Sea Route Impacts Native Peoples

by Gail Osherenko

A massive research effort known as the International Northern Sea Route Programme (INSROP) began in 1993 and will conclude at the end of 1998. Headquartered at the Fritdjof Nansen Institute in Norway, the program encompasses commercial and economic feasibility studies, ice navigation, ship design, ecological impacts, and political and legal issues. A small part of this program assesses the historical and future impacts of the Northern Sea Route on Russia's indigenous peoples. These studies, conducted by over a dozen researchers from Russia and the West and coordinated by the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College, have considered demographic patterns; subsistence and commercial activities; health; education and social services; political and legal organization; and archaeological and cultural resources. They culminate in a set of recommendations published in a new report by Gail Osherenko, Debra L. Schindler, Alexander I. Pika and Dmitry Bogoyavlensky, "The Northern Sea Route and Native Peoples: Lessons from the 20th Century for the 21st," from which this article is excerpted.

The creation of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), an enormous undertaking of the central government of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and 1930s, enabled ships to regularly transit the icy waters of the Northeast Passage. Simultaneously, it extended the control of the Soviet government throughout a vast territory and undermined preexisting indigenous institutions-laws, norms, customs, rules and patterns of life-governing economic and social activities of indigenous peoples. In the 1990s, northern shipping companies and nations are seeking ways to revitalize the NSR and make it a viable international route for shipping goods between the Pacific and Atlantic.

It was not the physical opening of a regular shipping route through the Arctic that most affected indigenous peoples, but the creation of powerful organs to administer it. The NSR made possible the whole pattern of economic development and industrialization of the Russian North. Native peoples who had inhabited the territories for centuries were valued for their potential contribution to this transformation rather than for their unique and distinct cultures. Soviet authorities noted their ability to survive and produce food and furs, and sought to increase this productivity by industrializing hunting, fishing and reindeer herding in order to feed an influx of workers from outside the region.

The institutional setting today is fragmented, transitional, and complex. The NSR remains a crucial link in the international commerce of the northern regions, especially in the lower Yenisei Valley. The industries operating there, as well as the oil and gas industries operating in Northwest Siberia and mines in the Sakha Republic, continue to underwrite a complex chain of subsidies to indigenous peoples and communities. Thus, the social welfare system, expenses for electricity generation and provision of fuel for heating in settlements, emergency administrative grants, even capital for constructing apartment houses, bakeries and bathhouses are all linked to continuation of trade.

Today, regional administrative units have had to replace the former state centralized subsidies for infrastructure and social welfare, but these government entities are highly dependent on the oil, gas and mineral industries in the regions where they exist. The extreme dependency on these industries continues to restrict the bargaining power of the indigenous population, which remains linked to former collective institutions. Sovkhozi (state farms), although legally disbanded, continue to operate on the Yamal Peninsula, in the Lower Yenisei Valley and in Chukotka. In the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, the sovkhozi have few options for survival in the transitional market economy. Some have become subsidiaries of the district's monopolistic oil and gas companies, a strategy that allows their continued activity in the short run but reduces their ability to achieve self-determination.

Today, the policy on northern regions and nationalities is unsettled. Some scientists remain proponents of central control and paternalistic care of northern communities. Another group advocates "neotraditionalism"-increased control by indigenous peoples of lands to be permanently restricted for use by those engaged in traditional hunting, fishing, herding and trapping. At the same time, power and some measure of legal authority over indigenous homelands has shifted to component parts of the Russian Federation-the Republic of Sakha, the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District and others. This avoids the paternalism of central control, but since indigenous minorities compose only a small fraction of the population of each of these republic and district-level governments, native peoples would have little say in control and management of lands and waters they have traditionally used and occupied. While there are some indications that policies made closer to home by regional authorities will better serve the interests of indigenous peoples, there is little reason to expect these governments to share power willingly with the indigenous minorities within their borders despite the claims of indigenous peoples to international and national rights to protect their land, livelihood and culture.

Some of the historical impacts of the NSR are directly caused by use and maintenance of the sea route itself. For example, operating ice-breakers year-round at the mouth of the Yenisei River in order to maintain open sea lanes has interfered with the migration of wild reindeer. The resulting chaotic migratory behavior of the Taymyr population of wild reindeer threatens the staple food source for native groups throughout the Lower Yenisei Valley. This in turn has destroyed the local economy of the reindeer-herding Dolgan and Nganasan population.

More widespread impacts identified in each of the regional studies are associated with industries that developed in connection with the NSR, and which are dependent upon the NSR. These include nickel smelting in Norilsk that has resulted in widespread air and water pollution and gas pipelines throughout Northwest Siberia and the Lower Yenisei Valley that form barriers to domestic and wild reindeer herds. Oil, gas and mining complexes have removed land from use by native peoples and have polluted rivers of fishing communities and spoiled many seasonal habitation sites of native peoples.

The NSR has also brought some positive benefits identified in the regional studies. The NSR ended transport isolation of Yakutia's northern regions and opened navigation possibilities on its rivers. Administrative authorities for the NSR opened trade posts and improved the material well-being of northern and Arctic populations by providing equipment and food.

It would be absurd to blame development of the NSR for all of the ecological, social and cultural ills that plague northern communities today. At the same time, it is naive to assume that the impacts of such a large scale transportation network financed and carried out by government authorities would be limited to only the direct physical impacts on immediately adjacent populations. The NSR brought massive demographic changes necessitated first by construction of the transportation network and related industries and later by an influx of workers to these industries. Demographic changes brought widespread and dramatic economic, social and cultural changes to indigenous people.

The impacts were multiplied in the case of the NSR by the nature of Soviet power and authority, the use of forced labor, and later by conscious government policy favoring creation of large cities in the Far North. In some cases newcomers increased land pressure in the most remote regions, resulting in overgrazing and degradation of pasture lands. The concentration of population around industrial centers exceeded the ecological carrying capacity, causing fires, water pollution, soil destruction and damage to flora and fauna.

Politically, the dramatic demographic change (nearly an eight-fold increase in the population of the five Arctic divisions of the Sakha Republic) undermined indigenous power, reducing native populations to tiny minorities in almost all political divisions of the Russian North.

Lessons for the 21st Century

Expanded international use of the NSR has the potential to bring similar impacts, positive and negative, to native settlements and villages as those experienced earlier. Opening the NSR to increased international traffic represents an opportunity to apply international standards in the treatment of indigenous peoples in the Russian North. A few of the recommendations of the INSROP study are listed here:

• Support civil infrastructure, social services, retail trade posts and regular provision of equipment and supplies to remote locations.
• Establish funds for compensation, alternative development and basic needs.
• Use the NSR to link outside markets to native producers of fish, fur, reindeer products, handicrafts and ecologically sound tourism.
• Develop tourism and shipping guidelines and appropriate mechanisms to achieve compliance with these.
• Establish an indigenous peoples advisory committee on use of the NSR.
• Create a legal foundation to protect northern peoples and cultures.
• Encourage and support the formation of self-governing communities of northern peoples.

Our findings show that potential risks of increased international use of the NSR include ecological damage, increased impoverishment, loss of livelihood and access to land and resources necessary to economic well-being and cultural continuity, and further political disenfranchisement. Potential benefits include increased access to goods and services, prospects for strengthening local economic activities including reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, trapping and native crafts, expansion and diversification of local economies, enhanced political and cultural rights, clarification of title to indigenous lands and resources, implementation of existing laws protecting indigenous cultures and activities, and reduction in conflicts with outsiders. Whether the benefits will outweigh the detriments will depend, in large measure, on the institutions, policies and practices put in place to protect native rights to land and resources, promote self determination of indigenous peoples, and increase local community control.

Gail Osherenko is a senior fellow of the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and directs the project assessing impacts of the Northern Sea Route on native peoples.