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Arctic Yearbook 2013
Bennett
establish national parks, ethno-ecological parks, and ethnic status territories in the Arctic and
subarctic. But any drive to promote indigenous rights has come to a halt. In fact, in November 2012
the Kremlin temporarily shut down the country‘s primary indigenous peoples‘ organization, the
Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), allegedly over disputes about a
local jade mine (Caven, 2012). This action illustrates the government's efforts to centralize decision-
making and eradicate debate over possible uses of space. Like Canada, Russia marshals
environmental values, geopolitical strategy, and a need for shipping regulation to justify the
expansion of a conservation area, but it noticeably differs in its discounting of local inhabitants and
indigenous peoples.
At the same time, Russia realizes that an empty reserve is not effective enough in demonstrating
sovereignty. The country seeks to employ patrols, tourists, and scientists to reveal active use and
capacity. An official decrying the lack of science and research facilities on the island once remarked,
―[w]e didn‘t take the island from the Americans just to turn it into a model example of Arctic
desert‖ (
Shtilmark, 2003
: 231). The Wrangel Island
zapovednik
has strayed from its original concept
of being a nature reserve free from ―any kind of tourism and recreation,‖ as eco-tourism is now a
stated goal (Gruzdev & Ovsyanikov, 2012). Tourists, more so than confrontational locals, are the
―right‖ kind of presence in Russian conservation areas and are an acceptable flow of people in an
otherwise regimented national space. They help reinforce, too, the notion that Wrangel Island is
Russian sovereign space. The Wrangel Island
zapovednik
enhances sovereignty and regiments
activities in an aqueous area subject to international flows of goods, capital, and people. It even
banishes oil and gas exploration, even though the harmful after-effects from the industry next door
could flow right in, too.
Thus, the protected areas of Lancaster Sound and Wrangel Island are more than just watery spaces
for whales and ecotourists. Wrangel Island
zapovednik
is neither an untarnished ―laboratory of
science‖ nor a ―complex organization,‖ as fellow reserves were during the USSR (Shtilmark, 2003:
147). Instead, it is a laboratory of sovereignty. The conserved areas become carefully calculated and
delineated territory where nature - and even the terrain itself - is enrolled to securitize the space. As
former president Dmitry Medevedev stated, ―[t]he continental shelf is our national heritage‖
(―Kremlin,‖ 2008), lumping the terrain into the same category as Tolstoy, Stravinsky, and the
Bolshoi Ballet. The continental shelf is terrain taken to an extreme, transformed ultimately into a
territory with political and cultural significance despite the fact that it sits unseen hundreds of meters
below the sea. As Elden (2013: 49) observes, ―[j]ust as the world does not just exist as a surface, nor
should our theorisations of it; security goes up and down; space is volumetric.‖ Conservation areas
in maritime spaces do not just cover the water‘s surface: they attempt to control, manage, and
regulate the flows and space both across and below as well.