Research professor of the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law (Arctic Centre/University of Lapland) Timo Koivurova cautions’ those who think that the ILO-Convention No. 169 will never be ratified in Finland.
“Many have mistakenly interpreted the announcement by the Finnish Minister of Justice that the ILO 169 will not be ratified to mean that it will never be ratified in Finland. This is, of course, a misunderstanding. It will again be for the next Government of Finland to think this through” States Timo Koivurova in an interview to the Barents Observer.
It has been previously reported that Finland’s Minister of Justice, Tuija Brax, told media that the skeleton law, prepared for a long time by the Ministry of Justic, broke worn because of the Centre Party’s opposition. Professor Koivurova argues that there are also many other misunderstandings related to the ILO 169 ratification in both Finland and Sweden.
“Many experts – also in ILO – are puzzled over why the ILO 169 is read in Finland and Sweden as if it was a detailed Act of law, when, in effect, it is an international convention envisaged to be of universal application (even if it has been ratified only by 22 countries worldwide). Any international convention, including ILO 169, contains flexibility as to how it is implemented to match with the realities of different countries and regions. ILO Convention says this explicitly in its Article 34”
Professor Koivurova also sees that the Norwegian model of implementing the ILO 169 shows that the ILO Convention can be interpreted flexibly.
“What we in Finland and Sweden can learn from Norway is that the ILO 169 was not interpreted only to protect the rights of Saami, but the State transferred most of its lands and waters in Finnmark to all the population groups living there, Kvens, Norwegians and Saami” says Timo Koivurova.
Another important thing according to the Professor is to realize is that the northern region benefited from this: decision-making powers and land ownership were really transferred from Oslo to Finnmark.
See also Finland will not ratify Convention on Sami rights
Source: Barents Observer
St. Matthew then had the classic ingredients for a population explosion—a group of healthy large herbivores with a limited food supply and no creature above them in the food chain. That’s what Dave Klein saw when he visited the island in 1957. Klein was then a biologist working for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is now a professor emeritus with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Institute of Arctic Biology. The first time he hiked the length of St. Matthew Island in 1957, he and field assistant Jim Whisenhant counted 1,350 reindeer, most of which were fat and in excellent shape. Klein noticed that reindeer had trampled and overgrazed some lichen mats, foreshadowing a disaster to come.
Other work commitments and the difficulty of finding a ride to St. Matthew kept Klein from returning until the summer of 1966, but he heard a startling report from men on a Coast Guard cutter who had gone ashore to hunt reindeer in August 1965—the men had seen dozens of bleached reindeer skeletons scattered over the tundra.
The oscillation exhibits a “negative phase” with relatively high pressure over the polar region and low pressure at midlatitudes (about 45 degrees North), and a “positive phase” in which the pattern is reversed. In the positive phase, higher pressure at midlatitudes drives ocean storms farther north, and changes in the circulation pattern bring wetter weather to Alaska, Scotland and Scandinavia, as well as drier conditions to the western United States and the Mediterranean. In the positive phase, frigid winter air does not extend as far into the middle of North America as it would during the negative phase of the oscillation. This keeps much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains warmer than normal, but leaves Greenland and Newfoundland colder than usual. Weather patterns in the negative phase are in general “opposite” to those of the positive phase, as illustrated below.