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Location: Neriungri, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia
Date: April 7th to 10th, 2007.
Announce:
April 7th to 10th, 2007 the Snowchange Cooperative / Osuuskunta Lumimuutos in cooperation with Northern Forum Academy and Institute of the Indigenous Peoples of Yakutia (Russian Academy of Sciences) will organize a four day event 'Snowchange 2007: Traditions of the North' in Neriungri, Republic of Sakha-Yakutia, Russia.
Description:
The Snowchange Cooperative is a cultural and scientific organisation located in Finland , with associates and research partners around the Circumpolar North. Snowchange contributed to the research of traditional knowledge observations of climate change from the Saami territories of Russia and Finland to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment released in November 2004 by the Arctic Council. It won the 2002 Panda award for best ecological project of the year, awarded by WWF Finland.
Snowchange 2007 will be a meeting where results of a three year field work in Republic of Sakha-Yakutia will be released to international audiences. Snowchange together with its scientific partners conducted community based documentation and research on Niznikolyma and Neriungri regions of Yakutia, visiting and working with nomadic reindeer herding communities.
Results of this work include documentatation of rapidly melting Siberian permafrost in the Kolyma River watershed, especially lower Kolyma, disappearance of lakes due to changes in permafrost, impacts to the Indigenous cultures of the region due to climate change, arrival of southern species to the region, and other weather and climate related impacts. The moors and peatlands of Kolyma watershed contain millions of tons of green house gases trapped in the permafrost. As the observed melting proceeds, this has a potential of releasing and further increasing the human induced, rapid climate change in the high Arctic and as well in the global weather systems.
Snowchange 2007 Workshop will highlight the crucial role of traditional societies and knowledge in observing, adapting and understanding changes to Arctic ecosystems in face of rapid changes. The scientific results of this workshop will be distributed to the Arctic Council, governmental representatives, Science Magazine and other scientific journals. The meeting will include delegations from Maori of New Zealand, Inuit of Alaska, Saami of Finland and Norway , traditional Indigenous societies of Yakutia, such as Evenki, Chukchi, Even and others. A session of nomadic schooling will be organised to highlight Indigenous cultures and revitalisation of traditional knowledge in the Arctic for future generations.
For more information contact:
Project Coordinator Maria Krivtsova, Yakutsk, Russia,
krivtsovamaria@rambler.ru
Snowchange Cooperative / International Affairs, Tero Mustonen,
tero.mustonen@snowchange.org, 358 40 7372424
Northern Forum Academy / President, Vladimir Vasiliev,
vladimir.vasiliev@rambler.ru
Website: www.snowchange.org
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