INUVIK, N.W.T. — Climate change affects all parts of life in the North and any plan to deal with it must be just as wide-ranging, says a strategy document to be released Friday by Canada’s Inuit.

“This is something that isn’t just a policy area for us,” said Natan Obed, head of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which wrote the strategy. “It also is a life-and-death situation for people who are still inextricably linked to the environment.”

The Arctic is warming twice as quickly as the rest of the planet and that means the Inuit need their own plan to deal with it, Obed said.

‘Canary in the coal mine’

Accompanied by federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna in Inuvik, N.W.T., Obed is to release a 48-page outline that says climate change can’t be tackled without addressing many of the other problems Inuit face.

“We have often been seen as the canary in the coal mine, often brought forward to tell the world about how the Arctic is changing, but that’s usually where it ends,” Obed said in an interview.

“Inuit have decided we are going to seek a partnership with the government of Canada and start to adapt any way we can through co-ordinated action.”

Watch: Melting ice could displace millions of people by 2100, a study says. Story continues below.