The panel session will consider principal models and approaches for government regulations to relations between Indigenous Peoples and industrial companies. Special attention should be focused on developing multilateral dialogue along different channels, including regional authority Councils of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples’ Representatives. For instance, the right of Indigenous People to take part in decision-making concerning industrial activities on their traditional territories is enshrined in international law and the national legislation.

Other proposed issues include sustainable regulations applicable to relations concerning compensation to Indigenous Peoples for losses, setting up special legal regime territories, assessing the practices for shaping regional regulations concerning responsible land use, and environmental efforts.

The panel session will consider improving corporate social responsibility standards as a factor in industrial safety, in a country’s socioeconomic development and in sustainable development of Indigenous Peoples.  

Special attention should be paid to the design and structure of corporate law, public non-financial reporting, public commitment and due diligence policy, including sustainable mechanisms for consultation, communication and grievance investigation. It is important to assess the need and means for adapting standardized international instruments to Russian reality.

“Ethnological expertise, effective programmes and means for building relations with Indigenous Peoples”

Organizers: Norilsk Nickel, Project Office for Arctic Development

The panel session will consider how socioeconomic development of Indigenous Peoples is promoted, including by building infrastructure on their traditional territories. Such measures ensure respect for collective rights and support for individual communities’ environmental support systems by means of agreements between industrial companies, the authorities, Indigenous Peoples’ associations, implementation of corporate programmes, projects, etc.

Special attention should be paid to shaping an organizational environment for Indigenous peoples’ effective involvement in developing directions and forms, and monitoring practices for projects under implementation, and to presenting forward-looking projects for their support and development.

The session will consider the practical significance of a methodological framework for boosting relations between businesses and Indigenous Peoples. Topical issues include public and corporate environmental measures, sustainable approaches to holding ethnologic, ethnographic and other public and non-governmental expert assessments, a methodology for loss compensation, assessing and monitoring the effect of industrial projects on Indigenous Peoples’ living environment.

In order to preserve Indigenous Peoples’ traditional environmental support systems, it is important to develop the institutions of territories of traditional nature management and other territories with special legal regimes benefiting Indigenous Peoples.

These measures are intended to ensure effective solutions taking the legitimate interests of stakeholders into account.

Interactive dialogue allows Forum participants to make statements on a broad range of agenda issues, including submitting proposals for the Forum’s final documents and for future activities.

Of special significance are improvement of the national standard for relations between Indigenous Peoples and industrial companies and those Peoples’ own stance on determining the priorities for their sustainable development based on the key international principle of “Nothing about us without us!”

Organizer: The Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON)