The Hawaiian culture places great emphasis on the word “Aloha,” which means love, peace, compassion, and charity. Hawaiians greet and bid farewell to their guests with Aloha. Unfortunately, there was no Aloha at this year’s APEC Summit (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) in Honolulu, Hawaii.  Sadly, a local Hawaiian youth was killed on the first day of the summit after scuffling with a U.S. federal agent who was hired as a security guard for the multi-day event. This caused bewilderment and a wave of protests from locals.

Honolulu, normally a peaceful vacation town, was not very friendly during the week of the summit and seemed to escalate into chaos. Roads were closed for world leaders and their entourages, causing massive traffic jams. According to witnesses, just the Chinese delegation alone, arrived with 1,000 members and that was only one of the 21 delegations in attendance. Thousands of armed soldiers and federal agents patrolled the perimeter of the tourist part of Honolulu-Waikiki, where the summit took place. Displaying weapons to cause fear in peaceful people is, unfortunately, a common practice in many countries. The meeting was held on Hawaii, far from the US mainland, where large-scale protests were unlikely. Yet, authorities and the APEC planning committee apparently decided to take special measures in light of recent Occupy Movement Protests in most large US cities.  To give you a sense of how much security was there, the US government spent $44 million to prepare for the summit, including $18 million for police and $10 million for “contingency expenses” such as 700 thousand units of non-lethal weapons, including 25 thousand pepper sprays, and even 3 thousand tasers, all purchased by American taxpayers.

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I think I am one of the luckiest people out there to be doing the work I am very passionate about, being able to travel, meeting some of the most wonderful people around the globe and being able to connect those people in order to make positive change.

I recently traveled to Nome, Alaska for the Beringia Days Conference organized by the Shared Beringian Heritage Program of National Park Service (NPS). The conference was first held in 1997 and since then it alternated between both sides of the Bering Strait. This year it was Alaska’s turn to host the conference. Nome welcomed more than 130 people.  Among them were native people of Alaska and Chukotka, Russian and American scholars, researchers, environmentalists, and representatives of government and non-governmental organizations.

The goal of the conference was to bring together various stakeholders for discussions around issues affecting communities both in Chukotka and Alaska. Some of the major topics covered during the conference were international cooperation, creation of the Shared Beringia Heritage Trans-boundary Protected Area, preservation of culture and language, youth programs, environmental issues including resource extraction, increased shipping, and pollution. Special attention was paid to marine mammal research and impacts of climate change on subsistence resources of indigenous peoples.

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Agricultural burning and resultant forest fires are much more than a public health and safety threat for Russia – rampant burning sends thick plumes of black carbon to the North during the spring and summer, leaving a dark layer on Arctic ice when the sun shines the longest, causing the ice to warm and melt at an increased rate. Pacific Environment is supporting several community-based projects in Russia to change burning behavior in the long term, with the hope that reduced black carbon emissions will buy time for the Arctic.

Photo credit: Audrey Wood, July 2011. Greenpeace Volunteer Program Director Grigorii Kuksin creates a model scenario in which an uncontrolled field fire spreads to a forest and then to a village on the other side, demonstrating to campers (all farmers’ kids) the importance of responsible burning practices.

During my recent bicoastal trip to Russia, I had the great opportunity to visit with two of Pacific Environment’s partner organizations for an up close and personal look at the incredible work these groups are doing locally to reduce seasonal agricultural burning and forest fires.

My first visit was with Greenpeace-Russia at their summer youth camp called “Let’s Restore Our Forests!”, located in the Meshcherskii National Park in the Ryazan region. The annual camp brings together children from rural farming communities for lessons in forest ecology, local botany, forest restoration (elementary), and fire safety basics; it is also this summer’s base camp for the Greenpeace volunteer fire brigade, so the crew doesn’t have to drive out from Moscow to fight local fires. When I arrive near the end of July, the rotating cast of Greenpeace staff and volunteers from Moscow and other regional towns has been fighting local fires for a month – mostly underground peat fires that smolder in dried-out bogs throughout European Russia.

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Last week, Pacific Environment successfully concluded one of three annual exchanges that support our programmatic efforts and provide opportunities for our partner organizations from Russia to gain new perspectives and build organizational capacity. The purpose of the exchange was to bring 4 -5 indigenous leaders and scholars working on indigenous issues from Kamchatka and Yakutia to North America to learn about sacred sites protection in the United States. We invited two of our longtime partners from Kamchatka, native Itelmen women Nina Zaporotskaya and Nastya Chukhman, along with Venera Sukhareva, an indigenous Koryak and the chair of the local Indigenous Association. Joining them were two indigenous Sakha peoples; Valentina Dmitrieva, a 20-year veteran of the environmental movement, and Viliam Yakovlev, an ethnographer and a cultural expert.

Our participants met with Native American tribal and NGO leaders in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and South Lake Tahoe to learn about of the methodology of protecting sacred sites and indigenous lands. During the exchange, our Russian participants convened with their peers from the Navajo, Acoma, Washoe, Paiute, and Hopi nations to share experiences and learn from each other.  Our Russian guests gained first-hand knowledge of how sacred sites and indigenous lands are protected  and managed in the United States.  Participants learned the tools needed to educate members of their local communities about sacred sites protection, how to lead efforts to protect sacred sites in Russia, and how to facilitate intercultural exchanges between native communities in the United States and indigenous communities in Russia.

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Nearly 300 years ago, one of the first researchers of the Kamchatka Peninsula, George Stelleronce wrote:

“Kamchatka lives almost solely on fish. If you hit the water with a spear you rarely miss a fish.  Fishing nets or seines are useless in Kamchatka for that reason.  It’s impossible to drag them ashore, they tear because ofthe abundance of fish.”

Many years ago, it seemed that the salmon would last forever.  However, today we know that all natural resources are limited, and Kamchatka’s salmon need protection.  So what is the current state of Kamchatka salmon?  The Kamchatka Branch of the Pacific Institute of Geography has published extensively on the topic. (more…)

A western gray whale named Flex has been receiving media attention worldwide for being the first of his kind to be tagged and tracked.  He is a 13 year old western gray whale that was tagged on October 4^th, 2010 by Russian and American scientists off of Sakhalin Island in eastern Russia.

His precedence is not the only thing gaining him fame though; his unpredictable path in the last four months has also been gaining him attention.  Scientists and researchers are baffled by his movements, but then again, they humbly admit they did not really know where western gray whales should be going in the first place. (more…)

Wetlands are an incredible environmental resource, providing critical habitat for countless animals and plant species, and natural water filtration and storage.  Wetlands help regulate water tables during floods and storm surges, and also serve an important carbon storage function. It is alarming, then, that our wetlands are degrading faster than any other ecosystem type, primarily due to climate change and development.

In honor of World Wetlands Day today, we at Pacific Environment would like to highlight some of the great work being done by our partners in wetlands around the Pacific Rim.  In particular, we would like to acknowledge the work of Dauria and the Rivers without Boundaries Coalition to assist WWF-Amur and the Daursky Biosphere Reserve in their efforts to protect the Ramsar wetlands within the transboundary Amur River basin in eastern Russia at the China-Russia border.  We would also like to acknowledge our partners in China, the China Mangrove Conservation Network, for their work on protecting ancient Looking-glass mangroves.

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I first met Arina Shurygina at the Keepers of the Salmon festival. It was amazing to see how much love she put into teaching about the salmon life cycle, its constitution, and peculiarities. It seemed that there was nothing more important to her than to teach each student how many fins a salmon has and the locations and names of each fin. Later, I learned that containers set throughout the town to collect plastic caps were another of Arina’s initiatives, but not the only one.

It was interesting to learn how it all began. Arina explains that, “One spring, at the outskirts of town, I realized that I was walking on a carpet of garbage. Snow cover was gone and garbage brought from nearby dumps had begun to surface. It was a very unpleasant feeling, but I wanted to fix it. I began to learn about different approaches to the problem that existed worldwide, and the possibilities available in the region. I discovered that in Kamchatka, and Russia in general, there is no general practice of sorting and recycling of household trash. I started to learn more about the issue and wrote articles to newspapers and journals. They were published but the situation still did not change.” (more…)

Almost every culture has a celebration to give thanks to nature for the previous year, the harvest, and the supplies stored for the winter. The Itelmen, one of the most ancient peoples of Kamchatka, call this holiday Alkhalalalai which is traditionally celebrated on the last weekend of September.  Recently this holiday has been celebrated in the Itelmen village of Pimchakh, after taking place for many years in Kovran, the spiritual and cultural center of the Itelmen people. This year, Alkhalalalai became an official holiday on Kamchatka’s calendar, a natural move, since the holiday unites all of the peoples of Kamchatka on one field, with no attention paid to population, age, or religious faith.

The celebration’s motto – “Here there are no guests, only participants” – came true from the very first minute of this year’s event. All of the guests were involved in the ceremonial cleansing of the hardships of the past year, and in the ritual feeding of Khantai. Khantai is the aboriginal god worshipped by the indigenous peoples of northern Russia and the Russian Far East. Aboriginals bring gifts to him since he rules the catch of fish.  Then they give thanks to him for the abundant catches.  The spirits were kind to the celebration’s participants and granted them a perfect, sunny day, even though the forecast predicted cloudy rainy weather, and it rained on both the day before and the day after the celebration. (more…)

This past weekend we were fortunate to attend the Golden Springs Festival, which celebrates the creative arts of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East. The festival took place in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

The festival’s gala concert was held in the recently refurbished drama theater. The performers met their guests at the theater’s entrance, and the sound of traditional drums (known as bubins) and songs set a festive atmosphere. The concert opened with a performance by Mengo, a renowned Koryak national ensemble, which has represented the creative arts of the indigenous peoples of the north on some of the most prestigious stages in Russia and throughout the world. It was lucky to see them perform on their native Kamchatka. Mengo delighted viewers with its performers’ sharp movements, perfect figures, and dramatic dances, as well as the beauty of their faces and costumes. (more…)