Agreement-making in the Sámi homeland: Investigating an emerging tool in green transition governance

The transition to a fossil-free economy requires decision-making that balances competing claims on land and resources in a perceived just manner. However, in the Sámi homeland – a hot-spot for green industrial transition in Sweden – conflicts are on the rise.

There is a growing trend for reindeer herding communities and developers such as mining and wind industry to enter negotiated agreements, as a response to gaps in state regulation.

In the literature, the space for Indigenous groups to meaningfully engage with so-called ‘extraction contracting’ is hotly debated: are agreements nothing but neoliberal governance instruments biased against Indigenous groups or do they, under the right conditions, help protect Indigenous rights and ensure social justice?

In Sweden, this question is unanswered since nothing is known about the content of these agreements and the factors that shape outcomes – a knowledge deficit that sorely undermines our ability to judge the role of agreements as an emerging tool in green transition governance for climate action.

Drawing on critical Indigenous scholarship on decolonization, the aim of this project is to undertake the first empirical investigation of agreement-making in the Sámi homeland.

The research will be conducted in partnership with several Sámi herding communities and the Sámiid Rikkasearvi (SSR), guided by principles of participatory action research and Indigenous research in a Sámi context.