Reindeer herders’ views on MEAs and Arctic biodiversity

STAKEHOLDER’S PERSPECTIVE

I

Mr. Mikhail Pogodaev Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders

II

The Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH) was established in 1997 in Nadym, Russia and has a long history of unique cooperation worldwide between Indigenous reindeer herders and their institutions. The establishment of WRH provided reindeer herders with a forum for contact and cooperation, which contributed to bringing reindeer husbandry onto the international agenda. Already in 1999, the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Knut Vollebæk, took the initiative to add reindeer husbandry on the agenda of the international Arctic cooperation, which resulted in WRH being granted Observer status to the Arctic Council.

Circumpolar reindeer husbandry has a long history in the north. More than 20 different Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic have reindeer husbandry as their livelihood. Reindeer husbandry is practiced in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Mongolia, China, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. It involves some 100,000 herders and 2.5 million semi-domesticated reindeer which graze approximately 4 million square kilometres of pastures. Reindeer herders have managed vast areas in the Arctic over hundreds of years. Reindeer herding represents a sustainable model for management of these barren circumpolar areas, a model that has been developed through generations. These areas have only recently become significant for other interests, including the oil and gas industry.

Today reindeer herders face major challenges, such as effects of global change in their local societies, loss of grazing land, and warming of the Arctic. World reindeer herders, owing to their experience, traditional knowledge, and skills, have

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developed unique management strategies for protection of pastures, observation of changes, and rational use of the natural resources which should be recognized and supported. Reindeer herders should have the right themselves to determine their own future, based on their own philosophy of life and understanding of the world, and should be consulted, included, and accepted as partners when Arctic development, research, and monitoring takes place on their territories.

Metaphorically, the development of the Arctic as the new energy region of the north truly represents a “tidal wave” for the Indigenous Peoples of the north, and they must prepare to meet it – both in order to ride safely on the flood, and to settle on an even keel once the water ebbs away. The challenge is to take reindeer herders’ traditional knowledge into action for sustainable development of the Arctic and, in particular, involve reindeer herders as real partners in this process as early as possible.

The connections between reindeer husbandry as a livelihood and Arctic biodiversity are complex. One of the main challenges in reindeer husbandry today is loss of pastures resulting from increasing human activity and infrastructure development, with subsequent habitat fragmentation and reduction in biodiversity. Major drivers behind this development are the world’s need for energy and natural resources, also potentially linked to and facilitated by climate change. As such, globalization very much influences the lives of reindeer herders and the sustainability of their communities. As reindeer herding peoples over time have tried to preserve the grazing land on which they are dependent,