Clean Waters of Evenkia

How a village club’s talk on Siberian forests and water reflects—like a drop of water—the complexity of human (mis)understandings of their predicament

Evenkia knows how to speak straight to the heart

Majestic are its seasons of change: you arrive in summer,

and within four weeks depart, treading the first snow.

Here flows the cleanest water on Earth.
From the small rivers, you drink straight from the current—
so fresh, so pure, it fills your body with health,
endowing you with new strength.

Scientists, who are they?

The internet here is costly and unreliable, yet WhatsApp still manages to get through. On the very day we were staying with our indigenous friends—preparing to continue our return to civilization the next morning—a message appeared in the Sulomai group chat: “Scientists have arrived. They’re looking for cedar cones, and they want help from locals.”

Almost at once, someone replied: “How do you know they’re scientists? If they are, let them speak out and tell us about their work.”

We, too, are scientists—but this message wasn’t about us. It was funny in a way, because Sulomai is such a small settlement, one of the few indigenous communities along the Yenisei. And yet, it suddenly seemed to have become a place where scientists gathered in surprising numbers.

Our hosts, eager to showcase their own, quickly suggested that we give a talk the following evening in the village club (a beautiful new building). We agreed, settling on the topic “Forests and Climate,” scheduled for 6:00 p.m. on September 29.

The real purpose of this seemingly academic talk—encouraged by our hosts, a young indigenous family with two toddlers—was to warn the community that their forests were in danger, at risk of being devoured by logging operations expanding into the heart of their hunting and fishing grounds. How could one awaken people to defend their land, to rise above the familiar weight of hopelessness and the real fear of standing against merciless commercial interests?

Such talks are hard to give; you must open your heart, knowing it may be wounded. Yet one cannot withdraw, for Evenkia herself looks into your eyes. To receive so much from her beauty is to be obliged to defend it, to justify your own happiness in being.

So Andrei spoke

Not many people had gathered by six, but a handful arrived, and there were quite a few children among them. Some listeners seemed ready to engage, especially a couple seated in the front row. When Andrei announced the topic, Forests and Climate, the man in the front quickly jumped in, asserting: yes, we know about climate change and all that, but the role of humans is far from proven—after all, there were glacial ages in the past, and now there is some warming.

Anyone who speaks regularly to diverse audiences knows this type of listener; they can be quite disruptive. Andrei responded calmly, noting that the current situation is more complicated, and that he hoped to present arguments that might change his opponent’s view. And, as it turned out, he succeeded.

Andrei began by sharing that he is no stranger to this land. His roots run deep along the Yenisey, and his father was born in the taiga during one of the tragic years of the 1930s. This connection matters profoundly: it reveals that his intentions are sincere, that he seeks to protect the land of his ancestors just as the indigenous people do. It naturally fosters trust and disarms purely emotional opposition.

Then came an argument that was likely unexpected by the audience. Rather than focusing on global warming “and all that,” Andrei emphasized the importance of forests, drawing on the vast empirical knowledge of indigenous hunters and fishers who understand the extraordinary power of nature. He argued that this power is indeed the power to create and stabilize an environment favorable to life, and to human life in particular:

Evenkia is a unique region of our planet, where pristine nature and the purest rivers have survived. Yet today, we see that intensive clear-cutting in the south and southeast of the Evenkiysky District is destroying the Podkamennaya Tunguska, one of the Yenisei’s largest tributaries: its headwaters are drying up, the waters are polluted, and the fish are disappearing. Landslides along the banks have become frequent due to melting permafrost, and fires follow the logging. The area still covered by untouched nature is shrinking. Animals lose their habitats, and the opportunities for indigenous people to maintain their traditional way of life—fishing and hunting—are steadily declining.

Protecting the natural, indigenous forest is our highest priority. Forests and plantations are not the same. Natural forests possess a unique ability to regenerate themselves. They create a livable environment and a stable climate. That is their defining difference. Plantations, on the other hand, are just timber—they have nothing to do with ecology.

Local people are close to nature; they see its beauty and its power every day.

We must close Evenkia to logging. This is a matter of survival for all of us. We have a unique opportunity not to repeat the mistakes of other countries that destroyed their natural forests. Preserving a forest is far easier than restoring it. Turning plantations into real forest is virtually impossible.

We should draw on the recent experience of banning clear-cutting around Baikal. We must unite our efforts with everyone who genuinely wants to solve the problem of environmental degradation and protect a climate suitable for life.

Discussion

After the talk, a discussion followed. Some people shared examples of how “everything dried out” after logging and how “everything burned.” Andrei explained how disrupting the natural tree canopy reduces transpiration, leading to warming and drying. Surprisingly, not a single person challenged him. They knew it was true, yet it was hard knowledge to explicitly handle.

Then came the difficult question: “What can be done?” At one point, the listener who had been disruptive before exclaimed, almost like a child, “Evenkia is such a small place! Can’t it be saved? Just it?”

And indeed, I thought: who would truly suffer if we simply saved this pearl of the Earth’s cleanest waters? What if these trees were left standing? Some families might not be able to renovate their wooden furniture—but perhaps what they already have could serve a little longer, just for the sake of preserving Evenkia. Chinese factories might lose a source of packaging paper. Maybe that is not so tragic. Why must the destruction of Evenkia feel so inevitable?

Cedar cones for China

After the discussion, most listeners drifted away—but it turned out that the other two scientists had been planning to give their talk as well. One of them was a young Chinese researcher who had worked in the Harbin forests, which, due to extensive logging, had lost most of their native tree species, leaving only fast-growing varieties.

After four weeks in the wilderness, we suddenly found ourselves back in the familiar environment of a scientific seminar—with PowerPoint slides and all—the kind where the presenter depends on you as the main audience. We couldn’t leave, and listened with genuine interest.

He had come to Russia searching for cedar cones that could be cultivated in China. He spoke of the impressive prospects of creating hybrid trees that are short (making cone collection easier), yield abundant edible seeds, and grow quickly. (“Unfortunately, there are natural hybrids that are short, but they don’t produce good seeds.”) A range of modern genetic and biophysical analyses was planned, carried out, as always, with the precision and dedication characteristic of Chinese research.

Strikingly, in the context of Andrei’s preceding talk—which the Chinese researcher could not follow, as it was in Russian—his own presentation was entirely about manufacturing nature, shaping it forcefully to serve human needs. He was, in effect, pursuing the very path that had already depleted China’s forests of their regenerative capacity, driving him into the Russian wilderness in the hope of restoring life to his homeland’s woods.

How long will we continue digging ever deeper, refusing to understand that the miracle of ecosystem self-regeneration and homeostasis lies far beyond the complexity our civilization can ever hope to grasp?

Apart from these conceptual precipice separating our approaches, the Chinese researcher and his companion, a Russian professor from Irkutsk studying mushrooms as ecological indicators, who expressed sympathetic views to biotic regulation, were exceptionally nice people. It turned out that tomorrow we all had the same helicopter flight to the nearest settlement from which planes fly to Krasnoyarsk, and then the same flight to Krasnoyarsk. We exchanged contacts and agreed to continue discussions tomorrow.

Together in one boat

The next day, September 30, we learned that the helicopter had been canceled due to bad weather. The local people, generous as ever, gave the four of us scientists plenty of warm clothing, boots, and two blankets. We set off in a boat to the airport settlement of Bor, navigating the rough waters of the Podkamennaya Tunguska. In fact, two boats traveled together for safety—because if anything were to happen, we would depend on one another, and on our mutual understanding, for survival.

Both boats reached Bor safely, even though the motor of one broke along the way and had to be repaired while the other waited patiently. Everyone still made it in time for the plane. Evenkia had been kind to us.