BTCV Handbooks Online

Book:	Environments for All
Chapter:	4.0 Case studies
Section:	The Kola Saami
Metadata:	Details	Buy this book

In 1998 the Estonia Fund for Nature (ELF) approached BTCV looking to work together to help ELF develop their own volunteer and community-based conservation programmes. Funding from the National Lottery enabled BTCV to work with partners in Eastern Europe helping them to develop their capacity to work with communities to care and manage their local environment. Through a programme of training and learning events, placements and joint projects, ELF very quickly gained the skills to develop and run their own projects and also transfer the skills gained from BTCV to others. One of these was a programme of support for the Kola Saami community.

The Kola Saami are an indigenous group living in the region of the Kola Peninsula, North West Russia. During the 1920s, the Soviet regime forced them to give up their historical lands and traditional reindeer-herding lifestyle in order to move them to more permanent settlements. The result was a loss of cultural identity and a reduction in numbers to about 1,800, of whom 900 now live in the village of Lovozero. The Saamis now suffer from social and economic problems, including unemployment, alcoholism and broken families. In recent years, however, they have started to set up community organisations, which are interested in starting some small-scale economic activity. However, due to a lack of resources and experience this has proved very difficult. To overcome this, a capacity building project for Kola Saami community organisations was initiated locally by the Kildin Ancestral Community, with support from the Danish Foreign Ministry.

The project aims to strengthen the community organisations, and establish sustainable livelihoods for Kola Saami people in rural areas. It supports the organisational capacities of the Kildin Ancestral Community, establishing stronger networks, and initiating sustainable, small-scale economic activities (eg reindeer herding, sustainable tourism, handicraft production and community forestry). It promotes the restoration of ancestral land-use rights.

Training events and seminars have been held on topics such as community issues, public relations and project formulation capacities, sustainable tourism, reindeer-herding and community forestry. These seminars have brought together people from different Kola Saami communities, national NGOs and authorities. Study tours have also been conducted to Scandinavia and Estonia on reindeer-herding, sustainable tourism and organisational development.

The link between the Kola Saami community and Estonians began in the 1960s with various research projects on Kola Saami language and folklore. In 1988, the Estonian-Saami Society was founded to gather researchers, artists, musicians and other interested people. Since then, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, concerts have been arranged almost every year.

To initiate the Capacity Building project, a conference was held in September 2002 in the old Kola Saami village of Lovozero, an event partially funded by the Estonian Government. Accommodation was in traditional tipiis. The conference was preceded by a three-day clean-up action called 'Beautiful Tundra' where 50 high school students from Lovozero and volunteers from Estonia collected rubbish from around the conference site. It was also like an introduction to the concept of conservation holidays for the Kola Saami people, which was for them a novel concept. The conference was followed with a legal aid seminar about land-rights. At the seminar the Kola Saami community initiated the process of applying for a territory where they could practice the traditional use of natural resources.

The involvement of ELF (Estonian Fund for Nature) is related to its mission to support traditional land use as a way of preserving biodiversity for future generations. ELF's project manager Mikk Sarv had participated in many cultural projects with the Kola Saami and on one such visit to the Kola Peninsula offered to share with the Saami community the experiences ELF had gained during the its 11 years of existence, including skills in management, organisational development, PR work, project management, international co-operation gained from working with BTCV and other partners.