Scholarly record

ACCESS TO LANDS AND NATURAL RESOURCES OF TRADITIONAL COMMUNITIES OF YAKUTIA

Tuyara Gavrilyeva, Z. Degteva, S. Boyakova, T. Mostakhova, N. Bochkarev

Abstract

Yakutia is a region where the largest mining projects have been implemented for several decades, but traditional activities for the North (e.g. livestock, reindeer herding, fishing, hunting and gathering) maintain their steadiness, which spawns conflicts in land and nature use. The paper is devoted to the issue of access of Yakut traditional communities to land and natural resources in the context of ensuring income and consumption on the basis of traditional economic activities. The evolution of the settlement system in the XX – early XXI century is described including the main stages: processes of resettlement in the beginning of the XX century, collectivization, industrialization, enlarging of collective farms, market economy. It is justified that the squeezing of the rural settlement system along with urbanization gave birth to the differentiation in socio-economic development and ethno-social composition of the districts, it negatively affected the agriculture. It is proved that the implementation of large investment projects has a mixed impact on the life of Yakut traditional communities. Along with the development of transport, energy, social infrastructure, there is the physical and economic displacement of residents, as well as damage to local ecosystems. When land is withdrawn for industrial projects, compensation is paid only to communities of indigenous peoples for a narrow list of ecosystem services. In the paper we suggest mechanisms for assessing the sustainability of traditional communities, depending on accessibility and sufficiency of land and natural resources. The information base of the study was the population census data from 1939 to 2010 and also modern statistics. The evaluation of the compression of the settlement system and the development of the territory of the republic is shown based on the use of standard statistical methods for data processing. The paper contains data on sociological surveys (2017) on access to land and natural resources, in regard to the project "Far Eastern hectare", property and land rights. An analysis of the current regulatory framework governing the access of traditional communities to land and natural resources is presented.

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