Netherlands Polar Data Center

Summary

Arctic indigenous communities do not necessarily benefit from oil and gas extraction as it threatens their traditional livelihoods of hunting, fishing and reindeer herding. Most transnational corporations (TNCs) in the Arctic oil and gas sector have declared their commitment to benefit-sharing standards that protect indigenous rights to land and access to traditional resources, but the local implementation of these standards is highly variable.
This project explains the institutionalization (or non-institutionalization) of benefit-sharing standards through an analysis of the governance of oil production networks and their implications for global rules and local practices related to indigenous communities. Four ideal types of oil governance networks have been identified: the shareholder mode, the partnership mode, the CSR mode and the paternalistic mode. The project analyses when these modes emerge, how they lead to different modes of governance, and assesses their impact on the level of compensation and economic support to local communities and indigenous people. Cases include sites of oil extraction near indigenous communities in the Russian Arctic and Alaska. The project is academically innovative in that it combines ethnography of particular territories of oil extraction with a sociological analysis of global governance networks.
Dutch policy makers will be able to use the findings of this project to advise the Arctic Council on how industry standards of the oil and gas sector can be improved to more effectively channel benefits to indigenous communities in a way that it simultaneously fosters economic development, empowers local actors and conserves traditional indigenous practices.

People involved

Datasets

Publications

Maria Tysiachniouk, Laura A. Henry, et al., 2018. Oil Extraction and Benefit Sharing in an Illiberal Context: The Nenets and Komi-Izhemtsi Indigenous Peoples in the Russian Arctic. Society & Natural Resources 31 (5), 556-579

Maria Tysiachniouk, Laura A. Henry, et al., 2018. Oil and indigenous people in sub-Arctic Russia: Rethinking equity and governance in benefit sharing agreements. Energy Research & Social Science 37 (2018-03), 140-152

Svetlana Tulaeva & Maria Tysiachniouk, 2017. Benefit-Sharing Arrangements between Oil Companies and Indigenous People in Russian Northern Regions. Sustainability 9 (8), 1326

Simone Pierk & Maria Tysiachniouk, 2016. Structures of mobilization and resistance: Confronting the oil and gas industries in Russia. The Extractive Industries and Society 3 (4), 997-1009

Laura A. Henry, Soili Nysten-Haarala, et al., 2016. Corporate Social Responsibility and the Oil Industry in the Russian Arctic: Global Norms and Neo-Paternalism. Europe-Asia Studies 68 (8), 1340-1368