface water. However, in the current context of climate change, river water is undergoing an unprecedented increase in turbidity, linked to the degradation of the permafrost and the development of shrubification. Fish stocks are under threat and chemical contaminants have accumulated in the aquatic food chain, thus in the Inuit preferred food. Plant and animal species are also colonizing this northern territory, in connection with the warming of temperatures. The U-SCAN project aims, thanks to a multidisciplinary approach of a participative type, associating Humanities, chemistry and toxicology, Environmental Sciences, to characterise the danger linked to different types of contaminants, in order to build a catalogue / decision support system. Identifier les contaminants et contaminations sur le territoire ...
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