Gleb Raygorodetsky

Gleb Raygorodetsky is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Traditional Knowledge Initiative of the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies and a Research Affiliate with the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria. Born and raised in a coastal village in Kamchatka, Russia, Gleb is a conservation biologist with expertise in resource co-management and traditional knowledge systems. He has lived and worked with the Evèn reindeer herders, the Aleut fur seal hunters, the Caboclos pirarucu fishermen and the Gwich’in caribou hunters. For his PhD, he looked at the resilience of social-ecological systems after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the Russian Far East, by researching furbearer use and conservation in Kamchatka. Between 2006-2010 he led the development of a new global grant-making strategy for the Christensen Fund on biocultural diversity and resilience. Gleb has contributed to such magazines as Cultural Survival, Wildlife Conservation, and National Geographic, writing about climate change, traditional knowledge, and Indigenous peoples.

Pulsating Heart of Nature: How to Ensure Our Collective Bioculturally Resilient Future.

Gleb RaygorodetskyOceania, Various
Pulsating Heart of Nature: How to Ensure Our Collective Bioculturally Resilient Future.
Fisherman are reporting problems with traditional fish spawning grounds after coral damage by the king tide Manus province, Papua New Guinea. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for Conversations with the Earth (CWE).
Papua New Guinea fisherman
The remarkable variety of life’s interdependent phenomena and processes — what we call ‘diversity’ — is being eroded by the modern forces of homogenization. The rich tapestry — woven from a countless multitude of mutually reinforcing strands of biological, cultural and linguistic relationships — is wearing out. Our increasingly fatigued world is losing its vitality, luminosity and splendour under a relentless assault from various “izations”, such as industrialization, colonization, secularization, computerization, globalization, and harmonization, to name a few.The multiple crises are intensifying and converging. Climate change is hastening ecosystem degradation; peak oil leads to a scramble for other carbon-based fuels and ultimately an even greater carbon footprint; and over-consumption, poverty, species loss, and ecosystem and cultural decline are deepening, further precipitating systemic collapse.
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Changing with the Land: The Skolt Sámi’s path to climate change resilience

Gleb RaygorodetskyEurasia, Europe
Changing with the Land: The Skolt Sámi’s path to climate change resilience
This photo essay by United Nations University’s Traditional Knowledge Initiative (UNU-TKI) research fellow Gleb Raygorodetsky offers a glimpse of the challenges that climate change presents for indigenous and local communities in northern Europe. An Arctic people of northern Finland whose livelihoods depend largely on their environment, the Skolt Sámi are searching for ways to remain resilient in the face of climate change. Recently, Raygorodetsky spent time with the Skolts, as part of an UNU-TKI project supporting a partnership between the Skolt Sámi and the Finnish Snowchange Cooperative focused on developing a climate change adaptation plan.
  
The land around Rautujärvi Lake, over 400 km above the Arctic Circle near the Norwegian and Russian borders, is home to the Skolt Sámi — reindeer herders and fishermen whose traditional ways are closely intertwined with the northern climate. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
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