Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Chapter 1.1: Overview of Impacts of Extractive Industries on Indigenous Peoples
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The Coal Industry and the Indigenous Peoples of Kemerovo Oblast 63
By Dmitry Berezhkov, Vice-President, Russian Association of Indigenous
Peoples of the North (RAIPON)
Kemerovo Oblast is situated in the southern part of West Siberia. The
Oblast is one of the most industrially-developed regions of Russia and has
a population of over 2.5 million people. Its economy is based on the coal
and smelting industries. The total geological coal resources of Kuznetsky
Basin (Kuzbas) are estimated at over 700 billion tons, which amounts to
approximately 70 percent of all the coal resources of Russia. The region
produces approximately 100 million tons of coal annually, which is around
60 percent of all the coal in Russia. Prior to the economic crisis of 2008,
this was around 180 million per year. Over a hundred coal-producing
companies are operating in the region.
European countries are the main consumers of Kuzbas coal: the UK, the
Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Denmark, as well as China, South Korea
and Turkey. In all, coal accounts for over 70 percent of the Oblast’s foreign
trade. In 2011, around 70 million tons of coal was exported, creating
total revenue of approx. US$7 billion. Russia’s largest smelting and
power-producing companies are also active in the Oblast, including the
OJSC Gurievsky Smelting Plant, the OJSC Koks, the OJSC Kuznetskie
Ferrosplavy, the OJSC Mechel, the OJSC SUEK and Evraz Holding.
The Indigenous Peoples of the Region
The small number of indigenous peoples that historically populate
Kemerovo Oblast are the Shorts and the Teleut. Around 13,000 Shorts
live in Russia in all, of which 11,000 live in Kemerovo Oblast. There are
approximately 2,500 Teleut living in the Oblast. These Turkic peoples
mostly live in the south and southeast of the Oblast, generally in the
mountain taiga area, known since the early 1900s as Shoria Mountain.
The Shorts’ main occupation today is agriculture, including cereal crops,
cattle farming and bee farming. They also continue to live according
to their traditional livelihoods, however, which includes hunting, fishing
and cedar nut harvesting. These indigenous peoples account for only
0.5 percent of Kemerovo Oblast’s population. There are no purely
Shorts or Teleut settlements in the Oblast—settlements usually have a
mixed population. There are, however, several dozen settlements with a
dominant Shorts or Teleut population; in most cases, these are very small
villages. The Shorts, an ancient nation from South Siberia, were among