1 The Challenges of Modernity for Reindeer Management in Northernmost Europe

This book presents the combined results of a research and development project funded by the European Union’s 5th Framework Programme of 2001–2004. The full title of the project was “The challenges of modernity for REiNdeer MANagement: integration and sustainable development in Europe’s subarctic and boreal regions (RENMAN)”1. Within this Framework Programme, RENMAN was funded under the Key Action “Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources” (Contract QLK5-CT-2000-0745). This portion of the program mandated that funded research aim toward (1) “the design and negotiation of policies that will have a direct impact on the local conditions and prospects for securing an acceptable level of quality of living”, and (2) “the continuation of appropriate management regimes for the utilization of living resources locally and regionally within the European context”. As such, it called for a direct role for local stakeholders – in this case reindeer herders – in the process of policy-relevant research and for the use of historical trends to facilitate adaptation to future changes. In these aims, RENMAN is quite similar to other EU-funded research projects that focus on particular species in northernmost or Arctic Europe to provide stakeholders and policy makers with a predictive framework of outcome for land use in fragile ecosystems, such as the projects “HIBECO” (Wielgolaski 2005) and “FRAGILE”. The purpose of RENMAN was therefore to develop new tools and models of participatory research and planning in reindeer management that would foster integrated and sustainable use of reindeer (Rangifer t. tarandus L.) and related living resources in northernmost Europe (for the natural history of the reindeer see Preface to Part I). Reindeer management is among the most