Gleb Raygorodetsky

The Skolt Sámi’s path to climate change resilience

This photo essay by United Nations University’s Traditional Knowledge Initiative (UNU-TKI) Research Fellow Gleb Raygorodetsky offers a glimpse of the challenges that climate change presents for indigenous and local communities in northern Europe. An Arctic people of northern Finland whose livelihoods depend largely on their environment, the Skolt Sámi are searching for ways to remain resilient in the face of climate change. Recently, Raygorodetsky spent time with the Skolts, as part of a UNU-TKI project supporting a partnership between the Skolt Sámi and the Finnish Snowchange Cooperative focused on developing a climate change adaptation plan.

February 1, 2013

Society

Biocultural resilience for systems change

The remarkable variety of life’s interdependent phenomena and processes — what we call ‘diversity’ — is being eroded by the modern forces of homogenization. The rich tapestry — woven from a countless multitude of mutually reinforcing strands of biological, cultural and linguistic relationships — is wearing out. Our increasingly fatigued world is losing its vitality, luminosity and splendour under a relentless assault from various “izations”, such as industrialization, colonization, secularization, computerization, globalization, and harmonization, to name a few. 

November 28, 2012

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