Clear-cut madness in Russian Karelia

Ecologist

Volumn 27, Issue 6, 1997, Pages 237-241

  Berglund, Eeva ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BOREAL FOREST; DEFORESTATION; ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT; NATURE-SOCIETY RELATIONS; PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY;

RUSSIAN FEDERATION, KARELIA;

EID: 0031433431     PISSN: 02613131     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. Numerous examples can be found in the annual reports of Finnish paper and pulp companies and in the Finnish press. In what follows, I shall however only be giving references to English texts.
2. See Lehtinen, A.A., The Fall of the Forest Villages: Ecological and Cultural Conflicts in the Russian Taiga, Research Report No.1, EPOS, Research Programme Environmental Policy and Society, Uppsala University, 1993. He notes that 'developers' and 'conservationists' share the same historical background of European Enlightenment which externalizes nature in order to be able to manipulate it, as well as to control the relationship between what is 'virginal' nature and the 'civlized' world.
3. Recent social theory, particularly in social-cultural anthropology, provides a powerful (and not naive) critique of Western-style ideas of human-environment relationships which posit nature as an external resource and object of knowledge. Putting the emphasis on knowledge as a process rather than a disembodied commodity helps raise the respectability and legitimacy of local people's ways of life, even where disembodied scientific expertise might suggest otherwise. See Palsson, G. and Descola, P. (eds), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, Routledge, London and New York, 1996.
4. Myllynen, A-L. (ed), On the ecological and economic impacts of wood harvesting and trade in North-West Russia, OYFEG-Forest and Environment Group Ltd, Joensuu, Finland, 1996.
5. Ministry of Environment, Helsinki.
6. E. G. Siitonen, J. and Martikainen, P., 'Occurrence of rare and threatened insects living on decaying Populus tremula: a comparison between Finnish and Russian Karelia', Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research 1994, Vol.9:pp.185-191.
7. J. (ed) Survey in Russian Karelian natural forests in Vienansalo, WWF Finland, 1996.
8. For an insightful account of taiga, other northern ecosystems and how ecological knowledge is related to environmental politics, see Haila, Y. and Levins, R., Humanity and Nature: Ecology, Science and Society, Pluto Press, London, 1992.
9. Siitonen, J. and Martikainen, P., op. cit.
10. For an account of the Master Plan project and an early account of the colonial strategies of Finnish industry and Soviet/Russian government in Karelia, see Lehtinen, A.A., op. cit. note 1.
11. I attended in the capacity of a researcher and was thus only able to attend open sessions, but was also able to interview several actors in the Karelian forest conflicts.
12. See footnotes 2 and 3. Also the many thoughtful essays in Cronon, W. (ed), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, W.W. Norton, New York and London, 1996, highlight the conflation of people with natural resources in environmentalist visions.
13. See for example Colchester, M. 'Salvaging Nature: indigenous peoples, protected areas and biodiversity conservation', discussion Paper 55, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, 1994.
14. Enso Ltd., press release 22.10.1996.
15. Russian Forest Club, press release 25.10.1996.
16. A.A. Lehtinen op.cit. writes that the "indigenous Karelians and their successors have shown a marked interest in returning to their ancestors' lands" (page 22).