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Short Title: CLUE Proposal URL: http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=337 Life in the Arctic is changing very fast, and there are serious problems behind the façade of its modernization process. High rates of morbidity and mortality, increased migration, unemployment and crisis of the native economies are taking place in many Arctic countries along with aggravated environmental problems contamination and degradation of the natural environment, rapid climate change, and shrinking of the pristine and traditional land use areas. Interdependence of social, economic and environmental problems, with their particular manifestations in the regions of traditional subsistence by indigenous peoples, require development of specific methods of scientific inquiry, aimed at understanding the various national and local approaches to their solutions. Northern populations, depending upon how they are recognized within a wide variety of legal and political frameworks, thereby obtain access to land-based resources. The immemorial presence of people on the land has often provided the justification for their confirmed rights or stipulated privileges (an important distinction) with regard to land use. Once states have defined who can access land resources and what kinds of usage such access might entail, however, a circular dynamic is formed whereby categories of people (and even historically well-defined groups) aspire to be "recognized" according to these legal criteria. The concept of "indigenous people" has come to mean different things in different countries and to be associated with a wide variety of accompanying land use regulations. Even the size of a defined ethnic group can be of significance with respect to resource use, as in Russia where placement of peoples on the list of the "small peoples of the North" holds great significance for their land rights and development, but might also thereby come to disqualify them from membership in a larger group with certain rights of political autonomy. In effect, there are compelling reasons for how groups manage to present themselves and different strategies that must be employed according to the different criteria established by their encompassing states. Similarly, the distinction between group and category is also open to strategic negotiation. In the West, new Indian tribes have been "constructed" in order to form effective lobbies for environmental protection. This ongoing circular dynamic whereby historical land use has come to define people, and the definition of people has come to define their land use rights, is of essential significance to the sustainability of the human dimension in the North. The proposed research methodology will be based on anthropological fieldwork accompanied by semi-structured sociological interviews of both members of local northern populations, members of their representative organizations and also government resource administrators. We shall seek to establish the current "rules of the game" with respect to definitions, eligibility criteria, and accompanying land rights/privileges. We will also seek to uncover the tensions between and within groups (haves and have nots) generated by these systems. We are interested in how, in effect, the system developed historically and politically. Current tensions will also outline the course of future changes. It is our conviction that these systems generate the seeds to their own future development. Hence research will focus upon current dissatisfactions and hopes and will also ask informants to speculate on possible corrective measures and what the effects of such measures might be if taken. We will thereby obtain material with a continuity of time depth as well as comparative material from different circumpolar countries. As each country deals with the much the same issues from different vantage points in national policy, and increasingly through similar foundations ratified in international conventions, such research into the pros and cons of various regulatory systems is essential.
CLUE