Swiss banks might not be the most obvious allies for indigenous communities struggling to survive in Russia’s Far North. But their financial clout could drive multinationals to change their business practices, argue those affected by a major environmental disaster last year.
A delegation from the Russian Arctic travelled more than 4,800 kilometres to Switzerland this month. Top of their agenda was calling attention to the lasting consequences of one of the largest oil spills in their country’s history. They want Swiss banks to use their influence to push the company responsible to protect the environment and properly consult indigenous communities.
On May 29, 2020, a fuel storage tank failed, flooding two local rivers with some 21,000 tons of diesel near the Siberian city of Norilsk. The company behind that environmental disaster is Russian company, Norilsk Nickel, or Nornickel, the world’s leading producer of refined nickel and palladium.
“This spill is the tip of the iceberg,” says Rodion Sulyandziga, director of the independent Centre for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North. “Pollution and disempowerment of indigenous communities didn’t start one year ago. It is a long story.”
The 2020 diesel spill was a “social disaster” as much as it was an environmental disaster, the rights activist told SWI swissinfo.ch. It had crippling consequences for indigenous communities trying to make a living in a tough habitat through fishing, reindeer herding and hunting. It also hurt their ability to trade.
“They have to go far in the tundra to find new places for fishing, for hunting,” Sulyandziga said. “They don’t have much fish or meat because of the oil spill. An even if they have [some], they cannot sell, because it has a special smell…profit is going down.”
Credit Suisse spokesman Yannick Orto noted that business transactions with companies from sensitive sectors and industries are subject to a reputational risk review process, which considers the rights of local communities and environmental implications. “Credit Suisse regularly engages in dialogue with NGOs and other stakeholders in this regard,” he said.
Around 10,000 indigenous people live on the Taymyr Peninsula, where Norilsk is located. Nornickel also has a production site in Russia’s eastern Kola Peninsula where the Saami people live. In both regions, pollution by the company is seen as a direct threat to the indigenous way of life.
Russia’s Norilsk smelter complex in the Arctic Circle has the highest sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the world, according to satellite data from US space agency NASA commissioned by Greenpeace. The smelters are responsible for more than 50% all SO2 emissions across Russia.
Other environmental incidents in the region include the leaking of iron oxides from Norilsk’s Nadeja plant which “turned the Daldykan river red”, according to STP. A 2020 fire at one of the company’s industrial waste sites covered the tundra with smoke, choking flora, fauna and people.
An industrial accident at a Nornickel processing plant in Norilsk also killed three people and wounded three others in February this year.
“The nature is poisoned, a part of the Sami soul is poisoned,” said Danilov, who describes a lunar landscape with water and land contaminated within a 30-kilometre radius of the city of Monchegorsk, home to a Nornickel refining hub. “We are already at the edge of the Earth. There is nowhere else that we go. We want to save our people and pass on what our ancestors passed on.”
SWI swissinfo.ch – a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR