:: antropologi.info ::

The tundra ecosystems in Siberia are vulnerable to both climate change and oil/gass drilling. Yet the Yamal-Nenets in West Siberia have shown remarkable resilience to these changes. “Free access to open space has been the key for success” says Bruce Forbes of the University of Lapland, Finland, Environmental Research Web reports.

Forbes and five colleagues from various disciplines (including anthropology) at the University of Joensuu, Finland, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the University of Cambridge, UK, have studied the Yamal-Nenets for more than four years. The research should not only help with plans for the Nenets’ future survival but could also offer tips for other communities.

The ability to roam freely enables people and animals to exploit or avoid a wide range of natural and manmade habitats. The Nenets responded to their changing environment by adjusting their migration routes and timing, avoiding disturbed and degraded areas, and developing new economic practices and social interaction, for example by trading with workers who have moved into gas villages in the area.

“Our work shows that local people have an important role to play, one that is every bit as useful and informative as that of the scientists and administrators charged with managing complex social-ecological systems", Forbes says.

Around half of the Yamal Peninsula’s 10,000 Nenet people are herding reindeers. Average temperatures in the region have increased by 1–2 °C over the past 30 years. The area contains some of the largest known untapped gas deposits in the world.

>> read the whole story in Environmental Research Web

>> press release

Their findings were published as open access article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, see High resilience in the Yamal-Nenets social–ecological system, West Siberian Arctic, Russia.

One of Forbes’ colleagues is anthropologist Florian Stammler. He has put several papers online, among others Arctic climate change discourse: the contrasting politics of research agendas in the West and Russia (together with Bruce C. Forbes), The Obshchina Movement in Yamal: Defending Territories to Build Identities? and the magazine article Siberia Caught between Collapse and Continuity (together with Patty Gray)

SEE ALSO:

Indigenous Russians Unite Against Oil and Gas Development

Cimate Change: Inuit leader wins environment prize

Climate Change: When is the Arctic no longer the Arctic?

“But We Are Still Native People” - Tad McIlwraith’s dissertation is online

Dissertation: Survival in the Rainforest