Imagining resilience: situating perceptions and emotionsabout climate change on Kamchatka, Russia

Jessica K. Graybill

Published online: 1 November 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Abstract Global environmental change shapes

places and people through ongoing transformation of

ecological, socioeconomic, political, and cultural

phenomena. One region construed as highly vulnera-

ble to global environmental change, particularly

anthropogenic climate change, is the North. Recent

research about human communities in Western arctic

and subarctic places revolve around vulnerability to

anthropogenic climate change, focusing on loss of the

ability to pursue traditional livelihoods, threats to

ecosystems sustaining human communities and the

need to adapt to new environmental regimes. Fewer

studies address Russia and the perceptions and emo-

tions related to climate change. To understand how

people of the Russian North engage with climate

change, I conducted ethnographic research in two rural

and remote communities in subarctic alpine Kam-

chatka, Russia in 2009–2010. Local narratives about

climate change largely reflect climate skepticism, and

anthropogenic climate change is rejected as explaining

environmental changes because: (1) climate is con-

sidered as naturally and cyclically changing, (2)

humans are not considered a large enough force to

alter natural climate cycles, (3) environmental prob-

lems are solvable with technology and (4) there is a

lack of knowledge about climate change science.

Thus, perceptions and emotions about transformation

focus on other realms—socioeconomic, political,

cultural—that are perceived as more critical to every-

day life in the present and near future. Here, I describe

these narratives and place the regional understanding

of climate change in greater context to explain

resistance to imagining environmental transforma-

tions due to climate change.

Keywords Anthropogenic climate change � Climate

skepticism � Emotional geographies �Risk perception �Kamchatka � Russia � Arctic studies

Introduction

Over the past two decades, an army of scholars has

turned their attention to climate transitions in the

North, documenting physical changes regionally and

longitudinally, understand the vulnerabilities and risks

experienced by human communities in this region of

rapid climate transition, and creating science-policy

frameworks to address human adaptation to changing

environmental conditions. Much research has been

undertaken in Western places, most notably in the

Canadian North (Berkes et al. 2001; ACIA 2004;

IPCC 2007; Ford 2009; Laidler et al. 2009).

This construction of impending risks, vulnerabili-

ties and transformations of coupled human and natural

systems in the North emphasizes vulnerability and risk

management approaches to the study of this region,

but largely excludes two additional concerns

J. K. Graybill (&)

Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA

e-mail: jgraybill@colgate.edu

123

GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832

DOI 10.1007/s10708-012-9468-4

regarding regional change in the arctic and subarctic:

colonialism and internal social resilience. Cameron

(2012) finds that current conceptualizations of indig-

enous people and communities in the north as ‘‘local’’

and ‘‘traditional’’ and current interest in improving the

lives of such people runs the risk of ‘‘perpetuating

colonial relations’’ by relegating peoples of the North

to being receptors, not agents, of current and future

change. Excluding colonial understandings from most

scholarship about the North guides engagement away

from deeper exploration of the implications of other

aspects of northern transformation, such as resource

and transportation development schemes (e.g., hydro-

carbon development and shipping routes), that will

affect physical environments and coupled human and

natural systems. While not writing about the North,

Cote and Nightingale 2011 express concern about the

lack of engagement with normative and epistemolog-

ical issues in the construction of the idea of social

resilience more generally. Social resilience is defined

as the ability of groups or communities to cope with

external stresses and disturbances as a result of social,

political, and environmental change (Adger 2000) and

resilience thinking ‘‘proposes a systems approach to

human-environment relations that fits well with

attempts to predict or model socio-ecological change’’

(Cote and Nightingale 2011). In other words, these

scholars would ask researchers to (1) examine criti-

cally for what and for whom are we defining ‘‘local,’’

‘‘traditional,’’ and social resilience, (2) emphasize

equally the roles of physical and political-economic

factors in conceptualizing vulnerability, and (3)

understand how ‘‘the production of knowledge about

colonized people and places is shaped by, and

implicated, in colonization itself’’ (Cameron 2012).

Interrogating knowledge production about human-

environment interactions shows the sociopolitical

construction of environmental knowledge (Castree

and Braun 2001) and, given geography’s general

interest in fairly representing others, acknowledging

social crystallizations of knowledge in ‘other’ places

is pertinent when studying ‘other’ environments.

Thus, geographers should be concerned with place-

based research and knowledge production that

engages other traditions and understandings of places

and transformations—environmental, socioeconomic,

political and cultural. Such a situated approach to

understanding knowledge construction of the North

recognizes that much scholarship about climate

transformations here originates from people outside

the North. Here, I refer to the North to include both

Arctic and sub-Arctic places. Because arctic physical

conditions can exist below the Arctic Circle (66� N)

and subarctic physical conditions occur 50–70� N,

these two regions can both be considered ‘‘the North’’

because they share similar biophysical conditions and

each provides important and early indicators of

climate change (Smith 2010).

Situated studies of northern climate change allow

research produced largely for Anglophone consump-

tion to incorporate extra-Anglophone conceptual fra-

mings. Without this, ‘‘the ‘other’, in postcolonial

terms, will remain an object of study and will not

become integral in ‘knowing’ other places’’ (Graybill

2007; see also Forbes and Stammler 2009). By seeking

to understand perceptions about climate change from

within a place and about a place, our knowledge of

climate change is increased and becomes polycentric,

moving beyond knowledge produced about regions

but inclusive of understandings developed by people

in regions.

Scholars have recognized that observations at the

local scale are largely absent from scientific studies of

climate change (Wilbanks and Kates 1999; Berkes and

Jolly 2001; van Aalst et al. 2008), but that local-scale

studies about topics such as local or traditional

environmental knowledges (Dinero 2011), shifts in

perceptions and uses of natural resource use (Graybill

2008) and understanding of the social networks that

may form to create community resilience (Bodin and

Crona 2009) provide multiple insights about local

responses to global environmental change. Addition-

ally, Moser (2007) recognizes the importance of

studying emotions in climate science, but few studies

anywhere in the North address perceptions and

emotions about climate change.

To move towards polycentric understandings about

climate change, I use a situated, constructionist per-

spective to ask how people on the Kamchatka Peninsula,

an understudied part of the Russian North, create

understandings of their own transforming lives, liveli-

hoods and places, ostensibly due to climate change. In

other words, do local people consider themselves to be at

risk due to current climate transformations? What are

the perceptions about climate changes in place? Is there

acceptance of climate change, or is climate skepticism

present? Is climate change discourse about vulnerabil-

ity, or is it about resilience and the ability to adapt to

818 GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832

123

multiple transformations (environmental, socioeco-

nomic, political, and cultural) simultaneously? What

emotional responses are provoked in discussing climate

change?

On Kamchatka, investigating local discourses and

perceptions of climate and other environmental

change is important because it sheds light on how

people living in one part of the Russian North perceive

and feel about not only their environmental contexts,

but also their simultaneously experienced social,

economic and cultural contexts. Indeed, in studying

the Nenets in the Russian Arctic (Forbes and Stammler

2009) and the Nivkh and Evenk on Sakhalin Island in

the Russian Far East (Graybill 2008), scholars have

noted that concerns about socioeconomic and political

transformations related to oil and gas extraction may

be perceived as more critical than climate transfor-

mations by both indigenous peoples and ‘‘newcom-

ers’’ to these territories. Thus, to investigate local

perceptions and emotions about climate change on

Kamchatka, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in

two rural and remote communities, Esso and Anavgai,

on the Kamchatka Peninsula. I asked how local people

conceptualize climate change, especially against a

backdrop of other changes that are equally—if not

more—important in everyday life. I focused on

understanding emotional responses to climate change.

I frame my investigation of perceptions of climate

change in rural and remote Russia in two bodies of

literature: (1) emotional geographies and (2) climate

change science discourse in Russia. I describe my

research methods and results and discuss the results,

drawing out the significance of this study and impli-

cations for future research to be conducted on local

aspects of climate change in the North and in Russia.

Kamchatka

Scientific, socio-environmental and anecdotal knowl-

edges of resources and physical conditions indicate a

warming trend on Kamchatka over the past several

100 years. Glaciological (Dyurgerov and Meier 2005)

and dendrochronological (Solomina et al. 2007; Sano

et al. 2009) evidence indicate warming temperatures

for the last 400 and 1000 years, respectively. Local

anecdotal narrative of changes to reindeer pasture,

snow seasons, and reports of diseased or ‘‘untasty’’

salmon caught in waters thought to be too warm for

their health exist on Kamchatka (personal communi-

cations in the field).

Alongside this overall trend of scientifically

observed warming and anecdotal knowledge of eco-

system transformations, other changes on Kamchatka

today are happening in socioeconomic, political and

cultural realms. Located on the Far Eastern margin of

Russia and accessible only by air or boat travel or long

terrestrial voyage across northern Siberia, Kamchatka

has always been remote and culturally marginal to

Russia. The first urban settlement, Petropavlovsk-

Kamchatksy, was founded in 1740, but this outpost did

not become a large city until the Soviet era. Geopo-

litically, Kamchatka was important throughout the

Russian Empire and Soviet Union for its naval base

and general border region security (Stephan 1994).

While geopolitical importance has waned, visible in

the decay of naval bases, today the region remains

economically important for Sea of Okhotsk and

Pacific fisheries, especially for salmon and crab

(Newell 2004).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, local

economies were devastated, as subsidies that floated

many of Kamchatka’s towns and villages dried up.

Throughout the Soviet era, people and infrastructure in

this region were heavily subsidized by the Soviet

federal government as part of northern development

schemes (Hill and Gaddy 2003) and for the ‘‘civiliz-

ing’’ of indigenous populations through re-education

mandates that included living settled lifestyles in

‘‘places of compact living’’ (mesta kompaktnogo

prozhivaniya), boarding schools for indigenous chil-

dren, and the erasure of indigenous cultural and

language practices (Slezkine 1994, Bartels and Bartels

1995, Pika 1999). Subsidies and the Soviet living

model continued until 1991, at which time funding

from the federal center ceased flowing to this periph-

ery and people turned to subsistence and semi-

subsistence practices to survive the political and

ensuing socioeconomic upheaval of regime collapse.

Since 1991 and similar to other northern and

peripheral regions of the Russian Federation, the

Kamchatka Krai (the administrative unit in which the

Kamchatka Peninsula lies) has experienced multiple

socioeconomic, political and cultural transformations,

including but not limited to: outmigration, commercial

economic decline in all sectors, individual impover-

ishment, inflation for everyday goods and services,

physical (e.g., buildings, heating systems) and social

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(e.g., primary through tertiary education, health care)

infrastructural decay, and difficulty maintaining trans-

portation of goods, services and people to the rural and

remote villages scattered across the peninsula. Twenty

years into the post-Soviet era, Kamchatka’s economy

revolves around fisheries at large commercial, small

business (e.g., indigenous collectives) and family

subsistence levels. Fish and seafood products are sold

in legal and illegal markets and for those not involved

in the fish economy, everyday life is plagued by

multiple concerns: low salaries, high prices for goods

and services, ongoing decay of many commercial and

residential buildings and slow development of a

market-oriented economy. Ecotourism is perhaps

one exception, and there are great hopes that further

development of this sector will sustain, and perhaps

preserve, the mostly pristine places and the

local and indigenous populations on the peninsula

(van Zoelen 2002). While future oil and gas devel-

opment of the offshore Western Kamchatka Shelf

may prove to be lucrative as part of the larger

development of the shallow Sea of Okhotsk’s

hydrocarbon deposits (Shirkov et al. 2002) and

gasification of the island by Gazprom is in process

(Gazprom 2010), hydrocarbon development is

largely in a holding pattern. Currently, Kamchatka’s

fisheries comprise a large percent of national and

regional fisheries revenue and fishing remains more

vital to these economies than offshore hydrocarbon

development (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Map of Kamchatka. Map from Newell (2004). Resource data and locations from World Wildlife Federation Russia

820 GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832

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The physical and socioeconomic living conditions

on Kamchatka in the post-Soviet period give rise to

common phrases about Kamchatka that I heard across

the peninsula about living here: Kamchatka is my

home, but it is a ‘‘godforsaken paradise’’ that is

‘‘increasingly isolated’’ from Russia and the rest of the

world; that ‘‘we live on a fish edge (rybii krai) of the

world, dealing by ourselves with all of the changes,’’

meaning socioeconomic, political and environmental

changes. To indicate the slow pace of economic

change, I observed the grand opening of the first

indoor clothing store (instead of outdoor, open-air

market stalls) in one of my research locations in March

2010, 19 years after the collapse of the command

economy.

Literature review

Emotional geographies of climate change

Current engagement with emotions about environment

across multiple disciplines opens new spaces for

investigating human reactions to climate change

narrative and realities. Because part of the human

experience is lived through emotions and within

natural environments, emotions about environment

matter, because they are ‘‘an intractable and intangible

aspect of all of our everyday lives’’ (Davidson and

Bondi 2004, 373), informing how we feel, think and

act regarding our environments. Knowledge and

emotions about place are the ‘‘ingredients’’ of percep-

tion about places (Casey 2009). Applying literature

about sense of place and emotions regarding place to

investigations of climate change allows scholars to

become sensitive to the emotions expressed in and

about environmental transformations that people are

facing, particularly regarding critical resources. Plac-

ing emotions at the center of understanding people’s

motivations to think about nature and resources in

particular ways moves scholars closer to understand-

ing the reactions to ideas about climate change.

For people in Kamchatka, being in this place

provides the ability to know it or sense it. Being of this

place constitutes a local knowledge about culture and

environment. The lived experiences of people in place

provide embodied context for perceptions of change in

and of the environment. Indeed, phenomenological

geographers argue that we know the world through

perception and practical, lived experience and know-

ing places creates a sense of attachment to them that

constitutes places as ‘‘fields of care’’ for individuals or

communities (Relph 1976; Tuan 1990). Thus, to be

human is to be ‘in place’, and to be in place is to be

‘attached’ or ‘rooted’ (Cresswell 2004). Especially

when people use natural resources in critical ways,

such as for everyday survival, emotional attachment to

local environments is heightened (Sultana 2011;

Graybill, forthcoming).

For people dependent on local subsistence

resources for individual survival or market sale, the

idea of climate change threatens their existing knowl-

edge of how and where to rely on the natural

environment to obtain what they need for survival.

Complex emotional geographies, then, may develop

regarding availability of and access to critical

resources, especially when those resources are under-

going the multiple kinds of transformations occurring

in the post-Soviet era in addition to the rapid changes

expected to occur due to climate transformations.

While the entire North has not experienced rapid

climate change, overall arctic greening has occurred

since the 1980s and general biophysical changes

observed across the north include northward expan-

sion of the tree line and increased shrub abundance

(Danby and Hik 2007) and changing precipitation and

snow cover regimes (Serreze and Francis 2006).

Movement of emotions through the environment—

and reaction to those emotions—teaches us about how

people are attached to and use places or resources.

That is important to understand because ‘‘what moves

us, what makes us feel, is also that which holds us in

place, or gives us a dwelling place’’ (Ahmed 2004, 11).

Listening for emotions about the ecologies and

resources of Kamchatka assists in understanding the

kinds of environmental identities that people are

creating for themselves in this place and the emotions

they might attach to climate transformations of this

place.

Few social science studies have sought to address

emotional aspects of climate change. One exception is

a sociological study of Norway by Norgaard (2011),

who finds that local residents in this northern location

are living in ‘‘climate denial.’’ While they are aware of

the discourses and realities of climate change through

news reports and biophysical changes experienced in

their region (e.g., no/low snow winters), they continue

to enact a ‘‘nonresponse’’ to climate transformations

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occurring around them. Other explanations for why

people are nonresponsive to ideas of climate change

include the idea of information deficit, the lack of

knowledge about climate change (Boykoff and

Boykoff 2004; Boykoff 2008), information confusion

about what climate change versus global warming,

global cooling and the role of sun spot activity might

be, given climate complexity (Sterman and Sweeney

2007; Dunlap and McCright 2010), and overall dislike

of the politicization of the issue by international

science policy panels such as the IPCC (Rowe 2009;

Berkhout 2010).

Norgaard explains lack of active engagement with

climate change in Norway through the emotions

attached to climate change by local residents. Specif-

ically, she notes the following emotions associated

with thoughts of climate change: fear of loss of

ontological security (threat to the confidence of

continuity of self-identity and surroundings; see

Giddens 1991), helplessness, guilt and threat to

individual and collective identity. Drawing on socio-

logical theory to understand that needs and desires

influence what is and not acceptable to think, emotions

can be understood to affect cognition (Lifton 1995).

Because individual and collective social processes

operate to organize the information people have in

their minds and, because controlling emotions is

difficult to do directly, ‘‘the main way of controlling

one’s emotions is to exert control over one’s thoughts’’

(Rosenburg 1991).

In attempting to control emotions, a condition

known as cognitive dissonance could arise if a person

has two incompatible thoughts. For example, envi-

ronmental cognitive dissonance occurs when a person

knows that water pollution is affecting their health

directly yet does nothing to purify their water source.

This is well documented in the environmental sociol-

ogy literature regarding non-responsiveness to envi-

ronmental degradation (Stoll-Kleeman et al. 2001;

Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; Kellstedt et al. 2008).

When applied to climate change, cognitive dissonance

could mean different things to different types of

people in the North. For well-to-do northerners in

Western contexts, it might mean that people informed

about climate change show less instead of more

concern for dealing with that change, or stop paying

attention to it altogether when no easy solution is seen,

as Norgaard finds. For northerners experiencing

multiple transformations in the post-Soviet era, it

might mean that people confronted with knowledge

about climate change might not be able to reconcile

the potential magnitude of this change with the need

for subsistence and semi-subsistence living. Under-

standing emotions is increasingly an important part

of many disciplinary inquiries and investigating

environmental emotions should include emotions

of phenomena and emotions about places. After

all, environmental phenomena—such as climate

change—always occur in places, and knowledge

about situated emotions can provide deeper insight

into how environmental transformations affect peo-

ple’s emotions, thoughts and actions on the

landscape.

Climate science and Russia

Since the establishment of the Russian Academy of

Sciences (RAS) in St. Petersburg in 1724, the pursuit

of scientific endeavors in Russia has been considered a

noble and elite occupation (Graham 1993). During the

Soviet period, RAS became the USSR Academy of

Sciences, which worked to address issues of state

construction. In the post-Soviet period, the name has

reverted to RAS. In Soviet geography, understanding

human-environment interactions, including the rela-

tionship between climate and society, ‘‘was reduced to

economic geographic inquiry. Geoengineers, planners

and economic geographers choreographed widespread

and large-scale development projects to ‘modernize’

society. Prior works recognizing humans as changed

by their environments were squelched to conceptual-

ize progress as modernization’’ (Graybill 2007).

Because the physical environment, including under-

standings of climate, became the vehicle and tool for

building socialist reality (Wood and French 1989;

Mazurkiewicz 1992), Soviet climate science remained

firmly rooted in the physical sciences; nevertheless,

thinking regarding human-climate interactions was in

evidence during the early 1960s (personal communi-

cation, Jonathan Oldfield).

In the post-Soviet period, study of human-environ-

ment interactions is resurging and relies on pre-Soviet

and Soviet theories of human-environment interac-

tion. Graybill 2007 writes that ‘‘Making sense of their

present and future, post-Soviet geography has turned

to the past, lauding prior Russian achievements. The

very Russianness of post-Soviet Russian geography is

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noted by the (re)turn to pre-Soviet visions … instead

of looking to other nations’ or people’s experiences or

to international theories.’’ What this means for

Western scientists interested in field studies of climate

change in Russia is the necessity of engaging with

different conceptualizations of environmental change

on the ground. In other studies of climate change in the

Russian North, this is also noted by Forbes and

Stammler (2009) in their long-term engagement with

Nenets in the Yamal region in the post-Soviet North

and by Crate (2008) in research in Yakutia. They find

that Western concepts of climate change, wildlife

management or traditional ecological knowledge

(TEK) do not have local buy-in, leading to conceptual

mismatches on the ground unless Western scientists

alter their conceptual frameworks and remain open to

Russian scientific and local/indigenous management

ideas.

On Kamchatka, Western-style engagement with the

concept of climate change is nascent (Sharakhmatova

2011), especially among some indigenous people as

they receive funding from Western sources to conduct

research on this topic among indigenous peoples.

Generally, engagement with human dimensions of

climate has a long history on Kamchatka, especially

regarding the impacts of weather and climate on

humans. For example, a monograph by Russian

medical scholar Viktor Sharkun (2008) indicates

long-term research on the physiological impact of

Kamchatka’s extreme cold on humans and the

Department for the Study of Extreme Conditions

(Fakultet Ekstremalogiya) at the Kamchatka State

University (KSU) routinely studies climate impact on

humans, especially the impact of northern cold and

darkness on the psychology of naval officers and

seamen during active duty (personal communication,

Olga Shiryaeva, KSU).

Generally, however, the overall massive funding

decline for science and salaries for scientists in the

post-Soviet era has resulted in a deficit of ‘‘big’’

science produced by scientists in Russia (Graham and

Dezhina 2008) and created limited engagement with

climate change science. Decrease in funding and

scientific endeavors across RAS and has created an

atmosphere where science has not been considered a

lucrative career path (Tavokin 2012). Youth are

instead pursuing careers in business, management

and law (Mindeli and Pipiya 2002). Second, decline of

science occurred at the same moment in history when

climate change science took hold in the West as a

major concern and funding initiatives grew across

disciplines and internationally (Moser 2010). Only

very recently has funding for climate-related science

regained momentum in Russia. For example, in well-

publicized media stunts, Prime Minister Putin is

shown granting an award for ‘‘promotion of geo-

graphic culture and popularization of science’’ in

Moscow (Voice of Russia 2011) and in 2011, as

Chairman of the Russian Geographical Society’s

Board of Trustees, he distributed grants financing

research of concern to ‘‘national geography.’’ Exam-

ples of the kinds of grants given are funds for polar

expeditions and climate observations to be conducted

by the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and

Climate Monitoring (Russian Geographical Society

2011).

Due to national pride and distrust of Western

scientific concepts, climate skepticism is important to

address as part of the climate science landscape in

post-Soviet Russia (Table 1). The resistance to ‘‘out-

sider’’ models occurs by Russian scientists seeking to

reclaim prior glory of Russian science (Graybill 2007)

and by people of the North because these conceptual

models do not match existing local knowledge’s of

environments and other pressing concerns (Forbes and

Stammler 2009). Rowe (2009) also points out that

Western and international climate science is under-

stood by Russians as heavily influenced by policy and

therefore of potentially reduced value because of

policy involvement.

However, as noted in Table 1, climate change

skepticism and acceptance both exist in Russia.

Disagreement among and imprecise use of these terms

by scholars creates difficulty in explaining the term

climate skepticism. Among these terms commonly

used are climate ‘‘denial, skepticism, cynicism, uncer-

tainty, and ambivalence’’ (Poortinga et al. 2011), all

with different shades of meaning depending on the

scholar and context. For example, one scholar’s

climate denial is another’s climate skepticism, and

often ‘‘climate contrarians’’ are lumped into one

group, leaving climate skepticism misunderstood and

under-analyzed.

Rahmstorf (2004) provides a useful framework

for discussing nuanced meanings of the term climate

change skepticism. Rowe (2009) provides useful

terminology for discussing nuances in climate

change acceptance in Russia. First, for climate

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change skepticism, Rahmstorf delineates three types

of climate skepticism: trend, attribution and impact.

Trend skepticism denotes uncertainty that climate

change is occurring; attribution skepticism means

the causes of climate change (e.g., natural climate

cycles or anthropogenic climate change) are uncer-

tain; and impact skepticism represents uncertainty of

the effects or impacts of climate change. Second, for

climate change acceptance, Rowe provides two

understandings specific to the case of Russia:

naturally cyclical climate (NCC) acceptance and

anthropogenic climate change (ACC) acceptance. To

this I add the notion of global environmental change

(GEC) acceptance. Acceptance of NCC means

recognition that climate is changing, but it is

attributed to natural climate cycles. Acceptance of

ACC denotes attribution of climate change to

natural and anthropogenic sources. Acceptance of

GEC is slightly different and indicates understand-

ing that environments and weather are changing, but

that environmental change derives from other fac-

tors before NCC or ACC. Combining Rahmstorf’s

and Rowe’s understandings, I create a nuanced

framework for understanding climate change skep-

ticism and acceptance in my study of Kamchatka

(see Table 2).

Methods

Interviews for this paper was conducted in two

locations in rural and remote Kamchatka. The villages

of Esso and Anavgai are located in the central

Kamchatka Peninsula (see Fig. 1), accessible by a

1-h helicopter ride (utilized by elite ecotourists) or an

8-h bus ride on gravel/snow roads (utilized by most

local people, thrifty ecotourists, NGO workers and

most research scientists). While living on Kamchatka

in 2009–2010, I conducted interviews for this research

in these two villages in March 2010. In obtaining

participants I was assisted by Bystrinsky Park office in

Esso and Liliya Bakanova, an Evenk cultural activist,

in Anavgai. Esso is a town of approximately 2600

people from across the former Soviet Union and some

of Kamchatka’s indigenous peoples (namely, Evenk

and Itel’men). Anavgai is a mesto kompaktnogo

prozhivaniya comprised of 800 people of multiple

ethnic groups, including Evenk, Itel’men and Kam-

chadal. These villages are located\20 km from each

other and are not close to other settlements. Partici-

pants from both of these remote and rural villages were

selected to include perceptions of climate change from

local and indigenous perspectives in different every-

day situations yet from largely the same geographical

Table 1 Framework for situating Russian national discourse about climate change since 2004. Major international and national

climate change events are noted. Shaded portions of the chart are after Rowe (2009)

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area for ease of comparison of the sense of climate

change in one region.

Investigating perceptions of ecology and resources

gets at the sources, or epistemological foundations, of

how individuals know and think about their environ-

mental surroundings. Semi-structured interviews

allowed me to learn how different individuals under-

stand changes to Kamchatka’s natural landscape and

what they identify as important about it, or what might

be a threat to it and living there, now or in the future.

I asked questions regarding perceptions and under-

standings of environmental transformation, weather

changes during the participant’s lifetimes, understand-

ings of climate change and global warming. I did not

state or discuss my personal position on climate

change, thereby avoiding labeling myself as a climate

skeptic or accepter in interviews or while living in

these communities. Most interviews lasted at least an

hour, and participants answered questions, expanding

on any topic they felt was important, including

historical land uses and weather conditions, other

transformative events in individual and collective

lives, and thoughts about their future existence. This

ethnographic and interview-based methodology

illuminated the emotions held about local environment

and climate change.

This analysis includes 20 participants (11 women, 9

men), 8 from Esso and 12 from Anavgai. Participants

self-identified as local or indigenous residents. Indig-

enous people interviewed include Evenk (11 partici-

pants) and Itel’men (1 participant). In one case, a

Russian woman identified herself as culturally Evenk,

because she lived with her husband and children in

Anavgai, rarely visiting Esso. The youngest partici-

pant was 24 years old and the oldest was 85. All

interviews were conducted in Russian. With one

elderly Evenk participant, an Evenk-Russian transla-

tor assisted with the interview. Research participants’

names are excluded to maintain privacy.

Results and discussion

It’s all changing, but it isn’t climate change…

The major results of this study indicate that participants

in my study are overwhelmingly skeptical about the idea

of anthropogenic climate change. Simultaneously,

Table 2 Types of climate change skepticism or climate change acceptance and associated thoughts of study participants

Explanation Esso (n = 8) Anavgai

(n = 12)

Quotes from respondents

Women Men Women Men

Trend

skepticism

No changes in temperature or weather

are occurring

X X ‘‘a topic of belief, not knowledge’’

Attribution

skepticism

Temperature and weather are

changing, but they are not due to

anthropogenic causes

X X ‘‘caused by natural climate cycles,

not human actions’’

Impact

skepticism

Temperature and weather are changing

due to anthropogenic causes, but the

related impacts are/will be negligible

X X ‘‘solvable with technological

innovation’’

Natural climate

cycles (NCC)

acceptance

Temperature and weather are naturally

cyclical and the related impacts may

or may not be significant in the long

run

X X X ‘‘caused by natural climate cycles,

not human actions’’

Anthropogenic

climate change

(ACC)

acceptance

Temperature and weather are changing

due to anthropogenic causes, and the

related impacts are/will be significant

‘‘solvable with technological

innovation’’

Global

environmental

change (GEC)

acceptance

Environments, weather and

temperature and changing, but

primary causes are historic or current

environmental degradation and

secondary causes are NCC or ACC

X X X Environment ‘‘has already been

changed by pollution and resource

overharvest. Why do we need

another explanation?’’

GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832 825

123

however, participants find that environmental condi-

tions in this alpine and subarctic region of Kamchatka

are changing and they are emotional about these

changes, especially regarding resources used in a

subsistence manner. For example, notions of change in

the quantity, quality and spatial location of salmon;

decreased berry abundance in known locations and

increased abundance in ‘‘different’’ locations; and

difficulty in locating ferns (paparatniki) in forests were

commonly discussed. Changes in precipitation (e.g.,

timing of rain, amount of snow) were not discussed by

any participants, which could be due to the alpine

location of the study locations or to the fact that not all

arctic and subarctic regions are experiencing rapid or

even similar physical changes due to current climate

change (Solomon et al. 2007).

Analysis of interviews regarding natural resources

reveals a specific range of thinking about and

emotional engagement with this topic and shows

how participants perceived and felt about environ-

mental transformation. Participants in my study were

quite interested in talking about the transformation of

resource bases on Kamchatka, including the changing

quantity and quality of multiple kinds of fish in rivers

and in the Sea of Okhotsk, and about onshore mining

developments, including gold and platinum placer

mines. Participants were the most emotional when

discussing how they perceive that environmental

conditions have worsened and how they must travel

farther away into less hospitable resource places to

reap lower quality harvests of fish, other marine

resources, or hunted animals. In discussions about

resource quality and the distance to resource harvest

sites, participants’ faces often registered disappoint-

ment about quality and sorrow at the distances needed

to travel to now access traditional resources, such as

fish. Further distances traveled means more time away

from family, a source of distress for both men and

women in these communities.

These resource concerns are largely attributed to

environmental degradation, something participants

understand as having begun in the Soviet era and

continuing today. In their understanding, however,

these are solvable problems, either through personal

technological advancement (e.g., the use of snowmo-

biles to obtain resources farther away), by resource

replacement (e.g., fishing for smelt instead of crab) or

by stricter environmental enforcement. Upon raising

the question that these environmental problems may

be related to anthropogenic climate change, partici-

pants largely did not perceive this as a reason for the

noted environment changes. Reactions to this sugges-

tion were often emotional, which leads to the overall

conclusion that even mentioning anthropogenic cli-

mate change was a cause for distress or excitement

among all participants. In other words, even in the face

of a resource base experiencing transformation, the

reasons for change are perceived as environmental

degradation and not climate change. To this, local and

indigenous peoples largely express that ‘‘we will be

resilient and overcome these problems’’ either by

personal adaptations, technological improvement, or

hope that the Russian government will suddenly

promote proactive resource conservation.

To understand the full range of perceptions about

climate change, I have combined the ideas of Rahmstorf

(2004) about climate change skepticism and Rowe

(2009) about climate change acceptance to frame the

results of my study of Kamchatka (Table 2). At first

glance it might seem that some of these categories

overlap. For example, impact skepticism could be

understood as almost the same as ACC acceptance. To

obtain finer-scale appreciation of the nuances of climate

change skepticism and acceptance, I separated these

categories based on the overall sense of perception of

climate change and types of emotions participated

expressed in interviews. For example, a participant who

expressed more distrust in climate change science and

had more faith in technological fixes to the problem was

categorized as an impact skeptic, whereas a participant

who expresses a bit more understanding of climate

change science and was more concerned about the

ability of humans to solve climate change problems was

categorized as an ACC accepter.

Aggregated results of the analysis indicate varia-

tions between the two study locations and between

genders as to the specific kinds of climate change

skepticism or climate change acceptance expressed by

participants. In the larger, more Russian town of Esso,

there is more trend skepticism and acceptance of

climate change due to natural climate cycles than in

the more indigenous town of Anavgai, where there is

more attribution and impact skepticism and accep-

tance of global environmental change, but not natural

climate change. Men are overall more skeptical of

climate change and more likely to attribute environ-

mental change to natural causes than women. In all

locations and across gender, none of the participants

826 GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832

123

explained environmental or climate changes in sub-

arctic alpine Kamchatka as occurring due to anthro-

pogenic climate change. This result is significant, in

that all participants felt that environmental problems

were ultimately resolvable by technological innova-

tion or policy implementation.

Temperature and weather are largely perceived as

changing, which many participants also conceded was

the reason for environmental and resource distribution

changes, but there was little consensus about the

magnitude or overall importance of these changes, or

their relationship to climate change, natural or human-

induced. Additionally, some participants remained

skeptical that climate change was occurring, while

others accepted that it was occurring, but doubted that

the impacts of climate and global environmental

change would be significant. Common phrases among

participants included that climate change ‘‘is a topic of

belief, not knowledge,’’ and that it is ‘‘caused by

natural climate cycles, not human actions.’’ In Esso,

participants identified belief as necessary for accept-

ing climate change, because they felt the knowledge

base for accepting large-scale climate change (either

natural or anthropogenic) did not exist. Among

participants from Anavgai, there was insistence that

while humans caused some environmental change

(e.g., pollution and ensuing degradation), nature was

the long-term cause of most changes they perceived to

be happening on Kamchatka.

Attempting to understand why there was an overall

acceptance of resource decline and only some accep-

tance of some explanations for climate change—but

definitely resistance to the idea of anthropogenic

climate change—requires situating people and place

in history and geographic context. Accepting changes

in resource bases is acceptable, because it is poten-

tially a solvable problem. According to Soviet science

ideology, humans are in control of nature and thus it

can be shaped or changed to meet our needs by

technological means and solutions (Mazurkiewicz

1992; Graybill 2007). Adherence to this understanding

of engineering-oriented science appears to be thriving

still in these locations on Kamchatka. Additionally,

resistance to accepting climate change as an explana-

tion for environmental changes occurring on Kam-

chatka may indicate distrust in international or

Western climate change science. Appreciating the

work of Forbes and Stammler (2009) and Rowe

(2009), both about Russia, misgivings about the

existence of anthropogenic climate change may be

related to the fact that much climate change science is

‘‘outsider’’ science, which participants seem to find

suspect for political reasons.

Geography matters in framing emotions

about climate change

In the process of making meaning in daily life in the

post-Soviet Russian North, socioeconomic, political,

cultural and environmental transformations all threa-

ten people’s sense of place, which affects a sense of

the continuity of life or the ability to (re)construct new

cultural, socioeconomic or political identities in the

post-Soviet era. Adding the need to construct new

environmental identities because of climate changes

that are beyond their ability to control may be simply

too much to add to the already chaotic mix of fluxes

that people already experience. With this contextual

understanding, it becomes understandable that people

in Kamchatka’s remote and rural communities that

subsist to survive resist accepting anthropogenic

climate change as an explanation of the environmental

changes occurring around them. Another way to think

about this is that international discourses and knowl-

edge of anthropogenic climate change, when applied

locally, present a temporal and spatial scalar mismatch

for local people. At the local level and on short human

time scales, the magnitude of change is hard to

imagine for remote and rural peoples on Kamchatka

who neither participate in Russia’s industrial produc-

tion nor barely afford its consumer products. Temporal

and spatial change in resource abundance and distri-

bution can rightfully be attributed to resource

mismanagement since the Soviet period of industrial-

ization (Pryde 1991) and this is perceived as a

solvable problem. As one participant noted, ‘‘our

environment has already been changed by pollution

and resource overharvest. Why do we need another

explanation?’’

To understand resistance to engaging with the idea

of anthropogenic climate change requires understand-

ing what other transformative experiences participants

have experienced and how they have adapted to other

changing conditions (socioeconomic, political, cul-

tural). In other works, applying a historical and

regional understanding of people and place is critical

in getting at the situated perceptions and emotions

about climate change on Kamchatka.

GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832 827

123

To explain climate change denial in Norway,

Norgaard (2011) places emotions and emotion man-

agement centrally in individual’s processes of denial,

finding that emotional states ‘‘matter for climate

change’’ because ‘‘if the emotional states associated

with thinking about a topic are uncomfortable or

socially unacceptable, a person may not make the

associated cognitive link’’ to the actuality of anthro-

pogenic climate change. For example, one of Norg-

aard’s research participants placed ‘‘his hands in front

of his eyes as he spoke’’: ‘‘People want to protect

themselves a bit,’’ because simply thinking about

global warming increase feelings of helplessness, guilt

and fear for the future, some of which Norgaard

concluded threatened individual identities in Norway.

On Kamchatka, a range of emotions was expressed

when participants were asked to think about climate

change on Kamchatka: bravery, disbelief, victimiza-

tion, bitter humor, confusion, anger, fear and help-

lessness (Table 3). All participants expressed bravery,

bitter humor and confusion about climate change. In

both study locations, there was a sense that individuals

and the communities of Esso and Anavgai were

capable of adapting to any changes and that they could

be(come) socially resilient if necessary. Largely, study

participants felt they had been able to overcome

multiple perestroikas throughout the twentieth cen-

tury, individually and collectively, and they felt ready

to deal with whatever other changes might come their

way. In other words, the sense that ‘‘we will

overcome’’ all ‘‘transformations’’ existed among all

participants. This machismo did not exclude women

and was not age limited. However, all participants also

expressed bitter humor and confusion about what

climate change actually was. In terms of humor, most

participants thought that nature is a force too large to

be manipulated extensively by humans, and therefor

the idea of human-induced global climate changes was

preposterous. This idea itself was humorous to most

participants, and became bitterly funny when partic-

ipants expressed that this dialog was simply a

‘‘Western idea imposed on us’’. Of note is the idea

Table 3 Emotions related to climate change in Esso and Anavgai, Kamchatka

Emotion Expressions/quotes related to emotions from the interviews Esso (n = 8) Anavgai

(n = 12)

Distilled idea

Women Men Women Men

Bravery We will overcome/resist all transformations; we’ve dealt

with it before

‘‘We’ll just fish further away’’

‘‘This is a problem solvable with technology’’

X X X X Social resilience

Adaptation

Technological fix

Disbelief Humans are too insignificant a force to change nature

It’s an international political game and climate change is

‘‘all about money’’

‘‘A topic of belief, not knowledge’’

X X Nature rules humans

International politics

Scientifically

unfounded

Something indigenous people will ‘‘hang noodles on your

ears about’’ (tell tall tales about) because they don’t have

the ‘‘right’’ kind of knowledge about the environment

X Unfounded notions

of the aboriginal

population

Bitterly

humorous

‘‘It’s Western ideas imposed on us’’ X International politics

Humans are too insignificant a force to change nature X X X X Nature rules humans

Victimized ‘‘It’s not us who caused it’’ X X X Victimization

Confusion What/who should we believe? X X X X Climate confusion

Anger What/who should we believe? X Climate skepticism

I can’t handle any more transformation X Inability to cope

Fear I can’t imagine transformation of nature in addition to

other transformations

X X Inability to cope

Helplessness How will I deal with this in addition to other changes

going on (socio-economic)?

‘‘…and just when I thought the big changes were over…’’

X X Inability to cope

828 GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832

123

that humans are in control of nature, and the distrust of

‘‘outsider’’ science. Reinserting Cameron (2012) into

the interpretation of the results, we might also ask

whether these emotions expressed relate to rejecting

the idea of climate change in the desire to not be

colonized again—this time regarding environmental

relations and possible policy futures—by ideas orig-

inating outside the North.

More men than women expressed emotions related to

the general ideas about human insignificance, interna-

tional politics, and unfounded bases for the acceptance

of climate change as really occurring. More women than

men expressed emotions related to the general ideas of

victimization, the inability to cope and climate confu-

sion and skepticism. Responses such as climate change

was ‘‘a topic of belief, not of knowledge,’’ ‘‘all about

money and international politics’’ indicate that climate

change was not a topic worthy of their consideration,

even if they might be confused as to what climate change

science actually is. All participants expressed some

confusion about the term and openly asked what and

whom they should believe about this topic. One

participant expressly noted that she would like to know

more about the topic, but didn’t know where to go for

information: ‘‘Local papers don’t write about this and I

don’t have internet access. The information I get is when

I go to the city (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) and then I

get overwhelmed.’’

Similar to Norgaard’s experience with the person

who put his hands over his eyes, one Russian

participant from Esso was very open to exploring

what climate change might mean for her future and her

children’s future, and very much wanted to discuss it.

But, as she realized the potential magnitude of change

associated with warming temperatures and changing

weather patterns, she engaged less with the idea of

climate change and turned to a narrative of bravery

against any kind of change. This interview provides an

example of cognitive dissonance in one person’s

confronted with life-altering change: specific emo-

tions—confusion, fear, helplessness—expressed early

in the interview were are replaced by other emotions—

bravery, disbelief, victimization, bitter humor,

anger—after discussion was underway. This could

be understood as a step towards creating social

resilience as initial thoughts and emotions about the

inability to cope with climate change were replaced by

other thoughts and emotions that sought to shelter an

individual from their initial responses.

The emotions related to climate change on Kam-

chatka result from two things related to history and

regional context (in other words, place matters). First,

resistance is closely related to how local communities

currently manage to survive and even thrive in this era

of reduced support, which is related to their abilities to

respond to ongoing socioeconomic, political and

cultural transformations. Reliance on well-developed

local kinship-based and social networks supplies

everyone in the community with the material goods

they need to survive. Second, the remote and rural

nature of the two study locations serves to strengthen

community and territorial bonds. This raises the idea

of social resilience, which is noted in participant

narratives about their abilities to cope with socio-

ecological change. Existing narratives about surviving

multiple kinds of transformations, distrusting ‘‘out-

sider’’ information and believing in the insignificance

of human communities in creating environmental

problems serve local and indigenous peoples well,

bonding communities socially and territorially, espe-

cially after near-systemic collapse in 1991.

Implications and future research

Multidimensional aspects of the global environmental

changes that are occurring are often reduced to concern

about human vulnerability and adaptation to a rapidly

changing climate in the North. Other global environ-

mental changes of equal importance occurring across

northern places and deserving of more attention include

immigration and emigration related to resource booms

and bust cycles (Heleniak 1999); socio-economic and

political transformation, especially in the Russian North

(Young 2009); (re)imagining cultural identity by indig-

enous peoples who are largely gaining political freedom

(Pika 1999) or stature (Cameron 2012); and speculation

about legal ramifications regarding the opening up of

new offshore transportation due the future likelihood of

ice-free Arctic waterways (Smith 2010).

Long-term scientific research indicates that climate

change is transforming the ecologies and environ-

ments used for subsistence hunting, fishing and

gathering on Kamchatka, and anecdotal knowledge

of the environment confirms this. For example,

reindeer pasture conditions are more unpredictable

due to rapid weather changes (e.g., snow to ice)

(personal communication, reindeer Sovkhoz director,

GeoJournal (2013) 78:817–832 829

123

Esso), and salmon are more frequently seeking colder

waters further north and away from traditional fishing

locations for indigenous peoples (personal communi-

cation, fisherman, Anavgai). However, participants in

this study frame environmental change not as climate

change, which is ‘‘unthinkable,’’ but largely as envi-

ronmental degradation that can be resolved by human

actions such as individual and social resilience,

technological innovation or policy intervention.

Understanding local resistance to accepting anthro-

pogenic climate change must be understood in context.

Only by situating local knowledge about the environ-

ment can the perceptions and emotions about it be

understood. On Kamchatka since 1991, many people

continue to struggle through socioeconomic, political

and environmental transformation with minimal aid

from the federal center. Thus, people rely on natural

resources in subsistence and semi-subsistence ways to

cope with multiple and simultaneous transformations

of society, economy and place. Because other things

take precedence, participants do not conceptualize

climate change as an urgent problem to address.

Indeed, as Moser (2010) points out ‘‘(c)oncern, sense

of urgency and importance vary greatly across pop-

ulations, and understanding of the causes and the

stakes remains limited.’’ Causes of resisting the idea of

anthropogenic climate change are the fact that accep-

tance of this narrative is threatening to livelihoods,

individual and community, and existing notions of

social resilience. On Kamchatka, the stakes are simply

too high to accept this new narrative. Resistance to this

discourse stems from a place of self-protection. Local

conceptualizations of social resilience—‘‘we are

resilient, we have survived all of the changes thrown

at us by the twentieth century’’—does not have room

for the emotional baggage created by thinking about

climate change.

Further pursuit of locally situated historical anal-

ysis will help elucidate that change on Kamchatka, and

likely in other northern communities, is a constant and

nothing is stationary. This must be explored for this

locale and others to understand the human dimensions

of climate change. While the global science commu-

nity scrambles to understand biophysical change in

what many call the anthropocene, other changes and

histories are perhaps more vital to everyday life in

places also experiencing climate change. The grand

narrative of climate change obscures other lived

changes and realities. Largely a field dominated by

physical science understandings, social scientists must

work to ensure that humans are written into environ-

mental history, as both agents and receptors of climate

change. Without this, for whom are we ‘‘saving’’ the

environment? Additionally, the turn to historical

understandings must be done with local participation

because, as Norgaard (2011) writes ‘‘a community’s

sense of the past, present and future are not just

‘‘there’’ like a political imagination; they are collec-

tively constructed.’’

Finally, recognizing that resistance to the idea of

climate change can create localized or even regional-

ized climate skepticism is important to consider in

northern research agendas. Scholars must learn to

grapple with this powerful counter narrative to the

dominant discourse of climate change originating in

the North. If we, as a global community, hope to create

just policy decisions about climate change that are

based on studies about and for local people and places,

we must not only acknowledge, but engage with, local

narratives about all transformations that may be

occurring in order to understand the communities

about whom we are talking and who will be most

affected in the short and long term futures.

Acknowledgments I thank the American Council of Learned

Societies and Colgate University for financial support of this

research and Jonathan Oldfield for correspondence regarding

climate science in Russia. I am deeply indebted to numerous

people on Kamchatka, including Liliya Bakanova for her

assistance navigating Esso and Anavgai, and to Olga Shiryaeva,

Viktoria Zhezherova and Elena Andreeva at Kamchatka State

University who made this research possible in logistical and

scholarly ways.

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