Just and Sustainable National Park Management in Norwegian and Swedish Sápmi

At the COP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in December 2022, over 100 countries (including Norway and the EU) pledged to protect 30% of the Earth's land and ocean areas by 2030. While this ’30 by 30’ agreement represents an important global effort to fight the climate and nature crises, it also poses a great threat to the rights of Indigenous Peoples worldwide. Due to their sustainable use and stewardship, Indigenous Peoples' lands contain around 80% of the planet's remaining biodiversity. Paradoxically, this makes that Indigenous territories are common targets for conservation efforts - which in turn, on the local level, tend to restrict Indigenous self-determination and the traditional practices that maintained these areas in the first place. There appears to be a clash between local and Indigenous rights and perspectives on the one hand, and the governance of environmental protection on the other.

My PhD project is a comparative case study that explores this issue in the context of national park management on the Norwegian and Swedish sides of Sápmi. In recent decades, political developments in both countries point at increased attention for both Sámi rights and healthy ecosystems. Still, local and Sámi people voice concerns about how national park management places restrictions on how they can practice their cultures and traditions in their traditional territories, while simultaneously leading to increased development and traffic as tourists come to enjoy the 'wilderness'. I use a combination of collaborative ethnographic methods and political document analysis to understand both the complex local and more structural conditions that shape these conflicts.