The Fifth Arctic Leaders Summit organized by the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) in Moscow was brought to a successful conclusion with the attending Arctic Indigenous leaders' signing of the ALS V declaration.

Indigenous leaders representing the Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC), the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), RAIPON, and the Saami Council signed a declaration on what had been the overarching theme of the ALS V, "Industrial development of the Arctic under climate change - new challenges for indigenous peoples."

The final of the two day summit had centered on climate change and its impacts on and challenges for Artic communities. Among others, Lars Moller, the Danish Arctic Council Chair, Vladimir Kattsov, director of a federal Russian geophysical and meteorological agency, and Mikhail Pogodaev of the Association of World Reindeer Herders gave presentations on this theme as seen from the perspective of their respective organizations.

All of the attending Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council, likewise, took the opportunity to make presentations on themes relating to climate change challenges. Among them, Cindy Dickson of the AAC, to an accompaniment of a splendid photo slide show, spoke about resilience aspects of indigenous peoples' living on the land and their right to continue to do so, to seek well-being and livelihood from doing so, as they had since time immemorial.

Civil society organizations like the WWF were also attending the summit. WWF Russia representative Victoria Elias took the floor to present a recently launched project on Rapid Assessment of Circum-Arctic Ecosystem Resilience (RACER) that aims at identifying and assessing eco-regional units and aspects of resilience as well as vulnerability with particular regard to Arctic communities.

James Stotts, International Chair of ICC, in response to the WWF presentation, asked Ms. Elias if she could provide a lead as to an official stance of her organization regarding the rights of indigenous peoples to harvest resources to sustain their livelihoods.

Ms. Elias, in response, admitted that the WWF is indeed a big organization giving many, and not necessarily aligned, messages to the world. However, she would maintain that the WWF do have an official policy with respect to indigenous peoples rights to sustainable use of nature, and that, basically, WWF considers itself to be on the same side as indigenous peoples.

The ALS V is scheduled back-to-back with the 20th anniversary of RAIPON as well as the opening of the EXPO 2010 headlined "Treasure of the North" in the All-Russia Exhibition Centre. A report on the RAIPON anniversary as well as a link to the ALS V declaration to be published on this site shortly.