International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

companies in the social security system. A further
vulnerability was noted regarding the decreased
availability of traditional food and potentially negative
health effects should traditional foods be substituted
with store-bought foods.
Value for other IPY science fields. MODIL-NAO has
created a comprehensive project report (Dallmann
et al., 2010) and a GoogleEarth-based GIS database
(Fig. 3.10-5) accessible through the Internet (http://
npolar.no/ipy-nenets), which is intended to serve
indigenous stakeholders, local and international
specialists in environmental protection, community
leaders, and policy-makers. The database is an open
product that will be maintained and expanded via
future monitoring and research. This GoogleEarthbased
atlas and database were conceived to support
the Nenets people and their organizations in planning
and discussing the land use issues and to combat the
degradation of their traditional pasture areas through
oil development. The project produced an ‘IPY 2007–
2008 snapshot’ of the environmental and socioeconomic
conditions in one of the Arctic regions most
heavily affected by oil and gas development and of
its indigenous people struggling to maintain their
life ways and economic practices under the growing
industrial pressure on their land and resources.
CARMA
The CircumArctic Rangifer Monitoring and Assessment
Network (CARMA no. 162 www.carmanetwork.
com/display/public/home) involved an extensive
network of more than 60 participants from the U.S.A.,
Canada, Norway, Greenland, Russia, Iceland and
Finland. Representatives were drawn from agencies,
indigenous organisations, co-management boards
and universities, which enabled the creation of a network
for sharing information and mutual learning. The
project sought to assess the vulnerabilities and resilience
of wild, barren ground caribou herds (Rangifer
tarandus) to global change and further to document
people’s relationship with this important resource.
Observation and monitoring strategies. The project
established a standard protocol for collecting data
for monitoring caribou herd conditions, health, range,
population levels, and remotely sensed data (Chapter
2.9) (www.carmanetwork.com/pages/viewpage.
action?pageId=1114257). Local hunters from several
participating communities in Alaska, Nunavut, Nunavik,
Canadian Northwest Territories, Labrador, Greenland,
Arctic Norway, and the Taymyr and Chukotka areas
in Russia have been involved in these activities; they
have been trained to report the information based
upon systematic monitoring of individual local caribou
Fig. 3.10-4. MODIL-
NAO workshop
at which local
representatives from
villages were trained
as interviewers for the
questionnaire survey.
(Photo: Winfried K. Dallmann,
September 2007)
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