The Common Threats to the Livelihood Security of the Nenets People

chapter 7 The Common Threats to the Livelihood Security of the Nenets People

Elena Tonkova*

Abstract

The Nenets are the biggest group of indigenous people in Russia and belong to the Samoyeds. They are nomadic people, reindeer herders living in the far north. Today, they inhabit some areas of the tundra and northern taiga of the European part of Russia and of Western Siberia. Their traditional lifestyle has become very fragile due to economic, ecological, and social reasons. Expansion of corporations harvesting raw materials (mainly oil and gas companies), climate change factors, and challenges of socio-cultural globalization have destroyed the environment for reindeer herding and ruined the world of the Nenets, both physically and psychologically. The traditional way of living has lost its basis, and it has become either impossible or rather hard and uncomfortable to follow. This chapter analyzes the common threats to the everyday life of the Nenets. Against the background of such threats, it also examines the attempts by the state and civil organizations, including those created by the Nenets themselves, to help the Nenets and other indigenous people overcome contemporary social and human security challenges and to continue with their traditional way of living.

The level of vulnerability for different livelihoods varies enormously, and one of the most vulnerable groups is indigenous people, to whom the concept of livelihood security means the opportunity to keep their traditional lifestyle. As stressed by S.N. Kharyuchi, the vice president of the Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North (raipon), in his letter to president Putin: “The right to keep the traditional lifestyle for the indigenous peoples means the right to live.”1 And, together with this, the idea of livelihood security should presuppose the guarantees that all other possible choices of living strategies

* Elena Tonkova, associate professor at the Syktyvkar State University, Russia. 1 Tishkov, V.A., ed., Sovremennoe polozhenie i perspektivy razvitiya korennyh malochislennyh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dalnego Vostoka: Nezavisimiy expertniy doklad [Current situation and development perspectives of the indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and Far East: The independent expert report] (Novosibirsk: Izdatelstvo Instituta Arheologii i etnographii so ran, 2003), 10 (author’s translation).

124 Tonkova are open for them too, such that the indigenous people are not tied by the so- ciety to follow the traditional lifestyle as the only option and that each of them can create their own life scenario.2 The principal aim of this paper is to analyze the life of the Nenets, an indigenous and primarily nomadic group of people inhabiting the Russian north, through the prism of the concept of livelihood security. And the key task is to present the main challenges that make the traditional lifestyle of the Nenets vulnerable, from their own perspective. This approach, based on the Nenets nomadic people’s perception and evaluation of threats, seems to be rather promising and potentially fruitful: it takes into consideration the outlook of the indigenous people and the fact that it is the nomadic people who meet those threats and who deal with them. This approach can help discern what kind of threats to livelihood security are seen by the people, what kind of pri- orities are given to these threats, and what kind of steps are considered to be rational and worth while for stabilizing and optimizing the situation. Thus, it is logical to expect more cooperation from the side of the indigenous peoples if their perspective is to be followed. It allows an exploration of the strategies and solutions that are being implemented in real life by the people themselves and the expectations from all the other social agents involved. The idea of livelihood security arises in discussions on topics devoted to the spectrum of characteristics of human and social well-being and can be explored based on both “apophatic” and “cataphatic” aspects. As the notion of health cannot be defined only as absence of disease, the notion of livelihood security includes the absence of economic, ecological, and social-cultural threats but it is not exclusive to this. The possibility of maintaining a specific lifestyle and to feel comfortable and satisfied with such a choice seems to be very important for personal and communal sustainability; that is, the chosen way of living must be economically profitable, socially inclusive, and culturally enlightening. In other words, the notion of livelihood security can be under- stood as a policy or set of measures aimed to ensure the basic needs and rights and to guarantee the maintenance of the capabilities and assets for human beings: both as individuals and as social entities.3 The economic aspects of livelihood security necessitate the absence of re- strictions to keep a specific (e.g., traditional) lifestyle, which should bring a certain income. The social-psychological aspects include confidence in the

2 Ibid. 3 CARE Household Livelihood Security Assessments: A Toolkit for Practitioners, Prepared for the phls Unit by: tango International Inc., Tucson, Arizona 2002. Available at: http://www .careclimatechange.org/files/toolkit/CARE_HLSA_Toolkit.pdf.