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.

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The land around Rautujärvi Lake, over 400 km above the Arctic Circle near the Norwegian and Russian borders, is home to the Skolt Sámi — reindeer herders and fishermen whose traditional ways are closely intertwined with the northern climate. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

The radiant disk of the Arctic sun hangs in the mid-September sky above northern Finland, like a ritual Sámi drum pinned to the wall inside a lavvu, a traditional Sámi dwelling. The sun’s reflection is floating gently on the still surface of Rautujärvi Lake, located over 400 km above the Arctic Circle near the Norwegian and Russian borders. Come November, according to traditional calendars created and refined over generations by the Sámi people to track seasonal cycles on their land, the sunlight would be bouncing off the ice and snow of Sápmi, as the Sámi call their land.

But the flows of air and water over this landscape are no longer in sync with the ancestral calendars, and the sun’s reflection may continue to float on the water for several weeks longer, disrupting Sámi traditional winter travel, fishing, hunting, and reindeer herding activities.

Like every Skolt Sámi, Vladimir Feodoroff is as much an expert at steering his boat on a lake as he is at lassoing reindeer during a seasonal roundup. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Vladimir Feodoroff is a Skolt Sámi, a very small, but culturally and linguistically distinct group of the Eastern Sámi. The Skolts are considered to be one of the most traditional Sámi reindeer herding and fishermen groups. They still practice the centuries-old customary system of clan-based governance, where the community council sobbar represents the highest body of decision-making, while for over 130,000 Sámi living throughout the northern reaches of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia, the dominant governance system is the Sámi Parliament.

Historically, the traditional lands of the Skolt Sámi, or Sä’mmlaž, spanned a vast territory, from Lake Inari eastward all the way to Kola Bay, the present-day location of the Russian city of Murmansk. Today, most of the Skolts live in a small pocket of the northern Lapland region of Finland, north of Lake Inari. They were relocated here when their homelands were seized by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after World War II.

The relocated Skolts eventually settled in the village of Sevettijärvi, where they continue to maintain their traditional practices and keep the endangered Skolt language alive. Most of the remaining 700 Skolts live around the Finnish municipality of Inari, some on the Norwegian side of the border, and only a few families remain in Russia.

In Finnish Lapland, reindeer no longer roam freely, having to navigate their way throughout the growing network of primary and secondary roads. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Before World War II, the Skolt families would move with their reindeer on foot, or by skis and sleds, depending on the season, along well-worn migration routes from winter pastures to summer fishing grounds across the boreal region of the Kola Peninsula. Once resettled in Finland, they had to nurture meaningful relationships with a less familiar landscape — a transition zone between the treeless fjels and boreal forest.

Here, their movement and reindeer herding practices became constrained by a growing network of roads throughout the region. Following the “snowmobile revolution” of the 1960s, there was also a rapid shift away from more traditional herding practices when families spent most of the year with their reindeer, towards a settled way of life. They came to rely more and more on mechanized transport, such as snowmobiles, small airplanes, and helicopters for gathering dispersed reindeer into herds during corralling season.

Despite these challenges and the dramatic societal shifts brought about by relocation and integration into the European Union’s (EU) economy, reindeer herding has remained at the heart of the Skolt Sámi culture and way of life, including their food, songs, clothes, and art. Adapting to rapid change is nothing new to the Skolts, and they draw on this experience as they search for ways to adapt to their latest challenge — climate change.

At his all-season fishing camp in the upper reaches of the Näätämö River — his second home after his house in Sevettijärvi — Jouko Moshnikoff (right) and his friend Teijo Feodoroff are cutting up reindeer ribs for dinner before firing up the sauna (visible in the background, at the river’s edge). Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

For the Skolts, reindeer meat is an important traditional food that is vital to their culture, helping ensure their food sovereignty in a changing landscape and climate. Skolts, like other Sámi groups, do not waste even a single hair of the slaughtered reindeer. The fine-fibered and lean reindeer meat is used for food and as a source of income; clothes are made from reindeer skins; and the antlers are carved into knife handles, various utensils, ornaments, and souvenirs for tourists.

After Finland became an EU member in 1995, the Skolt Sámi must follow burdensome EU regulations and standards for meat processing if they want to sell reindeer meat on the EU market. To comply with the new regulations, the Finnish Reindeer Herders’ Association replaced the 200 old field slaughterhouses with 10 EU regulations-compliant abattoirs staffed with mangers and veterinarians who oversee the annual processing of 1,500 tons of reindeer meat destined to the EU market.

The Skolts feel that while the market regulations may be good for commerce, they are not good for the local people and their land. The new system has made looking after their reindeer more expensive for the Skolts, forcing them to change when and where they can gather their herds. According to Pauliina Feodoroff — former President of the Sámi Council and Vladimir Feodoroff’s daughter —  the traditional method of killing reindeer inside a corral was pollution-free, but now chemicals must be used daily to disinfect EU-certified abattoirs. Moreover, many traditional practices — such as leaving some spilled blood and rapamaha, or reindeer stomach contents, on the ground to help fertilize and renew the trampled soil inside the corral — are no longer part of the modern system.

The morning sun melts the night frost on bog whortleberry (Vaccinium uliginosum) in the birch forest along the Näätämö River. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Budding birch leaves are an important spring food for reindeer craving a boost of fresh nutrients after a long winter diet of desiccated lichen. In 1966, the colder microclimate in the river valley saved the birch forest from defoliation along the river during an outbreak of the autumnal moth ( Epirrita autumnata), a cold-intolerant forest pest. In the birch forests on the south-facing hills, however, the winter temperature did not dip below -35 °C, thus allowing the moth to survive.

“I remember going fishing with my mother then,” recalls Illep Jefremoff. “And it was like having a heavy snowfall in the middle of the summer. The fish ate up the moths that fell into the water, but the birch trees dried up and died later.”

A few occasional birch stumps is all that remains of the once lush birch forest that used to support a diverse wildlife community. Two new outbreaks of autumnal moth infestation have been reported in Norway since 2005. The Skolt herders are concerned that as the climate warms, the moth outbreaks will become more frequent and spread widely, wiping out remaining birch forests and destroying an important spring food source for reindeer. The annual migration route of an individual reindeer herd is restricted to the territory of one of 56 reindeer cooperatives in Finland, limiting herders’ ability to move their reindeer away from affected areas of forest to find alternative sources of nutrient-rich spring food.

Tero Mustonen paddles across the Ylinen Lake, near his village of Selkie. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Tero Mustonen’s personal quest, under the guidance of Elders, to revitalize land-based traditions of his Finnish ancestors led him to found the Snowchange Cooperative in 2000. The Cooperative works to advance the role of traditional knowledge in environmental policy and practice. Headquartered in the village of Selkie, Finland — where Mustonen is a chief and a traditional seine fishing net master — Snowchange has grown into a respected international community-based network making important contributions towards global recognition of traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Mustonen explains that Snowchange’s goal is, “To see our culture come back — complete rebirth on the land!”

Snowchange has made important contributions to the Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment,  the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment, and the  Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) due out in 2014. Reflecting on these accomplishments, Mustonen smiles and says, “It is exciting, but a bit of punk rock — in a sense that we [a community-based cooperative] can play with the big boys [international agencies], but we still keep our own unique way.”

In addition to a solid base of over a dozen villages in Finland, Snowchange membership spans the globe, embracing communities, organizations and individuals working on local traditional knowledge-based projects in New Zealand, Canada, Russia, and Australia. All members of the Snowchange Cooperative work on developing locally appropriate, culture-based solutions to the challenges of environmental degradation, development and climate change faced by indigenous peoples and local communities around the world.

Tero Mustonen (left) and his neighbor Pekka Ikonen seine the waters of the Ylinen Lake for muikku or vendace, as European Cisco (Coregenus albula) is called here. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Summer and winter seining for vendace and other fish in the lakes surrounding their community has always been an important subsistence activity for Selkie villagers. But now they worry about the environmental impacts of climate change on their subsistence fishery. Selkie residents have observed seasonal shifts in wind patterns, delays in freeze-up, increase in summer temperatures, earlier spring thaws and changes in the patterns of snow and rainfall. Ice leads — areas of open water that form when lake ice fractures and is kept open by the current — no longer occur in places well-known to local people, making winter travel on the ice a lot more treacherous.

Old residents of Selkie remember that the winter of 1986 was the last real winter when the lakes and rivers were frozen by mid-November. Today, the ice forms only in January when the temperature finally dips below -20°C for several nights in a row. Finland’s hottest daily temperature of 37 °C was recorded in 2010 not far from Selkie. As summers become warmer, the fish seek cooler waters at the bottom of deeper lakes, which makes seining less reliable.

Like generations of Skolts before him, Jouko Moshnikoff welcomes guests at his fishing camp with salted and cold-smoked Atlantic salmon caught nearby. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Fishing for Atlantic salmon ( Salmon salar) has always been an important part of Skolts’ subsistence and cultural heritage, and indeed, they consider themselves to be more fishermen than reindeer herders. Today, in addition to traditional delicacies, Moshnikoff can also offer his guests a few store-bought extras — like apples from Spain and vodka from Estonia — shipped to Finland from other EU countries. During the long winter evenings, after a skin-scalding sauna and a hearty meal, Moshnikoff would crank up a Honda generator from Japan to watch a show or a sports program on his Made-in-China TV.

While these changes add a great deal of convenience and comfort to their lives, Moshnikoff and other Skolt Sámi worry about the consequences and the real costs of such benefits of the global economy for local communities. They recognize that the changing climate is the price they are paying for the fossil fuel-infused food production and transportation system that, while delivering the goods to their homeland, makes their traditional livelihoods, such as the Atlantic salmon fishery on the Näätämö River, increasingly difficult to sustain. Feeling powerless to change the global economic model, the Skolts are nevertheless determined to find a way to sustain their traditional salmon fishery under changing conditions.

On the porch of Jouko Moshnikoff’s cabin — against the backdrop of one of the most significant spawning sites for Atlantic salmon on the Näätämö River — Illep Jefremoff, Vladimir Feodoroff and Tero Mustonen (left to right) examine the area map of the region. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

To describe their work last summer, Feodoroff shows Tero all the traditionally known spawning sites that he visited with Jefremoff as part of the project “Skolt Sámi Survival in the Middle of Rapid Change”. The goal of this collaboration between the Skolt Sámi, the Snowchange Cooperative and the United Nations University (UNU) Traditional Knowledge Initiative is to help the Skolts to develop a climate change adaptation plan. The project is part of the international Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) initiative that is being developed and coordinated by a Peru-based indigenous non-profit organization, ANDES, and supported by UNU.

By applying the IPCCA methodology of community-led self-reflection, evaluation, and future-visioning based on local worldviews and traditional knowledge, the Sevettijärvi Skolts are developing a community-based climate change adaptation plan. Out of this process a collective consensus has emerged that the climate change challenges faced by the reindeer, while significant, are manageable given the present-day nature of reindeer herding. Instead, the Skolt Sámi identified their customary salmon fishery, the other half of their traditional subsistence and cultural identity, as a much greater concern.

As a result, the Snowchange-Skolt partnership has chosen to focus their climate change adaptation efforts on enhancing the resilience of the Skolts’ traditional salmon fishery along the Näätämö River. After visiting all traditionally known spawning sites during the last summer and holding several community-based workshops and discussions, the Skolt-Snowchange partnership is planning on putting together an initial draft of the Atlantic salmon co-management plan for the Näätämö River in 2013, to begin discussions with other salmon users along the watershed, and the representatives of the state fisheries agency, about the future of the Näätämö salmon.

A late-September morning’s  frosty air thickens into fog above the Näätämö River, enveloping birch trees on the riverbank. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

The Näätämö River is one of the few remaining free-flowing waterways in northern Europe that still supports wild populations of Atlantic salmon. The river meanders for 80 km from Lake Inari northward through Finland, until it reaches the Skoltefossen falls at the Norwegian border, 20 km from the Barents Sea. On average, out of eight tonnes of salmon caught annually along the river, only 20 percent comes from Finland the rest is caught in Norway. In addition to the Skolt Sámi and other locals, who are legally allowed to use fishing nets and rods to catch salmon, around 700 tourist anglers also descend on the Näätämö River every summer for the salmon run.

The Skolts feel that the significance of the Atlantic salmon fishery to their traditional culture has not been adequately recognized by the state fishery agencies. The Skolts have never had a real say in how the salmon fishery and the river are managed. The project partners are hopeful, however, that in the coming years their climate change adaptation project will help shift the balance of power and engage state officials and other stakeholders in a more equitable dialogue about the future of the Näätämö salmon fishery.

Over breakfast at Jouko Moshnikoff’s cabin, Tero Mustonen, Illep Jefremoff, and Vladimir Feodoroff (left to right) mull over the next steps in their climate change adaptation project. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

The Skolts realize that there is little they can do about the Norwegian Sydvaranger mine, an open pit iron ore mine that pollutes the fjord connected to the estuary of Näätämö River. Neither can they prevent an increase in risk of disease, breeding difficulties and genetic contamination in wild Atlantic salmon, caused by the farmed salmon escaping from Norwegian fish farms.

Still, based on the project’s first field season, the group is confident that they can do a lot to enhance the resilience of their traditional salmon fishery on the Finnish side of the border. Their main goal is to enhance spawning habitat and improve salmon survival along the Näätämö River. This includes restoring traditional salmon spawning grounds and reducing the predatory species like pike (Esox lucius), burbot (Lota lota) and mink (Neovison vison) that are hunting juvenile salmon or smolt. The group also feels that instead of three nets that the local people are legally permitted to use during the salmon fishing season, no more than a single net or just lures should be permitted for catching salmon. “Getting ten salmon per person in the summer is enough for us, Skolts,” says Feodoroff, “Because we just use it for subsistence, not to sell.”

By putting forward a set of such specific recommendations, the Skolts feel they should be able to develop a dialogue with state fisheries officials about their needs and the value of their traditional knowledge about salmon. The project is also creating pathways for engaging other groups of fishermen who rely on salmon for subsistence, recreation, and tourism on both sides of the Finnish-Norwegian border. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop a Näätämö River Atlantic Salmon Co-Management Plan that would create a more equitable governance structure for decision-making, compared to the existing rigid architecture based on trans-boundary bilateral agreements between Finland and Norway. The project partners hope that the envisioned co-management plan would help revamp the current rigid top-down regime through creating an equitable space for participation and contributions of all the groups who want their healthy relationships with the Näätämö River salmon to continue for generations.

In front of his house on the shore of Lake Sevettijärvi, Illep Jefremoff holds the Eastern Sámi Atlas open to the page with a picture of himself and his dog Kepu, checking fishing nets in the winter of 1993. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

Jefremoff contributed to the Eastern Sámi Atlas, sharing his knowledge and photographs of Skolt traditional activities, like setting fishing nets under the ice. The Skolts and the Snowchange Cooperative, with the support of UNU and the Nordic Council of Ministers, developed and published the Eastern Sámi Atlas as part of the Skolt climate change adaptation project. This comprehensive tome is a significant land-use document developed by any Sámi group. It shares several centuries of their history, through photographs and maps, describing how the Eastern Sámi, including the Skolt Sámi, lived on their traditional territory.

The real value of the volume, however, is in that it is truly a community effort to make their unseen histories visible. For their work on this project and the publication of the Atlas, the Snowchange Cooperative was honored with the Skolt of the Year Award in 2011, despite being a Finnish organization.

“Snowchange’s work with Sámi is very straightforward — it’s a peace-making plan,” explains Mustonen. Snowchange is trying to address the painful legacy of centuries of encroachment and assimilation by southern Finns on traditional Sámi territories. “All the work that Snowchange is doing with Sámi is about this, be it a nomadic school project or a climate change adaptation work or the Atlas. It is all about reconciliation,” says Mustonen. “If we can maintain a respectable relationship with Sámi and provide them with space and rights they ought to have, we are also healing ourselves,” he concludes.

To the unfamiliar eye, the lakes and forests of northern Finland look as pristine and unchanged as they have been for the last 9,000 years, after the glaciers retreated northward in this part of Europe. Photo: © Gleb Raygorodetsky 2012.

For the local people, the interdependencies between the sun, water, air, forest, fire, wildlife, fish and people are changing rapidly and in unfamiliar ways. “Who are these new winds?” ask local Elders. ”We do not know them, but we still try to greet them.” The changing climate alters the intricate relationships between the elements of the Skolt traditional territory. The future of the Skolts and their land in this time of climatic upheaval depends on their ability to find ways of maintaining the balance in their relationships with the land and water, forest and tundra, reindeer and salmon. This could be achieved, they feel, only through respectful collaboration with others who have a stake in the future of the region and its biocultural heritage, be they European anglers, Norwegian salmon farmers, or a Finnish NGO.

“It is the time to say goodbye to some things we’ll never see again,” says Mustonen of Snowchange. “But it is also time to build new knowledge. And this knowledge can only emerge through keeping strong connections with the traditional territory. We must be there on the land as it is changing, so that we can change with it.”

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This photo essay is part of Conversations with the Earth (CWE): Indigenous Voices on Climate Change initiative and was published earlier here. To learn more about CWE, visit it on Facebook and Twitter.

Learn more about the Sami from National Geographic magazine.

Fisherman are reporting problems with traditional fish spawning grounds after coral damage by the king tide Manus province, Papua New Guinea. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for Conversations with the Earth (CWE).

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 vitality, luminosity and splendour under a relentless assault from various “izations”, such as industrialization, colonization, secularization, computerization, globalization, and harmonization, to name a few.

The multiple crises are intensifying and converging. Climate change is hastening ecosystem degradation; peak oil leads to a scramble for other carbon-based fuels and ultimately an even greater carbon footprint; and over-consumption, poverty, species loss, and ecosystem and cultural decline are deepening, further precipitating systemic collapse.

The country knows. If you do the wrong thing to it, the whole country knows. It feels what’s happening to it… Everything is connected somehow… — Lavine Williams, Koyukon Elder, quoted by Richard Nelson.

At the Earth’s 11th Hour, when the environmental and social consequences of human-induced changes have become increasingly apparent, there is growing recognition that the ways of thinking that originated in the dominant, largely linear, reductionist worldview must be abandoned. As Albert Einstein observed, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” We must concede that, to date, no amount of technological “tweaking”, guided by the current dominant paradigm, has moved humankind out of its dire predicament. We therefore need to nurture a new way of thinking about the World We Want that is more aligned with the non-linear and interdependent nature of life. Such a paradigm shift is vital if we are to avoid the fate of humankind foretold by Alan Weisman in his non-fiction account of The World Without Us .

Scientists, managers, and policymakers are gradually recognizing the limitations of the current reductionist dualistic covenant, which postulates nature and culture as distinct entities and humans as separate from nature. This view fails to reflect the true essence of our relationship with the Earth and is therefore unhelpful in addressing the ultimate and proximate causes of our planet’s imperiled condition.

Lima Isama Pedro with a pine branch. Mojandita, Ecuador. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for CWE.

Recent years have seen the emergence of a number of integrative fields of inquiry — such as Systems Science, Resilience Science, Ecosystem Health, Ethnoecology, Deep Ecology, Gaia Theory and others. These fields seek to advance our understanding of the complex non-linear and multi-scale interactions between culture and nature, to incorporate insights from both the biological and the social sciences and often to develop respectful and equitable ways of relying on the traditional knowledge systems of land-based communities and the worldviews of indigenous peoples, together with mainstream scientific approaches, to tackle the multiple challenges facing the planet. Local and international organizations involved in biodiversity conservation, wildlife management, cultural preservation and sustainable development have become increasingly engaged in exploring such synergistic approaches and integrating them into decision- and policymaking processes.

Regrettably, the specialization and power hierarchy in the natural and social sciences continue to support an environment of learning and practice that is mired by intellectual siloing and exacerbate the problems we face rather than promote solutions. Still, there is an emerging recognition that as we contemplate and try to transform today’s economic, political and personal realities into a more sustainable, equitable and diverse world, we must rely on the holistic view of human-environment interactions. We have to discover (or re-discover) more synergistic ways of envisioning and interpreting social and ecological systems, as well as the environmental and cultural problems beleaguering them. We must grow wiser, so that the way we experience, interact with and value the Earth and its constituent elements is firmly grounded in an inherently holistic worldview.

A number of integrative fields of inquiry have been emerging in recent years, seeking to advance our understanding of the complex interactions between culture and nature.

One integrative way of looking at the world and our relationship with it is through the lens of biocultural diversity. Terralingua’s Director Dr. Luisa Maffi, one of the pioneers of this synergistic field of inquiry, characterizes biocultural diversity as “the pulsating heart of the globe, the multi-faceted expression of the beauty and potential of life on this planet — a precious gift for everyone to cherish and care for”. Biocultural diversity describes life-sustaining interdependencies and co-evolution of various forms of diversity — a view of the world that has been integral to indigenous ways of knowing — from landscapes to ecosystems, from foodways to languages.

Proponents and practitioners of valuing biocultural diversity — at global, regional and local scales — are working hard to infuse the fields of education, policy, conservation and sustainable development with more holistic models and practical approaches. “It is hard to ignore the similarities between the practical forces driving biological extinctions and cultural homogenization,” contends David Harmon, the President of the George Wright Society. “The only effective way to meet them is with a cohesive, biocultural response.”

Nomadic tribe preparing goat cheese supply before winter time. Zanskar, India. Photo by Nicolas Villaume for CWE.

The preamble to the Earth Charter states that humankind is at a critical juncture in Earth’s history, a time when the future holds both great peril and tremendous promise. As we seek our path toward the just future endowed with diversity and resilience, we must be guided by the vision of the world we would be proud of to leave to our children’s children. Will it be the proverbial Garden of Eden, or Weisman’s World Without Us, or a techno-cyber reality drawn up on a computer screen and engineered in a lab in response to contrived demands and incentives of the temperamental markets? The world we leave to future generations must be the place where the global community of custodians of Earth’s biocultural heritage sows and nurtures the seeds of an abundant and resilient future that is deeply rooted in collective biocultural wisdom and practice. Millennia of co-evolutionary relationships between humans and their surroundings — with people relying on their environment for survival while adapting to and modifying it — gave rise to a tremendous diversity of bioculturally-endowed systems around the globe.

Comprising a mere 4 percent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples care for over 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, directly maintaining close to 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity.

Today, many positive examples of biocultural systems endure around the world, as documented in a database maintained by the Resilience Alliance and in the Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook, Dr. Maffi’s latest book on the subject. Many of these examples come from indigenous peoples who continue to maintain biocultural systems worldwide through nurturing an intimate relationship with the planet — known to many of them as Mother Earth — something that our modern societies have all but forgotten. Comprising a mere 4 percent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples continue to care for over 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, directly maintaining close to 80 percent of the planet’s remaining biodiversity. In this task, they continue to be guided by their collective indigenous knowledge passed on through generations of oral teachings and sustained through practice.

The ‘Los Derechos de la Pachamama’ (Rights of Mother Earth) is an inspiring video created as a joint project between five indigenous communities in Peru with the support of InsightShare and Conversations with the Earth.

The essential feature of biocultural systems that has ensured their persistence in time and space has been their resilience. Prominent resilience scientist Dr. Brian Walker describes resilience as the propensity of a system to learn, adapt, self-organize (through co-evolution between different sub-systems) and absorb change without losing functional integrity. Resilient systems are characterized by a diversity of patterns, functions, and processes — from nutrient cycles to ecological niches, from inter- and intra-specific variability to between and within the richness of languages, from epistemologies to traditional institutions of governance — that ensures a wide range of responses to external or internal challenges.

Resilient systems are characterized by a diversity of patterns, functions, and processes that ensures a wide range of responses to external or internal challenges.

Another important characteristic of a resilient system is its modularity, the presence of relatively autonomous “nodes” (e.g., local communities, ecological refugia, pastoral networks) throughout a system that reduces its over-connectedness and therefore enhances its ability to resist rapid transmission of environmental and social shocks. Tight feedback mechanisms between various elements of biocultural systems enable detection of approaching thresholds, or tipping points (from coral- to algae-dominated systems, from rainforest to savannah, from commons to private property, from subsistence to market-based economy), long before the system is on the verge of flipping into a new, potentially irreversible state.

Functional overlap is a reflection of redundancy in the system that enhances its continuity when some of its elements experience change (e.g., carbon sequestration is achieved in different parts of an ecosystem; traditional diets include varied sources of protein; wildlife harvest is regulated through different institutional arrangements). Substantial social capital — in the form of trusted social networks, wise leadership, intergenerational transmission of knowledge, an equitable integration of different ways of knowing into decision-making —  also allows for diverse systemic responses to change.

Maintaining and enhancing the resilience of biocultural systems is fundamental to sustaining social and ecological systems and achieving the coveted goal of sustainability in meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Such efforts are less about “what”, “when”, or “where”, but more about “how”, because the recognition of the value of biocultural diversity must permeate every aspect of human-environment interactions, policy and decision-making, be it establishment of protected areas, wildlife management, cultural preservation, food production, or poverty alleviation.

The current trajectory of humankind’s “progress” however, is pushing us outside of what the researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Center describe as the planetary boundaries and away from the future that is resilient and endowed with biocultural diversity. The juggernaut of the dominant development paradigm, manifested by the Western multi-planet lifestyle, is sustained through a constant expansion and exploitation of scarce resources, consumerism, privatization of the commons and the homogenization of global cultures. As a result, diversity within and across landscapes and ecosystems is being diminished at local, regional and global scales. Biodiversity is disappearing at unprecedented rates; languages are vanishing; and associated systems of knowledge, wisdom and practice that have regulated human-environmental interactions for generations are also disappearing.

The juggernaut of the dominant development paradigm is sustained through a constant expansion and exploitation of scarce resources, consumerism, privatization of the commons and the homogenization of global cultures.

Globalization further removes us from the natural world, truncating feedback mechanisms and diminishing our ability to comprehend and adequately respond to the immediacy of our predicament, such as, for instance, climate change. Humankind has become a planetary force that is making the world increasingly ecologically, economically, socially and culturally “over-connected”, and therefore more susceptible to swift propagation of adverse conditions through the system, be they economic vulnerabilities, weather extremes, or food scarcity.

Several factors appear to limit our ability to maintain a bioculturally resilient world.

• Wisdom, knowledge, practice and values embedded in local worldviews that have evolved over millennia to recognize the interconnectedness of people and nature, are rapidly eroding amongst land-based communities and indigenous peoples who value Mother Earth and all its beings. Amongst other things, this is often a result of external and internal pressures that instill a false sense of inferiority on such worldviews relative to the dominant one.
• The scientific community lacks conceptual or methodological agreement on how to internalize the interdependent nature of biological and cultural diversities and the common threats to them into research agendas and conservation and management approaches.
• There are too few models, guidelines and tools for the policymaking and management communities that explicitly integrate biocultural diversity and resilience (but see Terralingua’s Index of Linguistic Diversity).
• Human and financial resources are limited for implementing and sustaining biocultural diversity-based initiatives amongst the groups who are interested in integrating them into their strategies and actions.
• There is poor understanding amongst the general public that, in the words of the late Dr. Darrell Posey, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_A._Posey there are “inextricable links between biological and cultural diversity”. Hence, the impact of individual and collective decisions and actions on resilience of biocultural systems are poorly understood.

As documented in Dr. Maffi’s book and a dedicated website, a growing cohort of local and indigenous individuals, communities, non-profit organizations and their international partners is working hard towards overcoming these obstacles by opposing the dominant reductionist paradigm while demonstrating and celebrating the importance of biocultural diversity. Several private foundations (The Christensen Fund, The Seventh Generation Fund, the Swift Foundation), non-profit organizations and initiatives ( Gaia Foundation, the Global Diversity Foundation, Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Assessment, Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas, Land is Life) and multilateral agency programs and partnerships ( Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, The Satoyama Initiative, Satoumi Initiative, UNESCO’s Man & Biosphere Programme, the UN University Traditional Knowledge Initiative and others) have been focusing explicitly on a more holistic way of thinking about achieving sustainability and biodiversity conservation. Many of these groups work on initiatives that are planned and implemented in close partnership with, or are guided directly by, indigenous peoples.

Our best hope for escaping the thickening fog of the dominant economic development paradigm is to focus our limited human and financial resources on maintaining and connecting resilient nodes of biocultural diversity.

Their efforts demonstrate that our best hope for escaping the thickening fog of the dominant economic development paradigm is to focus our limited human and financial resources on maintaining and interlinking resilient nodes of biocultural diversity — whether these are geographically anchored local communities, indigenous nations, or global networks of like-minded individuals on the path to revitalizing and sustaining traditions of biocultural wisdom and practice.

The late Thomas Berry, a renowned cultural historian and ecotheologian, described our age as the dark end of the Cenozoic evolutionary tunnel that the past 65 million years has been. Whether we can emerge from the twilight of self-inflicted crises into the light of an Ecozoic era — when human conduct would be based on valuing the Earth community as an integrated web of mutually synergetic relationships — depends on whether we have the gumption and heart to choose the right path. The current focus on “feel-good” stories in addressing global crises is not helpful for making this choice. However enticing and comforting it is for us to follow the dangling carrot of proclamations that “Changing the world does not have to conflict with living the life you want”, as the authors of World Changing: The Users Guide for the 21st Century argue, such a mindset does not reflect the reality of the changes that we must make.

350.org founder Bill McKibben is quoted as saying that, “It’s not that we have a philosophical difference with the fossil fuel industry — it’s that their business model is destroying the planet.” Business models, however, arise out of a particular way of seeing the world. The currently dominant paradigm of unbridled economic growth and development is firmly rooted in a myopic worldview that is completely ignorant of the interdependence of people and nature and averse to creating or nurturing conditions that support biocultural resilience.

It is therefore imperative that our efforts to deal with the contemporary social and ecological challenges facing the planet are firmly rooted in a holistic worldview, such as biocultural diversity and resilience thinking. In the words of Tom Goldtooth, the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, our global efforts must be about “systems change”, or a paradigm shift, toward learning from such synergistic worldviews as indigenous traditions of relating to the Earth with respect, reciprocity and reverence.

Whether or not humankind is going to achieve such a systems change and succeed in transitioning into the Ecozoic Age depends ultimately on our individual and collective courage to commit to a more holistic worldview that is based on valuing biocultural diversity for our own and our planet’s wellbeing.

For such a transformation to occur, a few key elements must be present. We must embrace change as an inalienable part of life, rather than trying to avert it at any cost. We must be realistic about the scope and scale of what should be done to correct the course, as well as what each of us is capable of doing him or herself. We must also expand our notion of community from a group of people united by their geographic or genetic proximity, to a broader global community inclusive of other like-minded individuals and groups united by their recognition of the value of biocultural diversity as the very “pulsating heart” of Nature. We must work towards a biologically and culturally rich world not only through our work, but more importantly by changing our own thinking and actions. Only through such comprehensive transformation of our own nature could we hope to ensure that Nature is bioculturally resilient for generations to come.

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The earlier version of this blog was published on the United Nations University blog.

NewsWatch blog posts on biocultural diversity could be found here.

The photos and video featured in this article appear courtesy of Conversations with the Earth. You can join the CWE conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

Indeed, member States to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed that Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) initiatives should become an important climate change mitigation mechanism to help in maintaining or reducing the global atmospheric concentration of GHG.

REDD initiatives aim to reduce GHG emissions by assigning forests a monetary value based on their capacity to absorb and store atmospheric carbon. REDD+ initiatives attempt to incorporate additional sources of forest value, such as ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and local livelihoods.

Photo: Nicolas Villaume/CWE from “ Guarani: The Price of Carbon“

Both REDD and REDD+ approaches feed into carbon markets that are supposed to generate significant financial flows from companies with high degrees of GHG emissions in developed countries (e.g., from burning fossil fuels to create electricity) toward less polluting, carbon-neutral or carbon-negative activities in developing countries (e.g., community-managed forestry). The global forest carbon-based market is projected to generate US$30 billion a year.

Amongst other things, carbon markets are expected to provide significant financial rewards for indigenous peoples and communities to continue to preserve their traditional forested lands. Since 2008, over US$7.5 billion has been committed to REDD+ projects, with many more billions promised. The main global REDD+ database currently has 647 registered projects in 40 countries amounting to US$3.32 billion.

Most of these initiatives are located on indigenous lands, since indigenous peoples legally own more than 11 percent of the world’s remaining forests, with traditional ownership and land tenure covering an even greater area, which supports close to 80 percent of the planet’s terrestrial biodiversity.

Some proponents of REDD+ initiatives argue that these projects would help sustain local cultures and communities, while protecting global biodiversity. Others are more cautious, pointing out that such outcomes could be achieved only when collective and individual land rights and indigenous customary laws, as enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), are properly recognized. To date, however, many indigenous communities remain unrecognized by state governments, while the essential elements of UNDRIP (e.g., Free Prior and Informed Consent, or FPIC) are absent from REDD+ initiatives.

Avoided-deforestation projects pose a problem rarely considered: the fate of the forest dwellers themselves. Photo: Nicolas Villaume/CWE from “ Guarani: The Price of Carbon“

Debates about the pros and cons of market-based mitigation measures continue at the local, national and international levels. On the one hand, some indigenous communities see potential local economic benefits of carbon trading projects, especially when traditional low-carbon livelihoods can be supported. Several indigenous communities (e.g., the Paiter-Surui people of Brazil) have been actively participating in setting up initiatives to benefit from carbon trading regimes or payment for ecosystem services (the benefits of nature to households, communities and economies) that compensate them for maintaining or enhancing these natural processes such as water purification, flood mitigation, or carbon sequestration.

However, it has been argued by other indigenous groups that “offsetting” one environmentally damaging practice (very likely to be detrimental to the indigenous peoples or local communities of that particular place) with a seemingly less damaging or even “positive” initiative somewhere else through carbon trading, makes achieving FPIC impossible and goes against indigenous worldviews that are based on respect, reciprocity and reverence toward Mother Earth rather than its monetary value (as articulated in, for example, the Kari-Oca II Declaration).

Many indigenous peoples, therefore, oppose such endeavours, arguing that assigning market value to communally stewarded resources destroys local biological and cultural diversities and undermines the resilience of local social-ecological systems.

The scale of the REDD+ experiment and its aspirational and technological, rather than experiential and community-based nature, have led to considerable problems and delays with its implementation. These challenges cannot be overcome without equitable and respectful participation of indigenous and local communities in all stages of REDD+ activities.

Recently, an Expert Workshop on Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples was organized by the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, Traditional Knowledge Initiative (UNU-IAS TKI) and IPCC. In March 2012, in Cairns, Australia, indigenous experts and researchers from around the world gathered and highlighted the following issues with REDD+ initiatives:

• National governments, the international community, the private sector and international agencies must recognize the FPIC of indigenous peoples and local communities. This is a prerequisite to ensuring that indigenous peoples and local communities can negotiate the use of their forests and benefit from such initiatives as REDD+.
• The lack of local understanding of the broader goals of REDD+ is a barrier to the implementation of such initiatives. Communication about these topics must be a continuous process that engages the local communities as well as national governments.
• The interaction between domestic legal frameworks for implementing REDD/REDD+ mechanisms and customary land tenure or community land rights is not always clear-cut with regard to ownership of carbon credits.
• The frameworks and bodies governing REDD+ implementation range from multilateral state-centered efforts to bilateral agreements between countries, and voluntary certification schemes. They may intersect with international legal regimes concerning indigenous peoples, biodiversity and cultural heritage and with national, regional and local community and indigenous governance arrangements.
• While many frameworks governing REDD+ contain safeguards and policies to address indigenous and local communities’ rights, there is often little oversight and accountability of these frameworks at the implementation stage.

For REDD+ initiatives to achieve substantial reductions in GHG emissions while doing no harm and, wherever possible, benefiting indigenous peoples, it is crucial to develop and implement legal, social, environmental and accountability safeguards. The approaches being developed to address social safeguards and ensure meaningful and equitable participation of indigenous peoples and communities must integrate indigenous worldviews and be closely monitored throughout all phases of REDD+ project development and implementation.

Recognizing the importance of these issues, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) committed to conducting an assessment of how indigenous peoples’ rights and safeguards are being addressed in REDD/REDD+ projects. The report will be presented at the Forum’s 12th session, in 2013. UNU-IAS TKI has been assisting UNPFII with the preparation of the REDD/REDD+ report (due out in May 2013) to help delegates and indigenous peoples around the world achieve a better understanding of the likely benefits and risks of REDD+ proposals.

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The earlier version of this blog was published on the United Nations University blog.

For more information and updates regarding the UNU-IAS Traditional Knowledge Initiative please visit their website, Facebook page and Twitter page.

Some photos for this article were provided by Nicolas Villaume/ Conversations With the Earth. You can join the CWE conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

The precipitous rise in the world’s human population and humankind’s ever-increasing dependence on fossil fuel-based ways of living have played a significant role in raising the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG). As a result, global temperatures are increasing, the sea level is rising, and patterns of precipitation are changing. At the same time, storm surges, floods, droughts and heat waves are becoming more frequent and severe. The consequent decline in agricultural production, increasing freshwater scarcity, and spread of infectious diseases, are degrading local livelihoods and diminishing human wellbeing around the world.

Indigenous peoples are the ones affected by the climate change the most, although they have contributed little to its causes. This is largely a result of their historic dependence on local biological diversity, ecosystem services and cultural landscapes as a source of their sustenance, wellbeing, and resilience.

Photo by Nicolas Villaume/CWE

Posakei Pongap | Lawes village, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea

“This place was beautiful, but no more,” says community elder Posakei Pongap. Thirty years ago, a grove of sago trees stood here, home to an abundant population of tree-dwelling opossums. Saltwater encroachment has since poisoned the trees’ roots, and low tide now reveals a barren, cemetery-like landscape. 

The very identity of indigenous peoples is inextricably linked with their lands, which are often located at the social-ecological margins of human habitation —small islands, tropical forests, high-altitude zones, coasts, desert margins, and the circumpolar Arctic. At these margins of the dominant society’s encroachment on global biocultural heritage, the consequences of climate change include effects on agriculture, pastoralism, fishing, hunting and gathering, and other traditional activities, including access to water.

Photo by Nicolas Villaume/CWE

Tsewang Regzin | Kumik, Zanskar, India

As a Himalayan glacier melts above them, pragmatic Zanskari farmers and pastoralists have decided to uproot their 1,000-year-old village beside a now-drying stream. In the absence of drastic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, their decision may foretell the fate of millions of people dependent on high-mountain water everywhere, from Pakistan to California. To those populations, the villagers offer striking lessons: acknowledge your vulnerability, act decisively, keep the spirits of the old place with you, rebuild with cheerful resignation (and passive solar houses) —and above all, take responsibility for the impact of your way of life, before more damage is done.

Indigenous peoples are not mere victims

Indigenous peoples, however, are not mere victims of climate change. Comprising only four per cent of the world’s population (between 250 to 300 million people), they utilize 22 per cent of the world’s land surface. In doing so, they maintain 80% of the planet’s biodiversity in, or adjacent to, 85% of the world’s protected areas. Indigenous lands also hold hundreds of gigatons of carbon — a recognition that is gradually dawning on industrialized countries that seek to secure significant carbon stocks in an effort to mitigate climate change.

Indigenous peoples are excellent observers and interpreters of change on the land, sea, and sky. Their community-based and collectively held traditional knowledge accumulated and maintained through practice over countless generations, offers valuable insights into the state of the environment. Indigenous knowledge possesses chronological and landscape-specific precision and detail that is often lacking from scientific models developed by scientists at much broader spatial and temporal scale, including those used to understand the magnitude of climate change consequences. Moreover, indigenous knowledge provides a crucial foundation for community-based adaptation and mitigation actions that can sustain resilience of social-ecological systems at the interdependent local, regional, and global scales.

Ritual Visit To Our Father Huaytapallana.

Quechua villagers carry out an ancient tradition of seeking guidance from an Apu, or sacred Mountain, in the Andes of Peru. Produced by the villagers, this video has become enormously symbolic for the Quechua, leading many villagers to once again take up their traditions of nurturing Mother Earth. (Video by Cochas Grande, Mantaro Valley, Junin/CWE).

The climate change and its direct and indirect consequences increasingly compromise the very survival of indigenous peoples. Still, they continue to be denied seats at the global decision and policymaking tables, such as official UN climate negotiations, where their future is “on the menu.” The consequences of such discrimination are that many globally sanctioned programs aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change — for instance, mega-dam projects constructed under the banner of Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM)— exacerbate the direct impacts of climate change on indigenous peoples, undermining their livelihoods even more. In addition, poorly designed and implemented climate change adaptation initiatives, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD/REDD+), often weaken the customary rights of indigenous peoples to their lands and natural resources, undermining their community resilience. Moreover, indigenous peoples are facing these escalating pressures at a time when their cultures and livelihoods are already exposed to the relentless assault from various “izations”―  colon-ization, industrial-ization, global-ization, sedentar-ization – which stretch the already frayed fabric of interdependent and mutually reinforcing strands of biological, cultural, linguistic diversities, the foundation of indigenous resilience.

Traditional knowledge must be an integral part of the global climate discourse

One important sign of the indigenous peoples being largely absent from the climate change policy and decision-making processes is the virtual lack of references to the existing traditional knowledge on climate change in the global, national, and local climate change discussions. To date, valuable insights held by indigenous peoples worldwide about direct and indirect impacts of, as well as mitigation and adaptation approaches to climate change, remain largely unrecognized. This is particularly apparent in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) Assessment Reports released every few years.

Photo by Nicolas Villaume/CWE

Charley Swaney | Arctic village, Alaska, USA.

“We may not have much,” Swaney said, “but what we have is out there.” Gwich’in hunters are concerned about new patterns in caribou migration and declining herd numbers. They constantly monitor the landscape and its animals and their movements.  

The most authoritative and influential reference on climate change in the world, the IPCC Assessment Reports guide governments, policy- and decision-making communities, and non-governmental organizations in planning and implementing their actions. The last IPCC Assessment (AR4, 2007) noted that indigenous knowledge is “an invaluable basis for developing adaptation and natural resource management strategies in response to environmental and other forms of change.” This was reaffirmed at the 32nd Session of the IPCC in 2010: “indigenous or traditional knowledge may prove useful for understanding the potential of certain adaptation strategies that are cost-effective, participatory and sustainable.”

Previous IPCC Assessments, however, were unable to access this type of information because, for the most part, traditional knowledge either appears in grey literature outside of peer-reviewed academic forums, or remains in oral form, thereby falling outside the scope of IPCC process.

Bridging the gaps between traditional knowledge and climate science

To fill-in the gaps in available information on traditional knowledge (TK) and climate change adaptation and mitigation, and to promote respect for TK and the role of indigenous peoples in policy development, a partnership has been formed between the United Nations University-Institute for Advanced Studies’ Traditional Knowledge Initiative (UNU-IAS TKI) and the IPCC. Building on the UNU-IAS TKI’s previous work, such as the book Advance Guard, the partners have been working together to organize a series of workshops that would enable the expertise of indigenous and traditional peoples with climate change become an integral part of the next IPCC Assessment Report (AR5, to be published in 2014) widely available to the global community.

The collaboration of UNU-IAS TKI & IPCC is significant at many levels. Among other things, it:

• advances understanding of climate change vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation related to indigenous peoples;
• collates, and makes it available to the global community, information important for understanding local-scale climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation involving local and indigenous knowledge holders;
• engages indigenous peoples in international climate dialogues and debates; and,
• provides policymakers with relevant information on the vulnerabilities, knowledge and adaptive capacity of indigenous peoples.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky

Alexander Dibesov | Aktru Glacier| Altai, Russia

“In the summer, when I was a kid, my family would come to Aktru from our home in the valley,” says Alexander, a warden of a mountaineering camp at the foot of Aktru glacier in the Altai Republic, Russia. “We loved going sledding on the glacier.” As Alexander scans the scree slopes of the canyon through his binoculars for signs of mountain sheep, he knows that the glacier has receded. Just 60 years ago, the glacier came down all the way to where Alexander is kneeling. 

An important goal of the collaborative workshops — which also include contributions of several other partners (UNDP, UNESCO, and CBD) — is to promote respect for the local and traditional knowledge at the national and local levels and to empower indigenous peoples to have a greater stake in developing global, regional, and local policies to address climate change that are supportive of their knowledge, culture, and self-determined development.

For indigenous peoples, such workshops provide opportunities not only to present their experiences and knowledge about climate change in their communities, but to participate with scientists in the process of co-creation of valuable understandings of global climate change that is affecting their communities. Moreover, at such gatherings indigenous peoples learn about climate change experience of other indigenous peoples from around the world, while scientists gain opportunities to ground-truth (field check) their climate models assumptions and scenarios.

First Step – 2011 Mexico Workshop

Photo by Citt Williams

Opening addresses at the Mexico Workshop.

At the table (left to right) Doug Nakashima (UNESCO), Sam Johnston (UNU), Vincente Barros (WGII, IPCC), Julia Martinez (National Institute of Ecology, Mexican Government), Terence Hay-Edie (UNDP), and Jaime Webbe (CBD). 

The first of these collaborative workshops was held in Mexico City, Mexico, from 26 to 28 July 2011, and was focused on traditional knowledge, indigenous peoples and climate change vulnerability and adaptation. It brought together over 80 indigenous and non-indigenous presenters from around the world. One of many outputs of the workshop is a technical report currently being finalized for the IPCC.

Eng’eno Eishoi Ng’ejuk (Knowledge for the Young Generation)

“Climate change is affecting our culture. Cattle, in particular, have an importance that goes beyond meat production. Cattle are traditionally used for paying dowries and blessings.” (Video by the Kenya Hub/CWE).

In addition to presenting essential baseline information and key sources of data, the technical report will highlight continuing areas of debate and emerging conclusions, including, among others:

• Indigenous peoples and rural populations are keen observers of their natural environments.
• Indigenous knowledge, although new to climate science, is a product of millennia of human co-evolution with environment. It has been long recognized as a key source of information and insight in disciplines such as agroforestry, traditional medicine, biodiversity conservation, customary resource management, environmental impact assessment, and natural disaster preparedness and response.
• Indigenous observations and interpretations of weather and climate are at a fine scale, have considerable temporal depth and highlight elements that may be marginal or even new to scientists. They focus on elements of significance for local livelihoods, security and well-being, and are therefore essential for climate change adaptation.
• Indigenous peoples’ observations contribute to advancing climate science by ensuring that assessments of climate change impacts and policies for climate change adaptation are meaningful and applicable at the local level.
• Indigenous responses to climate variation typically involve changes to livelihood practices and other socio-economic adjustments. Strategies such as engaging in multiple livelihood activities and maintaining a diversity of plant varieties and animal races provide a low-risk buffer under uncertain weather and climate conditions. The ability to access multiple resources and rely on different ways of using the land, contributes to local capacities to manage for climate change.
• Traditional systems of governance and social networks improve the ability of indigenous communities to collectively manage diversity and share resources, while dissipating shocks and reinforcing innovative capacities.

Ongoing respectful partnership between practitioners of indigenous knowledge and science is the key

Photo by Nicolas Villaume/CWE

Shagre Shano Shale, community leader | Doko village, Gamo Highland, Ethiopia

“In old times, there wouldn’t be rain during the dry season, and in the rainy seasons we had rain,” says Shagre Shano Shale, an elder in the village of Doko. “Those things have changed.” These changes have disrupted growth cycles. So Gamo Highlanders like Shagre must seek ways to guard their culture and find a new defense against famine. 

Resilience in the face of change is embedded in indigenous knowledge and know-how, diversified resources and livelihoods, social institutions and networks, and cultural values and attitudes. Policy responses to climate change should therefore support and enhance indigenous resilience. Regrettably, most government policies limit options and reduce choices, thereby constraining, restricting and undermining indigenous peoples’ efforts to adapt. This is reflected in counterproductive policies, including those leading to increased sedentarization, restricted access to traditional territories, land grabbing, substitution of traditional livelihoods, impoverished crop or herd diversity, reduced harvesting opportunities, and erosion of the transmission of indigenous knowledge, values, attitudes and worldviews.

Climate scientists’ contributions to climate change discourse must be locally meaningful. They should advance understandings of specific phenomena that are of significance to indigenous knowledge holders. Meaningful dialogues with indigenous knowledge holders are key to the success of this endeavor.

Next Step – 2012 Australia Workshop

Traditional Fire Abatement | Arnhemland, Australia

In Arnhem Land, traditional fire management practices have kept the country healthy for thousands of years. Aboriginal Wardakken people have been working with local scientists to adapt their traditional fire management to reduce greenhouse gas emissions whilst caring for the land. (Video by UNU Media Studio, Wardakken Inc and Australian National University in association with UNU-IAS Traditional knowledge Initiative).

The next UNU-IAS TKI and IPCC workshop, to be held in Cairns, Australia, next month (26-28 March 2012), will build on the outcomes of the 2011 Mexico workshop through a related focus on traditional knowledge and climate change mitigation and governance. The mitigation workshop is being developed in close collaboration with the Australian Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA).

As this cooperation demonstrates, indigenous knowledge holders and scientists are beginning to establish novel collaborative arrangements that are co-creating new knowledge that would not be generated through the efforts of either group alone.

Through initiatives like the UNU-IAS TKI and IPCC workshops, this co-produced knowledge is opening new and important pathways for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The earlier version of this blog was published on the United Nations University blog.

UNU-IAS Traditional Knowledge Initiative

The United Nations University-Institute for Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) is in the process of establishing a Traditional Knowledge Institute (TK Institute) in Australia. The UNU-IAS TK Institute aims to promote and strengthen research on traditional knowledge (TK) of indigenous and local communities conducted from a global perspective, grounded in local experience.

Conversations With the Earth (CWE)

CWE is an indigenous-led multimedia initiative that is a respectful partnership of the NGOs Land is Life and InsightShare, and photographer Nicolas Villaume, to amplify voices of over a dozen indigenous communities around the world in the global discourse on ecological and cultural challenges facing the planet, including climate change.

For the most recent updates from Conversations with the Earth, please follow CWE on Facebook, YouTube Channel and Twitter @ConversEarth

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

At the crossing of the Russian, Mongolian, Kazakh and Chinese borders, a mountain range rises at the western edge of Sayan Mountains. For centuries, Altai people herded their livestock across these plateaus and through mountain passes. Russian Starovery, or Old Believers, sought refuge in these valleys long ago from persecution by the Tsar’s Russian Orthodox Church.

With its outstanding landscape and biological and cultural diversity, the region gained international recognition when the Golden Mountains of Altai were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

An ancient horseman pursues mountain sheep over the rugged foothills of Altai Mountains. The petroglyph carved into stone two and a half millennia ago is a testament to the resilience of this cultural landscape.

Since the first humans arrived here close to a million years ago, the region has served as a home or migration route to nomadic cultures that, despite many upheavals, remain strong in modern day Altai. Today, the etched horseman and its quarry face a different set of obstacles, from the petroglyphs themselves being cut out for sale on the black market to accelerated erosion due to climate change.

Torrential downpours, freezing and thawing–now more frequent and unpredictable–can splinter the rock and destroy the petroglyphs forever.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

Galloping across a field near the village of Elo, descendants of the ancient Altai horsemen compete in a “goat-pulling” tournament–a modern version of the Turkic tradition of Kokboru. Teams compete by trying to throw a dead goat into their opponents’ kazan–a large sod vat.

This tradition faded from Altai culture during the decades of Soviet cultural domination beginning in 1919. Kokboru is slowly being restored in Altai through cultural exchanges with other Turkic people from around Asia.

This is part of emerging South-to-South connections between Altai people and their indigenous brothers and sisters from all corners of the Earth, helping tackle many social, cultural and ecological challenges, including climate change.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

Alexander Dibesov, a warden of a mountaineering camp at the foot of Aktru glacier, scans the scree slopes of the canyon through his binoculars for signs of mountain sheep. “In the summer, when I was a kid, my family would come to Aktru from our home in the valley,” says Alexander. “We loved going sledding on the glacier.”

Just 60 years ago, the glacier came down all the way to where Alexander is kneeling. Today, the glaciers are receding, barely visible up the slope in the distance.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

Tracing the contours of forested foothills with their wingtips, two berkuts, or golden eagles, draw a veil of snow flurries over the sacred Uch-Enmek Mountain.

Local people chose an ancient depiction of the berkut as the symbol for the Uch-Enmek Nature Park, created in the Karakol Valley in 2001 to protect this most sacred mountain and valley.

According to the Altai tradition, Uch-Enmek is the umbilical cord of the Earth, maintaining the spiritual and energy balance of our planet, and regulating the weather and climate.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

En route to Aru-Kem Lake in the Uch-Enmek Nature Park, Uchural Nonov, a park warden, ties horse hair–a substitute for traditional strands of cotton, or kyira–to a sacred tree.

“We ask the spirit of Altai to bless our companions’ journey and to look after our families,” says Uruchal. The supplicant never asks for anything for oneself. Reverence, respect, and reciprocity are at the heart of the sacred relationship between local people and the Altai. These qualities are fundamental elements of the local peoples’ worldview, guiding their daily actions toward each other, land, water, and air.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

Maria Amanchina, a traditional Altai shaman and healer, lights a pipe as she sends her prayers with the smoke to the Sky, the Land, and the Spirit of Altai.

Maria knows that healthy, respectful relationships with sacred sites–such as Ukok Plateau, a part of the Golden Mountains World Heritage Site on the border with China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan–are key to ensuring that her people and the Land can endure the changes facing the Altai,  such as climate change.

The future of Altai Ukok is under threat from a 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline from Russia to China planned by Gazprom that will cut through the heart of the Golden Mountains of Altai. If allowed to proceed without proper planning that integrates the local knowledge as well as addresses the concerns of local custodians of sacred sites, it would not only lead to significant degradation of local biological and cultural diversities, but undermine the integrity and resilience of the entire World Heritage Site.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

Hauntingly beautiful and stirring, Kai is an ancient style of throat singing, a way of connecting and communicating with the Altai’s physical and spiritual landscapes.

Emil Tyrkishev is a traditional Kai-chi–a hereditary shamanic throat singer and story teller. While he writes and performs his own music with support and accompaniment of his wife Radmilla, he relies on the guidance of his two-string topshur as he journeys through the past, present and future of this sacred land in his chants and songs, seeking answers to Altai’s current challenges.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

As they prepare to travel to the sacred Ukok Plateau, Maria guides her guests–clockwise, Liz Hosken, director of the UK-based Gaia Foundation , traditional healer from Botswana Niall Campbell, and Chagat Almashev, director of the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Altai –through a purification ceremony over wafts of smoke from a sacred juniper fire.

“Our relationship with the world,” says Maria, “must be based on our ability to keep the sacred balance with all living beings and the Land.” This is particularly important in places of high spiritual significance and potency, such as sacred sites.

Linking the people who understand and support the fundamental importance of this truth is critical to re-balancing humankind’s relationship with the Earth and its climate.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

Over the last few years, Maria and other Altai shamans have been gradually building relationships with custodians of sacred sites and their allies in different parts of the world in order to work collectively on restoring and sustaining the sacred Web of Life.

Custodians of sacred sites in Kyrgyzstan, Samankul Azyrankulov (standing) and Kadyrbek Dzhakypov (laying down), came to Altai to reconnect with the sacred landscape that nourished their ancestors, including Manas–the hero of the longest Kyrgyz epic poem who was born in Altai over a thousand years ago.

At the Dzhumalinskyi springs, where sacred healing water gurgles up from the foothills of Ukok Plateau, the two pilgrims from Kyrgyzstan make offerings seeking the healing energy of the sacred springs and rocks. They hope to bring this positive energy back to their homeland, to help address their own challenges, from inter-ethnic conflict to climate change.

Photo by Gleb Raygorodetsky/CWE

Called the “Pastures of Heaven” by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, Ukok Plateau is dotted with hundreds of burial grounds, or kurgans.

Maria is standing over one such kurgan, where a 2,400-year-old mummy of a Pazyryk noblewoman, the “Ice Princess”, was excavated by archaeologists in 1993 to great international fanfare.

Maria feels that the dominant Western mindset pierces the heart of the Earth as it digs for gold, drills for oil, and unearths and removes archaeological “artifacts”.

This very worldview is responsible for upsetting the intricate balance of the Altai and the rest of living Mother Earth. A powerful earthquake that shook the region soon after the “Ice Princess” was removed and shipped to the Museum of Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, confirmed Maria’s convictions.

Just as undeniable is the climate change Maria observes altering the Altai landscape, including the melting permafrost that for centuries preserved the remains of the Altai peoples’ ancestors on the Ukok Plateau.

Maria is convinced that only through reclaiming our reverential relationship with the sacred and spiritual worlds can we restore the balance of the Earth and its climate.

(Photo courtesy of Gleb Raygorodetsky)

Born and raised in a small coastal village in Kamchatka, Russia, Gleb Raygorodetsky (above) is a conservation biologist with expertise in resource co-management and traditional knowledge systems. His research took him from Brazilian Amazon to the Canadian Beaufort Sea, from Alaska to the Russian Altai Mountains. He has lived and worked with the Evèn reindeer herders of Kamchatka (Russia), the Aleut fur seal hunters of the Pribiloff Islands (Alaska), the Caboclos pirarucu fishermen of the Brazilian Amazon, and the Gwich’in caribou hunters of Canada’s Northwest Territories. He has also learned a lot from other sentient beings, including kittiwakes and pumas, guillemots and grizzly bears, sea otters and reindeer. For his Ph.D. at Columbia University (2006) Gleb has looked at the resilience of social-ecological systems in the Russian Far East after the collapse of the Soviet Union by researching wildlife use and conservation in Kamchatka. For the last six years, Gleb has been working in the field of biocultural diversity with a number of international organizations and private foundations. Gleb wrote and contributed to books, scientific and popular articles on indigenous issues, traditional knowledge, and conservation in both English and Russian languages.

Also by Gleb Raygorodetsky: Giants Under Siege (National Geographic Magazine)

Conversations With the Earth

This photo essay on the Altai was created and produced for the Conversations with the Earth (CWE) by Gleb Raygorodetsky.

CWE is an indigenous-led multimedia initiative that is a respectful partnership of the NGOs Land is Life and InsightShare,  and photographer Nicolas Villaume,  to amplify voices of over a dozen indigenous communities around the world in the global discourse on ecological and cultural challenges facing the planet, including climate change.

Major support for CWE has been provided by The Christensen Fund.

To learn more about CWE, visit it on Facebook, “Like” it, and share.

The next major CWE exhibit will take place from 22 July, 2011 to 02 January 2012, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Additional Resources about Altai

Sacred Lands Film Project

Pacific Environment

United Nations University Channel

Altai Mir University

Altai Assistance Project

The Altai Project

Fund for 21st Century Altai

Gazprom’s Altai Pipeline