Search for: All records

Abstract Urban landscape combines built-up areas with strongly altered natural (green and blue) and other open spaces. Voluminous literature examines urban socio-environmental interactions in tropical and temperate cities, whereas high-latitude cities are rarely considered. Here, we create a historical perspective on urban green (vegetation) and blue (water) spaces in a sub-Arctic city of Nadym in Russia. Our study explores a novel way to combine quantitative information from satellite imagery and biometric studies with qualitative information from interviews with stakeholders and residents. Such a joint analysis helps to understand dynamics of the urban green and blue space as well as its value for society. Furthermore, we propose objective indicators reflecting societal values of spaces in connection with recreational and ecological services. By contrast to temperate city studies, we found that green space is less used in summer, but still highly valued, deep lakes are used and valued more than warmer shallow lakes, and winter white space do not shrink but enhance the urban public space. Satellite images reveal inevitable loss of green space to urban construction and its remediation by artificial plantings (almost by 30% at present), whereas less valued blue space decreased almost three-fold. Interviews reveal that shallow lakes have reduced recreational values due to ice bottom and algae bloom. High values are attributed to deep artificial lakes, which are more than ten times deeper than natural lakes and do not freeze throughout in winter. Our biometric studies show that trees in urban environment are significantly taller than in the corresponding undisturbed areas. Since majority of the Arctic cities are built using very similar planning ideas and technologies, our findings shall help objective appreciation of green and blue spaces in other settlements. 

Road infrastructure development is an existing, but not a frequent element of extractive industry benefit-sharing frameworks in remote northern regions. However, it is often at the center of extractive activity and inflicts major impact on environment and communities. This paper examines the benefits and impacts derived from development of informal roads, i.e., vehicular roadways beyond the current publicly-governed road networks constructed, maintained and/or used by various entities and individuals based on private, special purpose and/or informal practices and regulations. Based on several field studies, GIS analysis of road networks and examination of secondary sources, the article investigates the use of informal roads as a form of benefit-sharing and details their impact on mobilities, environment and livelihoods of local and indigenous communities in the Irkutsk Oil and Gas region, Russia. We argue that construction, maintenance and use of the industry-built roads can be a part of benefit-sharing agreements, albeit mostly semi-formal and negotiated. The gains and problems stemming from ‘trickle-down’ (i.e., unintended) effects of the road networks are the most significant. The community-relevant implications of informal roads go far beyond immediate impacts on surrounding environment, but deeply affect subsistence activities, mobility, food security, personal safety and even consumer preferences of the indigenous residents. 

Road infrastructure development is an existing, but not a frequent element of extractive industry benefit-sharing frameworks in remote northern regions. However, it is often at the center of extractive activity and inflicts major impact on environment and communities. This paper examines the benefits and impacts derived from development of informal roads, i.e., vehicular roadways beyond the current publicly-governed road networks constructed, maintained and/or used by various entities and individuals based on private, special purpose and/or informal practices and regulations. Based on several field studies, GIS analysis of road networks and examination of secondary sources, the article investigates the use of informal roads as a form of benefit-sharing and details their impact on mobilities, environment and livelihoods of local and indigenous communities in the Irkutsk Oil and Gas region, Russia. We argue that construction, maintenance and use of the industry-built roads can be a part of benefit-sharing agreements, albeit mostly semi-formal and negotiated. The gains and problems stemming from ‘trickle-down’ (i.e., unintended) effects of the road networks are the most significant. The community-relevant implications of informal roads go far beyond immediate impacts on surrounding environment, but deeply affect subsistence activities, mobility, food security, personal safety and even consumer preferences of the indigenous residents. 

Many remote regions currently experiencing economic development are going through reindustrialization. However, the impact of previous industrial projects on current ones is not well documented. Using the example of the Evenki community in the Kazachinsko-Lenskii raion of Irkutsk Oblast, this article discusses the cumulative impact of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, Power of Siberia gas pipeline, and multiple forestry companies. We document encounters of Evenki with industrial projects in their settlements and along several pathways: traditional subsistence trails and tracks, the railroad infrastructure, geological clear-cuts, and forest roads. The analysis and observations are based on materials gathered during summer 2019 field work, which included interviews with local leaders, hunters and fishers, travelling by different transportation modes, and participating in local subsistence activities. 

While researchers of social-ecological systems acknowledge existence of formal and informal institutions affecting social-ecological governance, the role of informal sector in the land use change remains understudied. Moreover, existing studies of informal land use are focused mostly on urban areas, such as informal settlements. We argue that the remote regions would be another important area for inquiries. Informal, e.g. unobserved by official records, land use changes there are related to high-speed dynamics of resource extraction projects and location mostly in the regions of traditional land use practices of indigenous people. In particular, we focus on informal roads, which in the Arctic and Subarctic remote regions often remain understudied due to their small size, chaotic, temporal or even seasonal nature, private ownership or traditional subsistence functions. Despite their absence on official maps, they have significant social, economic and environmental impact on local, predominantly indigenous, communities. The study area: the north of Irkutsk region and Republic of Buryatia that the last decades has undergone rapid changes of traditional way of life of "old settlers", native Buryats and Evenks, collapse of the Soviet economy, development of oil and gas extractive industries and infrastructure, environmental regulations to protect the Lake Baikal and tourism development. The data was obtained in 2016-2018 at the municipal and local levels using interviews, observations, statistics and cartographic tools. As a result, we identified formal and informal elements of transportation infrastructure with common set of characteristics (e.g. time of development; purpose; present conditions; changes in location; use) and distinguished the specifics of their maintenance requirements, the forms of ownership, seasonality and local traditions. The future plans to use remotely-sensed data, coordinated visual mapping sessions, and field studies for understanding land use changes due to development of informal road networks will be discussed in the presentation.