EURO-ECO 2009 Hanover 3 - 4 Dezember 2009	Environmental, Engineering - Economic and Legal Aspects for Sustainable Living
	European Academy of Natural Sciences, Hanover European Scientific Society, Hanover University of Bremen, Bremen

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Vasily V. Markhinin

In the beginning of the new century three principal federal laws appeared in Russian legislation concerning small population groups of northern indigenous peoples: “On guarantee of rights of small population groups of indigenous peoples…” (1999), “On general principles of small population groups of indigenous peoples’ communities organization…” (2000), “On territories of traditional nature management of small population groups of indigenous peoples…” (2001). These laws are specified by a great number of legislative acts of the northern regions, subjects of the Russian Federation.

Both in the mentioned federal laws and in the dependent on them regional legislature the indispensable component are the norms, aimed at the protection of ecological conditions of the traditional nature management and the whole traditional life activity of small population groups of northern peoples. We talk about the strict norms and nature-conservative measures when the industrial activities (first of all, oil and gas extraction) are executed on the territories of traditional nature management (deer pastures, territories for hunting, fishing, wild fruit and plants gathering); about the reparation of damages, caused to the territories of traditional nature management by the industrial activity; about ethnological examination, including ecological examination as a term of starting the industrial activity on these territories.

But what is notable, is that all the mentioned legislative acts proved to be not very effective exactly in respect of ecological protection of the traditional nature management and the way of life of the small population groups of northern peoples. Low ecological efficiency of the legislature concerning the small population groups of northern peoples was admitted by the initiators of designing a federal law aimed at solution of problems of ecological protection of traditional way of life of small population groups of peoples.

In 2007 a draft of the federal law “On protection of aboriginal habitat, traditional way of life and traditional nature management of small population groups of indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation” was submitted to the first reading in the State duma. But it did not pass even the first reading. The draft law was returned as requiring improvement in view of the fact that it duplicates the existing legislation, without proposing any measures how to overcome its inefficiency in respect of ecology. Since the appearance of the draft law “On protection of aboriginal habitat, traditional way of life…” it has been given several readings, it is listed in the plan of the legislative work of the Federal assembly chambers, but its future becomes more and more doubtful. So what is the matter?

The matter, first of all, is that the modern Russian legislation concerning the small population groups of northern peoples proceeds uncritically from the standards of the western legislation concerning such peoples. Meanwhile, in Russia, as opposed to the western countries, historically prevails not enclave, but nationally mixed settlement of small population groups of northern peoples. Therefore in Russia it is practically impossible to solve the problem of ecological protection of the traditional way of life of the small population groups of northern peoples as a problem, different from the problem of protection of the traditional way of life of the rural Russian (and other nations) population. That means that special ecological protection is necessary for all the territories of the Russian North, where the traditional nature management is conducted. Though in many respects it concerns not only the North of Russia, but the other regions of the country as well. It is not without reason that the draft law “On protection of aboriginal habitat, traditional way of life…” concerns all small population groups of peoples, not only northern. In addition there is one thing, preferred to be left unnoticed by the state, which policy is one way or another determined by oligarchs: the whole agriculture needs revival and ecological protection of certain forms of traditional nature management. In other case it is impossible to produce ecologically clean foodstuff and other ecologically clean agricultural products. The latter is certainly true not only for Russia.

In the light of what has been said the question arises. What if the misadventures of the Russian draft law “On protection of aboriginal habitat, traditional way of life…” are one of the symptoms of the fact that narrow understanding of the objectives of ecological protection of the traditional nature management deadlocks the modern civilization and that the break in this deadlock is in realizing the necessity of organic combination of modern technologies and traditions in the way of life not only small population groups of peoples, but the whole present-day society? Certainly it demands changing the foundations of the present-day social order, in which ecological imperatives are opposed by the power of oligarchy and finance profitability fetishism. It is especially appropriate to think about it when the current world-wide financial and socio-economic crisis is in full swing.