CC BY
29
ARCTIC EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES
УДК 334.01, 334.021; 327.8
Aytalina Ivanovo1, Florian Stammler2
DETERMINING THE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN INDUSTRY, LOCAL LAND USERS AND THE STATE ON THE EXAMPLE OF KAMCHATKA AND YAKUTIA
This article analyses relations between people and resources according to two principal logics which we identified during fieldwork in the Russian Arctic and sub-Arctic: the utilitarian logic standing for the idea that humans own, control and exploit the land, and the partnership logic standing for humans living as part of the land in a reciprocal relationship. The encounter of these two in the Russian industrialised North is analyzed in the article using three case studies.
Keywords: Human-resource relations, Industrialisation, Indigenous peoples, Russian North, Extractivism
Introduction
Relations between people and the land have been characterised as opposed between two logics, the utilitarian logic standing for the idea that humans own and control the land, and the partnership logic standing for humans living as part of the land. States and industrial companies apply the first logic granting superiority of humans as deciding about the usefulness of an action on the land for humans. Indigenous and local people claim to embrace the other logic emphasizing the importance of the process and ways in which an action is carried out on the land rather than its economic usefulness. In this contribution we investigate how these two logics interact in two Russian northern regions with resource extraction. The idea that local people have enough power to accept or deny resource development carried out by external actors is not familiar to local people in our field sites in the Russian Far East. In all cases we see people agree that the utilitarian logic prevails. The partnership logic in people-resource relations can exist safely only in a narrowly assigned niche. This niche is governed by state law, which is adopted following the utilitarian logic that resources have to be useful for the majority of human society.
1 Aytalina Ivanova, PhD, Associate Professor, North-Eastern Federal University. E-mail: [email protected]
2 Florian Stammler, PhD, Research Professor, Arctic Anthropology, Arctic Centre, University of Rovaniemi, Finland. E-mail: [email protected]
Basing on our ethnographic and legal analysis from two case regions, we can develop several scenarios of the encounter of the utilitarian and the partnership logic in land resource relations, namely confrontation, coexistence and co-ignorance.
Background
Resource is what we live off. In this programme we focus more on extraction of resources from UNDER the ground, but when we analyse relations between people and the resources, we always consider that no matter where the resources are, their use goes through a human-environment relation. Resource use, resource extraction is always part of the bigger picture of our human-environment relation.
Meaningful resources are those to which people have a relation, be it of whatever kind: commercial economic, subsistence, cultural, even spiritual [4].
When we look at how resource extraction started, in a place like Neryungryi, we see that at the beginning there is always a sense-making exercise, as a result of which the relation of people to the resource changes, and land on or under which the resource is located acquires a different meaning. It is this different meaning that transforms the face of many places in the Arctic today, and as we see here in the past decades.
Relations of people and resources
We identify two main principles according to which the relations between people and their resources are organised. This forms our main theoretical background on which we develop our analysis of the encounter between various land uses, namely the extractive industries and traditional indigenous livelihoods.
1) the utiliarian logic: here the main conviction is that humans own and control the land: in the Soviet Union and other states, this idea was followed as state agents are supposed to control and conquer large resource peripheries. It is the state agents, the dominant society, that are supposed to master the land and make it useful for the entire population.
2) the Partnership logic: the main underlying idea is here that humans and the environment are equal partners. It is this idea that is on the base of most indigenous Arctic cosmologies [5].
All states and companies work according to first logic. Most indigenous peoples claim to live according to the second.
In this contribution we reflect on how do these two logics meet when extractive industries comes to indigenous lands
Methods
In our research we combined social anthropological analysis including in depth participant observation during fieldwork with legal analysis of documents, regulatory acts, laws of regional, municipal and federal importance. Using these methods, we carried out analyses of coexistence between industry and indigenous livelihoods and identified, best case and worst case scenarios. We found that the meeting of the two logics is mostly regulated by particular laws or guides (best practices). Those need to be analysed, alongside lived experience on both sides.
Human - environment relations
Paul Nadasdy [3] ha shown using examples from Canada that worldviews of indigenous peoples are in principle incompatible with the approach of the state, which becomes obvious in land claim settlements involving indigenous peoples and the state in Canada. His main argument is that all the beautiful talk about partnership, co-management, indigenous rights, still leads to subordination of the indigenous worldview to the dominant western style. Indigenous negotiators embrace the dominant worldview themselves - a situation that a Greenlandic Inuit has once called this "colonisation of the mind" (2008, keynote speech, International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences, Nuuk). In other words, indigenous activists and politicians subscribe themselves to the utilitarian logic, and have to accept a niche for their own livelihood that is granted by a superior agent (the state, the company).
Indigenous people and the land
At the heart of the encounter between industry and local / indigenous people is the question of land use and land rights. As the different interested parties around an industrial project meet, there is always "the risk and distortions inherent in translation processes'; as Nadasdy [3], notes. Therefore we ask what happens if indigenous livelihoods with their processual nature and cyclical worldview are pressed into laws made with an utilitarian logic? Nadasdy's [3] answer to this question would be that we get well-meaning paternalism.
The Russian situation
Different from Canada, or countries that adopted the resolution 169 of the International Labour Organization on indigenous and tribal peoples (ILO 169), there is no such understanding that local people own the land before industries come with the intention to extract resources. In Canada, the key case for this understanding has been in connection to the Berger Inquiry, an impact assessment study that recommended a moratorium on a pipeline project because the land rights situation on the projected pipeline territory was not clear [1].
Considering that half of the circumpolar world is owned by the Russian state, however, we suggest that understanding the process of encounter between industry, state and local people there is crucial if we want to make any more general statements about Arctic extractive industries. In the Russian North, local and / or indigenous people have usufruct rights. Their rights to negotiate with the state and with companies starts AFTER the decision to extract has been made. Whether or not to extract or not is not up for discussion usually.
The following three cases serve for our analyses of three situations that we preliminarily call confrontation, coexistence and co-ignorance in the relations among different resource users. We shall try to find out what determines these situations.
Figure 1. Map of the Russian Far East with the case sites in this contribution
Case 1, confrontation
When local people try to fight for a niche in which they practice their partnership logic in resource use, against dominant actors.
The Itelmen fishermen of Petropavlovsk and West Kamchatka live in on the shore of highly productive fishing grounds in a situation that we call confrontation: the main conflict is about restricting indigenous resource use rights. The stakes are high and the state wants to diminish the niche in which the indigenous fishermen practice traditional fishing livelihood following a partnership logic in the relation with their resource (fish). The state regulates following an utilitarian logic all land rights and fishing rights in negotiation with big industry in order to maximise profit of the resource (fish).
Our collaborators and friends there, the Lariny Family, live on West Kamchatka shore, close to the settlement of Ust-Bolsheretsk, and have been fighting for 10 years for the recognition of a Territory of Traditional nature use (TTP). According to the Federal law of
2001 [6], TTP is a territory where indigenous land users enjoy priority rights for practicing their traditional livelihoods. These territories are usually part of specially protected lands (osobo-okhranyaemye territorii), at least before another federal law in 2013 eliminated that status [7].
Figure 2. On the entry to their camp the Lariny state proudly that they got a status of Territory
of Traditional Nature use
When the Lariny fishermen finally got their land rights document, their situation turned into an open confrontation. This confrontation happened because the state (here: the oblast administration) tries to eliminate indigenous livelihood and resource use. In their utilitarian view, the Lariny's fishery is a wasted opportunity, a non-commercial use of a commercially valuable resource, namely pacific salmon. Concretely in the Lariny's everyday life, different state agencies harass the family with threatening documents for fines for violating different laws, and they restrict their quota for fishing and the time when they can fish. As Mr Larin expressed to us when we visited his camp: "they give us 15 minutes a day to practice our traditional life." The reason behind all this is that the state (the oblast structures) wants to create best possible conditions for big industry to extract most profit of the resource (fish). The industry - on their side - is interested in the elimination of fishing competitors. The less fishermen organisations there are in the area, the better it is for big companies. Here, industry transfers to the state the task of eliminating the indigenous partnership approach to the resource.
Case 2: coexistence
Consideration of mutual interests among various resource users.
Figure 3. Fishing ground of the "Arktika" kolkhoz in the Lena Delta, in the background freezing vessel owned by the state fish factory
The fishermen of the Lena Delta live on the shore of the Laptev Sea in a situation that we call coexistence. The state assigns a niche for them in a protected area and lets indigenous people live in partnership with the resource (fish) on their own terms, by granting them access to riverbanks and fishing grounds and quota for one special indigenous enterprise. Indigenous people voluntarily accepting their niche UNDER the state rule umbrella. The state accepts that indigenous peoples have their own rules that govern their livelihood on site.
The Kolkhoz artel "Arktika" (Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)) was founded in the 1920s, and is proud to be the only Arctic enterprise that since the early Soviet days did not change its name nor legal form. Since its establishment, the fishermen themselves have been the shareholders of the company.
In 1985 the Lena River Delta Biosphere Reserve, was established on a Russian Federal level, forbidding human action on the riverbank land. However, using their long tradition and indigeneity, the kolkhoz "Arktika" lobbied peacefully with the state for continuing their land and resource use rights. As a result, they got guaranteed a quota for fishing approximately 500 tons of fish yearly.
The state wants to create best possible conditions for industry to extract most profit of the resource (fish). We argue that this coexistence happened in the frame of the state superiority. It is the state that stipulates the profit margin. A state-owned enterprise, the Yakutsk fish factory, buys all the raw material (fish), directly at the catching places (rybuchastki) from the kolkhoz fishing brigades. Right there the fish is put to shock-freezing on a vessel owned by the fish factory, and shipped to Yakutsk for further processing and selling. In doing so, the state enterprise determines the terms of trade: the fishermen get 50 roubles per kilogramme fish, whereas the ready vacuum-packed fish is sold in shops for 500 roubles for the kilogramme.
Case 3: co-ignorance
We call the situation co-ignorance, where the state and companies avoid detailed regulations of resource use practices.
Co-ignorance works as long as the stakes are low, in other words, there is not too much money to earn from the practice, and industry production is small. In this case the state reserves the right to express the superiority of its utilitarian logic for the future, in case more subsurface resource extraction rights should be given to industrial companies.
Figure 4. Eveny reindeer herders camp close to the Shanuch NIckel deposit in Central Kamchatka
The Eveny herders of Kamchatka live with their reindeer between a mining area and a national park in a situation that we call the co-ignorance of dealing with other land users. On their summer pastures there is one nickel mine (Shanuch deposit) and one Gold mine (Aginskoe), with smaller operations ongoing. As of summer 2014, the nickel' mine operations were on temporary hold as the mining company was being sold to a Chinese company.
In the 1990s the head of the Bystryinski raion municipality Devyatkin issued a decree granting land rights of Eveny reindeer herders on their pastures. They got issued land documents as if their lands were TTP on a municipal level. However, as Svetlana Komarova from the Bystrinskii indigenous association highlights, the prosecutor annulled all these land documents because they supposedly contradict the forest code [2,8]. Therefore, the municipal decree lost its validity. In the Bystrinski raion, the state did not inform the reindeer herders and local fishermen and left them in the belief as if they held land rights still. As one of our informants there said, "these land titles have now become empty papers2" (pustye bumagi). Thus, in our case of co-ignorance, presence of extractive industries functions as a disincentive for the state to renew and regulate indigenous land rights. The extractive industry companies receive full state support if they would only continue and grow their production. The municipal and regional authorities ignore the need for regulation of indigenous peoples land rights. Even reindeer herders activists do not take the initiative for clarifying land rights, as they are afraid of a worsening of their situation. The confrontation case outlined from the Lariny family above makes us believe that they could be right in their fear.
Conclusion
From the cases above, we can draw the following conclusion:
- The utilitarian approach to the resource is superior in all cases
- The partnership approach to living with the resource can exist only in the niche given by the utilitarianists, those in power.
Whether or not the encounter between industry and local people end up in a situation of confrontation, coexistence or co-ignorance depend on the following conditions:
- the bigger the money, the bigger the interests, the more likely confrontation may become
- savy political subordination under the dominant utilitarian approach advocated by the state can create coexistence and a greater niche for the partnership approach to existing with the resource
- avoiding a solution of the problem can lead to stable co-ignorance, as long as stakes are low, but it will be much harder to continue such a practice when industry projects become bigger and more important for budgets.
References:
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3. Nadasdy, P. 2003. Reevaluating the Co-management Success Story. ARCTIC, 56(4), 367-380.
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5. Vitebsky, P. 2005. Reindeer People. Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia. London : Harper Collins.
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