Renewable resource use, resource development, and global processes in the Arctic
This is Section 12.2.3 of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Lead Author: Mark Nuttall; Contributing Authors: Fikret Berkes, Bruce Forbes, Gary Kofinas,Tatiana Vlassova, George Wenzel
Despite variations in economic and cultural practices, many indigenous communities throughout the Arctic share one important characteristic – their economies are vulnerable to changes caused by the global processes affecting markets, technologies, and public policies in addition to the environmental impacts of climate change. Residents of arctic communities are increasingly tied to world markets and the growth of the mixed economies of arctic communities points to widening interaction of arctic societies with the global economy[1]. Greenland’s largest single source of export income, for example, is deep-water shrimp, marketed in Europe, North America, and Japan. Oil from Alaska’s North Slope meets 25% of total US demand, and provides healthy tax revenues for the North Slope Borough’s Iñupiat residents. Development of hydropower has sparked major conflict between Saami in northern Norway and industry and governments to the south[2].
Renewable resources are a part of this global dynamic: salmon from Alaska’s Bering Sea is found in fashionable restaurants of Boston and Los Angeles within hours of being caught; Japanese technicians advise Greenlanders about how to produce specialized shrimp products ["fantails"] for Tokyo markets; wealthy European and North American hunters pursue polar bear in northern Canada for trophies; wilderness enthusiasts in places like Alaska’s Denali National Park seek wildlife experiences where subsistence hunting by indigenous peoples is banned; and animal rights activists lobby to keep Inuit hunters from selling seal skins on the European market, no matter how justifiable the practice on biological grounds.
–Caulfield, 2000
Arctic fisheries are a good example of how the effects and influences of global processes are increasingly felt in all aspects of social, economic, and cultural life in the Arctic today. Many problems experienced by North Atlantic coastal communities in the Arctic, for instance, can be attributed in part to the global restructuring of fisheries, the balance of competition between different species and different fishing areas, the globalization of the sourcing of supplies for processing plants and retail markets, and the redistribution of wealth from traditional actors, such as local fishers and local processors, to powerful global players in the form of transnational corporations. Fisheries are being transformed from industries or ways of life subject to the control and regulation of local, regional, and national authorities to a global enterprise dominated by a handful of transnational corporations[3].
Industrial development, deforestation, and pollution are also significant. In northern Russia, domesticated reindeer populations are decreasing due to the degradation of winter reindeer pastures by deforestation, industrial pollution, and overgrazing. Fewer winter pastures are available for reindeer as large territories are being occupied by the mining, oil, and gas industries, leading to greater pressure from grazing on increasingly fragile tundra and lesotundra ecosystems[4]. Several ecosystems in northern Russia are already overgrazed by reindeer. The reindeer population of the Yamal Peninsula, for example, exceeds the carrying capacity of pastures by 1.5 times, with 70% of pasture registered as low quality[5].
In Yukon Territory, concern over contaminants and dietary risks include: (1) the risks associated with increased market food consumption (for example, fewer of the protective factors associated with traditional food use, lower nutritional intake, and higher saturated fat intake), and (2) risks associated with exposure to chemical contaminants from the consumption of traditional food. Concentrations of organochlorine compounds and heavy metals are known to be very low in most market food, but are of potential concern in traditional food. Standard government analyses assume therefore that market food does not contain chemical contaminants, and that risk from contaminant intake via traditional food will be related to the level of exposure; the higher the level of exposure, the higher the supposed risk[6].
Thus, for some indigenous communities climate change may not be the most immediate issue of local concern. Yet the interrelations between industrial development, pollution and contaminants, international trade, sustainable development, and climate change (and their cumulative impacts) are poorly understood and further research is needed. With an increased focus on sustainable development of both renewable and non-renewable resources in the Arctic, future research on how local, regional, and national economies throughout the circumpolar North are being affected by climate change will need to contextualize arctic case studies with reference to the internationalization of production and exchange, the globalization of economic and industrial activity, and the activities and influences of transnational corporations and transnational practices.
There is scientific difficulty in stating how far climate change alone has affected arctic marine ecosystems in the past fifty years, for instance, as the impacts of over-fishing and over-hunting may be far greater[7]. However, Finney et al.[8] presented results that support a strong role for climate forcing in regulating abundance of northeastern Pacific fisheries over the last two millennia. Sockeye salmon return to spawn and die in the lakes in which they were born, releasing nutrients into the lake which accumulate in the sediments. By analyzing sediment cores from nursery lakes in Alaska, their research revealed the existence of multi-century regimes in salmon abundance. The two noticeable multi-century shifts in salmon abundance at ~100 BC (the beginning of a sustained period of low abundance) and ~AD 800–1200 (the beginning of a sustained period of high abundance) correspond to periods of major change in ocean–atmosphere circulation in the northeastern Pacific. Historical catch records, being of short duration, provide only a limited understanding of fish population dynamics and their response to climate change. This 2,200-year record demonstrates that very low productivity regimes, lasting for centuries, can occur even without the influence of commercial fisheries, in response to climate changes and associated oceanic changes[9].
Nor is climate change the only cause of changes to the treeline and tundra. The overgrazing of reindeer pastures in northern Russia leads to the overgrazing of lesotundra, damaging shrubs, and has an impact on the treeline, pushing it further south in some areas[10]. In Fennoscandia the development of reindeer husbandry over the last 100 years has also increased the risk of overgrazing. The shift from intensive to extensive reindeer husbandry probably reduced pressure on vegetation in some places; however it also meant that larger numbers of reindeer could be kept. In Finland, for example, the number of reindeer rose dramatically in the 1950s, with herds growing rapidly throughout Fennoscandia during the 1970s. The result was increasing grazing pressure over very wide areas[11].
In Norway, the growing numbers of reindeer and herds, together with the reduction of available pasture, have strongly reduced the most important asset of Saami pastoralists, namely flexibility. As a result, it is increasingly difficult for Saami herders to cope with variations in climate and pasture conditions[12]. Herders have strategies for dealing with climatic variability or changes in pasture which are becoming harder to utilize for a number of reasons. For example, if pasture becomes too scarce in summer owing to growing herd sizes, or if conditions become difficult because of climatic fluctuations one year, herders might leave the area early and keep their reindeer longer on autumn and winter pastures, or move their herds to temporarily vacant neighboring pasture. This flexibility is becoming increasingly problematic as fences, pasture regulations, a growing number of herds, and changing management systems combine to reduce the possibility of using such strategies[13].
Human activities, industrial development, resource use regulations, and global economic processes have far-reaching consequences for the environment and so magnify the likely impacts on indigenous livelihoods of variations in weather and climate. Indigenous economies are not self-reliant closed systems and although their involvement in global networks of production and consumption may provide means of strengthening and extending possibilities for arctic communities, they also introduce greater elements of risk and could make people and their livelihoods less resilient to coping with and adapting to climate impacts.
Chapter 12. Hunting, herding, fishing, and gathering: indigenous peoples and renewable resource use in the Arctic
12.1 Introduction (Renewable resource use, resource development, and global processes in the Arctic)
12.2 Present uses of living marine and terrestrial resources
12.2.1 Indigenous peoples, animals, and climate in the Arctic
12.2.2 Mixed economies
12.2.3 Renewable resource use, resource development, and global processes
12.2.4 Renewable resource use and climate change
12.2.5 Responding to climate change
12.3 Understanding climate change impacts through case studies
12.3.1 Canadian Western Arctic: the Inuvialuit of Sachs Harbour
12.3.2 Canadian Inuit in Nunavut
12.3.3 The Yamal Nenets of northwest Siberia
12.3.4 Indigenous peoples of the Russian North
12.3.5 Indigenous caribou systems of North America
References
Citation
Committee, I. (2012). Renewable resource use, resource development, and global processes in the Arctic. Retrieved from http://editors.eol.org/eoearth/wiki/Renewable_resource_use,_resource_development,_and_global_processes_in_the_Arctic- ↑ Caulfield, R. A., 1997. Greenlanders, Whales and Whaling: Sustainability and Self-determination in the Arctic Hanover. University Press of New England, 219pp.–Nuttall, M., 1998. Protecting the Arctic: Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Survival. Routledge Harwood.
- ↑ Caulfield, R., 2000. The political economy of renewable resource harvesting in the Arctic. In: M. Nuttall and T. V. Callaghan (eds.). The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy. Harwood Academic Press.
- ↑ Nuttall, M. 2000. Barriers to the sustainable uses of living marine resources in Vestnorden. In: J. Allansson and I. Edvardsson (eds.). Community Viability, Rapid Change and Socio-Ecological Futures, pp. 22–38. University of Akureyri and Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri.
- ↑ Callaghan, T. V., R.M.M. Crawford, M. Eronen, A. Hofgaard, S. Payette, W.G. Rees, O. Skre, B. Sveinbjörnsson, T.K. Vlassova and B.R. Werkman, 2002. The dynamics of the tundra-taiga boundary: an overview and suggested coordinated and integrated approach to research. Ambio Special Report, 12:3–5.–Vlassova, T.K., 2002. Human impacts on the tundra - taiga zone dynamics: the case of the Russian Lesotundra. Ambio Special Report 12:30–36.
- ↑ Vlassova, T.K., 2002. Human impacts on the tundra - taiga zone dynamics: the case of the Russian Lesotundra. Ambio Special Report 12:30–36.
- ↑ Receveur, O., N. Kassi, H.M. Chan, P.R. Berti and H. V. Kuhnlein, 1998. Yukon First Nations’ Assessment Dietary Benefit/Risk. Report to communities. Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment.
- ↑ Sakshaug, E. and J. Walsh, 2000. Marine biology: biomass productivity distributions and their variability in the Barents and Bering Seas. In: M. Nuttall and T. V. Callaghan (eds.). The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy. Harwood Academic Press.
- ↑ Finney, B.P., I. Gregory-Eaves, M.S. V. Douglas and J.P. Smol, 2002. Fisheries productivity in the northeastern Pacific Ocean over the past 2,200 years. Nature, 416(6882):729–733.
- ↑ Finney, B.P., I. Gregory-Eaves, M.S. V. Douglas and J.P. Smol, 2002. Fisheries productivity in the northeastern Pacific Ocean over the past 2,200 years. Nature, 416(6882):729–733.
- ↑ Vlassova, T.K., 2002. Human impacts on the tundra - taiga zone dynamics: the case of the Russian Lesotundra. Ambio Special Report 12:30–36.
- ↑ Bernes, C., 1996. The Nordic Arctic Environment: unspoilt, exploited, polluted? Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, 240pp.
- ↑ Bjørklund, I., 2004. Saami pastoral society in northern Norway: the national integration of an indigenous management system. In: D.G. Anderson and M. Nuttall (eds.). Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North. Oxford Berghahn Books.
- ↑ Bjørklund, I., 2004. Saami pastoral society in northern Norway: the national integration of an indigenous management system. In: D.G. Anderson and M. Nuttall (eds.). Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North. Oxford Berghahn Books.
