"I've made many trips and expeditions to the Arctic over the years and I have begun to feel that I owe something to a land and people that without exception have shown me nothing but kindness.

I lived for many months with the Inuit in North West Greenland and I've heard first hand their experiences of the changes brought about by global warming.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as anywhere else with dramatic consequences for the Inuit people.

Time is running out for them and their entire way of life could disappear in a few years.

The Inuit people are small in number but I hope to use this expedition to amplify their voice on the world stage.

My two Scottish colleagues Stephen Doughty and Richard Cree and I will kayak over 2,000 miles through the historic and challenging North West Passage that runs along the remote northern coast of the Canadian Arctic.

We will be the first UK nationals to kayak through the difficult terrain of the passage that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I decided on this particular route and way of travelling because firstly, it is environmentally friendly and secondly, it will enable us to visit the Inuit in their remote summer hunting camps.

One of the main aims of the expedition, which is an official project of the International Polar Year scientific programme, is to collect interviews with the Inuit on how their lives have changed and are changing because of global warming.

We are recording these conversations on film and audio and they will be used by the British Library for their archive as well as a semi-permanent exhibition on climate change.

We leave in June on the first stage of the trip and aim to kayak over 900 miles from Inuvik in the Mackenzie Delta to Kugluktuk or Coppermine in Coronation Gulf before completing the second stage of the voyage in 2008.

I will return in 2009 to make the final stage of the journey over sea ice and snow covered land using dog sled to reach the settlement of Repulse Bay on the North West of Hudson Bay.

The team is very experienced and the key to any expedition is preparation but of course I'm still concerned about the dangers we will face - in particular hungry Grizzly and Polar Bears and freezing seas where survival is just a matter of minutes.

As part of my concern to raise public awareness about the effects of climate change faced by the Inuit I have devised a unique educational and outreach programme involving twinning schools in the UK with those in the Arctic.

I am pleased to say that Sir Jonathon Porritt supports the project and has called it "inspirational".

I feel it is up to our generation to try to stop the damage caused by the industrialised world but I believe we owe it to our children to inform them as much as possible about the threat of climate change and to forge links with the Inuit community.

The twinning project involves schools throughout the UK but I'm really pleased that Llanelwedd Primary School in Builth Wells and the Builth Wells High School have already joined the programme.

People can follow the expedition's progress on the team's blog at www.arcticvoiceteam.blogspot.com and on the website."

Article written by Glenn Morris