UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation

Traditional Knowledge Serving the Nature Resource Management in Kamchatka

In the end of 2002 the UNESCO Moscow Office has launched the project "Indigenous Knowledge and its Role in Biodiversity Conservation and Nature Use in Kamchatka". The purpose of this project is to enhance biodiversity conservation and natural resource use in the Bystrinski National Park area through the integration of indigenous people and their environmental knowledge in the management process. This activity is an integral component of the UNDP-GEF project on biodiversity conservation in the Kamchatka peninsula. The UNESCO project is implemented by the German Institute for Social Anthropology and the Pacific Institute for Geography (RAS Far-Eastern branch) in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski.

The project is envisaged in four phases: compiling of existing data on Indigenous Knowledge (IK), collective fieldwork involving elders and youth to enhance IK intergenerational transmission, planning additional supplementing projects on IK in other parts of Kamchatka for 2004. Within the already started first phase of the project the consultations will take place with representatives of the local community, particularly with elderly people.

The project will result in producing an electronic database applicable – beyond scientific use – for the local communities themselves, and as a tool for the management of the Bystrinski Nature Park. The activity also aims at raising the general awareness about indigenous environmental knowledge. It is part of a greater UNESCO initiative on local and indigenous knowledge (LINKS).

The Volga Vision: How Can Science Guide a Region Towards Sustainable Development?

The UNESCO Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Sustainable Development of the Volga Caspian Basin was launched at the 4th Great Rivers Forum last year in Nizhny Novgorod and presented at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Recently, the organization of the complementary groups to support the initiative has been finalized: apart from the Volga Task Force with representatives of the five international science programmes of UNESCO (geology, hydrology, oceanography, ecology and social sciences), an Advisory Committee, including, among others, 16 members of high-level national authorities, and a Working Group, gathering highly experienced specialists from all over the Volga Basin and beyond, have been established. The Working Group is assisted by a group of consultants specialised in different branches of science. The objectives of the initiative consist in elaborating the vision of the socio-economic and environmental state of the Volga Basin in 30 years in the case of a favourably sustainable evolution.

The consultants have now begun their task of turning applied scientific knowledge into this general Vision. On the one hand, the approach applied focuses on human basic needs (such as health, nutrition, human and environmental security, habitat and quality of life) and relies on scientific data and assessment of the actual situation. On the other hand, the Vision should stand at the opposite of a prediction exercise, exhibiting, in setting target values, a detachment from the present situation and today’s problems. The initiative step following the vision will define strategies for project implementation in order to reach, in 30 years, the target values.

UNESCO intends to have the first version of the Volga vision ready to be presented and discussed during the next Great Rivers Forum in Nizhny Novgorod in May 2003.

A European Experts Meeting on Combating Racism, Xenophobia, Discrimination and Related Intolerance in Europe will be organized in Moscow in March 20–21, 2003. The event is a UNESCO Follow-up to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, South Africa, 2001).

Experts from 9 European countries and representatives of the relevant international organizations will gather to discuss a European regional contribution to the UNESCO integrated strategy against racism, discrimination, xenophobia, intolerance and exclusion.

Please read on the development in the next issue.

Dr. Malinin was born in Karelia in 1923. As an 18-year-old volunteer in the days following the 1941 German invasion of the USSR, he served in a fighter battalion of the Red Army. After being seriously wounded in March 1945, he spent more than a year in military hospitals. He was awarded a great number of orders and medals.

In 1946, Dr. Malinin enrolled in the Law Department of Leningrad State University, and graduated with highest honors in 1951. In 1955, he defended his master’s thesis, and in 1967, his doctoral dissertation. From 1968 to the present, he has been a professor in the International Law department of St. Petersburg University. Dr. Malinin is a leading specialist in the field of international law, and has published more than 100 scholarly works. His academic research has centered on the legal status of international organizations, the judicial nature of their legislative acts, and the legal status of UN special institutions. Dr. Malinin is one of the originators of a completely new area in domestic social science: atomic law. He has made an enormous contribution to the development of many of the legal problems of international security, disarmament, and international maritime law.

Dr. Malinin devotes a great deal of his time to the training of academic and teaching personnel. Under his supervision, around fifty master’s theses have been successfully defended, and more than ten doctoral dissertations.

For more than thirty years, Dr. Malinin has been the indispensable leader of the St. Petersburg Branch of the UN Association of Russia. Under his direction, the Association Branch has conducted many Russian and international academic, socio-political, and mass cultural events. Largely thanks to Dr. Malinin’s rich knowledge, consummate professionalism, and inexhaustible personal charm, young people are continually attracted to the Association Branch, and his ideas and enthusiasm have become the foundation for most of its projects.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Dr. Malinin, a leading figure in Russian and world studies of international law, was full of ideas and plans for both academic and public work.

The Russian and American UN Associations announce the 2003 Essay Contest for student youth. Entrants must write on the topic "High-ranking UN Officials on the Development of the United Nations". The authors of the best works will be invited to Moscow to defend their reports. The three winners will then be flown to New York to visit UN Headquarters, where the awards ceremony for the American winners will also be held.

In your work, you must analyze how different high-ranking UN officials have seen the organization’s role in the past, and how they see it in the present; what they have thought about the effectiveness of its operations; and what measures they have proposed to improve it. You must also present your own views on the organization’s path of development. The question of just which UN officials you should write about in your report is left up to you, the author. As author, however, you also have the right to select just one of the organization’s officials, and to concentrate fully on his (or her) views within the framework of the given topic. We would like to make it clear that we do not expect you to write a biography of UN officials, but an analysis of their points of view on the development of the organization.

The length of the report (in Russian) should not exceed seven (7) printed pages. Entrants must be under the age of 18 (as of August 1, 2003).

Works must be submitted no later than April 10, 2003, to the following address: 129010 MOSCOW / Prospekt Mira, 36 / UN Association of Russia, with the notice "Essay Contest of 2003" written on the envelope. Don’t forget to include an address and telephone number where we can contact you.

You can find some additional useful tips at the UNAR website: www.una.ru

Good luck!

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