Gleb Raygorodetsky

Gleb Raygorodetsky is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Traditional Knowledge Initiative of the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies and a Research Affiliate with the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria. Born and raised in a coastal village in Kamchatka, Russia, Gleb is a conservation biologist with expertise in resource co-management and traditional knowledge systems. He has lived and worked with the Evèn reindeer herders, the Aleut fur seal hunters, the Caboclos pirarucu fishermen and the Gwich’in caribou hunters. For his PhD, he looked at the resilience of social-ecological systems after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the Russian Far East, by researching furbearer use and conservation in Kamchatka. Between 2006-2010 he led the development of a new global grant-making strategy for the Christensen Fund on biocultural diversity and resilience. Gleb has contributed to such magazines as Cultural Survival, Wildlife Conservation, and National Geographic, writing about climate change, traditional knowledge, and Indigenous peoples.

This photo essay offers a glimpse of the challenges that climate change presents for indigenous and local communities in northern Europe. An Arctic people of northern Finland whose livelihoods depend largely on their environment, the Skolt Sámi are searching for ways to remain resilient in the face of climate change. _____________________________________________________________________________ The land around Rautujärvi…

  The remarkable variety of life’s interdependent phenomena and processes — what we call ‘diversity’ — is being eroded by the modern forces of homogenization. The rich tapestry — woven from a countless multitude of mutually reinforcing strands of biological, cultural and linguistic relationships — is wearing out. Our increasingly fatigued world is losing its…

Deforestation, especially of tropical forests, makes up 18 percent of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — more emissions than the entire global transportation sector. The 2007 Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized that reducing deforestation would be the most significant and immediate way to begin reducing global levels of…

We have the knowledge that can contribute to finding solutions to the crisis of climate change. But if you’re not prepared to listen, how can we communicate this to you? — Marcos Terena, Xané leader, Brazil. The precipitous rise in the world’s human population and humankind’s ever-increasing dependence on fossil fuel-based ways of living have…

For millennia, Altai people herded their livestock across what is now known as the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO’s World Heritage Site, in Russia’s southern Siberia. They endured many obstacles–from Mongol hordes to Soviet oppression. Now they face a new challenge–climate change.