Sustaining the Bering: An International Conference for Collaboration (Conference Summary and Proceedings)
April 15th, 2003
You may either download a summary of the conference proceedings here, or request a printed copy by mail. Email Jennifer Castner at jcastner 'at' pacificenvironment.org to request the complete proceedings or for further information.
Many of the summary materials in these proceedings are available in Russian and English. In addition, conference presentations are presented in the language of the presenter. It may be possible to translate some of these presentations, depending on demand.
Click here to download Part One of the conference proceedings - Includes Executive Summary, Working Group Reports, Participant List, Bering Sea Forum Concept Plan, More. (PDF 3.63 MB - Adobe Acrobat)
Conference Summary
In April 2003, Pacific Environment organized the largest international conference on the Bering Sea to date in Girdwood, Alaska. The Conference was called "Sustaining the Bering: An International Conference for Collaboration."
The Conference was just one step in a series of on-going initiatives to protect the Bering Sea habitat. It was the first international Bering Sea conference to bring together and foster open dialogue between a diverse group that included members and leaders of Alaska and Russian indigenous groups, nonprofit environmental groups from both sides of the Bering Sea and beyond, scientists, university professors and graduate students, fishing organizations and independent fishermen, foundations, government agencies, and others from as far away as Norway, Japan, and New Zealand.
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| Members of the Russian delegation to the "Sustaining the Bering" conference and Pacific Environment staff. |
Conference attendees agreed that while stronger and more effective conservation efforts for the Bering are critical, these same efforts must bring consensus to the people who depend on the sea for their livelihood, along with environmentalists, scientists, and the government officials who make the policies that affect the health of the Bering Sea ecosystem.
Attendees discussed the process of launching an international Bering Sea Forum for Bering Sea management. This Forum, which is the early stages of development, will be composed of scientists, fishermen, indigenous leaders, NGOs, and others from the U.S. and Russia. The primary goals of the Forum will be to share information across political borders, advocate for the sustainability of the Bering Sea environment and the communities that depend on it, and to foster greater international relations and a greater understanding among Bering Sea stakeholders. Pacific Environment plans to convene a Bering Sea Forum Executive Committee within a year, comprised of members selected after careful discussions with key stakeholders.
Featured speakers at the conference included the former Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, Fran Ulmer, Larry Merculieff from the Bering Sea Council of Elders, and U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Underwood. They met with many of their counterparts from Russia, including Igor Mikhno, Deputy Chairman of the Chukotka Fishery Committee, and Nina Zaporotskaya, the director of "Lach" an interregional Ethno-Ecological Center in Kamchatka.
Conference participants grappled with issues ranging from marginalization of indigenous communities, disappearing and threatened species, local community efforts on both sides of the Bering, and what form a proposed international Bering Sea Forum would take. Members of indigenous tribes from both Alaska and the Russian Far East repeatedly noted that their centuries-old way of life has disintegrated along with the health of the Bering Sea. As populations of fish and wildlife continue to plummet, their communities are increasingly threatened, and alcoholism, poverty, and despair flourish.
The conference was planned in unison with a comprehensive Steering Committee of 32 Bering Sea and fisheries experts from Russia, the United States, and Japan. Pacific Environment took great care to make a wide and inclusive sweep of critical stakeholders in generating the Steering Committee, the speaker list, and the invitation list.
Following is an overview of some of the larger themes that the conference touched upon.
I. ILLEGAL FISHING
Illegal fishing across the international border that divides the Bering is inevitable. The Bering Sea is shared primarily by the U.S. and Russian Exclusive Economic Zones, but contains a "donut hole" of international waters. Illegal fishing and poaching is most profound in Russia, where the enforcement regime cannot keep up with the volume and scope of illegal fishing. A particular issue, although legal, as pointed out by Artur Maiss of the Living Seas Coalition, involves driftnet fishing: "Japan is one of the few remaining countries that has yet to officially ban driftnet fishing…. Knowing this fact, Russian fishermen [according to an Russian-Japanese agreement] also use driftnets in the Bering Sea, covering the waters with 'walls of death' tens of kilometers in length in which salmon, marine mammals and fish perish." He goes on to discuss poaching, reporting that up to half a billion dollars is lost annually in unaccounted for fishing activity."
Poaching can be broken into two categories: individual and commercial. Individual poaching amounts are extremely small in comparison to commercial levels. Commercial poaching in Russia for the most part takes advantage of lax or overstressed enforcement of fishing regulations and can be conducted by both officially registered companies and fly-by-night operations. Maiss cites the most common schemes, "bareboat charter, when, due to the high cost of boat leases, unaccounted for fish product is sold overseas at dumping prices; duplication of documents or fishermen, when one and the same fishing quotas are fished multiple times by company subsidiaries, or when the same documents are used more than once to export fishing production."
Rear Admiral James Underwood represented the U.S. Coast Guard at the conference. Underwood reported that the Coast Guard has detected 141 incursions into U.S. waters by foreign fishing vessels since 2000 though this year U.S. crab vessels were also intercepted in Russian waters. While this increase in illegal fishing is a problem, Underwood also reported that it has presented an opportunity. He expressed optimism that the cooperative enforcement efforts that have been practiced with the Russian Federal Border Service could serve as a model for other types of international cooperation in the region. As he explains, it is founded on mutual respect for each nation's sovereign rights, common goals, and trust.
II. CLIMATE CHANGE
Many scientists have claimed that global climate change has been, and will continue to be, most apparent in cold climates. Gunter Weller of the University of Alaska underscored this point of view. Weller illustrated the crucial role that the Bering Sea plays in climate change, in that its snow and ice are sensitive indicators of variation. The Bering is also an ideal place to study climate change, as it stores long-term records in its glaciers. It is expected that the extent and thickness of the seasonal snow cover, sea ice, permafrost, glaciers, and river and lake ice are all expected to decrease as the planet warms. While not all of the consequences of this warming are predictable, there is no doubt that it will profoundly affect polar ecosystems, and in turn the economies of the region.
Indigenous peoples living around the Bering reported intimate experiences with the impacts of climate change on the region. Larry Merculieff, speaking to a reporter shortly after the conference, reported that the weather around the Bering has changed dramatically in the last several years. Because of this, the subsistence hunting and fishing that indigenous peoples depend on have suffered. Hunters have to venture out farther across the icy landscape to find animals, many of which are scarcer and smaller, and there has been an increase of people falling through thin ice in places where the ice was once much thicker. He also reported an increase of fish being caught with heretofore-unseen lesions, which he says could be the result of the physical stress related to climate change.
III. HEAVY METALS IN THE ARCTIC
Suzanne Marcy of the United States Environmental Protection Agency presented on the recent increases of the heavy metal mercury found in the Bering Sea and throughout the Arctic region. While the release of airborne mercury from North America and Europe has been reduced in recent years, the amount coming from Asia has been on the rise. In 1995, Asia accounted for about half of the world's release of mercury into the atmosphere.
Much of the world's airborne mercury ends up in the Arctic, and Marcy referred to the region as an "important sink in the global mercury cycle." When snow that contains mercury deposits melts, that mercury enters the food web. This has posed a health risk for people and animals in the Arctic region. Marcy recognized the need to continue monitoring the effects of mercury in the Arctic, as well as the need for regional and global action to reduce mercury emissions worldwide.
IV. IMPACTS OF THE DECLINE OF THE BERING ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND THE NEED TO HIGHLIGHT NATIVE TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE
Several conference participants, especially those from indigenous communities, pointed out that a decline of the Bering ecosystem could mean the death of their culture. As subsistence fishers and hunters, these communities depend on the ecological health of their immediate surroundings, even while they compete with the global fishing industry. Unlike large fishing vessels that trawl the Bering, the subsistence fishermen in these coastal villages cannot move to a more fertile area.
Shifts in the Bering Sea's ecosystem have had a devastating social effect on indigenous communities. Adelheid Herrmann, Alaska Regional Coordinator of the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, reported that as natural resources decline, people become scarcity-minded. There have been disaster declarations in villages throughout the Bering, which initially brought some financial assistance. This, however, brought a shift in the communities, through their growing dependence on a cash economy.
In his native village of Hooper Bay, Ole Lake, a trainer with the Native Family Systems of Alaska, reported that the indigenous community faces 70% unemployment, along with high rates of suicide, alcoholism, and domestic violence. "This is not because there is something wrong with us," he said. "It is because there is something wrong with the living things around us, and we are merely reacting as human beings. The people closest to ecosystems are the ones to suffer the most. They are our first indicators that there is something wrong."
In addition, it was noted by conference participants that it is important to incorporate both Native wisdom and experience and the scientific approach in managing the Bering. "There are really very many ways of seeing the world and speaking what we see as true," said Father Michael Oleksa, winner of the Alaskan of the Year Delani Award and adjunct professor at the University of Alaska and Alaska Pacific University. "There's the objective, quantifiable, scientific approach, which is useful in its own realm. And then there's the more ancient, more traditional, relational approach. We can amass all of our statistics, but we will only know it if we enter into a relationship with it. The indigenous people have been in that kind of relationship with their ecosystem for thousands of years."
Larry Merculieff also touched on the tenuous relationship between the worldviews of traditional knowledge (subjective) and science (objective). "Indigenous peoples experience the Bering Sea as multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, and profoundly mysterious…. In fact, in the minds of indigenous people, words and definitions often act to limit (not increase) human understanding and appreciation of Mother Earth and her ways, in stark contrast to the science that seeks to define everything." There can be a balance and harmony between those systems: traditional "holistic" science and objective Western science. "There is a vast divide between two very unique ways of knowing our world that must be reconciled before a true sharing can take place between indigenous peoples and the western world.
Merculieff cited an excellent example of the differing approaches is weather forecasting. "By gathering information through all the senses, Native peoples have created sophisticated weather forecast systems that modern day forecasters are only beginning to understand. Weather can be predicted by Native peoples who observe the subtle nuances of sea movement and color, types of clouds, aspects of the sun and moon, animal behavior, wind movements, and even how stars may appear to change their movements. These aspects may not be articulated in the specialized language of western science, but all can be found in the context of the cultures, teachings, and ways of living of coastal peoples. This kind of holistic science has evolved through experiential lessons that come from daily interaction and intimate relationships with the Bering Sea."
NEED FOR INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT
"No one state, country, or organization can possibly do what needs to be done," noted opening speaker Fran Ulmer, former Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. "Our only hope is for coordination and collaboration…. We have to ask ourselves what we can do as human beings, to work across boundaries, to make sure the Bering is healthy for future generations."
The United States could enforce any number of fish catch quotas, but since conference attendees pointed out that the struggling post-Soviet Russia is often unable to enforce its own quotas, the United States by itself can only partially solve the Bering Sea overfishing problem. Even if both countries pass and successfully enforce quotas of their own citizens, rogue fishing trawlers from other countries are sneaking in and making illegal catches. Ocean pollution and declining sea life populations do not remain securely on one side of the border, either. Marine species know no political borders. If the Bering Sea is going to be successfully and sustainably managed, it will need to be an international effort.
More specifically, if it is to be truly effective, an international effort by all the stakeholders will be necessary. While governments have made international agreements to ban and limit fishing that have positively affected the Bering Sea and other marine areas, governments alone cannot solve the ills of the Bering Sea. Nor can private industry, scientists, environmentalists, or Native people go it alone; but by working together, they just might be able to work things out.
To date, efforts between Russia and the U.S to manage the Bering Sea on a government level have been strained by conflicts over boundary issues and rising illegal fishing activities along the border. Conference attendees pointed out that there is little information sharing between Russia and the U.S. and what information is shared is often not shared between non-government representatives.
The Barents Sea Council is one example of proactive and effective international management collaboration that the Bering Sea Forum could model itself after. Cecilie von Quillfeldt, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, spoke about the integrated management process that the Barents Sea Council uses, taking into account social conditions, industries, environment and resources, petroleum, fisheries, aquaculture, shipping, and other factors. She also discussed elements of uncertainty in managing such a large and complex ecosystem: gaps in knowledge regarding the state of the ecosystem at any given time, a lack of understanding of the effect of human activities on the Barents Sea, and finally, the ever-changing assumptions which were valid when a plan was developed but may no longer be true.
An active and focused civil society effort can accelerate the solutions to what ails the Bering Sea, as well as highlight the rights and needs of local and indigenous communities. The Bering Sea Conference was the first forum for such a diverse international group of Bering Sea stakeholders. The conference itself highlighted the importance of local and indigenous communities, and participants stressed subsistence use of resources over profit-making use.
One of the major initiatives highlighted at the conference was the need for an International Bering Sea Forum.
INTERNATIONAL BERING SEA FORUM
The impetus to develop and International Bering Sea Forum was launched from the conference, as an international network comprised of representatives from local communities, indigenous leaders, NGOs, policy makers, scientists, and fishermen that are committed to the sustainable management of the Bering Sea.
The three primary goals of the Forum are to:
· Share information, foster greater international collaboration, and promote greater understanding of the importance of Bering Sea protection across political boundaries;
· Advocate for the protection of the Bering Sea environment and the species that depend upon the Bering Sea habitat for their survival; and
· Promote the sustainable livelihood of local communities that depend upon the resources of the Bering Sea, including coastal communities, indigenous communities, and local family fishermen.
Forum members shall be committed to working cooperatively to ensure the ecological and human health of the Bering Sea region. The International Bering Sea Forum will not be an attempt to influence or change the existing jurisdictional authority of one country over another, but rather will be a non-governmental entity without regulatory authority. The Forum is a step toward promoting greater civil society understanding and involvement in seeking positive solutions.
The Forum will proactively engage in public information and outreach within countries that rely upon the Bering Sea. The Forum will seek to bring greater attention to the importance of the Bering Sea region and the need to understand and manage the Bering Sea ecosystem as a unified habitat. The Forum will also seek to identify and encourage meritorious international projects that promote the protection of the Bering Sea habitat as well as improve the livelihoods of local communities that depend upon the Bering Sea.
While the Forum will rely upon sound scientific information and on traditional native knowledge in reaching determinations, it will spend the majority of its time engaging in outreach to the public and to Bering Sea stakeholders, sharing information across international borders, and
promoting greater international understanding and communication.
The International Bering Sea Forum will work in cooperation with existing international and regional agencies.
While the Forum is one of the many worthy proposals and ideas raised at the conference other, effective ongoing and proposed international initiatives were discussed. Highlighting and supporting these initiatives will be another aspect of the Forum's focus.
Click here to view Part One of the conference proceedings - Includes Executive Summary, Working Group Reports, Participant List, Bering Sea Forum Concept Plan, More. (PDF 3.63 MB - Adobe Acrobat)
