#buy the driving license in Stockholm
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Buy A Residence Permit For Sweden
As in all cities in Europe, people want to buy driving licenses online in Stockholm. Genuine driving license prices are not expected to be cheap but we can offer the best driving license deals for you.
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Subtext and Culture, Young Royals, Season 1, Episode 2
Episode 2 picks up the morning day after the initiation party, the girls are having breakfast lunch at their dorm, the boys at theirs, and everyone wants the juicy details about what happened at the party...
Culture: Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far? Although, it's pretty funny how the roles are reversed, Maddie is all "meh" about it, while Nils tells a different story. Then again, since when do you get together after a blowjob?
Culture: I actually have no idea why Simon is having breakfast at Skogsbacken, since regular schools only cover lunch for students, everyone eats breakfast at home, and then goes to school. Then again, it allows a scene where (Never mind, they're having lunch, thanks @kamand !) Blink and you miss it: Wilhelm casts some nervous glances at Simon after having been called out for disappearing at the party and almost forced to confess to making out with someone.
Culture: I know Felice is trying to put August down, but don't knock a proper Swedish pizza! As much as I like living in the US, they can't fucking make pizzas here, and the first thing I eat every time I go back to Sweden is always a real pizza. With pineapple and shrimp as God intended pizza to be made!
Culture: August is namedropping ski resorts in the Alps, which is where you go skiing in Europe if you have money, although Saint-Martin-de-Belleville is actually near Val Thorens in France, while Verbier is in Switzerland. It does have a three-star restaurant, though. Sweden and Norway have a couple of decent ski resorts, but the Scandinavian mountain chain is simply not as impressive as the Alps.
Subtext: Remember Wilhelm getting up and hurrying to math class in the beginning of the scene? It was so he could grab the other seat next to Simon, because he knows Simon is gonna sit next to Sara, since no-one else does.
Culture: Formally greeting your teacher before class is very uncommon in Sweden, but since Hillerska is all about discipline and tradition, of course they do it. Note that they're again using the formal Swedish title for male teachers, Magister, which in a regular school would be kind of a joke, since teachers and students are on a first-name basis with each other.
Subtext: Wilhelm is exposing how the world works if you have money. At Simon's old school, studying alone would result in good grades, but Hillerska is slightly corrupt and almost expects the students to essentially pay for getting a good grade.
Subtext: Simon is lying to his teacher, he absolutely hasn't talked to his parents about paying for private lessons.
Subtext: No, Sara absolutely does care about what other people think about her, and when she directly tells Felice that she would actually like some friends, that's when Felice gets it and starts making an effort to become real friends with her.
Culture: They're all bilingual at Simon's home, they're all speaking Spanish and Swedish, although Linda has a very noticeable accent to her Swedish. Based on demographics and statistics, the most likely scenario is that Linda immigrated to Sweden from Chile, met Micke, and started a family. In real life, Omar Rudberg was born in Venezuela and grew up in Sweden, while Carmen Gloria Pérez was born in New York, and grew up in Puerto Rico.
Subtext: Remember how I talked in the intro post about how distant social classes know nothing of each other? Ayub and Rosh are either working class or lower middle class like Simon, and since rowing is a typical upper class sport, they know nothing of it, they don't even think of it as a real sport. Unlike football, which is a proper working class sport, they know all about that!
Subtext: Scandinavia has Jantelagen, and everyone there thinks it's uniquely Scandinavian, but all countries have some form of Tall Poppy Syndrome. In this scene, Simon is starting to make a class journey, he started rowing, he started trying to fit in with the other upper-class kids, and getting into a relationship with someone as upper-class as Wilhelm would definitely move him all the way. But going on a journey means leaving things behind, which is why Rosh and Ayub are cutting him down and literally turning their backs on him. They like it in the small town of Bjärstad, why can't he be happy there too? Why is he betraying his roots?
Subtext: This comment from August nicely foreshadows a later episode when August does something traceable on a School computer...
Subtext: What August means is that he's not sure Wilhelm has the same desire to be accultured into the upper class, to play the part of a proper prince, in the same way that he and Erik have accepted their roles and are even enjoying them.
Culture: Although it's impossible to read the name of the medicine, the paper tag on the bottle indicates that it's some kind of prescription medicine. From the conversation with Vincent, we learn that it's some kind of ADHD medication, probably some kind of Dextroamphetamine since those improve athletic ability and cognitive functions in healthy people.
Culture: Birkenstock sandals are associated with hippies in Sweden as well as in many parts of the world, so August is actually saying that the school counselor isn't really part of the same upper-class society as the rest of the staff. And again, his use of the word sosse drives the point home.
Subtext: Consequently, the counselor sees right through August and refuses to immediately prescribe him the medication that he wants...
Subtext: ...even though August tries to both bribe him and threaten him into giving him the medication he wants.
Subtext: A big theme of this episode is class journeys, and in this scene and a previous exercise scene, August gushes about how good a thing that is, how proud he is of Simon for going on one, and spouts some crap about how everyone can make it if they really want to.
Subtext: Thankfully, Madison says what we're all thinking: August is full of shit, life isn't fair, and they're only at the school because they were born into privilege.
Blink and you miss it: After Wilhelm has nervously texted his crush for the first time, he starts to bite his fingernails, but quickly stops himself, because why would he be nervous? He's just texting another boy about rowing practice, there's nothing more to it!
Subtext: Simon's texting game is on point though, he knows exactly what he should write to get Wilhelm to go on a totally-not-a-date with him.
Subtext: In the same way that August couldn't convince the counselor about being sick, I don't think Wilhelm's atrocious acting here convinces August that he's sick either.
Culture: Public transport in the greater Stockholm area - or wherever we're supposed to be - is of course cash-less, and you pay by either charging a special card, or by signing up in their app and buying tickets through there. The point of this scene though is to drive home how Wilhelm has never ever had to take the bus before in his life, and therefore has no idea how it works.
Culture: The totally-not-a-date starts at a Circle K, which in Sweden is just another gas station, but it is actually a Canadian multi-national convenience store corporation. The price of gas is of course posted in kr/l, and 13.98kr/l corresponds to roughly $6/gal.
Subtext: Throughout the totally-not-a-date, Wilhelm is trying to reach for common ground with Simon, trying to show him how he's just a regular guy...
Subtext: ...but then real life intrudes, Wilhelm is recognized by some local girls, who call out to him and run away giggling, which shows how he's not a regular guy, he's going to get recognized wherever he goes.
Culture: Kokt eller grillat, boiled or grilled, are the two ways you can get your hot-dog at pretty much any hot-dog place in Sweden, and ketchup and mustard is always offered. The correct answer to this question is of course grilled, with ketchup and mustard, and this just shows that Wilhelm is a man of culture and good taste. Unfortunately, they were out grilled ones, so they all got boring soggy boiled hot-dogs instead. Is there a metaphor here? I don't know.
Subtext: Again, the show drives home the point that absolutely no-one has a problem with people being gay. Simon is clearly out to Ayub and the rest of his friends, and Ayub immediately picks up on the fact that this is totally a date.
Blink and you miss it: Ayub nudges Simon with his elbow to tell him that he should make a move on Wilhelm.
Culture: What we're looking at is just the local junior/high school football team, Bjärstad, playing a match against some other unnamed junior football team. Since the stakes are super low, the audience basically consists of whichever parents and friends of the players that could be bothered showing up.
Culture: Driving age is 18 in Sweden, and even then getting your own car at that age is extremely uncommon. However, you can easily get a license for a moped when you turn 15, so these are the vehicles of choice for teenagers to get around.
Subtext: August found out about Wilhelm's trip to town, but his main problem with it is that he wants Wilhelm to stop slumming it with lower class people, and to start hanging out with everyone at school instead, so that he can be properly accultured into the upper class. Again, sosse in this context means working class, not socialist.
Subtext: Although Simon felt really great about his first date with Wilhelm, the text message reminds him that Wilhelm isn't a regular person, and that even this innocent little trip generates interest and scrutiny, and can't be posted publicly.
Culture: As everyone should have noticed by now, Madison keeps speaking English, while everyone speaks to her in Swedish, so clearly she understands it. But here she gives her motivation for sticking to English, and that is that she doesn't feel she's good enough at speaking Swedish. Boarding schools like Hillerska attracts international students that have some kind of connection to the country, so a likely scenario is that Madison grew up in the US with a Swedish parent, and she's being sent here to experience Swedish culture and get immersed in the language to learn it better.
Cinematography: This shot of August drives really home all the pressure he is under, he's out of drugs, the headmistress just hinted that he's out of money, and he's literally being weighed down by books and work-out weights.
Subtext: Simon has kept his visits to Micke a secret from Sara, so here he has to intervene to make sure August doesn't accidentally reveal this to her. He also wants to protect his sister, so he's redirecting August's search for drugs onto himself.
Subtext: And on the flipside, Simon isn't really telling his dad that Sara still hates him and really doesn't want to see him, so he's vague when Micke asks about Sara and Linda.
Culture: Finally a bottle of medicine where we can read the label! Unfortunately for Simon, this is Tramadol, an opiate prescribed for pain relief, which is the complete opposite of the kind of drugs August wants.
Subtext: If you haven't figured out yet that this episode is about class journeys, August spells it out for us here. However, the reason he's "congratulating" Simon in front of everybody is because Simon just supplied him with more drugs, so this is his way of thanking him, since he can't really pay him.
Blink and you miss it: For a split second, Wilhelm grabs Simon's leg during the scary scene.
Subtext: The entire dialogue of the movie works as subtext for what's actually going on between Wilhelm and Simon at this point, and Wilhelm is getting a little freaked out by this sneaky display of affection.
Subtext: The movie also puts words on the implications of Wilhelm getting together with a boy, what about having kids in the future? Can you carry on your family name and traditions, or will they die with you?
Lost in translation: The plaque actually says "FEEL YOUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE HERITAGE". Even though the plaque means the heritage and legacy of the school itself, Wilhelm is thinking about his legacy, his heritage, and how getting together with Simon would threaten that.
Lost in translation: Wilhelm actually says "jag är inte en..." - "I'm not a..." before he stops himself. So it's not possible that he was trying to say "I'm not gay", because that doesn't work grammatically in Swedish either. He could be trying to say "I'm not a guy like that" or "I'm not a guy who likes guys", that would work.
Cinematography: The framing and silhouetting of this shot is just chef's kiss. The outline of their hair allows us to see who is who, and we can see from their poses that Simon is welcoming a kiss, while Wilhelm is still hesitating.
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fc5 questionnaire: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 14, 19, 26, 29 oops, my hand slipped >:)c
What’s their name?
Bartholomew Esther Rook, goes by Bart.
How old are they?
23 during the events of FC5.
What’s their style like?
Messy and ratty. He hates shopping so when he finds something he likes, he will wear it until it’s literally falling apart beyond any hope of repair so most of his clothes have holes, patches, really shitty sewing, etc. He keeps it casual, usually wearing baggy hoodies, jeans, and either sneakers or hiking boots. Has a nice collection of graphic tees, most of which are from sci-fi and classic horror films as well as a denim vest covered in pins and patches of a similar style.
What type of weapons do they prefer?
Bart is a civilian and isn’t licensed so he doesn’t pack real heat. He’s familiar-ish with firearms thanks to hanging out with Jason and Uri so much but the only “weapons” he carries are a slingshot (for knocking out security cams), a Leatherman multi-tool, and very, very occasionally homemade explosives that he gets from his neighbor Sharky.
What’s their outfit (transportation) like?
Bart is not allowed to drive for a number of reasons so his primary method of transportation is a bicycle, hitch-hiking, or mooching rides from his friends. He’s kind of an inconsiderate dick about that last option but he always brings gas money at least.
What are their thoughts on the cult?
VERY MISINFORMED FEAR. He knows the cult is stalking him and abducting people out of Hope County but is wound up so tight in his conspiracy theory that he thinks Joseph’s doomsday prophecy is actually related to a hostile alien invasion. He spends the better part of a year investigating their activities and eventually uncovers what is really going on but by the time he’s figured it out, anyone who could help thinks he’s just crying wolf.
First thoughts on the Seed family?
Absolutely cannot stand John, thinks he’s just a pompous dickhead but also can’t help but feel a little empathy toward him since Bart went through some similar religious trauma himself. Still thinks he’s an asshole though and frequently vandalizes his ranch just because he can. They get along a little better after Bart is indoctrinated but only because Joseph demands it. During Bart’s baptism, John “allowed” Bart to keep his desert rose tattoo rather than carving it off of him and that’s the closest thing to a truce they ever really had.
TERRIFIED of Jacob. Even before everything went down, Bart had a passing familiarity with Jacob because of Jason dragging him to Eli’s support group at the VA and has always gotten bad vibes from him. Jacob has made his distaste of Bart known as well, writing him off as a weak-minded nobody, and Bart does his best to avoid Jacob at all costs because he knows what Jacob’s ‘philosophy’ about the strong/weak is about. Even after being indoctrinated, they still don’t like each other and Jacob resents the importance Joseph places on Bart’s role.
He really didn���t know what to make of Joseph at first. Every interaction he had with the man was pleasant if not a little touchy and weird, but Bart was too distrustful to fall for Joseph’s charisma and kept him at arm’s length despite Joseph’s repeated attempts at getting closer to Bart. The longer he investigated, Bart became more and more disturbed by what he found, eventually developing a healthy fear of Joseph that kept him relatively safe until one bad fight with Jason drove Bart over the edge. He tried to infiltrate Eden’s Gate to prove once and for all that Joseph was behind the disappearances in Hope County but Joseph was expecting him and Bart became the man who gets his eyes gouged out in the video that the deputy watches on the chopper ride into Peggie country. Joseph handles Bart’s indoctrination personally and lavishes attention and love and awful pain on Bart until Bart holds an almost god-like reverence for him. He breaks him until Bart’s mind is an empty vessel and he imprints on him like a child, shaping a new identity that revolves around Joseph.
Bart and Faith were friends as teenagers back when Faith was still Rachel. Both were homeless at the time and living out of a shelter, both struggling with deeply personal issues like gender/sexuality and drug addiction. They both did their best to support the other and even though the relationship was a little toxic sometimes, they really did care for each other and Bart was devastated when she disappeared. He didn’t realize she was involved with Eden’s Gate until after he was captured and Faith ultimately played an instrumental role in getting him on their side because he was so, so happy that she was okay. After his indoctrination, they maintain a very close friendship again but Faith has some envy issues with how much attention Bart gets from Joseph and she worries that Bart is going to replace her.
From the Police department who do they get along with?
Bart and the Hope County Sheriff’s Department have a very tumultuous relationship. Bart constantly gets picked up for petty crimes and has ZERO respect for the cops but since he’s so close with Jason, Whitehorse usually just throws him in the tank until Jason can take him home rather than actually book him for anything. So he and Whitehorse have sort of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner relationship where they are mortal enemies that never actually do anything serious. Bart used to have a pretty big crush on Staci but Staci was an asshole about it so now Bart is just kind of shy and awkward around him but not outwardly hostile unless Staci is the one arresting him. Joey is the only one he shows any amount of respect to and that’s only because she brings him coffee when he’s in lock-up and because Jason mentors her. She’s the only one he won’t bite during an arrest.
How do they feel about Faith?
Basically answered above!
What do they feel about Joseph?
Answered above!
How do they feel at the end of all the game events?
Bart himself does not actually go through any of the events in the game with most of his story taking place before and after the canon story. And all four Seeds survive to the bunker in my version of events. By the time the game ends, Bart has been thoroughly broken by his indoctrination and while he is very afraid of the nukes, he is also elated to have a family that loves him now and thinks Joseph did everything right and they are all only alive because Joseph and the others saved them. He buys into Joseph’s prophecy without question and feels nothing but joy about everything that happened, including his own torture, at least until they have to wean him off of his bliss drip and reality settles in during detox. They have to keep him doped up almost constantly in order to maintain that level of Stockholm syndrome.
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50 Questions Tag!
I was tagged by @earthpodd thank you :)!
I bet no one even gonna read all of this XD and you gain nothing from it
What colour is your hairbrush?: Brown
Name a food you never eat: Kiwi because I’m allergic.
Are you typically too warm or too cold?: I don’t know :’D
What were you doing 45 minutes ago?: Watching DNA Memory because I wanted to gif something from their videos.
What’s your favourite candy bar?: Brumberg’s raspberry truffle
Have you ever been to a professional sports game?: Nope
What’s the last thing you said out loud?: Good night to my mom
What’s your favourite ice cream?: I don’t really eat ice cream...
What was the last thing you had to drink?: Water
Do you like your wallet?: Nope, but I’m too lazy to search new one and I don’t want to use my money on that ahaha.
What’s the last thing you ate?: Bread.
Did you buy any new clothes last weekend?: Nope. Haven’t bought any new clothes in long time.
What’s the last sporting event you watched?: Honestly speaking... I don’t even remember!!
What is you favourite flavor of popcorn?: I don’t really eat popcorn and when I do I don’t use any flavors...
Who’s the last person you sent a text to?: My friend.
Ever go camping?: Nope.
Do you take vitamins?: Yeah.
Do you go to church every sunday?: I’m agnostic.
Do you have a tan?: Nope. I don’t even get tan, I just turn in to red or then stay very white.
Do you prefer Chinese or pizza?: Chinese.
Do you drink soda through a straw?: Nooo.
What color socks do you usually wear?: Grey or black.
Do you ever drive above the speed limit?: I don’t even have license so no.
What terrifies you?: Many things so I can’t just think one right now.
Look to your left, what do you see?: Books.
What chore do you hate the most?: Cleaning toilet.
What do you think of when you hear an Australian accent?: My relatives.
What’s your favourite soda?: Sprite.
Do you go in fast food places or just hit the drive thru?: I don’t eat fast food and never been on drive thru so.
What’s your favourite number?: 7
Who’s the last person you talked to?: My mom.
Favourite cut of beef?: Aaah this is hard because honestly I like all.
Last song you listened to?: HP by Maluma.
Last book you read?: I rarely read books so I don’t remember.
Can you say the alphabet backwards?: Nope :’D
Favourite day of the week?: Saturday.
How do you like your coffee?: I don’t drink coffee.
Favourite pair of shoes?: My blue converse’s.
Time you normally get up?: My sleeping schedule is so messed up so I don’t even know ahahah
Sunrise or sunsets?: Sunsets!
How many blankets on your bed?: Three :’D
Describe your kitchen plates?: White :’D
Describe your kitchen at the moment?: Clean and silent.
Do you have a favourite alcoholic drink?: I don’t really drink but when I do Baileys Irish Cream.
Do you play cards?: Sometimes.
What color is your car?: I don’t own a car.
Can you change a tire?: Nope.
Your favourite state/province/country/etc.?: Okay this gonna be so hard for me to answer and this gonna get LOOONG answer haha. Rome is one of my favorite places on earth. Almaty, Seoul, Prague, Stockholm too. I like few places in Finland as well.
Favourite job you’ve had?: Solving post.
How did you get your biggest scar?: When I was getting baking tray out of the oven it did touch my wrist and I got really bad burn there. Ah how nice it was to be a cook :’)
Tagging: @yukiakaren, @cherrytomato-shutdown
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High Price, Limited Performance Of European Electric Cars Might Boost China Minis
New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/high-price-limited-performance-of-european-electric-cars-might-boost-china-minis/
High Price, Limited Performance Of European Electric Cars Might Boost China Minis
Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV
The high price of so-called “affordable” electric vehicles in Europe and their often pitiful highway cruising performance might make some hard-up buyers grit their teeth, admit the unthinkable and opt for a mini battery-powered vehicle because the alternative is a scooter, a bike, or even worse, the tube or bus.
And the possibility of a cheap but limited little electric car might well lead to dancing in the streets in Europe’s poorest countries, which have so far been left out of the electric revolution.
The cheapest electric vehicles like the Renault Zoe, and upcoming offerings like the Fiat 500E and perhaps the expected Volkswagen ID.2, start at around €20,000 ($24,300 after tax). That’s about twice the price of an entry-level gasoline-powered car, which might not even be available by 2030. EU CO2 rules, and even outright bans, threaten cheap traditional cars. Small electric cars and SUVs like the Vauxhall/Opel Corsa and the MG ZS EV cost from around €30,000 ($36,500). These vehicles all come with impressive claims for range, which suddenly dissolve when the vehicle is asked to undertake a highway journey at normal cruising speeds.
The speed limit across Europe is mainly 130 km/h, about 80 mph, and this is the accepted legal cruising mode on many highways, except of course in Germany where there are still long sections with no speed limit. You will see every type of sedan and SUV, from the cheapest to most expensive cruising at around 80. But the impact on available mileage at these speeds on battery electric vehicles (BEV) is catastrophic. Often you will lose miles at twice the rate or more of the actual miles being travelled.
So these “affordable” cars aren’t the equivalent of regular gasoline or diesel powered cars. They are fantastic city cars, but very expensive considering their limited ability. Suddenly a small car like the Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV from China makes lots of sense. It can reach about 60 mph, probably downhill with a following wind, but quite adequate in town and country driving. Base models have a range of about 70 miles. You can make an average daily commute, said to be about 24 miles in Europe, do the shopping and take the children to school. If you’re not convinced yet, try this. The base price is $4,400. That number will be enough for many Europeans with average earnings to swallow their pride. And there won’t be much of that because the little Hong Guang Mini EV looks cute and believable.
Hong Guang Mini EV
That’s the price now in China and it’s likely to be a bit more expensive if it came to Europe, but will still probably be popular in eastern Europe.
Groupe PSA of France’s Citroen is about to launch its cheap and cute little Ami, electric city car, although this in its initial form is too slow (28 mph), has only 2 seats, a range of 43 miles, and costs €6,000 ($7,300).
The idea that small is the answer isn’t exciting some European analysts.
“We don’t see a switch by European carmakers into making these little electric cars happening,” said Viktor Irle, Stockholm, Sweden-based analyst with consultancy EV-volumes.
Irle said small cars like this won’t be profitable.
That’s probably true of traditional European manufacturers, but likely not Chinese ones.
“The Citroen Ami will not be a big seller. Europeans want a car – not two – that gives them flexibility. If you have a small car, unable to go on highways, the use is very limited. Big cities like Paris, Berlin and Rome could see some sales of these. Generally, car buyers move up in segments. So Ami is likely going to replace scooters and mopeds and motorcycles in our analysis,” Irle said.
But this assumes that “affordable” electric cars can match gasoline or diesel cars on the highway, and that isn’t the case in my experience. It remains to be seen if the latest electric cars, like the Volkswagen ID.3, perform adequately at motorway cruising speeds.
IHS Markit auto analyst Ian Fletcher doesn’t see a shift downmarket either.
“Volumes of traditional (city car) segment vehicles have been retreating anyway. (Manufacturers) have been pulling out or reducing their exposure to this category and we see this continuing. This is partly related to the difficulty making the financials stack up compared to something larger, and recently this has not been helped by meeting new regulations in the (EU) region, particularly those for (CO2) emissions. Customers are also less interested buying something of this size as well,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher said IHS Markit predicts city cars will make up just over 1% of the European market in 2025, and just under 2% by 2030.
Fletcher reckons price won’t be a factor because leasing plans make new cars more affordable. Sales growth will come from electrifying small and medium sized family cars.
Citroen Ami is a quadricycle and can be driven without a license in France from the age of 14. … [] (Photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/Getty Images)
“We see far greater BEV volume growth in (VW Polo and VW Golf equivalent) segments, which are the biggest by volume currently anyway. By 2025, B segment BEVs will be around 6.5% of the entire market and 9.5% by 2030, while C segment BEVs will be around 7% and 12.5%, respectively. Obviously, there is an argument with regards to the purchase cost, but I think fewer and fewer people are looking at that now. It is more about the affordability on a monthly basis through a leasing plan or similar,” Fletcher said.
But the Hong Guang Mini EV has a been a remarkable success so far in China, which of course won’t necessarily translate to Europe.
“This new battery electric vehicle has taken the (Chinese) market by storm, breaking all sales expectations since its launch,” said LMC Automotive analyst Alan Kang.
The Hong Guang Mini EV, is a two-door micro electric vehicle launched by a joint venture between General Motors GM and SAIC.
“The diminutive model’s eye-catching design gives it a deceptively expensive look, something that has undoubtedly contributed to its surprisingly robust performance. In September, only its 4th month on the market, the Hong Guang Mini EV racked up sales in excess of 20,000, propelling it to the top of China’s electric vehicle market,” Kang said.
“A range choice of between (70 and 100 miles) is more than adequate for the needs of its target audience. And less powerful battery translates to a lower sticker price,” Kang said.
In a recent interview, David Bailey, Professor of Business Economics at the Birmingham Business School, said he believes a serious threat from China is likely in this segment and Europeans must gear up to meet it.
How Mini cars used to be. BMW Isetta. Photo: Sina Schuldt/dpa (Photo by Sina Schuldt/picture … [] alliance via Getty Images)
“European manufacturers certainly need to embrace this niche or face being wiped out in this segment by super low-cost Chinese brands when the latter can meet European crash safety standards,” Bailey said.
LMC Automotive’s Kang agrees.
“I am not sure whether Hong Guang Mini EV will go to the Europe market now, for I don’t know whether the model can meet the regulations and standards of Europe market. But I agree with you that such little mini EVs with cheap prices but good design might also be welcome in the European market, if they can meet the regulations and keep same low price at the same time. It would be just a commuting tool, that does everything you need to commute, shop and take the kids to school, as you said,” according to Kang.
Germans and relatively well-off western Europeans might be tempted to scoff at these limited little electric vehicles, but in the east they may well be seen as a godsend. According to a survey by the European Automobile Manufacturers association, known by its French acronym ACEA, in the world of electric car ownership there is a deep divide between the haves and have-nots. ACEA said in 2019, 3% of new cars sold across the EU were electrically-chargeable, but the comparison between rich and poor, east and west was stark. The poorest GDP per head country was Estonia at €21,160 ($25,652) had an electrically-chargeable car market share of 0.3%. The richest, Germany (€41,510-$50,332) had a 3.0% market share.
1. Estonia – 0.3% (GDP of €21,160)
2. Lithuania – 0.4% (GDP of €17,340)
3. Slovakia – 0.4% (GDP of €17,270)
4. Greece – 0.4% (GDP of €17,500)
5. Poland – 0.5% (GDP of €13,780)
1. Germany – 3.0% (GDP of €41,510)
2. United Kingdom – 3.1% (GDP of €37,780)
3. France – 2.8% (GDP of €35,960)
4. Italy – 0.9% (GDP of €29,610)
5. Spain – 1.4% ECVs (GDP of €26,440)
(Source-ACEA)
No doubt Chinese manufacturers have already figured this out and will be cranking up sales campaigns in Tallinn, Vilnius, Bratislava, Athens and Warsaw.
From Transportation in Perfectirishgifts
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(update, angels request, wife would not see it comin’, mebbe. ‘ambrosio did. ‘lima did, perhaps ‘taylor did. three apple hill drive did. they not clapping hands, i was their HERO, eventually. so [a] am negotiating price and brand of a CAR vehicle cat.B driving license, which MY E.U. Sweden based WIFE to buy for me so I go activating the E.U. Health services PIN card, the ‘social securities card with and inside of the E.U. (Greece left it by 2015, UK left it by 2017). am aware far-far-fetched, but under NORMAL terms environmentally friendly, craziness would apply (am wearing miss ‘brown reddish all over my back, she a peak day on a MONDAY). or [b] am negotiating WIFE give a call at Stockholm and tell king WE wanna out of the E.U., just like the BRITS. and should king say OK, then Russia again watch he baby boomer onto its borders, and HAVE Deutschland PEEP more deeply again at Saint Petersburg affairs, via Rostock and it made me for a second actually believe E.U. for Sweden basically NEW AGE of the COLD WAR, when Bonn and Helmut Koll. and ‘ambrosio is simply put saying that, by weekend time. so in order keep GERMANY occupied and France tranquille, Sweden agreed to enter the E.U., otherwise selling SAAB Griphen to Sao Paolo, comme d’habitude (since the 50s, ages of Pirelli entering Amazonia). nonetheless, ‘chase of NYC NYC would had allowed ‘kinley to ride my car, bought as wedding gift by WIFE of Sweden, onto European roads. when WIFE away and forgotten with her affairs and JOB. remind bring roses should i step onto NYC NYC JFK (La Guardia entered re-furbishing and extension trials). pusi to wife, am thinking ass. m)
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AZ buys cut price priority review voucher, but for what?
AstraZeneca has bought a priority review voucher (PRV) from Swedish biotech Sobi for $95 million, but isn’t revealing just yet what it intends to use it for.
A PRV can be used to reduce an FDA regulatory review by four months to six months, and there has been a thriving trade in them over the last few years driven by companies that feel there is a significant benefit from reducing the time to market for a new drug product.
Drug developers are awarded PRVs from the FDA as a reward for bringing orphan drugs for diseases with significant unmet need to market, and this one was awarded to Novimmune when it got approval for Gamifant (emapalumab) for hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) from the FDA last November.
Stockholm-based Sobi claimed rights to Gamifant – and the PRV – when it acquired the business from Novimmune in a $518 million deal in June.
The price paid by AZ suggests that the going rate for PRVs continues to slide, however, having reached a peak when AbbVie paid a whopping $350 million for one awarded to United Therapeutics in 2015. In 2017 the deal values were still generally above $100 million, but since then have slipped below that threshold.
At the time only a handful of vouchers had been granted by the FDA, but the drive by biopharma companies into rare diseases has made them more common. That may explain why prices are on the slide, and it may also be that with a fairly fertile fundraising environment smaller biotechs are hanging onto them in case they can benefit from them in the future.
There were six PRVs awarded in 2017, seven in 2018 and so far 2019’s tally has reached five with four months of the year still to go.
Speculation on the motivation for AZ’s purchase is focusing mainly on two late-stage projects which could both benefit from a head start in the market.
One is Fibrogen-partnered HIF-PHI drug roxadustat for anaemia associated with chronic kidney disease, which is already approved in China – picking up an additional approval for a broader patient population just this week. It is in a race to market with GlaxoSmithKline’s daprodustat in the US, Europe and other world markets including Japan.
Roxadustat is tipped to become a $2 billion product in 2023, according to Clarivate forecasts, and with GSK hard on its heels with data that looks comparable a few months’ lead could make it easier to claim dominance in the emerging HIF-PHI market.
Another is HER2-targeting antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) trastuzumab deruxtecan (DS-8201) for breast, gastric and other solid cancers, which AZ licensed from Daiichi Sankyo earlier this year in a massive deal that included $1.35 billion upfront and another $5.55 billion in potential follow-up payments.
DS-8201 is currently in phase 3 testing for HER2-positive breast cancer, including a head-to-head trial with Roche’s $1 billion-a-year HER2-targeting ADC Kadycla (trastuzumab emtansine) and importantly another late-stage study in advanced breast cancer patients with lower levels of HER2 expression.
The post AZ buys cut price priority review voucher, but for what? appeared first on Pharmaphorum.
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Facing US ban, Huawei emerging as stronger tech competitor
Long before President Donald Trump threatened to cut off Huawei’s access to U.S. technology, the Chinese telecom equipment maker was pouring money into research that reduces its need for American suppliers.
Huawei’s founder says instead of crippling the company, the export curbs are making it a tougher competitor by forcing managers to focus resources on their most important products.
Little-known to Americans, Huawei Technologies Ltd. is the No. 2 smartphone brand worldwide and the biggest maker of switching gear at the heart of phone networks. Its equipment is used by 45 of the 50 biggest global phone carriers.
Huawei is a pioneer in the emerging field of next-generation, or 5G, telecoms. It promises not just faster internet but support for self-driving cars and other futuristic applications. That fuels Western security concerns and makes 5G politically sensitive. The U.S. claims the company might aid Chinese spying, though Huawei denies that and American officials have provided no evidence.
Huawei needs some American innovations, especially Google services used on Android phones, but industry experts say the company is increasingly self-sufficient after spending 485 billion yuan ($65 billion) on research and development over the past decade.
“They have a strategy to become completely independent from U.S. technology. And in many areas they have become independent,” said Bengt Nordstrom of North Stream, a research firm in Stockholm.
Ren Zhengfei, who founded the company in 1987, acknowledged in an interview that phone sales will suffer if access to technology, including Google services for smartphones, is disrupted by the addition of Huawei to a U.S. Commerce Department “entity list” that requires it to get government permission to buy American technology. Phone sales could be $20 to $30 billion less than forecast over the next two years, Ren and other executives said, but the company will survive.
“When the entity list came out, they hoped Huawei would die,” Ren said. ���Not only did Huawei not die, it is doing even better.”
The company was added to the entity list on May 16 but already has been granted two 90-day extensions after American suppliers of processor chips and other technology warned they stand to lose billions. Intel Corp. and other vendors that industry analysts say were paid a total of some $12 billion last year by Huawei have asked the Trump administration for permission to continue sales.
The biggest potential American blow to Huawei would be the loss of Google services that are standard features on Android-based phones. Huawei could use Android, which is open-source, but would lose Google’s music, maps and other applications, making it harder to compete with Samsung, the No. 1 smartphone brand.
“Nobody is going to spend money to buy a premium Huawei phone if it doesn’t have maps, YouTube, Google Play,” said Samm Sacks, an expert in Chinese digital policy at the New America think tank.
Ren said he wants to keeping using Android and working with American suppliers. But as a fallback, the company unveiled its HarmonyOS operating system in August and said Android phones can be switched to the new system in days if necessary.
Huawei, with $107 billion in 2018 sales, spent 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) on research and development last year, more than Apple or Microsoft. It has 76,000 engineers and other researchers at its sprawling, leafy headquarters campus in southern China and in Silicon Valley, Russia, India’s Bangalore and other industry centers.
Huawei is “rapidly building up strength” in R&D, Forrester analyst Charlie Dai said.
In the AP interview, Ren made a sales pitch to Washington: To ease security fears, Huawei will license 5G technology to American developers.
“I am open to the possibility of a paid transfer of 5G technology and production techniques to U.S. companies,” Ren said.
That is a long shot, given Washington’s pressure on phone carriers to shun Huawei. But it would increase the company’s presence in 5G and generate license fees and demand for its products.
Huawei is on a global charm offensive, trying to convince European and other governments there is no truth to U.S. claims it is a security risk.
Washington has been lobbying European governments to exclude Huawei from 5G networks but Germany, France and Ireland say they have no plans to ban any supplier.
Early on, Huawei faced complaints it copied technology from industry leaders. It temporarily pulled out of the United States in 2003 after admitting it copied Cisco software in routers.
But the company is catching up with Western developers, industry experts say. Huawei says it has collected $1.4 billion since 2015 in license fees from other companies that use its technology.
Huawei is, along with Ericsson and Nokia, a leader in developing network equipment to support 5G. The company says it has invested $4 billion in that since 2009, produces its own equipment and uses no U.S. technology.
“It’s almost all our own components,” Ren said.
Huawei also is among hundreds of companies that are creating 5G phones and other devices, making it the only competitor to straddle the two markets.
“They are very well positioned to develop 5G — at least the same level as their competitors,” Nordstrom said.
5G is meant to vastly expand telecom networks to support self-driving cars, factory robots, nuclear power plants, medical equipment and other applications.
That, plus growing use of networks to link fighter planes and other military hardware, raises the potential cost of security failures and the political sensitivity of 5G.
Huawei bills its Mate 20 X smartphone, which went on sale in China in August, as the first with 5G capability.
It uses Kirin 980 and Balong 5000 chips from Huawei’s HiSilicon subsidiary instead of chips from Qualcomm or Intel. HiSilicon also makes Kirin chips for lower-end phones and Kunpeng chips for servers.
Huawei launched its Ascend line of processor chips in October for artificial intelligence. The 310 for self-driving cars and the more powerful 910 are based on architecture from British chip designer Arm Ltd.
Arm said in July it might be forced to cut ties with Huawei because it does some research in the United States. That highlighted the challenge of finding suppliers with no U.S. links.
Arm said in an email it is “actively communicating” with the U.S. Commerce Department about the relationship.
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As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries
FINNMARK PLATEAU, Norway/OSLO (Reuters) – When he’s not out on the Arctic tundra with his 2,000 reindeer, his dog and Whitney Houston blasting through his headphones, Nils Mathis Sara is often busy explaining to people how a planned copper mine threatens his livelihood.
Along with other Sami herders and fishermen, the 60-year-old is in a standoff with the mine owners, Norwegian officials and many townspeople that is, after six years, coming to a head.
It is a litmus test for the Arctic, where climate change and technology are enabling mineral and energy extraction, shipping and tourism while threatening traditional ways of life and creating tensions among its four million inhabitants.
“This mine is completely nuts,” said Sara, preparing to move his herd from winter pastures on Norway’s windswept Finnmark plateau three days north to the grass-rich pastures on the coast, where females calve and there are fewer mosquitoes.
“We would be losing summer pastures for our reindeer again.”
Herders around the Arctic – in other Nordic nations, Russia, Canada and Alaska – echoed his concerns in interviews, citing threats from climate change, mining, oil spills and poaching as well as thoughtless behavior from townspeople and tourists.
Global majors, including Eni, Equinor, Gazprom, Glencore, Lukoil and Rio Tinto, are all grappling with how to square their prospecting plans with the interests of people whose views count more than in the past.
Anders Oskal, Executive Director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, said the copper mine was in the spotlight. “Big industry is sitting on the fence and seeing how it plays out,” he said.
Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2tQSjlC
LEGAL ACTION?
Local officials gave the green light for the privately-owned Nussir copper project back in 2012 on the grounds it would bring in much-needed jobs and funds. It has been stuck ever since.
Indigenous Sami herders and fishermen say the plan to dump the mine’s tailings in the fjord, while less damaging than piling them on land, would destroy spawning grounds for cod and the mine would damage summer pasture grounds and frighten the reindeer.
“I don’t get it,” Tommy Pettersen, a 47-year-old Sami fisherman, said on board his boat, which gives him a potentially lucrative but unpredictable income. “We are a maritime nation. We have relied on the ocean to live off and we want to dump this stuff in the fjord?”
He had just caught king crabs worth 16,000 Norwegian crowns ($1,990). Last year he earned 1.6 million crowns ($199,000) for four weeks’ work — about half from cod and the rest from crabs, a Pacific species brought to the Barents Sea in the Stalin era.
Sara’s income is steadier. He gets up to 130 Norwegian crowns ($16) a kilo for his meat, 300 crowns for each skin and 140 crowns a kilo for the antlers, which he sells to China as aphrodisiac.
Nussir has won the necessary permits, says the area contains 72 million tonnes of copper — Norway’s largest reserve — and plans more than 1 billion crowns ($124 million) in investment.
“We can run this mine alongside reindeer herding and fishing,” said Oeystein Rushfeldt, the head of the project.
Terje Wickstroem, mayor of Kvalsund, a village of painted wooden houses on the Repparfjord with 1,027 inhabitants, said the mine would boost a municipality which spends 40 percent of its income caring for the elderly as young people move away.
“It would create optimism for the town,” said Wickstroem, who is himself a Sami.
After years of back and forth with locals and the consultative Sami Parliament of Norway, as well as assessments by ministries and government agencies, the center-right, pro-business government will make a ruling on the copper mine this year.
Oskal, of the reindeer husbandry center, said it was ironic that Nussir may be allowed to dump waste when Norwegian laws oblige Sami reindeer herders to send the animals’ stomachs and intestines for destruction, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, to reduce risks of disease.
Traditionally, herders just buried the remains.
The Sami herders insist they are not opposed to change — their language has no word for “stability” — but Sara said the politicians were not listening. “If this mine gets the go ahead, we will go to the courts to stop it,” he said.
Wickstroem said he understood Sara’s concerns. “His business is under pressure. But this is a bigger, national debate.”
It is also an international one.
Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 60, drives his ATV as he follows a herd of reindeer on the Finnmark Plateau, Norway, June 16, 2018. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
SHRINKING ICE
Average temperatures in the Arctic region have risen more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) since pre-industrial times, twice as fast as the world average, according to research for the intergovernmental Arctic Council.
Temperatures now sometimes spike above freezing in mid-winter, melting snow that then re-freezes into a blanket of ice on lichen pastures that the reindeer cannot nuzzle through. In the worst recorded ‘rain on snow’ event, in the Yamal Peninsula in Russia in 2013-14, about 61,000 of 275,000 reindeer died.
“Indigenous peoples and systems in the Arctic” top a list of populations vulnerable to warming in a draft U.N. scientific report about the risks of climate change to be published in October.
Shrinking ice also means liquefied natural gas tankers can now travel west to Europe year-round and east to Asia in summer from the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia, where Gazprom is the dominant producer.
“There is an explosion of industrial development in Arctic regions,” said Mikhail Pogodaev, Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, who is based in Yakutsk, eastern Russia.
The Nenets herders on the Yamal Peninsula still live in tents and travel with their herds, unlike the Sami, who now venture out on snowmobiles or quad bikes from village homes and overnight in caravans or wooden huts on skis.
Russia does not have Norway’s consultative system — its regional governors are often swapped by the Kremlin — making things easier for companies able to navigate Kremlin politics but leaving the Nenets little power, wealth or legal redress.
Gazprom says it goes out of its way to cooperate with herders, raising pipelines to let reindeer pass underneath and making road crossings where herders request them.
“Around 10,000 reindeer cross via these crossing points during a season,” it said by email.
Oskal, Pogodaev and some academics say Gazprom does plan carefully, but, like all energy majors, it is in the environmental firing line over its impact on global warming, which is speeding up as the polar ice caps melt.
EAT MORE REINDEER
In Norway, some reindeer herders and fishermen noted efforts by Italian oil group ENI to cooperate, for instance using Sami interpreters and discussing the sifting of an electric cable that takes power to the Goliat oilfield offshore.
Norwegian Equinor, formerly Statoil, operates the offshore gas field, Snoehvit, in Norway’s Barents Sea, sending gas to a liquefied natural gas plant near the northern town of Hammerfest.
The government is offering exploration licenses ever further north, in areas covered by winter sea ice until recent decades.
Some reindeer herders see the influx of workers as a potential new market for their meat, but say companies rarely buy enough.
A 2007 U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples obliges states to “obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands”.
In practice, that usually stops short of a veto and lawsuits abound.
In neighboring Sweden, the government has appealed to the Supreme Court to resolve a dispute over management of hunting and fishing rights in the Sami village of Girjas.
And there is a long-running conflict over the Kallak magnetite iron ore deposit near Jokkmokk in Norrbotten county, where British miner Beowulf Mining is pursuing an exploitation concession for the Kallak North project. The Swedish government has not yet taken a final decision.
In Finland, opposition from Sami people and environmentalists has blocked proposed geological surveys for iron ore, copper and gold in the Sami region of Enontekio.
POACHERS IN CANADA
It is not only herders and companies that are facing off. Conflicts of interest between those continuing millennia-old traditions and other residents and visitors are increasing.
Across the Arctic from Norway, in Canada, Lloyd Binder said his 4,000-strong reindeer herd at Inuvik, the country’s biggest, had suffered poaching since a new highway opened to cars in November.
Bruce Davis, of the Midnite Sun Reindeer Ranch in Alaska, says he has just 40 reindeer left from a herd of 8,000 in his father’s day. It was partly because many had mixed with wild caribou, but damage by past gold prospectors and climate change had also taken their toll on the reindeer’s pastures.
Still, some reindeer find ways around their problems. In Norway’s Hammerfest, a 19-km (12-mile) long wooden fence, built a decade ago with money from Equinor, has a gaping hole.
Slideshow (28 Images)
“The reindeer are annoying … They eat all the flowers I plant,” said Karin Karlsen, 78, knitting on her patio while reindeer nibbled at the grass behind her red wooden house.
Additional reporting by Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, Oksana Kobzeva and Olesya Astakhova in Moscow, Johannes Hellstrom, Anna Ringstrom and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm; Editing by Philippa Fletcher
The post As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries appeared first on World The News.
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As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries
FINNMARK PLATEAU, Norway/OSLO (Reuters) – When he’s not out on the Arctic tundra with his 2,000 reindeer, his dog and Whitney Houston blasting through his headphones, Nils Mathis Sara is often busy explaining to people how a planned copper mine threatens his livelihood.
Along with other Sami herders and fishermen, the 60-year-old is in a standoff with the mine owners, Norwegian officials and many townspeople that is, after six years, coming to a head.
It is a litmus test for the Arctic, where climate change and technology are enabling mineral and energy extraction, shipping and tourism while threatening traditional ways of life and creating tensions among its four million inhabitants.
“This mine is completely nuts,” said Sara, preparing to move his herd from winter pastures on Norway’s windswept Finnmark plateau three days north to the grass-rich pastures on the coast, where females calve and there are fewer mosquitoes.
“We would be losing summer pastures for our reindeer again.”
Herders around the Arctic – in other Nordic nations, Russia, Canada and Alaska – echoed his concerns in interviews, citing threats from climate change, mining, oil spills and poaching as well as thoughtless behavior from townspeople and tourists.
Global majors, including Eni, Equinor, Gazprom, Glencore, Lukoil and Rio Tinto, are all grappling with how to square their prospecting plans with the interests of people whose views count more than in the past.
Anders Oskal, Executive Director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, said the copper mine was in the spotlight. “Big industry is sitting on the fence and seeing how it plays out,” he said.
Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2tQSjlC
LEGAL ACTION?
Local officials gave the green light for the privately-owned Nussir copper project back in 2012 on the grounds it would bring in much-needed jobs and funds. It has been stuck ever since.
Indigenous Sami herders and fishermen say the plan to dump the mine’s tailings in the fjord, while less damaging than piling them on land, would destroy spawning grounds for cod and the mine would damage summer pasture grounds and frighten the reindeer.
“I don’t get it,” Tommy Pettersen, a 47-year-old Sami fisherman, said on board his boat, which gives him a potentially lucrative but unpredictable income. “We are a maritime nation. We have relied on the ocean to live off and we want to dump this stuff in the fjord?”
He had just caught king crabs worth 16,000 Norwegian crowns ($1,990). Last year he earned 1.6 million crowns ($199,000) for four weeks’ work — about half from cod and the rest from crabs, a Pacific species brought to the Barents Sea in the Stalin era.
Sara’s income is steadier. He gets up to 130 Norwegian crowns ($16) a kilo for his meat, 300 crowns for each skin and 140 crowns a kilo for the antlers, which he sells to China as aphrodisiac.
Nussir has won the necessary permits, says the area contains 72 million tonnes of copper — Norway’s largest reserve — and plans more than 1 billion crowns ($124 million) in investment.
“We can run this mine alongside reindeer herding and fishing,” said Oeystein Rushfeldt, the head of the project.
Terje Wickstroem, mayor of Kvalsund, a village of painted wooden houses on the Repparfjord with 1,027 inhabitants, said the mine would boost a municipality which spends 40 percent of its income caring for the elderly as young people move away.
“It would create optimism for the town,” said Wickstroem, who is himself a Sami.
After years of back and forth with locals and the consultative Sami Parliament of Norway, as well as assessments by ministries and government agencies, the center-right, pro-business government will make a ruling on the copper mine this year.
Oskal, of the reindeer husbandry center, said it was ironic that Nussir may be allowed to dump waste when Norwegian laws oblige Sami reindeer herders to send the animals’ stomachs and intestines for destruction, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, to reduce risks of disease.
Traditionally, herders just buried the remains.
The Sami herders insist they are not opposed to change — their language has no word for “stability” — but Sara said the politicians were not listening. “If this mine gets the go ahead, we will go to the courts to stop it,” he said.
Wickstroem said he understood Sara’s concerns. “His business is under pressure. But this is a bigger, national debate.”
It is also an international one.
Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 60, drives his ATV as he follows a herd of reindeer on the Finnmark Plateau, Norway, June 16, 2018. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
SHRINKING ICE
Average temperatures in the Arctic region have risen more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) since pre-industrial times, twice as fast as the world average, according to research for the intergovernmental Arctic Council.
Temperatures now sometimes spike above freezing in mid-winter, melting snow that then re-freezes into a blanket of ice on lichen pastures that the reindeer cannot nuzzle through. In the worst recorded ‘rain on snow’ event, in the Yamal Peninsula in Russia in 2013-14, about 61,000 of 275,000 reindeer died.
“Indigenous peoples and systems in the Arctic” top a list of populations vulnerable to warming in a draft U.N. scientific report about the risks of climate change to be published in October.
Shrinking ice also means liquefied natural gas tankers can now travel west to Europe year-round and east to Asia in summer from the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia, where Gazprom is the dominant producer.
“There is an explosion of industrial development in Arctic regions,” said Mikhail Pogodaev, Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, who is based in Yakutsk, eastern Russia.
The Nenets herders on the Yamal Peninsula still live in tents and travel with their herds, unlike the Sami, who now venture out on snowmobiles or quad bikes from village homes and overnight in caravans or wooden huts on skis.
Russia does not have Norway’s consultative system — its regional governors are often swapped by the Kremlin — making things easier for companies able to navigate Kremlin politics but leaving the Nenets little power, wealth or legal redress.
Gazprom says it goes out of its way to cooperate with herders, raising pipelines to let reindeer pass underneath and making road crossings where herders request them.
“Around 10,000 reindeer cross via these crossing points during a season,” it said by email.
Oskal, Pogodaev and some academics say Gazprom does plan carefully, but, like all energy majors, it is in the environmental firing line over its impact on global warming, which is speeding up as the polar ice caps melt.
EAT MORE REINDEER
In Norway, some reindeer herders and fishermen noted efforts by Italian oil group ENI to cooperate, for instance using Sami interpreters and discussing the sifting of an electric cable that takes power to the Goliat oilfield offshore.
Norwegian Equinor, formerly Statoil, operates the offshore gas field, Snoehvit, in Norway’s Barents Sea, sending gas to a liquefied natural gas plant near the northern town of Hammerfest.
The government is offering exploration licenses ever further north, in areas covered by winter sea ice until recent decades.
Some reindeer herders see the influx of workers as a potential new market for their meat, but say companies rarely buy enough.
A 2007 U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples obliges states to “obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands”.
In practice, that usually stops short of a veto and lawsuits abound.
In neighboring Sweden, the government has appealed to the Supreme Court to resolve a dispute over management of hunting and fishing rights in the Sami village of Girjas.
And there is a long-running conflict over the Kallak magnetite iron ore deposit near Jokkmokk in Norrbotten county, where British miner Beowulf Mining is pursuing an exploitation concession for the Kallak North project. The Swedish government has not yet taken a final decision.
In Finland, opposition from Sami people and environmentalists has blocked proposed geological surveys for iron ore, copper and gold in the Sami region of Enontekio.
POACHERS IN CANADA
It is not only herders and companies that are facing off. Conflicts of interest between those continuing millennia-old traditions and other residents and visitors are increasing.
Across the Arctic from Norway, in Canada, Lloyd Binder said his 4,000-strong reindeer herd at Inuvik, the country’s biggest, had suffered poaching since a new highway opened to cars in November.
Bruce Davis, of the Midnite Sun Reindeer Ranch in Alaska, says he has just 40 reindeer left from a herd of 8,000 in his father’s day. It was partly because many had mixed with wild caribou, but damage by past gold prospectors and climate change had also taken their toll on the reindeer’s pastures.
Still, some reindeer find ways around their problems. In Norway’s Hammerfest, a 19-km (12-mile) long wooden fence, built a decade ago with money from Equinor, has a gaping hole.
Slideshow (28 Images)
“The reindeer are annoying … They eat all the flowers I plant,” said Karin Karlsen, 78, knitting on her patio while reindeer nibbled at the grass behind her red wooden house.
Additional reporting by Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, Oksana Kobzeva and Olesya Astakhova in Moscow, Johannes Hellstrom, Anna Ringstrom and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm; Editing by Philippa Fletcher
The post As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries appeared first on World The News.
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As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries
FINNMARK PLATEAU, Norway/OSLO (Reuters) – When he’s not out on the Arctic tundra with his 2,000 reindeer, his dog and Whitney Houston blasting through his headphones, Nils Mathis Sara is often busy explaining to people how a planned copper mine threatens his livelihood.
Along with other Sami herders and fishermen, the 60-year-old is in a standoff with the mine owners, Norwegian officials and many townspeople that is, after six years, coming to a head.
It is a litmus test for the Arctic, where climate change and technology are enabling mineral and energy extraction, shipping and tourism while threatening traditional ways of life and creating tensions among its four million inhabitants.
“This mine is completely nuts,” said Sara, preparing to move his herd from winter pastures on Norway’s windswept Finnmark plateau three days north to the grass-rich pastures on the coast, where females calve and there are fewer mosquitoes.
“We would be losing summer pastures for our reindeer again.”
Herders around the Arctic – in other Nordic nations, Russia, Canada and Alaska – echoed his concerns in interviews, citing threats from climate change, mining, oil spills and poaching as well as thoughtless behavior from townspeople and tourists.
Global majors, including Eni, Equinor, Gazprom, Glencore, Lukoil and Rio Tinto, are all grappling with how to square their prospecting plans with the interests of people whose views count more than in the past.
Anders Oskal, Executive Director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, said the copper mine was in the spotlight. “Big industry is sitting on the fence and seeing how it plays out,” he said.
Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2tQSjlC
LEGAL ACTION?
Local officials gave the green light for the privately-owned Nussir copper project back in 2012 on the grounds it would bring in much-needed jobs and funds. It has been stuck ever since.
Indigenous Sami herders and fishermen say the plan to dump the mine’s tailings in the fjord, while less damaging than piling them on land, would destroy spawning grounds for cod and the mine would damage summer pasture grounds and frighten the reindeer.
“I don’t get it,” Tommy Pettersen, a 47-year-old Sami fisherman, said on board his boat, which gives him a potentially lucrative but unpredictable income. “We are a maritime nation. We have relied on the ocean to live off and we want to dump this stuff in the fjord?”
He had just caught king crabs worth 16,000 Norwegian crowns ($1,990). Last year he earned 1.6 million crowns ($199,000) for four weeks’ work — about half from cod and the rest from crabs, a Pacific species brought to the Barents Sea in the Stalin era.
Sara’s income is steadier. He gets up to 130 Norwegian crowns ($16) a kilo for his meat, 300 crowns for each skin and 140 crowns a kilo for the antlers, which he sells to China as aphrodisiac.
Nussir has won the necessary permits, says the area contains 72 million tonnes of copper — Norway’s largest reserve — and plans more than 1 billion crowns ($124 million) in investment.
“We can run this mine alongside reindeer herding and fishing,” said Oeystein Rushfeldt, the head of the project.
Terje Wickstroem, mayor of Kvalsund, a village of painted wooden houses on the Repparfjord with 1,027 inhabitants, said the mine would boost a municipality which spends 40 percent of its income caring for the elderly as young people move away.
“It would create optimism for the town,” said Wickstroem, who is himself a Sami.
After years of back and forth with locals and the consultative Sami Parliament of Norway, as well as assessments by ministries and government agencies, the center-right, pro-business government will make a ruling on the copper mine this year.
Oskal, of the reindeer husbandry center, said it was ironic that Nussir may be allowed to dump waste when Norwegian laws oblige Sami reindeer herders to send the animals’ stomachs and intestines for destruction, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, to reduce risks of disease.
Traditionally, herders just buried the remains.
The Sami herders insist they are not opposed to change — their language has no word for “stability” — but Sara said the politicians were not listening. “If this mine gets the go ahead, we will go to the courts to stop it,” he said.
Wickstroem said he understood Sara’s concerns. “His business is under pressure. But this is a bigger, national debate.”
It is also an international one.
Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 60, drives his ATV as he follows a herd of reindeer on the Finnmark Plateau, Norway, June 16, 2018. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
SHRINKING ICE
Average temperatures in the Arctic region have risen more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) since pre-industrial times, twice as fast as the world average, according to research for the intergovernmental Arctic Council.
Temperatures now sometimes spike above freezing in mid-winter, melting snow that then re-freezes into a blanket of ice on lichen pastures that the reindeer cannot nuzzle through. In the worst recorded ‘rain on snow’ event, in the Yamal Peninsula in Russia in 2013-14, about 61,000 of 275,000 reindeer died.
“Indigenous peoples and systems in the Arctic” top a list of populations vulnerable to warming in a draft U.N. scientific report about the risks of climate change to be published in October.
Shrinking ice also means liquefied natural gas tankers can now travel west to Europe year-round and east to Asia in summer from the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia, where Gazprom is the dominant producer.
“There is an explosion of industrial development in Arctic regions,” said Mikhail Pogodaev, Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, who is based in Yakutsk, eastern Russia.
The Nenets herders on the Yamal Peninsula still live in tents and travel with their herds, unlike the Sami, who now venture out on snowmobiles or quad bikes from village homes and overnight in caravans or wooden huts on skis.
Russia does not have Norway’s consultative system — its regional governors are often swapped by the Kremlin — making things easier for companies able to navigate Kremlin politics but leaving the Nenets little power, wealth or legal redress.
Gazprom says it goes out of its way to cooperate with herders, raising pipelines to let reindeer pass underneath and making road crossings where herders request them.
“Around 10,000 reindeer cross via these crossing points during a season,” it said by email.
Oskal, Pogodaev and some academics say Gazprom does plan carefully, but, like all energy majors, it is in the environmental firing line over its impact on global warming, which is speeding up as the polar ice caps melt.
EAT MORE REINDEER
In Norway, some reindeer herders and fishermen noted efforts by Italian oil group ENI to cooperate, for instance using Sami interpreters and discussing the sifting of an electric cable that takes power to the Goliat oilfield offshore.
Norwegian Equinor, formerly Statoil, operates the offshore gas field, Snoehvit, in Norway’s Barents Sea, sending gas to a liquefied natural gas plant near the northern town of Hammerfest.
The government is offering exploration licenses ever further north, in areas covered by winter sea ice until recent decades.
Some reindeer herders see the influx of workers as a potential new market for their meat, but say companies rarely buy enough.
A 2007 U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples obliges states to “obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands”.
In practice, that usually stops short of a veto and lawsuits abound.
In neighboring Sweden, the government has appealed to the Supreme Court to resolve a dispute over management of hunting and fishing rights in the Sami village of Girjas.
And there is a long-running conflict over the Kallak magnetite iron ore deposit near Jokkmokk in Norrbotten county, where British miner Beowulf Mining is pursuing an exploitation concession for the Kallak North project. The Swedish government has not yet taken a final decision.
In Finland, opposition from Sami people and environmentalists has blocked proposed geological surveys for iron ore, copper and gold in the Sami region of Enontekio.
POACHERS IN CANADA
It is not only herders and companies that are facing off. Conflicts of interest between those continuing millennia-old traditions and other residents and visitors are increasing.
Across the Arctic from Norway, in Canada, Lloyd Binder said his 4,000-strong reindeer herd at Inuvik, the country’s biggest, had suffered poaching since a new highway opened to cars in November.
Bruce Davis, of the Midnite Sun Reindeer Ranch in Alaska, says he has just 40 reindeer left from a herd of 8,000 in his father’s day. It was partly because many had mixed with wild caribou, but damage by past gold prospectors and climate change had also taken their toll on the reindeer’s pastures.
Still, some reindeer find ways around their problems. In Norway’s Hammerfest, a 19-km (12-mile) long wooden fence, built a decade ago with money from Equinor, has a gaping hole.
Slideshow (28 Images)
“The reindeer are annoying … They eat all the flowers I plant,” said Karin Karlsen, 78, knitting on her patio while reindeer nibbled at the grass behind her red wooden house.
Additional reporting by Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, Oksana Kobzeva and Olesya Astakhova in Moscow, Johannes Hellstrom, Anna Ringstrom and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm; Editing by Philippa Fletcher
The post As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries appeared first on World The News.
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As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries
FINNMARK PLATEAU, Norway/OSLO (Reuters) – When he’s not out on the Arctic tundra with his 2,000 reindeer, his dog and Whitney Houston blasting through his headphones, Nils Mathis Sara is often busy explaining to people how a planned copper mine threatens his livelihood.
Along with other Sami herders and fishermen, the 60-year-old is in a standoff with the mine owners, Norwegian officials and many townspeople that is, after six years, coming to a head.
It is a litmus test for the Arctic, where climate change and technology are enabling mineral and energy extraction, shipping and tourism while threatening traditional ways of life and creating tensions among its four million inhabitants.
“This mine is completely nuts,” said Sara, preparing to move his herd from winter pastures on Norway’s windswept Finnmark plateau three days north to the grass-rich pastures on the coast, where females calve and there are fewer mosquitoes.
“We would be losing summer pastures for our reindeer again.”
Herders around the Arctic – in other Nordic nations, Russia, Canada and Alaska – echoed his concerns in interviews, citing threats from climate change, mining, oil spills and poaching as well as thoughtless behavior from townspeople and tourists.
Global majors, including Eni, Equinor, Gazprom, Glencore, Lukoil and Rio Tinto, are all grappling with how to square their prospecting plans with the interests of people whose views count more than in the past.
Anders Oskal, Executive Director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, said the copper mine was in the spotlight. “Big industry is sitting on the fence and seeing how it plays out,” he said.
Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2tQSjlC
LEGAL ACTION?
Local officials gave the green light for the privately-owned Nussir copper project back in 2012 on the grounds it would bring in much-needed jobs and funds. It has been stuck ever since.
Indigenous Sami herders and fishermen say the plan to dump the mine’s tailings in the fjord, while less damaging than piling them on land, would destroy spawning grounds for cod and the mine would damage summer pasture grounds and frighten the reindeer.
“I don’t get it,” Tommy Pettersen, a 47-year-old Sami fisherman, said on board his boat, which gives him a potentially lucrative but unpredictable income. “We are a maritime nation. We have relied on the ocean to live off and we want to dump this stuff in the fjord?”
He had just caught king crabs worth 16,000 Norwegian crowns ($1,990). Last year he earned 1.6 million crowns ($199,000) for four weeks’ work — about half from cod and the rest from crabs, a Pacific species brought to the Barents Sea in the Stalin era.
Sara’s income is steadier. He gets up to 130 Norwegian crowns ($16) a kilo for his meat, 300 crowns for each skin and 140 crowns a kilo for the antlers, which he sells to China as aphrodisiac.
Nussir has won the necessary permits, says the area contains 72 million tonnes of copper — Norway’s largest reserve — and plans more than 1 billion crowns ($124 million) in investment.
“We can run this mine alongside reindeer herding and fishing,” said Oeystein Rushfeldt, the head of the project.
Terje Wickstroem, mayor of Kvalsund, a village of painted wooden houses on the Repparfjord with 1,027 inhabitants, said the mine would boost a municipality which spends 40 percent of its income caring for the elderly as young people move away.
“It would create optimism for the town,” said Wickstroem, who is himself a Sami.
After years of back and forth with locals and the consultative Sami Parliament of Norway, as well as assessments by ministries and government agencies, the center-right, pro-business government will make a ruling on the copper mine this year.
Oskal, of the reindeer husbandry center, said it was ironic that Nussir may be allowed to dump waste when Norwegian laws oblige Sami reindeer herders to send the animals’ stomachs and intestines for destruction, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, to reduce risks of disease.
Traditionally, herders just buried the remains.
The Sami herders insist they are not opposed to change — their language has no word for “stability” — but Sara said the politicians were not listening. “If this mine gets the go ahead, we will go to the courts to stop it,” he said.
Wickstroem said he understood Sara’s concerns. “His business is under pressure. But this is a bigger, national debate.”
It is also an international one.
Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 60, drives his ATV as he follows a herd of reindeer on the Finnmark Plateau, Norway, June 16, 2018. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
SHRINKING ICE
Average temperatures in the Arctic region have risen more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) since pre-industrial times, twice as fast as the world average, according to research for the intergovernmental Arctic Council.
Temperatures now sometimes spike above freezing in mid-winter, melting snow that then re-freezes into a blanket of ice on lichen pastures that the reindeer cannot nuzzle through. In the worst recorded ‘rain on snow’ event, in the Yamal Peninsula in Russia in 2013-14, about 61,000 of 275,000 reindeer died.
“Indigenous peoples and systems in the Arctic” top a list of populations vulnerable to warming in a draft U.N. scientific report about the risks of climate change to be published in October.
Shrinking ice also means liquefied natural gas tankers can now travel west to Europe year-round and east to Asia in summer from the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia, where Gazprom is the dominant producer.
“There is an explosion of industrial development in Arctic regions,” said Mikhail Pogodaev, Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, who is based in Yakutsk, eastern Russia.
The Nenets herders on the Yamal Peninsula still live in tents and travel with their herds, unlike the Sami, who now venture out on snowmobiles or quad bikes from village homes and overnight in caravans or wooden huts on skis.
Russia does not have Norway’s consultative system — its regional governors are often swapped by the Kremlin — making things easier for companies able to navigate Kremlin politics but leaving the Nenets little power, wealth or legal redress.
Gazprom says it goes out of its way to cooperate with herders, raising pipelines to let reindeer pass underneath and making road crossings where herders request them.
“Around 10,000 reindeer cross via these crossing points during a season,” it said by email.
Oskal, Pogodaev and some academics say Gazprom does plan carefully, but, like all energy majors, it is in the environmental firing line over its impact on global warming, which is speeding up as the polar ice caps melt.
EAT MORE REINDEER
In Norway, some reindeer herders and fishermen noted efforts by Italian oil group ENI to cooperate, for instance using Sami interpreters and discussing the sifting of an electric cable that takes power to the Goliat oilfield offshore.
Norwegian Equinor, formerly Statoil, operates the offshore gas field, Snoehvit, in Norway’s Barents Sea, sending gas to a liquefied natural gas plant near the northern town of Hammerfest.
The government is offering exploration licenses ever further north, in areas covered by winter sea ice until recent decades.
Some reindeer herders see the influx of workers as a potential new market for their meat, but say companies rarely buy enough.
A 2007 U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples obliges states to “obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands”.
In practice, that usually stops short of a veto and lawsuits abound.
In neighboring Sweden, the government has appealed to the Supreme Court to resolve a dispute over management of hunting and fishing rights in the Sami village of Girjas.
And there is a long-running conflict over the Kallak magnetite iron ore deposit near Jokkmokk in Norrbotten county, where British miner Beowulf Mining is pursuing an exploitation concession for the Kallak North project. The Swedish government has not yet taken a final decision.
In Finland, opposition from Sami people and environmentalists has blocked proposed geological surveys for iron ore, copper and gold in the Sami region of Enontekio.
POACHERS IN CANADA
It is not only herders and companies that are facing off. Conflicts of interest between those continuing millennia-old traditions and other residents and visitors are increasing.
Across the Arctic from Norway, in Canada, Lloyd Binder said his 4,000-strong reindeer herd at Inuvik, the country’s biggest, had suffered poaching since a new highway opened to cars in November.
Bruce Davis, of the Midnite Sun Reindeer Ranch in Alaska, says he has just 40 reindeer left from a herd of 8,000 in his father’s day. It was partly because many had mixed with wild caribou, but damage by past gold prospectors and climate change had also taken their toll on the reindeer’s pastures.
Still, some reindeer find ways around their problems. In Norway’s Hammerfest, a 19-km (12-mile) long wooden fence, built a decade ago with money from Equinor, has a gaping hole.
Slideshow (28 Images)
“The reindeer are annoying … They eat all the flowers I plant,” said Karin Karlsen, 78, knitting on her patio while reindeer nibbled at the grass behind her red wooden house.
Additional reporting by Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, Oksana Kobzeva and Olesya Astakhova in Moscow, Johannes Hellstrom, Anna Ringstrom and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm; Editing by Philippa Fletcher
The post As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries appeared first on World The News.
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As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries
FINNMARK PLATEAU, Norway/OSLO (Reuters) – When he’s not out on the Arctic tundra with his 2,000 reindeer, his dog and Whitney Houston blasting through his headphones, Nils Mathis Sara is often busy explaining to people how a planned copper mine threatens his livelihood.
Along with other Sami herders and fishermen, the 60-year-old is in a standoff with the mine owners, Norwegian officials and many townspeople that is, after six years, coming to a head.
It is a litmus test for the Arctic, where climate change and technology are enabling mineral and energy extraction, shipping and tourism while threatening traditional ways of life and creating tensions among its four million inhabitants.
“This mine is completely nuts,” said Sara, preparing to move his herd from winter pastures on Norway’s windswept Finnmark plateau three days north to the grass-rich pastures on the coast, where females calve and there are fewer mosquitoes.
“We would be losing summer pastures for our reindeer again.”
Herders around the Arctic – in other Nordic nations, Russia, Canada and Alaska – echoed his concerns in interviews, citing threats from climate change, mining, oil spills and poaching as well as thoughtless behavior from townspeople and tourists.
Global majors, including Eni, Equinor, Gazprom, Glencore, Lukoil and Rio Tinto, are all grappling with how to square their prospecting plans with the interests of people whose views count more than in the past.
Anders Oskal, Executive Director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, said the copper mine was in the spotlight. “Big industry is sitting on the fence and seeing how it plays out,” he said.
Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2tQSjlC
LEGAL ACTION?
Local officials gave the green light for the privately-owned Nussir copper project back in 2012 on the grounds it would bring in much-needed jobs and funds. It has been stuck ever since.
Indigenous Sami herders and fishermen say the plan to dump the mine’s tailings in the fjord, while less damaging than piling them on land, would destroy spawning grounds for cod and the mine would damage summer pasture grounds and frighten the reindeer.
“I don’t get it,” Tommy Pettersen, a 47-year-old Sami fisherman, said on board his boat, which gives him a potentially lucrative but unpredictable income. “We are a maritime nation. We have relied on the ocean to live off and we want to dump this stuff in the fjord?”
He had just caught king crabs worth 16,000 Norwegian crowns ($1,990). Last year he earned 1.6 million crowns ($199,000) for four weeks’ work — about half from cod and the rest from crabs, a Pacific species brought to the Barents Sea in the Stalin era.
Sara’s income is steadier. He gets up to 130 Norwegian crowns ($16) a kilo for his meat, 300 crowns for each skin and 140 crowns a kilo for the antlers, which he sells to China as aphrodisiac.
Nussir has won the necessary permits, says the area contains 72 million tonnes of copper — Norway’s largest reserve — and plans more than 1 billion crowns ($124 million) in investment.
“We can run this mine alongside reindeer herding and fishing,” said Oeystein Rushfeldt, the head of the project.
Terje Wickstroem, mayor of Kvalsund, a village of painted wooden houses on the Repparfjord with 1,027 inhabitants, said the mine would boost a municipality which spends 40 percent of its income caring for the elderly as young people move away.
“It would create optimism for the town,” said Wickstroem, who is himself a Sami.
After years of back and forth with locals and the consultative Sami Parliament of Norway, as well as assessments by ministries and government agencies, the center-right, pro-business government will make a ruling on the copper mine this year.
Oskal, of the reindeer husbandry center, said it was ironic that Nussir may be allowed to dump waste when Norwegian laws oblige Sami reindeer herders to send the animals’ stomachs and intestines for destruction, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, to reduce risks of disease.
Traditionally, herders just buried the remains.
The Sami herders insist they are not opposed to change — their language has no word for “stability” — but Sara said the politicians were not listening. “If this mine gets the go ahead, we will go to the courts to stop it,” he said.
Wickstroem said he understood Sara’s concerns. “His business is under pressure. But this is a bigger, national debate.”
It is also an international one.
Sami reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara, 60, drives his ATV as he follows a herd of reindeer on the Finnmark Plateau, Norway, June 16, 2018. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
SHRINKING ICE
Average temperatures in the Arctic region have risen more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) since pre-industrial times, twice as fast as the world average, according to research for the intergovernmental Arctic Council.
Temperatures now sometimes spike above freezing in mid-winter, melting snow that then re-freezes into a blanket of ice on lichen pastures that the reindeer cannot nuzzle through. In the worst recorded ‘rain on snow’ event, in the Yamal Peninsula in Russia in 2013-14, about 61,000 of 275,000 reindeer died.
“Indigenous peoples and systems in the Arctic” top a list of populations vulnerable to warming in a draft U.N. scientific report about the risks of climate change to be published in October.
Shrinking ice also means liquefied natural gas tankers can now travel west to Europe year-round and east to Asia in summer from the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia, where Gazprom is the dominant producer.
“There is an explosion of industrial development in Arctic regions,” said Mikhail Pogodaev, Chair of the Association of World Reindeer Herders, who is based in Yakutsk, eastern Russia.
The Nenets herders on the Yamal Peninsula still live in tents and travel with their herds, unlike the Sami, who now venture out on snowmobiles or quad bikes from village homes and overnight in caravans or wooden huts on skis.
Russia does not have Norway’s consultative system — its regional governors are often swapped by the Kremlin — making things easier for companies able to navigate Kremlin politics but leaving the Nenets little power, wealth or legal redress.
Gazprom says it goes out of its way to cooperate with herders, raising pipelines to let reindeer pass underneath and making road crossings where herders request them.
“Around 10,000 reindeer cross via these crossing points during a season,” it said by email.
Oskal, Pogodaev and some academics say Gazprom does plan carefully, but, like all energy majors, it is in the environmental firing line over its impact on global warming, which is speeding up as the polar ice caps melt.
EAT MORE REINDEER
In Norway, some reindeer herders and fishermen noted efforts by Italian oil group ENI to cooperate, for instance using Sami interpreters and discussing the sifting of an electric cable that takes power to the Goliat oilfield offshore.
Norwegian Equinor, formerly Statoil, operates the offshore gas field, Snoehvit, in Norway’s Barents Sea, sending gas to a liquefied natural gas plant near the northern town of Hammerfest.
The government is offering exploration licenses ever further north, in areas covered by winter sea ice until recent decades.
Some reindeer herders see the influx of workers as a potential new market for their meat, but say companies rarely buy enough.
A 2007 U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples obliges states to “obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands”.
In practice, that usually stops short of a veto and lawsuits abound.
In neighboring Sweden, the government has appealed to the Supreme Court to resolve a dispute over management of hunting and fishing rights in the Sami village of Girjas.
And there is a long-running conflict over the Kallak magnetite iron ore deposit near Jokkmokk in Norrbotten county, where British miner Beowulf Mining is pursuing an exploitation concession for the Kallak North project. The Swedish government has not yet taken a final decision.
In Finland, opposition from Sami people and environmentalists has blocked proposed geological surveys for iron ore, copper and gold in the Sami region of Enontekio.
POACHERS IN CANADA
It is not only herders and companies that are facing off. Conflicts of interest between those continuing millennia-old traditions and other residents and visitors are increasing.
Across the Arctic from Norway, in Canada, Lloyd Binder said his 4,000-strong reindeer herd at Inuvik, the country’s biggest, had suffered poaching since a new highway opened to cars in November.
Bruce Davis, of the Midnite Sun Reindeer Ranch in Alaska, says he has just 40 reindeer left from a herd of 8,000 in his father’s day. It was partly because many had mixed with wild caribou, but damage by past gold prospectors and climate change had also taken their toll on the reindeer’s pastures.
Still, some reindeer find ways around their problems. In Norway’s Hammerfest, a 19-km (12-mile) long wooden fence, built a decade ago with money from Equinor, has a gaping hole.
Slideshow (28 Images)
“The reindeer are annoying … They eat all the flowers I plant,” said Karin Karlsen, 78, knitting on her patio while reindeer nibbled at the grass behind her red wooden house.
Additional reporting by Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, Oksana Kobzeva and Olesya Astakhova in Moscow, Johannes Hellstrom, Anna Ringstrom and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm; Editing by Philippa Fletcher
The post As Arctic warms, reindeer herders tangle with new industries appeared first on World The News.
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