NPAC 2014 Proceedings_final

climate change to human rights, I am convinced that the escalating pressures we now face regarding resource development will deepen the need for all parties to adopt a rights-based approach in the search for solutions to these problems. I believe the approach the community of Clyde River is taking exemplifies what I have spoken of as a “reframing” of the issue in terms of fundamental human rights and the connection between environmental change, cultural rights, and the development of the Inuit homelands.

Commentary

Ellen Inga Turi

While climate change is generally perceived as a threat in southern latitudes, in the North it is often viewed simultaneously as an opportunity. Climate change is making Arctic areas increasingly accessible for human activities such as resource extraction, tourism and shipping. For the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, however, these developments represent a dual challenge. On the one hand, Indigenous peoples are witnessing the direct effects of climate change, and the impacts of these effects on their traditional livelihoods and subsistence activities. Simultaneously, increased human and economic activity in the Arctic represents a concurrent change that Indigenous people must adapt to.

The Arctic is a region of political and socioeconomic diversity. While Arctic areas are geographically, physically and climatically linked, there is no coherent Arctic political region. Rather, the Arctic is composed of territories located within the boundaries of eight nation states, where only Iceland lies fully within the area defined as the Arctic by, for instance, the Arctic Council (Keskitalo et al., 2013). Apart from Iceland, the Arctic comprises the remote peripheries of seven nation states, where policy matters have traditionally involved interactions with policy centers located in the south (Young, 2005). Consequently, governance structures around the Arctic are not uniform. The Arctic is rather a collection of states with great variations in local governing structures, formal or informal. There is considerable difference between governance structures even in neighboring countries such as those in Scandinavia, as well as in the local effects of governance structures. Similarly, Arctic Indigenous peoples are not uniform. There is great diversity in the cultures, languages, livelihoods and histories of Indigenous populations in the North. This diversity represents the starting point for any discussion of Arctic change from the Indigenous perspective.

As part of the North Pacific Arctic Conference on international cooperation in a changing Arctic, Sheila Watt-Cloutier has presented a view of Arctic development from the perspective of Indigenous peoples, calling for a rights-based approach to Arctic development. Watt-Cloutier emphasizes the connection between climate change and human rights, and

calls for a focus on the human face of this issue, i.e., the communities on the ground. She eloquently concludes: “We must not permit the discussion of northern development to be conducted only in terms of sovereignty, resources and economy. The focus must be on the human dimension, human communities and protection of human and cultural rights. We cannot separate political and economic development in our communities from the education, health and well-being of individuals and families” (Watt-Cloutier 2014, 16). This article presents a short commentary on Watt-Cloutier’s keynote presentation. I fully concur with her main argument that the discussion of Arctic development needs to incorporate the human dimension, i.e., the lived experience of the populations of the North. Such an approach needs to be rooted in human rights, the lived experience and human needs of the populations of the North. To complement Watt-Cloutier’s discussion, I draw attention to the knowledge dimension. In particular, I want to highlight the value of the traditional knowledge of Arctic Indigenous peoples in relation to understanding the effects of and planning for development in the Arctic. I argue that a rightsbased approach needs to incorporate and emphasize Indigenous traditional knowledge as a basis for decision making and as a basis for understanding the needs of Indigenous populations in the North. Such an approach will not only benefit Indigenous populations but also improve our collective human understanding of environmental change in the Arctic.

To elaborate my argument, I draw from a specific Arctic Indigenous livelihood, nomadic reindeer pastoralism, to illustrate the opportunities and challenges of incorporating traditional knowledge into broader governance practices. Reindeer pastoralism is the most extensive form of animal husbandry in the Arctic and subarctic (McCarthy et al., 2005). It is primarily an Indigenous livelihood involving more than 20 different Indigenous peoples in an area stretching from the North Sea to the Pacific Ocean and covering around 5 million km2 (i.e., 10-15% of the entire land area of the world). This livelihood involves approximately 100,000 people and 2.5 million reindeer. Reindeer pastoralism is thus, on the one hand, a spatially-extensive livelihood, while on the other hand it is demographically and economically marginal. In my home country, Norway, around 40% of the land area is used as reindeer pasture involving around 200,000 reindeer and 3,000 Indigenous Sámi reindeer herders.

This extensive land use is primarily a result of the nomadic strategy. As a nomadic livelihood, reindeer pastoralism is characterized by the

strategy of securing forage for animals primarily through the use of natural pastures. Sámi reindeer herders in northern Scandinavia, for instance, migrate up to 350 km, following the reindeer from summer pastures in coastal grassland areas to winter pastures in lichen-covered inland areas. This extensive and nature-based character of reindeer pastoralism implies that reindeer herding is sensitive to changes in climate, land-use, and related socioeconomic transformations.

In terms of land-use change, the following quote from a study conducted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) elaborates the challenge:

“Northern Scandinavia and parts of Russia are examples of areas where the current growth of infrastructure related to transportation, oil, gas and mineral extraction is increasingly incompatible with land requirements for reindeer husbandry. In these areas infrastructure growth is associated with the loss of traditional lands, and conditions forcing indigenous people to abandon nomadic herding patterns for more sedentary lifestyles. Infrastructure development is often concurrent with changes in regional economic activity inviting southern-based resource extraction companies interested in short-term economic gains. Such soci-economic changes not only affect cultural practices directly related to traditional reindeer husbandry, but also conflict with the use of traditional homelands for hunting, fishing and gathering.” (Nellemann et alet al., 2001, 16–17)

This study showed that 25% of reindeer pastures in Northern Norway are “strongly disturbed” by development, including 35% of the coastal summer pastures and calving grounds (which are of particular importance for nomadic reindeer herding) (Vistnes et al., 2009). Scenarios for 2050 estimate that the figure will increase to as much as 78% unless changes are made in national and regional plans (ibid).

In addition to loss of pastures, climate change is now evident in the Arctic. Climatic projections for inland winter grazing areas in my home area, Guovdageaidnu in Finnmark, anticipate winter temperature increases of 7°-8°C over the next 100 years, accompanied by increased precipitation (Benestad, 2008). Yet, considering the enormous pressure on land use, it is perhaps not surprising that reindeer herders express greater concern for industrial development than climate change (Kumpula et al., 2012; Degteva et al., 2009; Eira et al., 2009). Reindeer herders in the European Arctic

have expressed the need for more autonomy over herding decisions, e.g., herd structure, castration, and migration, in order to preserve options to meet climate change (Degteva et al., 2009; Eira et al., 2009). It has also been suggested that undermining such autonomy erodes the very resilience of the reindeer herding socio-ecological system (O’Brien et al., 2009). Herders’ perceptions are supported by studies indicating that compared to socioeconomic change, the vulnerability of reindeer herding to climate change is comparably small (Rees et al., 2008). In other words, it is not the direct ecological and weather effects of climate change that indigenous reindeer herders find most alarming, but rather the combination of increased human activity and climate change. Yet, indirect effects of climate change such as increasing human activity following increased accessibility of the Arctic from developments like the opening of the Northern Sea Route or offshore oil and gas exploration in the High North will likely accelerate the rate of fragmentation of pastures. As such, the issue of climate change is a central one for reindeer herding peoples but is inevitably linked–even inseparable–from socioeconomic changes in the North.

The most pressing challenge associated with increased human activity in the North from the perspective of reindeer herding is the reduction of spatial flexibility. In relation to climate change, spatial flexibility, or simply mobility, is a core tool used by reindeer herders to adapt to climatic variations. One direct effect of climate change in reindeer herding areas is the increased occurrence of “goavvi,” a northern Sámi term describing locked pastures resulting from rain-on-snow (Eira, 2012). Goavvi happens when rain during the winter produces an impenetrable layer of ice on top of the snow, making it difficult for the animals to reach the fodder underneath. A well-known and frequently-applied strategy for handling such conditions has been either to move the herds to different areas or, in extreme cases, to completely release control over the herds, and allow animals to search for the marginal scatterings of penetrable and available grazing areas. This type of response strategy, however, is being challenged increasingly by the fragmentation of pastures.

Reindeer herders have developed management strategies for the protection of pastures and monitoring of changes, owing to their longterm accumulated experience and skills, transferred from generation to generation. From my research on governance processes in Northern Norway, I was surprised to discover that the reindeer herding “siida” (the basic unit of social organization in Sámi reindeer herding) is currently

the only institution in Norway, monitoring and analyzing all the different types of changes spanning its customary pasture areas, as such changes may directly affect the practice of their livelihood, no matter whether it is a single tourist cabin, a major power line, or exploring prospects for mining (Turi and Keskitalo, in press). The accumulated collective knowledge of the siida includes detailed and long-term observation of land-use changes spanning several centuries over areas covering several administrative divisions. Formal governance structures, on the other hand, tend to be characterized by spatial and sectoral fragmentation in planning and decision making, meaning that land-use changes of different character such as tourism, resource extraction or infrastructure building are divided among different sectoral authorities and administrative divisions (municipal, regional or national authorities), while multiple stressors such as climatic change and socioeconomic change are treated only in passing or completely left out of the picture. Such administrative fragmentation complicates the task of decision making based on an holistic consideration of cumulative effects.

An opportunity, albeit a challenging one, thus lies in including and incorporating the siida’s and other indigenous groups’ knowledge and understanding of land-use change for better governance of these areas. Conventional tools for planning, e.g., environmental impact assessments, even in the rare cases where authors pay due diligence to include reindeer herders’ knowledge into the assessment (see, for example, Nellemann and Vistnes, 2011), are not sufficient to ensure that long-term and cumulative effects of land-use change for reindeer herding are duly assessed in decisionmaking processes. Typical flaws of conventional planning tools include the tendency of assessing only single projects and short-term effects and a lack of ongoing assessments throughout the project period (Fjellheim, 2006).

While this is primarily a governance issue, the solutions are not located only with the government. Industrial interests and other land uses also need to focus on the local level, i.e., the community level, in order to avoid the trap of “one size fits all” leading to solutions that have so often created additional challenges for local adaptation by indigenous communities. A community-level focus is central, as even neighboring communities often have different dynamics, needs and challenges. The impacts of opening a mine, building windmills, or building a new shipping port will have different impacts depending on where, when and how installations are placed. In order to understand such impacts, there is a need for

mutually respectful communication between the local-level land users and potential developers aimed at developing real understanding and mutually satisfactory solutions (rather than just achieving permission to start the development).

A major challenge of Arctic transformation is thus finding effective governance solutions that utilize the best knowledge available for land-use planning. For Indigenous reindeer herding populations, the main challenge remains finding governance solutions that do not undermine the adaptive capacity arising from traditional knowledge and intimate familiarity of the land and climate. One way of doing this is through a focus on human and Indigenous peoples’ rights. A rights-based approach emphasizes the human dimensions of Arctic development, as duly noted by Watt-Cloutier. Further, a rights-based approach diverts attention from a focus exclusively on economic gain and directs attention toward the realities of human societies in the North. The rights-based approach needs, however, to be complemented and nuanced with a focus on the knowledge and practices of people on the land.

While my home country, Norway, is often noted as being one of the more advanced countries regarding the issue of Indigenous rights, reindeer herders in Norway and Scandinavia more generally are constantly struggling to meet the challenge of Arctic change. While there is potential for development in relation to Indigenous rights in governance, a rightsbased approach also needs to be developed to incorporate a more nuanced view of the complexity of Indigenous land uses. Reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, farming and other natural resource harvesting systems often coexist in the same area, yet experience different impacts from socioeconomic developments. The reality for most of the Indigenous population in the North is a complex web of land use where no single group has exclusive rights to land use, raising the question “whose rights?” While a rights-based approach is important for highlighting local land uses, such an approach needs to be complemented by a traditional knowledgebased approach in order to incorporate an understanding of the potential impacts of Arctic development on local Indigenous communities.

In conclusion, I applaud Watt-Cloutier’s presentation for directing attention to the human impacts of Arctic development, and specifically for directing attention to the Indigenous people in the Arctic. I do want to emphasize, however, that Indigenous peoples must not only be seen as rights holders, but also knowledge holders. Indigenous and local peoples

possess unique, valid and tested knowledge about the diverse ecosystems and environments in the North.

As a final note, I want to emphasize that it is important to avoid the trap of thinking of Indigenous populations as ancient (or outdated) people. Reindeer herders, for instance, are constantly searching for economic opportunities to develop their livelihood. Fostering economic security through exploring wider markets for reindeer products, for example, could be one way to foster resilient Indigenous reindeer herding communities. Economic interest in the Arctic thus also represents an opportunity for Indigenous communities and could potentially contribute to fostering economic independence and self-sustaining communities in the North. This opportunity can only be realized, however, if the planning of Arctic development incorporates both the rights and the knowledge of Arctic’s Indigenous people.

References

Benestad, R. E. 2008. “Empirical-Statistical Downscaling of Russian and Norwegian Temperature Series.” Met.no Report 13/2008. Norwegian Meteorological Institute.

Degteva, A., Eira, O. I., Khudi, L., & Turi, E. I. 2009. Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia: Nadym and Yar-Sale. In A. Oskal, J. M. Turi, S. D. Mathiesen, & P. Burgess (Eds.), Reindeer Herders’ Voice: Reindeer Herding, Traditional Knowledge and Adaptation to Climate Change and Loss of Grazing Land (pp. 45–67). Guovdageidnu: International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry.

Eira, I. M. G. 2012. Muohttaga jáohis giella: Sái ábevirolašmáttu muohttaga birra dákkáatrievdanággis / “The Silent Language of Snow: Sái Traditional Knowledge of Snow in Times of Climate Change.” Dissertation (Ph.D.). University of Tromsø.

Eira, I. M. G., Eira, O. I., Eira, R. B. M., Magga, A. M., Ketola, N. J., & Sara, E. A. 2009. Sámi: Kautokeino, Norway and Inari, Finland. In A. Oskal, J. M. Turi, S. D. Mathiesen, & P. Burgess (Eds.), Reindeer Herders’ Voice: Reindeer Herding, Traditional Knowledge and Adaptation to Climate Change and Loss of Grazing Land (Vol. 5, pp. 19–43). Guovdageidnu: International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry.

Fjellheim, R. S. 2006. “Arctic Oil and Gas - Corporate Social Responsibility.” In R. S. Fjellheim & J. B. Henriksen (Eds.), Oil and Gas Exploitation on

Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Territories Human Rights, International Law and Corporate Social Responsibility (pp. 8–23). Guovdageidnu: Gáaldu – Resource Centre for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Keskitalo, E. C. H., Malmberg, G., Westin, K., Wiberg, U., & Müuller, D. K. 2013. “Contrasting Arctic and Mainstream Swedish Descriptions of Northern Sweden: The View from Established Domestic Research.” Arctic, 66(3), 351– 365.

Kumpula, T., Forbes, B. C., Stammler, F., & Meschtyb, N. 2012. “Dynamics of a Coupled System: Multi-Resolution Remote Sensing in Assessing SocialEcological Responses during 25 Years of Gas Field Development in Arctic Russia.” Remote Sensing, 4(12), 1046–1068.

McCarthy, J. J., Martello, M. L., Corell, R., Eckley, N., Fox, S., Hovelsrud-broda, G., … Oskal, N. 2005. “Climate change in the Context of Multiple Stressors and Resilience.” In Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (pp. 945–988). Cambridge University Press.

Nellemann, C., Kullerud, L., Vistnes, I. I., Forbes, B. C., Foresman, T., Husby, E., … Larsen, T. S. 2001. Globio: Global Methodology for Mapping Human Impacts on the Biosphere: the Arctic 2050 Scenario and Global Application. UNEP/ Earthprint.

O’Brien, K., Hayward, B., & Berkes, F. 2009. “Rethinking Social Contracts: Building Resilience in a Changing Climate.” Ecology and Society, 14(2), 12.

Rees, W. G., Stammler, F. M., Danks, F. S., & Vitebsky, P. 2008. “Vulnerability of European Reindeer Husbandry to Global Change.” Climatic Change, 87, 199– 217.

Turi, E.I. and Keskitalo, E. C. H. (in press), “The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Land-Use Negotiations: the Case of Reindeer Pastoralism and Copper Mining in Kvalsund, Northern Norway.” Polar Geography 27(3).

Vistnes, I. I., Burgess, P., Mathiesen, S. D., Nellemann, C., Oskal, A., & Turi, J. M. 2009. “Reindeer Husbandry and Barents 2030: Impacts of Future Petroleum Development on Reindeer Husbandry in the Barents Region.” Report. Guovdageidnu: International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry.

Watt-Cloutier, S. 2014. “A Rights-Based Approach to Arctic Development.” Keynote Presentation for Session V Arctic Peoples: Indigenous Responses to Arctic Development, 2014 North Pacific Arctic Conference on International Cooperation in a Changing Arctic, Honolulu, Hawaii. August 20-22, 2014.

Young, O. R. 2005. “Governing the Arctic: From Cold War Theater to Mosaic of Cooperation.” Global Governance, 11, 9–15.

Commentary

Denise L. Michels

One of the questions posed to Alaska’s leaders is, how will large-scale development in the Arctic affect nearby communities? The answer is that any new development in the Arctic will impact nearby Alaskan rural communities by straining infrastructure and local resources. Most coastal communities in rural Alaska, except for hub and sub-hub communities, have a population of less than 1,000 and have only basic infrastructure in place to sustain the existing population (e.g., five of our villages in the Bering Strait region do not have piped water and sewers). In the spring, some villages have to manage water usage so they will not run out of water, possibly creating health and sanitation concerns. At times, communities have run out of heating fuel before the first barge arrives in June, and need to have fuel flown in, costing more than the community can afford. Many of our villages do not have a port or barge landing and use the beach to land and launch landing crafts and skiffs.

Alaska is already experiencing impacts from the increase in Arctic shipping on the Outer Continent Shelf (OCS) with exploration activities that involve more vessels traveling through the Bering Straits to access leased tracts. With the opening of the Arctic Ocean, the shipping industry is now using the Northern Sea Route. While there were more than 82 vessels operating on August 10, 2014, in 2009 there were none. The Northern Sea Route Administration has approved 519 applications to date. There is an increase in vessels traversing the Northwest Passage, and at least 10 vessels have stopped at the Port of Nome over the last four years. The City of Nome is still experiencing a gold rush and gold exploration in state waters, and the change is that there are larger barge-type vessels operating in this area. This year to date there have been a total of 87 dredge vessels with 21 support craft, while in 1990 there was an average of four to five dredging vessels. All this traffic happens in a short timeframe when marine mammals and birds are migrating through the Bering Strait from June to November.

Climate change is impacting ice formation (thinner ice, ocean freezing later in the winter, and frequent fall storms causing coastal erosion due to having no shore-fast ice to protect the coast) and the migration patterns of marine mammals that depend on the ice.1 Two villages in the Bering Strait