« Greeting the Prime Minister with Fragments of his National Culture... Woodchips | Main | Demarcation South From Angeli »
March 16, 2005
The Jobs Question
Our campaigner, Matti, responds to queries about jobs in the Inari area...
Hey Philippe et all re: jobs.
Let us quote an old (2001), but still relevant article published here in Inari in local newspaper Inarilainen:
Sent to the letters page of Inarilainen in Inari municipality, on March 1 2001, by reindeer herders:
"WE TOO ARE CONCERNED ABOUT OUR JOBS
Lately there has been a lot of public debate over the problems between reindeer herding and forestry. The biggest fuss arose when some environmental NGOs brought a few international journalists to see planned logging sites within our herding area. [Finnish] Newspapers have covered only one side of the story, which is why we, the herders of the Menesjärvi herd, want to express our opinion on the issue too.
Hammastunturi reindeer herding co-operative has already back in 1993 disapproved of Metsähallitus's logging in the Menesjärvi-Solojärvi area. During the years, as the winter pastures have decreased steadily, the situation has grown worse and worse. In 1997, the Land Surveying Office of Ivalo measured the area used by our herd in the co-operative and concluded that the logged forests cover 5000 hectares and the unlogged forests 1180 hectares of our area. Since then the situation has grown worse still. We have gotten to know the "negotiations" of Metsähallitus during the years. There are plenty of noble principles and fancy words, but in practice we have been the ones to give in all the time. If we at some site have, with great effort, managed to postpone a logging by some years, the same amount of timber has been taken from elsewhere. Quite recently there has been logging that we were not even given prior notice of. This is called with fancy terms "negotiation" and "participatory planning".
At the moment in the area used by our herd, there are not more than two significant unlogged forests left: the much discussed Kynsileikkaamanniemi and Passiloselkä, which is at least as important. Metsähallitus is planning to log both of these areas in the coming years.The next opportunity to argue about forest logging will then be in 200 years the earliest.
Every herder knows that there is no tree-growing lichen in logging sites where there are only seed trees left. The tree-growing lichen is especially important for the reindeer in late winter, when the reindeer cannot reach ground lichen through the snow. We are here used to reindeer depending mainly on forests for its fodder. Suplementary feeding raises our costs significantly, and makes our livelihood considerably less feasible.
For some reason the media and the representatives of Inari municipality continuously seem to bring up almost only the forestry side of the issue. When they talk about jobs, they talk about jobs provided by forestry. When they talk about the intrest of the Inari inhabitants, they talk about the interest of forestry. If someone wants to question this way of looking at things, he is easily given a bad name. It seems that the municipality as well as the Metsähallitus are happy to show reindeer herding to their VIP guests, but there is no will to support the livelihood in concrete situations, when there would be need for it. We wonder if it has been decided somewhere that the only value reindeer herding has nowadays is as an exotic point of intrest for visitors?
Yet there still remain 650 reindeer owners in Inari, of which 200 are full-time herders. Reindeer herding carries also significant importance for other livelihoods such as tourism. All in all the jobs provided by our livelihood are thus clearly greater in number than those provided e.g. by the state forestry operations.
Reindeer herding is a profession to us, but it is also a significant part of our culture. It is an entire way of life, in which all the members of the family participate in one way or the other, and in which the knowledge and the skills are passed from one generation to the other. Thus the situation differs somewhat from that of e.g. forestry, where the profession is more rarely passed from the father to the son. Based on the reasons listed above, we feel that also we reindeer herders have the right to defend our own source of income. We wish to have our livelihood alive and well also when the current clearcuts have turned into forests bearing tree- growing lichen; into forests, where the reindeer and the herder enjoy to roam.
The herders who participated in the forest excursion,
Petri Mattus
Onni Jomppanen
Oula Jomppanen"
[Explanatory notes:
1. The state enterprise Metsahallitus manages more than 90 per cent of the land in northernmost Lapland. Reindeer herding happens on all land in the area.
2. The admistrative unit in reindeer herding is a co-operative (such as Hammastunturi co- operative). There are altogether 56 co-operatives in Finland. Within the co-operative, the herding happens in several herds. The undersigned herders are part of the Menesjärvi herd inside the Hammastunturi co-operative.
3. This letter was a response to publicity caused by a field trip for German journalists arranged by Greenpeace and Finnish Nature League in February 2001. The Sami reindeer herders and the president of Finnish Sami Parliament participated the field trip]
Posted by Dave at March 16, 2005 10:51 PM
Comments
Thank you for those precisions but I am still not satisfied because you don't touch the question I asked about the threat to logging jobs.
I understand the threat to the herding jobs and the fact the "negociations" have constanlty been onesided but I still wonder about the reality of the threat of losing logging jobs: after all when all the forests are gone where are the logging jobs going to be?
If there is a threat, are there other options? Many logging communities (in other parts of the world) have changed their ways and developed alternatives, like eco-tourism...
I would also be curious to know more about the logging corporations, where are they from , who runs them, how much the executives make, how big are their profits, when and where is the next general assembly of the stockholders taking place, who are their clients, do they sell products to the general public, how can they eventually suffer from getting a bad name?
Recently in the US, people glued "wanted" posters near the home of a multinational bank executive: they did not remain posted for long and the activists were even arrested but the image and reputation of this CEO is going to suffer among his neighbors and peers.
The logger at the end of the chain could be a less interesting "target" (so to speak) than the CEOs. But I imagine GP has also thought about giving them some concern about their misdeeds.
I am sad to report that a nice old tree was cut down in Paris while one of his friends had to be restrained by the police. Most shockingly the elected official responsible for this cut is a member of the Green party (green only on the outside?) and Greenpeace France was not there to protect this tree. Hopefully they'll be there next time?
see the info in French on www.blogvert.org
If Emilie wants to record an mp3 report about what's going on I would be very happy to post it on blogvert, along with the recording I did of the most recent posting of Margot Wallstrom. I also posted a note for Margot on her blog, inviting her to come and visit you when she goes to Oslo (later this week?).
Take care
Ph
Posted by: philippe boucher at March 17, 2005 10:51 PM
"Many logging communities (in other parts of the world) have changed their ways and developed alternatives"
And many reindeer heirders have changed their ways and developed alternatives, at least in Norway, because there the government pays them tens of thousands of euros for abandoning their traditional job. Told by the Sámi TV News today. I'm not sure why Norway wants them to quit.
Posted by: Eino-Kalevi at March 18, 2005 03:04 AM
Jobs:
We have proposed many concrete alternatives, solutions and ways forward:
1. The whole Finnish Sámi area must be included under same administrative unit of state forestry enterprise Metsähallitus, and this way all logging in the area can be done with lumberjacks instead of forest harvesters. One logging machine does the job of fifteen men.
2. Compensation by wealthy and healthy Finnish state and industry. The same state who has abused the Sámis rights for decades must take responsibility. The government must clean up the mess it has caused. It must keep lunberjacks employed, and pay them. It is up to the government to source this funds for this compensation and pay. Let the government buy one less F-18 Aircraft, and put that money into this.
The same forest industry who makes billions of euros in profits every year could donate some euros for solutions here.
Private forestry must continue. We have no objections to private-owned forestry. They can log, let 'em log. They feed sawmills, they feed pulpmills, and that's fine with us, because it's fine with Sámi parliament and the reindeer herders too.
3. All the questions about alternatives are of course interesting here, but because we are not saying that all forestry must end, we do not have to provide answers on "what is our alternative forestry here", because there doesn't need to be - it's OK for us that there is forestry here. It's all about scaling it.
Posted by: Matti Liimatainen at March 18, 2005 10:51 AM
"I understand the threat to the herding jobs and the fact the "negociations" have constanlty been onesided but I still wonder about the reality of the threat of losing logging jobs: after all when all the forests are gone where are the logging jobs going to be?
If there is a threat, are there other options? Many logging communities (in other parts of the world) have changed their ways and developed alternatives, like eco-tourism..."
Forests of Lapland are not disappearing. Forests are used of course, but new trees are planted. Forests will grow in Finland also in the future.
Comparison to the other parts of the world is quite poor. Already 30-40 % of the Lapland's forests are protected (if including poor growth areas figure is 60%). Forestry and tourism are things that can easily live side by side in today's Lapland. After all, wood is the most ecological material, even the wood from Inari.
In twenty years the amount of reindeers has doubled. Is that a "natural" develpoment? At the same time logging has reduced to half..
In Finland we cut down less m3 than the yearly growth is.
Posted by: Rednose at March 18, 2005 03:13 PM
Rednose - much of what is protected in Lapland is not old-growth forest, and a lot of it is on high ground - poor forestry area.
Posted by: dave at April 19, 2005 01:56 PM
