Abstract
This research provides an insight into various modes of benefit-sharing agreements between oil and gas companies and indigenous people in Russia’s northern regions, e.g., paternalism, corporate social responsibility, and partnership. The paper examines factors that influence benefit-sharing arrangements, such as regional specifics, dependency on international investors, corporate policies, and the level of local community organization. It analyses which instruments of benefit-sharing are most favourable, and why, for indigenous communities. The authors conducted research in three regions of Russia (Nenets Autonomous Okrug; Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Sakhalin) by using qualitative methodology that involved semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. Theoretically, the paper builds on the concept of benefit-sharing arrangements combined with the social equity framework. We assessed each case study in terms of procedural and distributive equity in benefit-sharing. The paper demonstrates that the procedural equity is the highest in the partnership mode of benefit-sharing on the island of Sakhalin where companies implement globally-accepted standards recognized by investment banks. The cases in Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Khanti Mansi Autonomous Okrug represent a reset of Soviet practices on a market basis, but whereas the distributional equity may be sufficient, the procedural equity is low as decisions are made by the company in concord with regional authorities.
Highlights
Most oil and gas deposits in Russia are situated in Arctic and subarctic regions that are populated by indigenous peoples
Indigenous people are recognized as indigenous if they inhabit traditional territories of their ancestors, maintain their traditional lifestyle, their number is less than 50,000 people and they recognize themselves as independent ethnic communities [35]
Indigenous people recognized by the state have certain rights to maintain their traditional way of life; Federal legislation allows them to designate territories of traditional use of natural resources (TTNR) [35,36,37,38,39]
Summary
Most oil and gas deposits in Russia are situated in Arctic and subarctic regions that are populated by indigenous peoples. Fast industrial development impacts the environment and indigenous people who live off their natural environment Their traditional lifestyle is tied to reindeer grazing lands and hunting and fishing grounds [1] that are often situated on oil deposits. Oil development entails a decrease in reindeer farming areas, river pollution and changes to animal migration routes. For this reason, local residents view the appearance of the oil-industry as an invasion into their indigenous life. On the contrary, consider industrial activity as being fundamental for the welfare of the region They stress that the oil and gas industry contributes to the budget, which enables the development of necessary infrastructure. One of the issues is balancing out the interests of the indigenous people and the oil companies
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