Conversations with the Earth - Stories » Gleb Raygorodetsky

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

Gleb Raygorodetsky — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:00:43 +0000

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).

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.

The country knows. If you do the wrong thing to it, the whole country knows. It feels what’s happening to it… Everything is connected somehow… — Lavine Williams, Koyukon Elder, quoted by Richard Nelson.

At the Earth’s 11th Hour, when the environmental and social consequences of human-induced changes have become increasingly apparent, there is growing recognition that the ways of thinking that originated in the dominant, largely linear, reductionist worldview must be abandoned. As Albert Einstein observed, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” We must concede that, to date, no amount of technological “tweaking”, guided by the current dominant paradigm, has moved humankind out of its dire predicament. We therefore need to nurture a new way of thinking about the World We Want that is more aligned with the non-linear and interdependent nature of life. Such a paradigm shift is vital if we are to avoid the fate of humankind foretold by Alan Weisman in his non-fiction account of The World Without Us .

Scientists, managers, and policymakers are gradually recognizing the limitations of the current reductionist dualistic covenant, which postulates nature and culture as distinct entities and humans as separate from nature. This view fails to reflect the true essence of our relationship with the Earth and is therefore unhelpful in addressing the ultimate and proximate causes of our planet’s imperiled condition.

Lima Isama Pedro with a pine branch. Mojandita, Ecuador. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for CWE.
Recent years have seen the emergence of a number of integrative fields of inquiry — such as Systems Science, Resilience Science, Ecosystem Health, Ethnoecology, Deep Ecology, Gaia Theory and others. These fields seek to advance our understanding of the complex non-linear and multi-scale interactions between culture and nature, to incorporate insights from both the biological and the social sciences and often to develop respectful and equitable ways of relying on the traditional knowledge systems of land-based communities and the worldviews of indigenous peoples, together with mainstream scientific approaches, to tackle the multiple challenges facing the planet. Local and international organizations involved in biodiversity conservation, wildlife management, cultural preservation and sustainable development have become increasingly engaged in exploring such synergistic approaches and integrating them into decision- and policymaking processes.

Regrettably, the specialization and power hierarchy in the natural and social sciences continue to support an environment of learning and practice that is mired by intellectual siloing and exacerbate the problems we face rather than promote solutions. Still, there is an emerging recognition that as we contemplate and try to transform today’s economic, political and personal realities into a more sustainable, equitable and diverse world, we must rely on the holistic view of human-environment interactions. We have to discover (or re-discover) more synergistic ways of envisioning and interpreting social and ecological systems, as well as the environmental and cultural problems beleaguering them. We must grow wiser, so that the way we experience, interact with and value the Earth and its constituent elements is firmly grounded in an inherently holistic worldview.

A number of integrative fields of inquiry have been emerging in recent years, seeking to advance our understanding of the complex interactions between culture and nature.

One integrative way of looking at the world and our relationship with it is through the lens of biocultural diversity. Terralingua’s Director Dr. Luisa Maffi, one of the pioneers of this synergistic field of inquiry, characterizes biocultural diversity as “the pulsating heart of the globe, the multi-faceted expression of the beauty and potential of life on this planet — a precious gift for everyone to cherish and care for”. Biocultural diversity describes life-sustaining interdependencies and co-evolution of various forms of diversity — a view of the world that has been integral to indigenous ways of knowing — from landscapes to ecosystems, from foodways to languages.

Proponents and practitioners of valuing biocultural diversity — at global, regional and local scales — are working hard to infuse the fields of education, policy, conservation and sustainable development with more holistic models and practical approaches. “It is hard to ignore the similarities between the practical forces driving biological extinctions and cultural homogenization,” contends David Harmon, the President of the George Wright Society. “The only effective way to meet them is with a cohesive, biocultural response.”

Nomadic tribe preparing goat cheese supply before winter time. Zanskar, India. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for CWE.
The preamble to the Earth Charter states that humankind is at a critical juncture in Earth’s history, a time when the future holds both great peril and tremendous promise. As we seek our path toward the just future endowed with diversity and resilience, we must be guided by the vision of the world we would be proud of to leave to our children’s children. Will it be the proverbial Garden of Eden, or Weisman’s World Without Us, or a techno-cyber reality drawn up on a computer screen and engineered in a lab in response to contrived demands and incentives of the temperamental markets? The world we leave to future generations must be the place where the global community of custodians of Earth’s biocultural heritage sows and nurtures the seeds of an abundant and resilient future that is deeply rooted in collective biocultural wisdom and practice. Millennia of co-evolutionary relationships between humans and their surroundings — with people relying on their environment for survival while adapting to and modifying it — gave rise to a tremendous diversity of bioculturally-endowed systems around the globe.

Comprising a mere 4 percent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples care for over 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, directly maintaining close to 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity.

Today, many positive examples of biocultural systems endure around the world, as documented in a database maintained by the Resilience Alliance and in the Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook, Dr. Maffi’s latest book on the subject. Many of these examples come from indigenous peoples who continue to maintain biocultural systems worldwide through nurturing an intimate relationship with the planet — known to many of them as Mother Earth — something that our modern societies have all but forgotten. Comprising a mere 4 percent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples continue to care for over 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, directly maintaining close to 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. In this task, they continue to be guided by their collective indigenous knowledge passed on through generations of oral teachings and sustained through practice.

The ‘Los Derechos de la Pachamama’ (Rights of Mother Earth) is an inspiring video created as a joint project between five indigenous communities in Peru with the support of InsightShare and Conversations with the Earth.

The essential feature of biocultural systems that has ensured their persistence in time and space has been their resilience. Prominent resilience scientist Dr. Brian Walker describes resilience as the propensity of a system to learn, adapt, self-organize (through co-evolution between different sub-systems) and absorb change without losing functional integrity. Resilient systems are characterized by a diversity of patterns, functions, and processes — from nutrient cycles to ecological niches, from inter- and intra-specific variability to between and within the richness of languages, from epistemologies to traditional institutions of governance — that ensures a wide range of responses to external or internal challenges.

Resilient systems are characterized by a diversity of patterns, functions, and processes that ensures a wide range of responses to external or internal challenges.

Another important characteristic of a resilient system is its modularity, the presence of relatively autonomous “nodes” (e.g., local communities, ecological refugia, pastoral networks) throughout a system that reduces its over-connectedness and therefore enhances its ability to resist rapid transmission of environmental and social shocks. Tight feedback mechanisms between various elements of biocultural systems enable detection of approaching thresholds, or tipping points (from coral- to algae-dominated systems, from rainforest to savannah, from commons to private property, from subsistence to market-based economy), long before the system is on the verge of flipping into a new, potentially irreversible state.

Functional overlap is a reflection of redundancy in the system that enhances its continuity when some of its elements experience change (e.g., carbon sequestration is achieved in different parts of an ecosystem; traditional diets include varied sources of protein; wildlife harvest is regulated through different institutional arrangements). Substantial social capital — in the form of trusted social networks, wise leadership, intergenerational transmission of knowledge, an equitable integration of different ways of knowing into decision-making — also allows for diverse systemic responses to change.

Maintaining and enhancing the resilience of biocultural systems is fundamental to sustaining social and ecological systems and achieving the coveted goal of sustainability in meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Such efforts are less about “what”, “when”, or “where”, but more about “how”, because the recognition of the value of biocultural diversity must permeate every aspect of human-environment interactions, policy and decision-making, be it establishment of protected areas, wildlife management, cultural preservation, food production, or poverty alleviation.

The current trajectory of humankind’s “progress” however, is pushing us outside of what the researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Center describe as the planetary boundaries and away from the future that is resilient and endowed with biocultural diversity. The juggernaut of the dominant development paradigm, manifested by the Western multi-planet lifestyle, is sustained through a constant expansion and exploitation of scarce resources, consumerism, privatization of the commons and the homogenization of global cultures. As a result, diversity within and across landscapes and ecosystems is being diminished at local, regional and global scales. Biodiversity is disappearing at unprecedented rates; languages are vanishing; and associated systems of knowledge, wisdom and practice that have regulated human-environmental interactions for generations are also disappearing.

The juggernaut of the dominant development paradigm is sustained through a constant expansion and exploitation of scarce resources, consumerism, privatization of the commons and the homogenization of global cultures.

Globalization further removes us from the natural world, truncating feedback mechanisms and diminishing our ability to comprehend and adequately respond to the immediacy of our predicament, such as, for instance, climate change. Humankind has become a planetary force that is making the world increasingly ecologically, economically, socially and culturally “over-connected”, and therefore more susceptible to swift propagation of adverse conditions through the system, be they economic vulnerabilities, weather extremes, or food scarcity.

Several factors appear to limit our ability to maintain a bioculturally resilient world.

Wisdom, knowledge, practice and values embedded in local worldviews that have evolved over millennia to recognize the interconnectedness of people and nature, are rapidly eroding amongst land-based communities and indigenous peoples who value Mother Earth and all its beings. Amongst other things, this is often a result of external and internal pressures that instill a false sense of inferiority on such worldviews relative to the dominant one.
The scientific community lacks conceptual or methodological agreement on how to internalize the interdependent nature of biological and cultural diversities and the common threats to them into research agendas and conservation and management approaches.
There are too few models, guidelines and tools for the policymaking and management communities that explicitly integrate biocultural diversity and resilience (but see Terralingua’s Index of Linguistic Diversity).
Human and financial resources are limited for implementing and sustaining biocultural diversity-based initiatives amongst the groups who are interested in integrating them into their strategies and actions.
There is poor understanding amongst the general public that, in the words of the late Dr. Darrell Posey, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_A._Posey there are “inextricable links between biological and cultural diversity”. Hence, the impact of individual and collective decisions and actions on resilience of biocultural systems are poorly understood.

As documented in Dr. Maffi’s book and a dedicated website, a growing cohort of local and indigenous individuals, communities, non-profit organizations and their international partners is working hard towards overcoming these obstacles by opposing the dominant reductionist paradigm while demonstrating and celebrating the importance of biocultural diversity. Several private foundations (The Christensen Fund, The Seventh Generation Fund, the Swift Foundation), non-profit organizations and initiatives ( Gaia Foundation, the Global Diversity Foundation, Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Assessment, Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas, Land is Life) and multilateral agency programs and partnerships ( Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, The Satoyama Initiative, Satoumi Initiative, UNESCO’s Man & Biosphere Programme, the UN University Traditional Knowledge Initiative and others) have been focusing explicitly on a more holistic way of thinking about achieving sustainability and biodiversity conservation. Many of these groups work on initiatives that are planned and implemented in close partnership with, or are guided directly by, indigenous peoples.

Our best hope for escaping the thickening fog of the dominant economic development paradigm is to focus our limited human and financial resources on maintaining and connecting resilient nodes of biocultural diversity.

Their efforts demonstrate that our best hope for escaping the thickening fog of the dominant economic development paradigm is to focus our limited human and financial resources on maintaining and interlinking resilient nodes of biocultural diversity — whether these are geographically anchored local communities, indigenous nations, or global networks of like-minded individuals on the path to revitalizing and sustaining traditions of biocultural wisdom and practice.

The late Thomas Berry, a renowned cultural historian and ecotheologian, described our age as the dark end of the Cenozoic evolutionary tunnel that the past 65 million years has been. Whether we can emerge from the twilight of self-inflicted crises into the light of an Ecozoic era — when human conduct would be based on valuing the Earth community as an integrated web of mutually synergetic relationships — depends on whether we have the gumption and heart to choose the right path. The current focus on “feel-good” stories in addressing global crises is not helpful for making this choice. However enticing and comforting it is for us to follow the dangling carrot of proclamations that “Changing the world does not have to conflict with living the life you want”, as the authors of World Changing: The Users Guide for the 21st Century argue, such a mindset does not reflect the reality of the changes that we must make.

350.org founder Bill McKibben is quoted as saying that, “It’s not that we have a philosophical difference with the fossil fuel industry — it’s that their business model is destroying the planet.” Business models, however, arise out of a particular way of seeing the world. The currently dominant paradigm of unbridled economic growth and development is firmly rooted in a myopic worldview that is completely ignorant of the interdependence of people and nature and averse to creating or nurturing conditions that support biocultural resilience.

It is therefore imperative that our efforts to deal with the contemporary social and ecological challenges facing the planet are firmly rooted in a holistic worldview, such as biocultural diversity and resilience thinking. In the words of Tom Goldtooth, the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, our global efforts must be about “systems change”, or a paradigm shift, toward learning from such synergistic worldviews as indigenous traditions of relating to the Earth with respect, reciprocity and reverence.

Whether or not humankind is going to achieve such a systems change and succeed in transitioning into the Ecozoic Age depends ultimately on our individual and collective courage to commit to a more holistic worldview that is based on valuing biocultural diversity for our own and our planet’s wellbeing.

For such a transformation to occur, a few key elements must be present. We must embrace change as an inalienable part of life, rather than trying to avert it at any cost. We must be realistic about the scope and scale of what should be done to correct the course, as well as what each of us is capable of doing him or herself. We must also expand our notion of community from a group of people united by their geographic or genetic proximity, to a broader global community inclusive of other like-minded individuals and groups united by their recognition of the value of biocultural diversity as the very “pulsating heart” of Nature. We must work towards a biologically and culturally rich world not only through our work, but more importantly by changing our own thinking and actions. Only through such comprehensive transformation of our own nature could we hope to ensure that Nature is bioculturally resilient for generations to come.

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The earlier version of this blog was published on the United Nations University blog.
NewsWatch blog posts on biocultural diversity could be found here.
The photos and video featured in this article appear courtesy of Conversations with the Earth. You can join the CWE conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

Changing with the Land: The Skolt Sámi’s path to climate change resilience

Gleb Raygorodetsky — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:31:23 +0000

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.
The radiant disk of the Arctic sun hangs in the mid-September sky above northern Finland, like a ritual Sámi drum pinned to the wall inside a lavvu , a traditional Sámi dwelling. The sun’s reflection is floating gently on the still surface of Rautujärvi Lake, located over 400 km above the Arctic Circle near the Norwegian and Russian borders. Come November, according to traditional calendars created and refined over generations by the Sámi people to track seasonal cycles on their land, the sunlight would be bouncing off the ice and snow of Sápmi , as the Sámi call their land. But the flows of air and water over this landscape are no longer in sync with the ancestral calendars, and the sun’s reflection may continue to float on the water for several weeks longer, disrupting Sámi traditional winter travel, fishing, hunting, and reindeer herding activities.

Like every Skolt Sámi, Vladimir Feodoroff is as much an expert at steering his boat on a lake as he is at lassoing reindeer during a seasonal roundup. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
Vladimir Feodoroff is a Skolt Sámi, a very small, but culturally and linguistically distinct group of the Eastern Sámi. The Skolts are considered to be one of the most traditional Sámi reindeer herding and fishermen groups. They still practice the centuries-old customary system of clan-based governance, where the community council sobbar represents the highest body of decision-making, while for over 130,000 Sámi living throughout the northern reaches of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia, the dominant governance system is the Sámi Parliament.

Historically, the traditional lands of the Skolt Sámi, or Sä’mmlaž, spanned the vast territory, from Lake Inari eastward all the way to Kola Bay, the present-day location of the Russian city of Murmansk. Today, most of the Skolts live in a small pocket of the northern Lapland region of Finland, north of Lake Inari. They were relocated here when their homelands were seized by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after World War II. The relocated Skolts eventually settled in the village of Sevettijärvi, where they continue to maintain their traditional practices and keep the endangered Skolt language alive. Most of the remaining 700 Skolts live around the Finnish municipality of Inari, some on the Norwegian side of the border, and only few families remain in Russia.

In Finnish Lapland, reindeer no longer roam freely, having to navigate their way throughout the growing network of primary and secondary roads. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
Before World War II, the Skolt families would move with their reindeer on foot, or by skis and sleds, depending on the season, along well-worn migration routes from winter pastures to summer fishing grounds across the boreal region of the Kola Peninsula. Once resettled in Finland, they had to nurture meaningful relationships with a less familiar landscape — a transition zone between the treeless fjels and boreal forest. Here, their movement and reindeer herding practices became constrained by a growing network of roads throughout the region. Following the “snowmobile revolution” of the 1960s, there was also a rapid shift away from more traditional herding practices when families spent most of the year with their reindeer, towards a settled way of life. They came to rely more and more on mechanized transport, such as snowmobiles, small airplanes, and helicopters for gathering dispersed reindeer into herds during corralling season.

Despite these challenges and the dramatic societal shifts brought about by relocation and integration into the European Union’s (EU) economy, reindeer herding has remained at the heart of the Skolt Sámi culture and way of life, including their food, songs, clothes and art. Adapting to rapid change is nothing new to the Skolts, and they draw on this experience as they search for ways to adapt to their latest challenge — climate change.

At his all-season fishing camp in the upper reaches of the Näätämö River — his second home after his house in Sevettijärvi — Jouko Moshnikoff (right) and his friend Teijo Feodoroff are cutting up reindeer ribs for dinner before firing up the sauna (visible in the background, at the river’s edge). Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
For the Skolts, reindeer meat is an important traditional food that is vital to their culture, helping ensure their food sovereignty in a changing landscape and climate. Skolts, like other Sámi groups, do not waste even a single hair of the slaughtered reindeer. The fine-fibered and lean reindeer meat is used for food and as a source of income; clothes are made from reindeer skins; and the antlers are carved into knife handles, various utensils, ornaments and souvenirs for tourists.

After Finland became an EU member in 1995, the Skolt Sámi must follow burdensome EU regulations and standards for meat processing if they want to sell reindeer meat on the EU market. To comply with the new regulations, the Finnish Reindeer Herders’ Association replaced the 200 old field slaughterhouses with 10 EU regulations-compliant abattoirs staffed with mangers and veterinarians who oversee the annual processing of 1,500 tons of reindeer meat destined to the EU market.

The Skolts feel that while the market regulations may be good for commerce, they are not good for the local people and their land. The new system has made looking after their reindeer more expensive for the Skolts, forcing them to change when and where they can gather their herds. According to Pauliina Feodoroff — former President of the Sámi Council and Vladimir Feodoroff’s daughter — the traditional method of killing reindeer inside a corral was pollution-free, but now chemicals must be used daily to disinfect EU-certified abattoirs. Moreover, many traditional practices — such as leaving some spilled blood and rapamaha, or reindeer stomach contents, on the ground to help fertilize and renew the trampled soil inside the corral — are no longer part of the modern system.

The morning sun melts the night frost on blueberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) in the birch forest along the Näätämö River. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
Budding birch leaves are an important spring food for reindeer craving a boost of fresh nutrients after a long winter diet of desiccated lichen. In 1966, the colder microclimate in the river valley saved the birch forest from defoliation along the river during an outbreak of the autumnal moth ( Epirrita autumnata), a cold-intolerant forest pest. In the birch forests on the south-facing hills, however, the winter temperature did not dip below -35 °C, thus allowing the moth to survive.

“I remember going fishing with my mother then,” recalls Illep Jefremoff. “And it was like having a heavy snowfall in the middle of the summer. The fish ate up the moths that fell into the water, but the birch trees dried up and died later.”

A few occasional birch stumps is all that remains of the once lush birch forest that used to support a diverse wildlife community. Two new outbreaks of autumnal moth infestation have been reported in Norway since 2005. The Skolt herders are concerned that as the climate warms, the moth outbreaks will become more frequent and spread widely, wiping out remaining birch forests and destroying an important spring food source for reindeer. The annual migration route of an individual reindeer herd is restricted to the territory of one of 56 reindeer cooperatives in Finland, limiting herders’ ability to move their reindeer away from affected areas of forest to find alternative sources of nutrient-rich spring food.

Tero Mustonen paddles across the Ylinen Lake, near his village of Selkie. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
Tero Mustonen’s personal quest, under the guidance of Elders, to revitalize land-based traditions of his Finnish ancestors led him to found the Snowchange Cooperative http://www.snowchange.org/ in 2000. The Cooperative works to advance the role of traditional knowledge in environmental policy and practice. Headquartered in the village of Selkie, Finland — where Mustonen is a chief and a traditional seine fishing net master — Snowchange has grown into a respected international community-based network making important contributions towards global recognition of traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Mustonen explains that Snowchange’s goal is, “To see our culture come back — complete rebirth on the land!”

Snowchange has made important contributions to the Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment, the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment, and the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) due out in 2014. Reflecting on these accomplishments, Mustonen smiles and says, “It is exciting, but a bit of punk rock — in a sense that we [a community-based cooperative] can play with the big boys [international agencies], but we still keep our own unique way.”

In addition to a solid base of over a dozen villages in Finland, Snowchange membership spans the globe, embracing communities, organizations and individuals working on local traditional knowledge-based projects in New Zealand, Canada, Russia, and Australia. All members of the Snowchange Cooperative work on developing locally-appropriate culture-based solutions to the challenges of environmental degradation, development and climate change faced by indigenous peoples and local communities around the world.

Tero Mustonen (left) and his neighbor Pekka Ikonen seine the waters of the Ylinen Lake for muikku or vendace, as European Cisco (Coregenus albula) is called here. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
Summer and winter seining for vendace and other fish in the lakes surrounding their community has always been an important subsistence activity for Selkie villagers. But now they worry about the environmental impacts of climate change on their subsistence fishery. Selkie residents have observed seasonal shifts in wind patterns, delays in freeze-up, increase in summer temperatures, earlier spring thaws and changes in the patterns of snow and rainfall. Ice leads — areas of open water that form when lake ice fractures and is kept open by the current — no longer occur in places well-known to local people, making winter travel on the ice a lot more treacherous.

Old residents of Selkie remember that the winter of 1986 was the last real winter when the lakes and rivers were frozen by mid-November. Today, the ice forms only in January when the temperature finally dips below -20°C for several nights in a row. Finland’s hottest daily temperature of 37 °C, was recorded in 2010 not far from Selkie. As summers become warmer, the fish seek cooler waters at the bottom of deeper lakes, which makes seining less reliable.

Like generations of Skolts before him, Jouko Moshnikoff welcomes guests at his fishing camp with salted and cold-smoked Atlantic salmon caught nearby. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
Fishing for Atlantic salmon ( Salmon salar) has always been an important part of Skolts’ subsistence and cultural heritage, and indeed, they consider themselves to be more fishermen than reindeer herders. Today, in addition to traditional delicacies, Moshnikoff can also offer his guests a few store-bought extras — like apples from Spain and vodka from Estonia — shipped to Finland from other EU countries. During the long winter evenings, after a skin-scalding sauna and a hearty meal, Moshnikoff would crank up a Honda generator from Japan to watch a show or a sports program on his Made in China TV.

While these changes add a great deal of convenience and comfort to their lives, Moshnikoff and other Skolt Sámi worry about the consequences and the real costs of such benefits of the global economy for local communities. They recognize that the changing climate is the price they are paying for the fossil fuel-infused food production and transportation system that, while delivering the goods to their homeland, makes their traditional livelihoods, such as the Atlantic salmon fishery on the Näätämö River, increasingly difficult to sustain. Feeling powerless to change the global economic model, the Skolts are nevertheless determined to find a way to sustain their traditional salmon fishery under changing conditions.

On the porch of Jouko Moshnikoff’s cabin — against the backdrop of one of the most significant spawning sites for Atlantic salmon on the Näätämö River — Illep Jefremoff, Vladimir Feodoroff and Tero Mustonen (left to right) examine the area map of the region. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
To describe their work last summer, Feodoroff shows Tero all the traditionally known spawning sites that he visited with Jefremoff as part of the project “Skolt Sámi Survival in the Middle of Rapid Change”. The goal of this collaboration between the Skolt Sámi, the Snowchange Cooperative and the United Nations University (UNU) Traditional Knowledge Initiative is to help the Skolts to develop a climate change adaptation plan. The project is part of the international Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative that is being developed and coordinated by a Peru-based indigenous non-profit organization, ANDES, and supported by UNU.

By applying the IPCCA methodology of community-led self-reflection, evaluation, and future-visioning based on local worldviews and traditional knowledge, the Sevettijärvi Skolts are developing a community-based climate change adaptation plan. Out of this process a collective consensus has emerged that the climate change challenges faced by the reindeer, while significant, are manageable given the present-day nature of reindeer herding. Instead, the Skolt Sámi identified their customary salmon fishery, the other half of their traditional subsistence and cultural identity, as a much greater concern.

As a result, the Snowchange-Skolt partnership has chosen to focus their climate change adaptation efforts on enhancing the resilience of the Skolts’ traditional salmon fishery along the Näätämö River. After visiting all traditionally known spawning sites during the last summer and holding several community-based workshops and discussions, the Skolt-Snowchange partnership is planning on putting together an initial draft of the Atlantic salmon co-management plan for the Näätämö River in 2013, to begin discussions with other salmon users along the watershed, and the representatives of the state fisheries agency, about the future of the Näätämö salmon.

A late-September morning’s frosty air thickens into fog above the Näätämö River, enveloping birch trees on the riverbank. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
The Näätämö River is one of the few remaining free-flowing waterways in northern Europe that still supports wild populations of Atlantic salmon. The river meanders for 80 km from Lake Inari northward through Finland, until it reaches the Skoltefossen falls at the Norwegian border, 20 km from the Barents Sea. On average, out of eight tonnes of salmon caught annually along the river, only 20 percent comes from Finland the rest is caught in Norway. In addition to the Skolt Sámi and other locals, who are legally allowed to use fishing nets and rods to catch salmon, around 700 tourist anglers also descend on the Näätämö River every summer for the salmon run.

The Skolts feel that the significance of the Atlantic salmon fishery to their traditional culture has not been adequately recognized by the state fishery agencies. The Skolts have never had a real say in how the salmon fishery and the river are managed. The project partners are hopeful, however, that in the coming years their climate change adaptation project will help shift the balance of power and engage state officials and other stakeholders in a more equitable dialogue about the future of the Näätämö salmon fishery.

Over breakfast at Jouko Moshnikoff’s cabin, Tero Mustonen, Illep Jefremoff, and Vladimir Feodoroff (left to right) mull over the next steps in their climate change adaptation project. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
The Skolts realize that there is little they can do about the Norwegian Sydvaranger mine, an open pit iron ore mine that pollutes the fjord connected to the estuary of Näätämö River. Neither can they prevent an increase in risk of disease, breeding difficulties and genetic contamination in wild Atlantic salmon, caused by the farmed salmon escaping from Norwegian fish farms.

Still, based on the project’s first field season, the group is confident that they can do a lot to enhance the resilience of their traditional salmon fishery on the Finnish side of the border. Their main goal is to enhance spawning habitat and improve salmon survival along the Näätämö River. This includes restoring traditional salmon spawning grounds and reducing the predatory species like pike (Esox lucius), burbot (Lota lota) and mink (Neovison vison) that are hunting juvenile salmon or smolt. The group also feels that instead of three nets that the local people are legally permitted to use during the salmon fishing season, no more than a single net or just lures should be permitted for catching salmon. “Getting ten salmon per person in the summer is enough for us, Skolts,” says Feodoroff, “Because we just use it for subsistence, not to sell.”

By putting forward a set of such specific recommendations, the Skolts feel they should be able to develop a dialogue with state fisheries officials about their needs and the value of their traditional knowledge about salmon. The project is also creating pathways for engaging other groups of fishermen who rely on salmon for subsistence, recreation, and tourism on both sides of the Finnish-Norwegian border. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop a Näätämö River Atlantic Salmon Co-Management Plan that would create a more equitable governance structure for decision-making, compared to the existing rigid architecture based on trans-boundary bilateral agreements between Finland and Norway. The project partners hope that the envisioned co-management plan would help revamp the current rigid top-down regime through creating an equitable space for participation and contributions of all the groups who want their healthy relationships with the Näätämö River salmon to continue for generations.

In front of his house on the shore of Lake Sevettijärvi, Illep Jefremoff holds the Eastern Sámi Atlas open to the page with a picture of himself and his dog Kepu, checking fishing nets in the winter of 1993. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
Jefremoff contributed to the Eastern Sámi Atlas, sharing his knowledge and photographs of Skolt traditional activities, like setting fishing nets under the ice. The Skolts and the Snowchange Cooperative, with the support of UNU and the Nordic Council of Ministers, developed and published the Eastern Sámi Atlas as part of the Skolt climate change adaptation project. This comprehensive tome is a significant land-use document developed by any Sámi group. It shares several centuries of their history, through photographs and maps, describing how the Eastern Sámi, including the Skolt Sámi, lived on their traditional territory.

The real value of the volume, however, is in that it is truly a community effort to make their unseen histories visible. For their work on this project and the publication of the Atlas, the Snowchange Cooperative was honored with the Skolt of the Year Award in 2011, despite being a Finnish organization.

“Snowchange’s work with Sámi is very straightforward — it’s a peace-making plan,” explains Mustonen. Snowchange is trying to address the painful legacy of centuries of encroachment and assimilation by southern Finns on traditional Sámi territories. “All the work that Snowchange is doing with Sámi is about this, be it a nomadic school project or a climate change adaptation work or the Atlas. It is all about reconciliation,” says Mustonen. “If we can maintain a respectable relationship with Sámi and provide them with space and rights they ought to have, we are also healing ourselves,” he concludes.

To the unfamiliar eye, the lakes and forests of northern Finland look as pristine and unchanged as they have been for the last 9,000 years, after the glaciers retreated northward in this part of Europe. Photo: ©Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.
For the local people, the interdependencies between the sun, water, air, forest, fire, wildlife, fish and people are changing rapidly and in unfamiliar ways. “Who are these new winds?” ask local Elders. ”We do not know them, but we still try to greet them.” The changing climate alters the intricate relationships between the elements of the Skolt traditional territory. The future of the Skolts and their land in this time of climatic upheaval depends on their ability to find ways of maintaining the balance in their relationships with the land and water, forest and tundra, reindeer and salmon. This could be achieved, they feel, only through respectful collaboration with others who have a stake in the future of the region and its biocultural heritage, be they European anglers, Norwegian salmon farmers, or a Finnish NGO.

“It is the time to say goodbye to some things we’ll never see again,” says Mustonen of Snowchange. “But it is also time to build new knowledge. And this knowledge can only emerge through keeping strong connections with the traditional territory. We must be there on the land as it is changing, so that we can change with it.”

• ♦ •

This photo essay is part of Conversations with the Earth (CWE): Indigenous Voices on Climate Change initiative and was published earlier here. To learn more about CWE, visit it on Facebook and Twitter.

Restoring the Sacred Web of Life

Gleb Raygorodetsky — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:58:25 +0000

Golden Mountains of Altai, Russia

For countless generations, Altai people herded their livestock across what is now known as the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO’s World Heritage Site, in Russia’s southern Siberia. They endured many obstacles–from Mongol hordes to Soviet oppression. Today, they face the new challenge–climate change.

PEOPLE ALTAI

PLACE Altai Republic – Russia

STORY

Torrential downpours, freezing and thawing splinter the rock and destroy petroglyphs, the millennia-old repository of Altai people’s culture. Permafrost that preserved the remains of Altai ancestors in burial grounds for thousands of years is melting. And unpredictable snowstorms, winter rains, thawing and freezing, decimate herds of sheep and horses on which Altai people still rely heavily. Local shamans are convinced that only through restoring their reverential relationship with the sacred and spiritual realms can Altai people and the rest of the world restore the balance of the Earth and its climate. At the crossing of the Russian, Mongolian, Kazakh and Chinese borders, a mountain range rises at the western edge of Sayan Mountains. For centuries, Altai people herded their livestock across these plateaus and through mountain passes. Russian Starovery, or Old Believers, sought refuge in these valleys long ago from persecution by the Tsar’s Russian Orthodox Church. With its outstanding landscape and biological and cultural diversity, the region gained international recognition when the Golden Mountains of Altai were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.

An ancient horseman pursues mountain sheep over the rugged foothills of Altai Mountains. The petroglyph carved into stone two and a half millennia ago is a testament to the resilience of this cultural landscape. Since the first humans arrived here close to a million years ago, the region has served as a home or migration route to nomadic cultures that, despite many upheavals, remain strong in modern day Altai. Today, the etched horseman and its quarry face a different set of obstacles, from the petroglyphs themselves being cut out for sale on the black market to accelerated erosion due to climate change. Torrential downpours, freezing and thawing–now more frequent and unpredictable–can splinter the rock and destroy the petroglyphs forever.

Galloping across a field near the village of Elo, descendants of the ancient Altai horsemen compete in a “goat-pulling” tournament–a modern version of the Turkic tradition of Kokboru. Teams compete by trying to throw a dead goat into their opponents’ kazan–a large sod vat. This tradition faded from Altai culture during the decades of Soviet cultural domination beginning in 1919. Kokboru is slowly being restored in Altai through cultural exchanges with other Turkic people from around Asia. This is part of emerging South-to-South connections between Altai people and their indigenous brothers and sisters from all corners of the Earth, helping tackle many social, cultural and ecological challenges, including climate change.

Alexander Dibesov, a warden of a mountaineering camp at the foot of Aktru glacier, scans the scree slopes of the canyon through his binoculars for signs of mountain sheep. “In the summer, when I was a kid, my family would come to Aktru from our home in the valley,” says Alexander. “We loved going sledding on the glacier.” Just 60 years ago, the glacier came down all the way to where Alexander is kneeling. Today, the glaciers are receding, barely visible up the slope in the distance.

Tracing the contours of forested foothills with their wingtips, two berkuts, or golden eagles, draw a veil of snow flurries over the sacred Uch-Enmek Mountain. Local people chose an ancient depiction of the berkut as the symbol for the Uch-Enmek Nature Park, created in the Karakol Valley in 2001 to protect this most sacred mountain and valley. According to the Altai tradition, Uch-Enmek is the umbilical cord of the Earth, maintaining the spiritual and energy balance of our planet, and regulating the weather and climate.

En route to Aru-Kem Lake in the Uch-Enmek Nature Park, Uchural Nonov, a park warden, ties horse hair–a substitute for traditional strands of cotton, or kyira–to a sacred tree. “We ask the spirit of Altai to bless our companions’ journey and to look after our families,” says Uruchal. The supplicant never asks for anything for oneself. Reverence, respect, and reciprocity are at the heart of the sacred relationship between local people and the Altai. These qualities are fundamental elements of the local peoples’ worldview, guiding their daily actions toward each other, land, water, and air.

Maria Amanchina, a traditional Altai shaman and healer, lights a pipe as she sends her prayers with the smoke to the Sky, the Land, and the Spirit of Altai. Maria knows that healthy, respectful relationships with sacred sites–such as Ukok Plateau, a part of the Golden Mountains World Heritage Site on the border with China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan–are key to ensuring that her people and the Land can endure the changes facing the Altai, such as climate change. The future of Altai Ukok is under threat from a 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline from Russia to China planned by Gazprom that will cut through the heart of the Golden Mountains of Altai. If allowed to proceed without proper planning that integrates the local knowledge as well as addresses the concerns of local custodians of sacred sites, it would not only lead to significant degradation of local biological and cultural diversities, but undermine the integrity and resilience of the entire World Heritage Site.

Hauntingly beautiful and stirring, Kai is an ancient style of throat singing, a way of connecting and communicating with the Altai’s physical and spiritual landscapes. Emil Tyrkishev is a traditional Kai-chi–a hereditary shamanic throat singer and story teller. While he writes and performs his own music with support and accompaniment of his wife Radmilla, he relies on the guidance of his two-string topshur as he journeys through the past, present and future of this sacred land in his chants and songs, seeking answers to Altai’s current challenges.

As they prepare to travel to the sacred Ukok Plateau, Maria guides her guests–clockwise, Liz Hosken, director of the UK-based Gaia Foundation , traditional healer from Botswana Niall Campbell, and Chagat Almashev, director of the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai –through a purification ceremony over wafts of smoke from a sacred juniper fire. “Our relationship with the world,” says Maria, “must be based on our ability to keep the sacred balance with all living beings and the Land.” This is particularly important in places of high spiritual significance and potency, such as sacred sites. Linking the people who understand and support the fundamental importance of this truth is critical to re-balancing humankind’s relationship with the Earth and its climate.

Over the last few years, Maria and other Altai shamans have been gradually building relationships with custodians of sacred sites and their allies in different parts of the world in order to work collectively on restoring and sustaining the sacred Web of Life. Custodians of sacred sites in Kyrgyzstan, Samankul Azyrankulov (standing) and Kadyrbek Dzhakypov (laying down), came to Altai to reconnect with the sacred landscape that nourished their ancestors, including Manas–the hero of the longest Kyrgyz epic poem who was born in Altai over a thousand years ago. At the Dzhumalinskyi springs, where sacred healing water gurgles up from the foothills of Ukok Plateau, the two pilgrims from Kyrgyzstan make offerings seeking the healing energy of the sacred springs and rocks. They hope to bring this positive energy back to their homeland, to help address their own challenges, from inter-ethnic conflict to climate change.

Called the “Pastures of Heaven” by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, Ukok Plateau is dotted with hundreds of burial grounds, or kurgans. Maria is standing over one such kurgan, where a 2,400-year-old mummy of a Pazyryk noblewoman, the “Ice Princess”, was excavated by archaeologists in 1993 to great international fanfare. Maria feels that the dominant Western mindset pierces the heart of the Earth as it digs for gold, drills for oil, and unearths and removes archaeological “artifacts”. This very worldview is responsible for upsetting the intricate balance of the Altai and the rest of living Mother Earth. A powerful earthquake that shook the region soon after the “Ice Princess” was removed and shipped to the Museum of Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, confirmed Maria’s convictions. Just as undeniable is the climate change Maria observes altering the Altai landscape, including the melting permafrost that for centuries preserved the remains of the Altai peoples’ ancestors on the Ukok Plateau. Maria is convinced that only through reclaiming our reverential relationship with the sacred and spiritual worlds can we restore the balance of the Earth and its climate.

Additional Resources about Altai

Sacred Lands Film Project

Pacific Environment

United Nations University Channel

Altai Mir University

Altai Assistance Project

The Altai Project

Fund for 21st Century Altai

Gazprom’s Altai Pipeline