Russia

Background info on Russia & Siberia

There are 180 groups of indigenous peoples in Russia. Only 40 of these groups are legally recognised.

There is no concept of ‘free, prior and informed consent’ meaning that indigenous people are not consulted and do not have the chance to consent to the implementation of legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

These are not the only systematic problems that indigenous people in Russia face, for example, local authorities have lost the power to protect indigenous people, and land and natural resource articles have been revoked, opening their lands up for exploitation.

Siberia

In Siberia, indigenous peoples are having to rent the land they live on whilst the Russian government simultaneously sells the same land to logging companies.

This results in indigenous peoples having their homes destroyed. Logging companies often cause huge forest fires and leave highly flammable waste lying around thus exacerbating them. In 2019 the Siberian Taiga was on fire burning 130,000 sq/km of land which had a detrimental affect on indigenous groups as an estimated 33-90% of their forest was destroyed.

Norilsk oil spill

On May 29th, 2020 there was a diesel spill in the freshwater lake of Norilsk, Russia. The spill has killed wildlife and spread toxic pollutants into the environment and, if left untreated, could spread to the Arctic Ocean. Despite all efforts to clean it up the oil is still flowing downstream and could take up to 10 years to complete. It will not only harm the environment, but will also endanger the livelihoods of indigenous peoples in Northern Russia.

The Russian mining firm Norilsk Nickel, who are responsible for the spill, have blamed melting permafrost to cause the spill instead of taking accountability for their ageing infrastructure and environmental negligence. This means Norilsk Nickel have faced no consequences for their actions despite being one of the biggest polluters in the area. It is time to take action and shed international attention onto the indigenous peoples of the Russian North.

How you can help

Sign the petition to prevent another tragedy like Norilsk happen again!

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Participate in the Twitter storm on Friday about #SaveNorilsk

Use these example tweets: We demand that @NornickelGroup takes accountability for their ageing infrastructure and neglect which played into the oil spill in May. This spill is poisoning resources that indigenous peoples rely on. We must #defendthedefenders

Share this poster with the #SaveNorilsk

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