Arctic climate change discourse: the contrasting politics of research agendas in the West and Russia

Abstract

In this paper we explore how Western scientific concepts and attitudes towards indigenous knowledge, as they pertain to resource management and climate change, differ from the prevailing view in modern Russia. Western indigenous leaders representing the Inuit and Saami peoples are actively engaged in the academic and political discourse surrounding climate change, whereas their Russian colleagues tend to focus more on legislation and self‐determination, as a post‐Soviet legacy. We contribute to the debate with data from the Nenets tundra, showing how different research has employed the three crucial Western research paradigms of climate change, wildlife management and indigenous knowledge on the ground. We suggest that the daily practice of tundra nomadism involves permanent processes of negotiating one's position in a changing environment, which is why “adaptation” is woven into the society, and cosmology as a whole, rather than being separable into distinct “bodies” of knowledge or Western‐designed categories. We argue that research agendas should be placed in their proper local and regional context, and temporal framework: for example, by collaborating with herders on the topics of weather instead of climate change, herding skills instead of wildlife management, and ways of engaging with the tundra instead of traditional ecological knowledge.

Climate change policy responses for Canada's Inuit population: The importance of and opportunities for adaptation

“…(e.g. Gearheard et al, 2006;Huntington et al, 2007;Alessa, 2008;Alessa et al, 2008a,b;Crate, 2008;Keskitalo, 2008aKeskitalo, ,b, 2009Forbes and Stammler, 2009;Keskitalo and Kulyasova, 2009;Loring and Gerlach, 2009;Rattenbury et al, 2009;Trainor et al, 2009). Examining similarities and differences in vulnerability and adaptive capacity between different national contexts offers a promising new direction for research, with potential to increase our understanding of vulnerability determinants and identify best practice for adaptation.…”

An integrative assessment of water vulnerability in First Nation communities in Southern Ontario, Canada

“…It thus supports and furthers incorporating this aspect into water vulnerability assessments by Alessa et al (2008). More broadly, it coincides with the call for combining knowledge to assist with understanding and responding to environmental change (e.g., Berkes, 2009;Fobes and Stammler, 2009). This research also builds upon the existing water assessment tools and offers several innovations.…”

“…Combining scientific with local and traditional knowledge is important because neither may alone provide sufficient understanding of a problem (Berkes et al, 2003; see also Berkes and Folke, 1998). Bringing together multiple types and forms of knowledge is necessary to understand and respond to environmental change (e.g., Pelling and Uitto, 2001;Berkes, 2009;Fobes and Stammler, 2009).…”

Doing is Learning: Analysis of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Adapt TEK/IK Methodology to Norwegian Sámi Circumstances

“…To confirm local ownership of knowledge, Saemien Sijte had taken on the position as the holder of such knowledge (Agrawal, 1995). Moreover, we had ambitions to include the larger Southern Sámi community in the research process to ensure that what we would pass on as Southern Sámi local knowledge was perceived as representative to the local community, and to build an understanding of collective ownership (Nadasdy, 1999;Bicker et al, 2002;Huntington et al, 2002;Forbes & Stammler, 2009). …”