THE ORGANIZATION OF A TERRITORY OF TRADITIONAL NATURE USE AS ONE OF THE PROMISING DIRECTIONS FOR THE SURVIVAL OF INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS OF THE NORTH OF RUSSIA

Sergey V. Nikolaev -- IN ABSENTIA

Society of Nature Conservation, Central Council
103012, Moscow, proyezd Kuibysheva, 3
RUSSIA

TEL: (095) 490-71-95

For many years, intensive industrial assimilation of significant territories, the use of minerals, raw materials and biological resources, was carried out without proper regard for the [local] conditions, reserves, and the ability of the natural environment to withstand technogenic activity, which led to a series of complex problems (ecological, ethnic, socioeconomic), which are difficult to solve. Among these problems is the need to protect the natural environment by lowering the anthropogenic burden, particularly in many regions of northern Russia. One potential solution, in part, which has been looked at at the federal and local levels, is the apportionment of special territories for traditional nature use by the local population--the "small peoples" of the north and older members of the population. A number of such territories for traditional nature use have already been organized and registered. Nevertheless, the creation of such territories for traditional nature use takes place without sufficient scientific basis, which inevitably leads to negative consequences.

Below are offered basic conditions for the apportionment of land which potentially could be set aside for the creation of territories for traditional nature use (TTP) of the native populations of northern Russia, which were elaborated and approved as solutions to analogous problems in the Far Eastern region and in a number of other places.

1. Clarification of the particular social-economic, national, historical, cultural and legal aspects of settling the population in the regions under review.
2. The value of the current state of the environment, the availability of necessary bio-resources/plants, land and sea animals, etc. The prognoses for changing the natural conditions as a result of anthropogenic influence.
3. Determination of land and sea territory with intensive anthropological pollution, excluding the possibility of creating a TTP.
4. Determination of borders for distribution of existing quadrants of valuable mineral resources in the regions under investigation.
5. The determination of the contours of land and sea territory, in which it pays to include a TTP, which is needed in a "merciful" land use management plan.
6. Obtaining the consent of the local population in the creation of the TTP, which, in turn requires the carrying out of long-term, investigative work.

Translated by Kate Watters

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