Greta Thunberg was among the activists who protested against the construction of six wind farms on Sami indigenous lands in Norway.
Also present on the morning of Monday 27 February was the renowned Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, among the demonstrators sitting outside the entrance to the Norwegian Ministry of Energy in Oslo. "The Norwegian state is violating human rights and this is absolutely unacceptable. We must stand in solidarity in this struggle," she told the Reuters news agency. At the heart of the protests is the construction of six wind farms on the Fosen peninsula in central Norway, where the Sami indigenous people live.
The indigenous Sami people number around 80,000 individuals: roughly half live in Norway, mainly in the northern regions, with the rest spread across Sweden, Finland and Russia. The principal activity of the Sami indigenous people is reindeer herding; they make use of every part of the animal — the meat, a cornerstone of their traditional cuisine, but also the hide, for clothing and footwear, and the antlers, for tools and works of art.
The Fosen peninsula in central Norway also encompasses Sami lands. There, however, the decision was taken to build six onshore wind farms, the largest project of its kind in Europe, capable of producing enough energy to power around 100,000 homes. It is managed by a joint venture made up of Statkraft (a Norwegian state-owned company), TrønderEnergi and Nordic Wind Power.
The Sami indigenous people, however, maintain that the machinery is excessively intrusive in terms of visual and noise pollution, and that it frightens the animals — thereby jeopardising their primary source of livelihood as well as their traditions. The Norwegian Supreme Court ruled in their favour. A ruling from October 2021 establishes that the works violate their rights, without, however, specifying what will become of the 151 turbines or the roads that were built specifically for the construction site. One of the options under consideration is that the wind farms remain in operation while measures are put in place to compensate the Sami indigenous people.
Five hundred days on from the ruling, nothing has changed. Hence the protest organised by around two hundred activists, which Greta Thunberg also joined. "Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand in hand with climate protection and climate action. If the latter comes at the expense of certain groups of people, there is no climate justice," Thunberg explained to Reuters during the sit-in. Police removed the demonstrators and held them for a few hours before releasing them.
