Sustainability and Resilience of Indigenous Siberian Communities under the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure Transformation

• Published in: Sustainability
• Main Authors: Maria Kuklina, Antonina Savvinova, Viktoria Filippova, Natalia Krasnoshtanova, Viktor Bogdanov, Alla Fedorova, Dmitrii Kobylkin, Andrey Trufanov, Zolzaya Dashdorj
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2022
• Subjects: remote territories; transportation infrastructure; Siberia; indigenous communities; sustainable development; traditional activities; mining; taiga
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/su14106253

Transport provision in remote territories is one of the most important factors in maintaining the sustainability of socio-economic and ecological systems. Indigenous peoples of Siberia have always been mobile using diverse traditional ways across the taiga. During the Soviet period, the transition to settled life, along with technological development and the emergence of new modes of transport, such as off-road cars, snowmobiles, and motor boats, significantly affected the level of population mobility, including remote areas where people are engaged in traditional nature management. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were significant changes and reductions in the subsidies of transportation systems for remote terrains that made them isolated. Transport connectivity has been realized through rare plane flights (once a month or less) or by cars on dirt roads (actually off-road) that take several days of travel. Siberian territories rich with natural resources, low population density, and weak infrastructure might be attractive for mining companies. Being difficult to access not only for the local population, but also for industrial companies, the territories imply the allocation of a significant share of road construction and transport costs in the cost items of miners and processors. The problems of sustainability and resilience of the indigenous peoples of Siberia require special attention when restructuring transport communications, but they have practically not been studied before. Methods of in-depth and group interviews with local residents were used. Based on comparative geographic and statistical analysis and generalization of data, network and problem approaches applied for various sources and field materials (including in-depth and group interviews), the factors of sustainability and resilience, which the indigenous communities of three remote Siberian territories pin their hopes on in the context of the transformation of transportation infrastructure, have been identified. If geographic ...