The expeditionary group Desafío Ártico –which has a program on Canal Sur with the same name– has proposed to transfer a 15-ton iceberg from Greenland to the streets of Malaga so that it melts in full view of the citizens and thus raise awareness about climate change and how it is causing the disappearance of polar ice.
According to statements by Manuel Calvo, who leads the group and collected by Europa Press, "bringing an iceberg to Spain will help them to see from here what will soon be something difficult to find even at the North Pole".
Operation Iceberg is the name given to this eighth edition of Desafío Ártico, which has extracted fifteen tons of ice from Greenland to bring it, by boat, to Spain. Upon arrival – which is estimated to be in September – the iceberg is expected to be exhibited on Calle Larios in Malaga. The objective is to let it melt in front of the population to reproduce the feeling that the thaw generated during this last expedition.
“Verifying in situ the disappearance of an ancient glacial front in less than five years has been devastating. The graphic evidence is there and anyone can verify the reality of climate change and what this planet is suffering”, Calvo pointed out.
The trip has been sponsored by the Malaga Provincial Council together with the Dingonatura Foundation; and had, as a second objective, to document the area and collect biological samples that will be sent to different institutions that will carry out their scientific analysis to continue investigating how climatic changes affect the area.
The protagonists of the expedition, in addition to Calvo, were a group of Andalusian teenagers who have overcome cases of cancer. They have traveled a total of 320 nautical miles (592 kilometers) in an inflatable boat.
Since they left for Greenland on July 14, they have visited the Qooqqut glacier, which has a large number of icebergs, and the Qaleraliq glacier, a camp located in the south of the island, in one of the most inhospitable places on the world, only accessible by boat. The visit continued in the town of Narsaq, known for its immense plain and the seals and whales that inhabit the area, where they have also been able to see arctic foxes or hares, according to EFE records.
The team returned on July 28, after two weeks living with the Inuit (commonly known as Eskimos), with whom they shared the products that were delivered from Sabor to Malaga; sausages, pepperoni, cheeses, honey, dried figs and oil.
As for the iceberg, he is still involved in his journey, loaded on a boat that keeps it refrigerated at 22ºC below zero. To get it out of Greenland, it was necessary to obtain an export license for scientific study purposes from the Government of this country.
The action taken by Arctic Challenge has been criticized by some environmental NGOs. “It is as if they were trying to raise awareness about animal abuse with a bullfight”, evaluated Ecologistas en Acción. The organization defends that the level of emissions that they have produced with transport, added to the extraction of ice that they have carried out, is counterproductive; It contributes more to the advancement of climate change than its fight and they consider this to be a form of greenwashing (when a company makes an environmental claim about something it is doing with the intention of promoting a sense of environmental impact that does not exist).
This act also has precedents. The most famous is the four-tonne iceberg that was placed in the Clyde River in Glasgow on the occasion of COP26, by the scientific organization Arctic Basecamp. This is also the case of the Danish artist Olafur Eliason, who together with the geologist Minik Rosing, did the same in the cities of Copenhagen, London and Paris; all of them with the aim of making the world population aware of the terrible consequences of climate change.
