How extractive industries trigger multiple pressures on reindeer husbandry

I am happy to announce that another paper of my PhD work for REXSAC was published! Together with a great team of co-authors, I show how extractive industries, especially large-scale mining, induced a cascade of land conversions that are affecting animal populations and the adaptive responses of pastoralists in northern Sweden.

Attempting this type of research was challenging to publish not only due to its interdisciplinary nature (bridging between natural and social science) but also in terms of including reindeer herder knowledge (as a form of indigenous and local knowledge) acknowledged to an equal extent as empirical knowledge. This is not the first time that we realised that this is an issue. Most of the information that we highlight is not news to reindeer herders in the area, but our paper allows their voices, and concerns, to be heard by wider audiences. We believe that giving a platform to these voices is vital. Our research can contribute to models for science that includes indigenous and local knowledge for not only the research community but all stakeholders. We also summarised and translated our work into both Swedish and North Sámi to be more inclusive and for our findings to become more accessible beyond the scientific community.

Read the paper and its summary here: http://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10234

Author: Christian Fohringer
Photo: Reindeer in Laevas reindeer herding community walking across a waste rock pile of the Kiruna mine, the largest underground iron ore mine in the world. Credit: Niila Inga 

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Christian Fohringer Christian Fohringer

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Umeå

E-mail: christian.fohringer@slu.se