14 février 2018 – Atelier du CEMS-GSRL / Vladislava Vladimirova : « Neoliberal approaches to nature conservation in Russia and their impact on indigenous people of the North: the case of the Sami in the Kola Peninsula »

Le prochain atelier du CEMS-GSRL aura lieu le mercredi 14 février 2018 de 14 h 00 à 16 h 00 au Centre des Etudes Mongoles et Sibériennes (CEMS), 54 bd Raspail, salle P1-01/B1-10. Nous aurons le plaisir d'accueillir Vladislava Vladimirova (de l'Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies et du Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Université d'Uppsala) Elle effectuera une présentation sur le thème :

"Neoliberal approaches to nature conservation in Russia and their impact on indigenous people of the North: the case of the Sami in the Kola Peninsula"

Abstract: This presentation will first introduce the concept of neoliberal nature conservation and provide a short overview of critical academic perspectives on it. Criticism has often been concentrated on the consequences of processes of neoliberalization of nature on local people and indigenous communities. Processes of neoliberal nature conservation provide means for control and profit to national and international elites while excluding local and indigenous inhabitants. Ecotourism, for example, in protected areas, has been shown to transform communities and their socioecological landscapes by introducing new forms and ideas of nature and land use rights, dependencies, and boundaries. It has reinforced social class and regional divisions, economic segregation, and unequal distribution of profit, only a small part of which remains locally. Without adequate state regulation, corporate business actors are more successful in defending their interests when conflicts between industrial exploitation and biodiversity conservation occur. Instead of supporting local community interests and their natural environment, neoliberalization creates more space for activity by corporations and international agencies who may even take over resource management through de-centralized governance structures (Fletcher 2010; Levine 2002).  Neoliberal nature conservation also reaffirms non-political explanations of biodiversity loss, and reinforces neoliberal rationalities among conservationists and local communities, thus distracting public attention from real problems and discrediting alternative approaches to reforming environmental protection policies and local resource use systems. Neoliberalization of nature has been seen as political performativity that cultivates neoliberal subjectivities which justify, spread, and normalize neoliberalism across society. Neoliberal conservation can make nature and experience of it into commodities, with value calculated on the basis of consumption by visitors and other economic use values. Commoditization transforms local values and meanings ascribed to nature, along with its ontological realities, through a complex and dramatic process which Sian Sullivan has called "cultural displacement" (Sullivan 2009: 24). The presentation will substantiate the grounds for such criticism empirically with examples from the Kola Peninsula and two nature conservation projects that are running there, and both directly engage also indigenous Sami people interests: the Seidiavr Nature Reserve and Hibiny Hill National Park.