Renewable Energy and the Reindeer:
Norway’s solution to mitigate climate change is threatening an age-old way of sustainability
by Signi Livingstone-Peters
a shorter version of this article appeared in the American University of Paris student magazine Peacock Plume and in OneZero. Signi Livingston-Peters, a graduate of AUP, is a Communications Officer at the International Science Council (ISC) created in 2018 from a merger of the International Council for Science (founded in 1931) and the International Social Science Council (founded in 1952).
a shorter version of this article appeared in the American University of Paris student magazine Peacock Plume and in OneZero. Signi Livingston-Peters, a graduate of AUP, is a Communications Officer at the International Science Council (ISC) created in 2018 from a merger of the International Council for Science (founded in 1931) and the International Social Science Council (founded in 1952).
Don't miss Nature & Cultures' other features on the Great North: The Arctic: A New Middle-East? and our review of "Alaska Native Games and How to Play Them: Twenty-Five Ancient Contests That Never Died."
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There is no cutting-edge climate technology inhumed in the blanket of white snow that covers the tundra in Jokkmokk, Sweden — a small hamlet in the Swedish Lapland. Nor are there glossy climate research centers — let alone people at all–but according to Scandinavia’s indigenous Sami people, the snow is nowhere as abundant as it used to be. “When I was young, the snow used to be up to our shoulders,” explains Tertu Mukala, a Sami native of Salla, in Finland. “Years later, up to the belt. Eventually, the knees. Now look, it’s up to the ankles.” She motions toward her booted feet outside of her home. Even though it’s mid-February, the snow hardly covers them.
The Arctic region where the Sami live, along with the polar bear, has long been a poster child for the environmental crisis. The symbolism exists for a reason — with its high proportion of ice, the region acts as an amplifier of sorts for the global heat engine as the ice melts and seas rise. The results are catastrophic, causing major global socio-economic, psychological, and ecological impacts. Once triggered, they may continue for centuries and cause irreversible change to ice sheets, global circulation, and sea level rise. Indigenous people, like the Sami of Lapland, are at the forefront of unprecedented environmental changes that are forcing them to shift how they live and work on their land. For the Sami people, climate change is not a debate — it’s a daily reality.
The Arctic region where the Sami live, along with the polar bear, has long been a poster child for the environmental crisis. The symbolism exists for a reason — with its high proportion of ice, the region acts as an amplifier of sorts for the global heat engine as the ice melts and seas rise. The results are catastrophic, causing major global socio-economic, psychological, and ecological impacts. Once triggered, they may continue for centuries and cause irreversible change to ice sheets, global circulation, and sea level rise. Indigenous people, like the Sami of Lapland, are at the forefront of unprecedented environmental changes that are forcing them to shift how they live and work on their land. For the Sami people, climate change is not a debate — it’s a daily reality.
The Sami people (also spelled Saami) are a Finno-Ugric tribe that encompasses large parts of Sweden, Norway, northern parts of Finland, and the Murmansk Oblast of Russia. Although Sami ancestral lands are not well-defined, they are present due to the meticulous work of their ancestors–and the fight of generations to preserve their identity.
A long-standing model for a progressive approach to economic development, the windswept Nordic countries of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark all boast low unemployment, high levels of equality, and sophisticated social services. Perhaps most importantly, Scandinavia is a leader in operating primarily off of renewable energy — a crucial pursuit as we face another decade in a rapidly exacerbated environmental crisis.
In early April 2016, Norway took one of the biggest global steps forward in terms of renewable energy — six wind farms with a combined capacity of 1,057 MW at a cost of roughly $1.3 billion. That’s enough to nearly double Norway’s wind potential.
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Above: promotional videos by Statkraft, specializing in energy infrastructures, one of the main contractors of the gigantic projects in Lappland
Wind and solar energy require virtually no water to operate. Because of this, they do not pollute water resources, nor strain resources by competing with agriculture, drinking water, or other essential water needs. Fossil fuels, on the contrary, have a significant impact on water resources — both coal mining and natural gas drilling can pollute sources of drinking water, and all thermal power plants, including those powered by coal, gas, and oil, withdraw and consume large amounts of water for cooling.
For the Sami people, climate change is not a debate — it’s a daily reality. The snow melting exponentially faster and earlier has a paradoxical effect on the ice: it eventually becomes harder and reindeer cannot dig through it to find to find their natural forage, explains Trevelyan Wing in an article for the Climate Institute. Reindeer can dig through the snow but not through the hard ice that forms abnormally between the layers of snow and close to the ground when the thermometer drops at the beginning of a winter that is more frequently postponed. According to Sámi herder Anders Kroik, “the snow becomes like sheet metal here, and the reindeer that eat from the ground don’t have the strength to get through that layer,” leading many to starve (Ibid.) “The snow becomes like sheet metal here, and the reindeer that eat from the ground don’t have the strength to get through that layer,” leading many to starve laments Anders Kroik, another Sámi herder (Ibid.).
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Above: on a field trip with American University of Paris anthropology professor Tanya Elder, her students (not seen on this picture) marvel at the animals and their Sami handlers during preparations for the reindeer race at the annual Sami Winter Market in Jokkmokk, Sweden. The market, comparable to the fur rendez-vous of Native Americans in the Rocky Mountains, has been held uninterupted for more than 400 years. Just as centuries ago, indigenous traders buy and sell any product derived from reindeer (below) as well as many traditional artisanal goods and anything needed for life in the Far North.
Clearly, the Norwegian project is not about big bad government drilling holes in the land to search for oil and contributing to climate destruction. This is one of the largest, most progressive renewable energy projects in the world. So what’s the catch?
The project lies in the middle of a crucial Sami reindeer grazing area, leaving traditional herders concerned for the future of a culture they have fought for generations to preserve. Local herders have said that the sight and sound of the turbines would disturb reindeer herding. Despite UN calls to suspend the project to study the impact on indigenous herders livelihoods, the Norwegian Petroleum and Energy Ministry will proceed with the wind park, compromising Sami land, livelihood, and identity. Oleg Kobtzeff is a Franco-American professor at The American University of Paris, a writer, and a researcher who studies what he calls “the interface of civilizations and their relationships with their natural environments”. Kobtzeff has worked for the U.S. National Parks Service, the CNES (the French space agency), and several scientific and educational institutions in Alaska, where he lived for four years in an indigenous community. He is a specialist in Arctic regions. The Sami have been living sustainably for centuries, without the use of science. Kobtzeff believes that with a shift in the relationship between the government, the “rest of the world,” and indigenous groups, “the Sami could eventually tell us where and how to build windmills that would not create a problem for them.”
Although the wind farms in the project boost high wind potential and a promising renewable future for Norway, the Sami have opposed these plans, seeing them as unprecedented land grabs and a fundamental threat to their culture. Not only this, but the Sami have been living sustainably for centuries, without the use of science.
But warmer winters mean less snow. Less snow means more rain. Due to the freezing temperatures, the rain then freezes into ice, making it impossible for reindeer to reach the vegetation that is crucial to their diet and survival. In turn, many reindeer starve or are born stunted.
This puts the traditional way of herding reindeer under pressure, as rising temperatures threaten the size of the herds and cause financial stress. In addition to these money woes, many young Sami feel the pressure of being the last remaining faces of a dissolving culture, while witnessing the firsthand effects of a warming planet. |
The new wind farm is only amplifying this dilemma.
“The Sami may know much more than we do about climate change,” Kobtzeff says. “In fact, we know they do. The whole difficulty is to get them to share the information that they have.”
From an anthropological perspective, indigenous people have a robust track record of maintaining intimate, sustainable relationships with the world and ecosystems around them. These relationships have nourished their communities and sustained their culture for centuries, all without ruining the life-providing environment itself. This is the track record that they fight to maintain. Ironically, a solution from the “developed world” meant to mitigate climate change has threatened their age-old way of sustainability.
Many Sami have an innate relationship to their environment and land. They can fathom things that engineers, scientists, zoologists, geographers and meteorologists who study climate and nature are not aware of. They possess an education that has come from centuries of experience, observation, along with trial and error from living off the land. Generations of reindeer herding have taught them how to use meat sustainably, and how to use snowmelt for energy, free of industrial production. There are thousands of more traditional, less harmful methods toward climate action that we could learn from indigenous groups such as the Sami.
Non-indigenous populations are insufficiently aware of their importance in such strategic concerns because first of all, for centuries, representatives of civilizations considering themselves as far superior, whether these representatives were rationalist know-it-all academics or sanctimonious religious missionaries mocked or demonized the knowledge and techniques accumulated after centuries of experience by whom they considered "primitive" populations as superstition, ignorance or sorcery. To avoid humiliation and the desecration of their knowledge that is intimately linked to their spiritual worldview (every element of their natural, and cultural environment such as knowledge itself, being sacred) the unwritten encyclopedic data that they have accumulated was kept secret. More recently after it became "cool" to boast respect for indigenous populations, secrecy was still necessary for the diametrically opposite reason: cultural appropriation, one of its Most Extreme forms being plagiarizing and copyrighting music or techniques for which non-indigenous people take credit by non-in indigenous pseudo-artists or pseudo-inventors. Yet, knowledge and experience of people like the Sami remain indispensable for the planet's survival.
In the present situation of global warming, the Sami capacity to adapt has been rapid and efficient. One example is how they deal with the paradoxical formation of abnormal layers of hard ice caused by warmer and shorter winters. In his afore mentioned article in which he explains this, Trevelyan Wing writes about the amazing Sami “TEK” – Traditional Ecological Knowledge:
“The Sami may know much more than we do about climate change,” Kobtzeff says. “In fact, we know they do. The whole difficulty is to get them to share the information that they have.”
From an anthropological perspective, indigenous people have a robust track record of maintaining intimate, sustainable relationships with the world and ecosystems around them. These relationships have nourished their communities and sustained their culture for centuries, all without ruining the life-providing environment itself. This is the track record that they fight to maintain. Ironically, a solution from the “developed world” meant to mitigate climate change has threatened their age-old way of sustainability.
Many Sami have an innate relationship to their environment and land. They can fathom things that engineers, scientists, zoologists, geographers and meteorologists who study climate and nature are not aware of. They possess an education that has come from centuries of experience, observation, along with trial and error from living off the land. Generations of reindeer herding have taught them how to use meat sustainably, and how to use snowmelt for energy, free of industrial production. There are thousands of more traditional, less harmful methods toward climate action that we could learn from indigenous groups such as the Sami.
Non-indigenous populations are insufficiently aware of their importance in such strategic concerns because first of all, for centuries, representatives of civilizations considering themselves as far superior, whether these representatives were rationalist know-it-all academics or sanctimonious religious missionaries mocked or demonized the knowledge and techniques accumulated after centuries of experience by whom they considered "primitive" populations as superstition, ignorance or sorcery. To avoid humiliation and the desecration of their knowledge that is intimately linked to their spiritual worldview (every element of their natural, and cultural environment such as knowledge itself, being sacred) the unwritten encyclopedic data that they have accumulated was kept secret. More recently after it became "cool" to boast respect for indigenous populations, secrecy was still necessary for the diametrically opposite reason: cultural appropriation, one of its Most Extreme forms being plagiarizing and copyrighting music or techniques for which non-indigenous people take credit by non-in indigenous pseudo-artists or pseudo-inventors. Yet, knowledge and experience of people like the Sami remain indispensable for the planet's survival.
In the present situation of global warming, the Sami capacity to adapt has been rapid and efficient. One example is how they deal with the paradoxical formation of abnormal layers of hard ice caused by warmer and shorter winters. In his afore mentioned article in which he explains this, Trevelyan Wing writes about the amazing Sami “TEK” – Traditional Ecological Knowledge:
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“Drawing on environmental learning accumulated over countless generations, they carefully adjust the composition of herds to reflect weather conditions from year to year.[29] As their climate has grown increasingly warm and irregular, the Sámi castrate more of their male animals. Castrates are the largest and strongest members of a herd, serve to calm the other animals and, crucially, prove better able to withstand challenging winter conditions – including a greater ability to dig through hard ice” (Ibid.).
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But can awareness that indigenous lives matter be disseminated in such a way that appreciation does not become appropriation? |
For example, they would know where to place windmills without bird populations migratory paths or love local flight. Sami guides would be the best to guide geologists and Engineers to the best construction spots. Any initiative in development in the Great North, even minimal and sustainable, will have some impact (and let's face it: it is unrealistic to count on these Arctic and subarctic regions to remain completely untouched by humans like Antarctica). the Sami people like all other indigenous people of the Great North are the most qualified to give a device on how to keep this impact minimal.
“But for this to happen,” Kobtzeff says, “fundamentally, the relationship between the indigenous groups and the rest of the world needs to change.” Unfortunately, the relationship between government, the “rest of the world,” and indigenous groups such as the Sami in Norway or the Inuit in Alaska has rarely been convivial. For centuries, they have been mocked, and referred to as savages or primitive, based on the notion that they simply cannot know better than those who have learned mathematics, or climate science in official universities.
Indigenous groups have long been featured on magazine covers and in documentary films. Their culture has been turned into a spectacle, an image.
The more we increase the multicultural, multi-knowledge perspective on what’s happening with us and the planet, the better it will be. But can awareness that indigenous lives matter be disseminated in such a way that appreciation does not become appropriation? |
Indigenous groups have long been featured on magazine covers and in documentary films. Their culture has been turned into a spectacle, an image.
The more we increase the multicultural, multi-knowledge perspective on what’s happening with us and the planet, the better it will be. But can awareness that indigenous lives matter be disseminated in such a way that appreciation does not become appropriation?
One of the worst problems of appropriation that indigenous populations have started to face most recently is a form of pure theft. In the European Far North, a growing number of Sami have been exploited for their traditional medicinal remedies, further fueling the hostile relationship between indigenous groups and the rest of the world. This exploitation is known as “biopiracy” in which large companies, often pharmaceutical, commercially exploit naturally occurring biochemical or genetic material. Often these companies will obtain patents that restrict the further use of these materials, while failing to pay fair compensation to the community from which it originates. (On the issue of cultural appropriation and biopiracy in particular concerning the Sami, see Yokota, Y. and Saami Council (2005) “Expanded Working paper submitted by Yozo Yokota and the Saami Council on the substantive proposals on the draft principles and guidelines for the protection of the heritage of indigenous peoples”, United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Document E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/2005/3.)
“For all of these reasons, these are populations that are extremely wary of sharing traditional knowledge,” Kobtzeff says. “They know a lot about the climate because of the patterns of animal behavior. [But] they are probably hiding a lot of this information because all of this has been mocked. Because of that, they are shy. There is an attitude about keeping the information to themselves.”
The more we increase the multicultural, multi-knowledge perspective on what’s happening with us and the planet, the better it will be. But can awareness that indigenous lives matter be disseminated in such a way that appreciation does not become appropriation?
One of the worst problems of appropriation that indigenous populations have started to face most recently is a form of pure theft. In the European Far North, a growing number of Sami have been exploited for their traditional medicinal remedies, further fueling the hostile relationship between indigenous groups and the rest of the world. This exploitation is known as “biopiracy” in which large companies, often pharmaceutical, commercially exploit naturally occurring biochemical or genetic material. Often these companies will obtain patents that restrict the further use of these materials, while failing to pay fair compensation to the community from which it originates. (On the issue of cultural appropriation and biopiracy in particular concerning the Sami, see Yokota, Y. and Saami Council (2005) “Expanded Working paper submitted by Yozo Yokota and the Saami Council on the substantive proposals on the draft principles and guidelines for the protection of the heritage of indigenous peoples”, United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Document E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/2005/3.)
“For all of these reasons, these are populations that are extremely wary of sharing traditional knowledge,” Kobtzeff says. “They know a lot about the climate because of the patterns of animal behavior. [But] they are probably hiding a lot of this information because all of this has been mocked. Because of that, they are shy. There is an attitude about keeping the information to themselves.”
This is also why initiatives coming from the outside world, even presented as having the best intentions, can be felt as an aggression. This poses a problem for building wind farm, which, on a large scale, is less harmful for the planet, for the Great North and for Lappland in particular, than continuing to exploit fossil fuels, but is not perfectly safe for the environment and is therefore met with hostility by many Saami.
“It is evident that one of the largest onshore wind power facilities in Europe will have irreparable consequences for the reindeer owners who have drifted here since time immemorial,” said Thomas Åhren, a governing council member of the Saami Parliament of Norway, in a press release. The problems are caused not only by the wind turbines themselves as by the human activities and the development – such as the 241 kilometers of new roads built by Fosen Vind – generated to support the building and maintenance of the wind farms: “They are using explosives to carve out a road, and we’ve had to gather and fence in the reindeer so we don’t lose them in the wild,” said Sami reindeer herder Risten Aleksandersen in an interview for Irish Times' Stephen Starr. “And because they can’t roam around, as they normally would, we have to buy food for them, which is an additional cost for us.” |
The electricity infrastructures themselves also have a direct effect on reindeer herds. As shown in by Daniel Cressey in "Why Reindeer Steer Clear of Power Lines" an article which appeared in Nature magazine and was reproduced in Scientific American research conducted recently has confirmed that the animals’ behavior is strangely affected: Michael Land, a University of Sussex neurobiologist is quoted in saying that “reindeer almost certainly can see UV (weakly) when dark adapted [to the extended Arctic winter darkness], and may well be able to see power lines in the dark,” affirms this expert studying vision in vison. “The fact that they also avoid them during the day, when UV light is everywhere, is puzzling, and it isn't clear why they should want to avoid the discharges anyway.”
So is the dilemma insoluble? Or must indigenous lifestyles be once again sacrificed on the altar of development although this time, a development less damageable to the planet as a whole, yet, still harmful to an already endangered culture and local ecosystem? While native peoples only constitute 4% to 5% of the world’s population, they use almost a quarter of the world’s land surface and manage 11% of its forests. “In doing so, they maintain 80% of the planet’s biodiversity in, or adjacent to, 85% of the world’s protected areas,” says Gleb Raygorodetsky, a researcher with the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. From a small village in the Bering Sea, Raygorodetsky has worked for two decades with indigenous communities around the world on traditional resource management, sacred sites, climate change adoption and mitigation, and biocultural diversity. |
“After all, it is they who have a robust millennia-long track record of maintaining intimate relationships with the natural world, which has nourished their communities and sustained their cultures, without devouring the life-giving environment,” says Raygorodetsky. “This is the track record that they continuously strive to maintain, despite formidable odds, including fierce opposition from the ‘developed’ world. But the ‘accomplishments’ of modern society, however, are a lot more recent, paltry, and have had much more destructive consequences for life on Earth. The most efficient path toward enhancing climate change resilience is to secure and support indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands and waters so they can continue to support the majority of Earth’s remaining biological and cultural diversity.”
A potential solution for the wind farm is compensation — not necessarily financial, but the possibility of giving ownership over more land, or even allowing for greater political representation by giving more power to the local Sami institutions. Despite their strong identity and decades of lobbying since the 1960s, according to the Climate Institute, an institution aimed at discovering and implementing climate solutions by advancing research, sharing information, and collaborating with U.S and international partners, “the ancient custom of reindeer herding represents one of the last means by which the Sami can support themselves with a traditional pursuit, providing one of the few remaining outlets for sustained cultural expression and pride.”
Raygorodetsky thinks that in addition to scientific technologies — even the most progressive ones — we should look to the people who are still closely connected to nature, not solely as the backbone that sustains them. Finding solutions to the impacts of climate change is much more complicated than everyone having the mindset and positive incentive of “wanting to save the planet.” It requires probing into a deep, multicultural, multi-knowledge perspective and understanding of the people around us who have lived sustainably for centuries.
Perhaps the most efficient path toward driving climate change resilience is to secure and support indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands and waters, and maintain a close relationship to them so that they can continue to support the majority of Earth’s remaining biological and cultural diversity in the same way that they have done for centuries.
The more we increase the multicultural, multi-knowledge perspective on what’s happening with us and the planet, the better it will be for us. Science is certainly one crucial way to solve the issue of climate change, but it is not the only one.
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