Full report from the Nasjonal Konferanse om Arealforvaltning i Reinbeiteomrader, held in Alta, March 20, 2007. Report prepared by EALAT researcher Inger Marie Gaup Eira. Download the full report here (Norsk pdf, 84 pages)
Sammenhengen mellom simlens størrelse, kalveproduksjon og rovdyr tap i år med svært ulike beitiforhold. Torkild Tveraa, Per Fauchald, Nigel G. Yoccoz, Cathrine Hanaug. (pdf, Norsk)
KUNGL. SKOGS- OCH LANTBRUKSAKADEMIENS TIDSKRIFT Future Challenges for Reindeer Herding Societies Nummer 7 • 2007 Årgång 146
Reindeer husbandry is of great economic and cultural importance for many indigenous peoples in the Arctic and represents an interesting traditional way of life. Although the life of reindeer herding families has always been demanding, the circumpolar reindeer industry today faces major challenges. As pointed out in the Arctic Council report Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA, 2004), the predicted global climate change is expected to be articularly pronounced in the Arctic and could have a large impact on reindeer husbandry. Other major future challenges for reindeer herding and the reindeer industry are analysed in two reports from the Arctic Council, Sustainable Reindeer Husbandry (2002) and Family-based Reindeer Herding and Hunting Economies, and the Status and Management of Wild Reindeer/Caribou populations (2004). Challenges involving societal factors, gender, tourism, pasturage etc. are mentioned as important elements. Attempts have recently been made to map ‘Sami-related’ research...
Read the full report here (pdf)
Anna Degteva belongs to the Vepsian people – an indigenous minority group of the Russian Federation. In Russia, she studied at the Institute of Traditional Crafts’ Technologies for the Indigenous Peoples of the RF.
In 2006, Anna completed an interdisciplinary Master Program in Indigenous Studies, University of Tromso, Norway, where she defended her Master’s thesis, called “The Oil Industry and Reindeer Herding: the problems of implementing indigenous rights in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia”.
She has chosen a multidisciplinary approach to examine the non-implementation of the Nenets peoples rights, who experience environmental and social threats as a result of the oil industry. The research question is evaluated through an analysis of international and Russian legislation, history, social, political and economic circumstances. At the present moment, Anna is working on an article for Gáldu Cála – the Journal of Indigenous Peoples' Rights. In the near future, she is going to continue her research among reindeer herders of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug within the ENSINOR project at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Finland.
Author: Erik S. Reinert Journal: British Food Journal ISSN: 0007-070X Year: 2006 Volume: 108 Issue: 7 Page: 522 - 540 DOI: 10.1108/00070700610676352 Publisher: Emerald Group
Abstract: Purpose – This paper attempts to explain the drastic fall in income experienced by Saami reindeer herders in Northern Norway between 1976 and 2000, in spite of increasing government subsidies. Saami herders maintain a legal monopoly as suppliers of reindeer meat, a traditional luxury product in Norway. The paper argues that main explanatory variables are to be found in the interaction of a number of factors, mainly: cyclical climatic variation in Northern Norway; a system with fixed prices, independent of the variations in supply, that magnified the effects of the natural cycles; increasingly severe sanitary regulations forcing Saami herders to abandon slaughtering and preparation; and the oligopoly market powers of the non-Saami actors taking over slaughtering and processing. It is argued that the fall in herders' income resulted from a failure of the Norwegian Department of Agriculture to understand key factors distinguishing sub-Arctic herding from sedentary agriculture. Sanitary requirements and the government's quest for economies of scale in processing contributed to playing the volume of production into the hands of non-Saami oligopolies. In this way the Saami herders lost the meat production that traditionally was at the core of both their culture and their economic livelihood. Originality/value – The paper is relevant for the management of herding and other production systems in areas with cyclical production, and documents the damaging effects on the aboriginal culture resulting from Norway's exclusive use of modern agricultural science in managing such systems.
Keywords: Culture (sociology), Government policy, Norway
* JAN ÅGE RISETH Norut Social Science Research Limited and Nordic Sámi Institute, P.O. Box 250, N-8504 Narvik, Norway. Email: janar@samf.norut.no *
Protection of nature for biodiversity, and for the material livelihoods of Indigenous peoples, have much in common. Indigenous relations to nature are, however, based on unity between use and protection, implying that human use is necessary for effective protection. Often protected areas include the homelands of Indigenous peoples, whose needs and rights are still being ignored to a large extent.
This paper explores the effects of a plan for a significant increase of large nature protection areas in Norway, still under implementation. Most of the new protection areas are in the heartland of the Indigenous Sámi, whose core livelihood is reindeer management. The plan implies transfer of jurisdiction from Indigenous and local domains to formalised central domains. In several cases, this has provoked Indigenous and rural groups to organised resistance.
In this case study, there are signs of new tensions between Sámi and other rural groups. Indigenous land use can be marginalised by park restrictions and increasing pressure from visitor activity. The Sámi response was to boycott the park management board leading to a stalemate. A robust solution seems to require consideration of deeper institutional levels.
KEY WORDS National Parks; Indigenous peoples; conservation; Sámi reindeer management; institutional level analysis
You can download the full article here from Blackwell Synergy
