Indigenous Peoples of Russian North the Canaries of Global Warming

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Historically, coal miners kept canaries in their workplaces to warn them when poisonous gases were reaching levels at which the miners would die because the canaries would die first. Now, the numerically small nations of the Russian North are playing much the same role with regard to the impact of global warming on human populations.
    Because these peoples from time immemorial have lived in the closest relationship with the surrounding environment, the changes global warming are producing on their world are recognizable earlier than elsewhere and cannot be dismissed as easily as they often are by people living in cities farther south.
    The Arctida portal says that because of the interrelationship of these peoples with the natural world, they are not only losing their food supplies but suffering from changes in their cultures and languages and thus put at risk of extinction (arctida.io/ru/projects/climate-crisis-and-indigenous-peoples).
    These changes have been compounded, the portal says, by the impact of those who as a result of global warming are now able to come into the historical territories of the northern peoples to extract the immense natural resources of that area, often in ways that further degrade the environment of the northern peoples.
    While the Kremlin has largely ignored the problems of the northern peoples and tried to prevent them from telling the world about their problems, scholars at Tomsk State University have recognized that the northern peoples provide an early warning of what global warming will be doing to others in the coming decads.
    In 2023, the Tomsk scholars signed an agreement with indigenous peoples of the Yamalo-Nenets AD to track how climate change was affecting their lives, an accord that has led to an expanded understanding of the process, regardless of what Moscow officials do (tass.ru/arktika-segodnya/18264263).
    But according to Ardtida, this kind of cooperative research needs to be dramatically expanded so that the practical knowledge the peoples of the north have about how global warming is changing their lives will become the basis for changing the lives of others before it is too late to save either.