Programs
Sakhalin Salmon Initiative
The Sakhalin Salmon Initiative (SSI) is a collaborative effort to promote conservation and sustainable use of wild salmon and the ecosystems upon which they depend, to build institutional capacity for conservation and to promote sustainable economic development on Sakhalin Island. The Sakhalin Salmon Initiative strategy brings together businesses, local communities, and nongovernmental organizations in an ambitious public-private partnership.
History
The Wild Salmon Center began working actively on Sakhalin in 2004, conducting stakeholder interviews with over 200 organizations/stakeholders to identify existing threats and develop strategies to address these threats. In late 2006, the SSI was officially launched with the support of Sakhalin Energy Investment Corporation and the Sakhalin Oblast Administration at the SSI International Conference. The action items included in the Conference Resolution provided the organizational mandate for establishing the Sakhalin Salmon Initiative Center, which opened in April, 2007 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalin.
Partnership and support
The SSI is managed by the Sakhalin-based SSI Center and overseen by the SSI Coordinating Committee of twenty-three organizations that operate locally, including the Sakhalin Oblast Administration, Wild Salmon Center, regional and federal agencies, academic institutions, business enterprises, commercial fishermen, indigenous communities and other local and international NGOs. Sakhalin Energy is a founding sponsor of the SSI, which is also supported by the Neukom Family Foundation, the Mott Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, USDA Forest Service International Programs, Turner Foundation, International Riverfoundation, and several other international foundations and private donors.
About Sakhalin Island
Sakhalin Island and its surrounding waters are rich with great biological and mineral wealth. Some of the Pacific Rim's rarest and most commercially valuable populations of salmon are found on Sakhalin. If maintained into the future, the value of Sakhalin's economic and cultural resources is virtually unlimited (see Why Sakhalin Salmon). However, the island and its surrounding waters are also home to one of the world's largest oil and natural gas deposits.
Investments in these oil and gas deposits and other social and economic changes pose risks and offer opportunities, specifically the opportunity to set a precedent for balancing the sustainable use and conservation of the island's biological wealth with the rational development and management of the island's other resources. If this balance is not achieved, the biological wealth of the region could be undermined and the sustainable economies and cultures of local communities damaged.
The Sakhalin Salmon Initiative is separate from the Sakhalin II or other specific oil and gas projects on Sakhalin, and Sakhalin Energy's participation should be considered an additionality to Sakhalin II project delivery. SSI is not designed to address or replace Sakhalin Energy's Health, Safety or Environmental obligations under Russian or international laws and agreements.