Assessment of losses caused to the indigenous peoples of the North in the Taimyr Dolgano-Nenets District of the Krasnoyarsk Territory due to the diesel spill at TPP-3 in Norilsk

The authors consider the issues of assessment and compensation of losses caused to the indigenous peoples of the North due to the diesel spill on May 29, 2020 at TPP-3 in Norilsk. They carried out the assessment of these losses within the framework of the public ethnological expertize of the contamination consequences of the native habitat of indigenous peoples in the Taimyr Dolgano-Nenets District of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, initiated by the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation. According to the authors’ estimates, the amount of losses due to the impact of the diesel spill on traditional cropping, primarily on fisheries, will amount to 175.2 million in a lump sum. Compensation is due to 699 people from among the indigenous peoples of Taimyr, their tribal communities.

EVOS and the Prince William Sound Long Term Environmental Monitoring Program

ABSTRACT Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS), the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council began the Long-Term Environmental Monitoring Program (LTEMP) in 1993 to track oil hydrocarbon chemistry of recovering sediments and mussel tissues along the path of the spill in Prince William Sound (PWS) and across the Northern Gulf of Alaska (NGOA) region. The program also samples sites near the Alyeska Marine Terminal (AMT) within Port Valdez, primarily to monitor tanker operations and the resulting treatment and discharge of oil-contaminated tanker ballast water. Over the last 28 years, the program has documented EVOS oil's disappearance at the spill-impacted sites (albeit buried oil still exists at a few unique sheltered locations in PWS). Within the Port, a few tanker- and diesel-spill incidents have been documented over the years, but all were minor and with recovery times of < 1 yr. Of highest concern has been the permitted chronic release of weathered oil from tankers' ballast-water that is treated and discharged at the Alyeska Marine Terminal (AMT). In earlier years (1980s–90s), with discharge volumes reaching 17–18 MGD, up to a barrel of finely dispersed weathered oil would be released into the fjord daily. Over the last two decades, total petrogenic inputs (TPAH43) into the Port have declined as measured in the monitored mussels and sediments. This trend reflects a combination of decreased Alaska North Slope (ANS) oil production and thus, less tanker traffic, plus less ballast from the transition to double-hulled tankers with segregated ballast tanks, and improved treatment-facility efficiency in removing PAH. From the 2018 collections, mussel-tissue hydrocarbon concentrations from all eleven LTEMP stations (within Port Valdez as well as PWS and NGOA regions) were below method detection limits and similar to laboratory blanks (TPAH43 < 44 ng/g dry wt.). At these low background levels, elevated TPAH values from a minor 2020 spill incident at the Terminal were easily detected at all three Port Valdez stations.

Ǧviḷ̕ás and Snəwayəɬ: Indigenous Laws, Economies, and Relationships with Place Speaking to State Extractions

A discussion about Indigenous economies, governance, and laws begins with relationships. These relationships are centered in a place, a traditional territory, and include responsibilities towards that place. Such a relational approach to Indigenous economies is in conflict with capitalist modes of extraction and the settler Canadian court’s narrow conception of the duties of “consultation and accommodation” as the state’s primary responsibility when an activity or project will infringe Aboriginal rights in a traditional territory. The purpose of this article is to explore the conflict between Indigenous economies and state-sponsored extraction drawing on the experience of two Indigenous nations in British Columbia, Canada—the Heiltsuk and Tsleil-Waututh Nations—who are upholding their relationship with their traditional territories through the assertion of jurisdiction. The Heiltsuk continue to challenge the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ permitting commercial herring fisheries, and have dealt with a marine diesel spill using their own legal processes. The Tsleil-Waututh are opposing the construction of another fossil fuel pipeline in their territory that would increase tanker traffic in the habitat of endangered orcas by seven hundred percent by conducting their own assessment of the project based on Coast Salish law. These exercises of jurisdiction demonstrate relations with and responsibilities towards these Nations’ traditional territories that underscore ecosystem health and wellbeing as the foundation of Indigenous economies. While these examples effectively demonstrate the Nations’ responsibility towards their territories, the regimes of state-sponsored extractions require radical reformulation to be able to engage relational processes of consent.