Inuit hunters say a thawing of Arctic ice is threatening their human rights as they try to raise pressure on the United States to do more to fight global warming.
"The human rights of Inuit are under threat as a result of human-induced climate change," Ms Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), told a news conference during a 180-nation UN meeting on climate change in Milan, Italy, on Wednesday.
The ICC represents about 155,000 Inuit in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia and says that rising temperatures are undermining traditional lifestyles based around hunts of animals like seals, whales, walruses and polar bears.
In recent years, some hunters have drowned by falling through thinning ice, while thawing permafrost is destabilising buildings and triggering mudslides. UN studies say the Arctic Ocean may be largely ice-free in summer by 2100.
"These are issues of life and death," Watt-Cloutier said. "We go out to hunt on the sea ice to put food on the table. You go to the supermarket."
She said the group was exploring legal ways to link human rights and climate change to put pressure on the United States and other nations to do more to cut emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
She said the Inuit were likely to complain about global warming to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a part of the Organisation of American States.
The Commission's rulings are non-binding but "powerful governments do not like to be branded as human rights violators," she said. "We will probably decide exactly what to do around April next year."