Meet Rasmus Kløcker Larsen, Research Fellow

I was teaching at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala. I worked with environmental communication, helping launch a new Masters programme. Actually, I worked part-time at both places for a few years – teaching at Uppsala and doing research at SEI.

There were several reasons, but for one I was attracted to SEI because of its emphasis on practice and policy. It’s more applied, more societally relevant. It’s simply a very dynamic environment where you’re encouraged to engage in real-life issues and work together with people whose lives may be directly affected by our research.

Most of my work is on natural resource governance, especially land use conflicts. I look at the relationships between Indigenous peoples and communities, and private developers such as the mining industry and wind power operators – as well as state actors and government agencies. How do these actors navigate contested resource decisions when interests and perspectives diverge, basically.

SEI and our partners offer a new way to discuss contentious issues which have gotten stuck. We offer new platforms – it could be a workshop – and new perspectives and analyses. People appreciate our approach that aims to support enhanced collaboration and contribute to change in the near-term, but with a critical eye to power relations and the need for state institutions and industry to become active participants in decolonization.

We work in close partnership with Sámi reindeer herding communities, and one of the ongoing projects involves facilitating a planning process for communities wanting to develop their own goals for land use. Reindeer herding tends to be a male-dominated livelihood – but in one recent meeting several young women from the community joined. There was an exciting moment in the pre-discussion to the major meeting where they brought up ideas, perspectives and issues that had not been surfaced at the meetings we’d had with larger group of herders. When they brought those ideas into the larger meeting, suddenly the conversation totally shifted. I thought that was fascinating, and it demonstrates the importance of whose voices are heard in these dialogues and within Indigenous groups.

Together with my collaborators and partners I’d love to contribute to the Swedish government taking Sámi perspectives, knowledges, and rights more seriously.

There’s no doubt that Sweden has to revise legislation to better respect Sámi rights and culture – that’s been said repeatedly by international expert bodies like the UN. There are some exciting new developments taking place now in Sweden and people are becoming increasingly aware, due in part to struggles and court cases led by Sámi organizations. We play only a small role but hopefully we can help contribute to concrete changes soon – in legislation, government practice, and the way industries behave on Sámi lands.

SEI is a very diverse group of people, but we have a great need for more diversity. From my perspective, working with the questions I work on, we need Sámi researchers. We need other Indigenous researchers, too. If SEI is to offer robust and credible knowledge in situations shaped by still-ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples, then we must also help decolonize research itself. This can only be done together with Indigenous colleagues.