Land use conflicts on Sámi lands

Green transition has become a guiding principle for policy and a catch-all solution to the multiple environmental crises the world is facing. However, the term has become rather ambiguous and the version championed by the EU and Sweden includes policies on fossil free steel production, increased mining for critical minerals, expansion of renewable energy production and commercial forestry. These solutions are geographically dependent on the Northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland – the Sámi homeland. Such activities, deemed central for green transition in public discourse, can cause significant negative impact on Sámi lands as well as traditional livelihoods such as reindeer herding that is already threatened by previous infringements on their land and by climate change.

Tensions of what sustainability means are increasing between herders’ and dominant policy discourses. Competing discourses have emerged, one framing sustainability concerns as overgrazing/overstocking (putting the responsibility on herders) vs over exploited (putting the responsibility on other land users). By investigating the cases of Sweden and Norway, we aim to reveal conflicts and trade-offs of the green transition and to identify leverage points for challenging dominant policy discourses by creating space for alternative policy to emerge that would not only make the green transition fair, but also reduce already existing inequalities.