The E-Waste Column no. 215

18 hours ago

2 min read

Today, we are looking at a dispute arising in Sweden around the expansion of an iron ore mine on Sámi land.

🌱 What mining is planned?

The Swedish state-owned mining company, LKAB is “Europe's largest producer of iron ore”. It is now taking steps to “expand a vast iron ore mine next to the town of Kiruna”. The plan is to mine the Per Geijer deposit, which is “Europe’s largest known reserve of rare-earth elements”. As a part of this, even more of Kiruna – which is Sweden’s most northern town – needs to be relocated “to a new and more stable site”. Past “mining operations have caused cracks and unstable ground under the city”. The city center was therefore already relocated in 2022. To make further mining operations possible, the Swedish government is allowing LKAB “to buy 275 hectares of state-owned land to continue the urban development of Kiruna”. All in all, it is estimated that “[a]round 12,000 people and 6,000 homes are affected” by this development.

🌱 What is the larger political context?

Under the Critical Raw Material Act, the EU set itself targets intended to expand its domestic extraction, processing, and recycling of strategic raw materials by 2030. Under these targets, no more than 65% of the annual consumption of any critical raw material are to come “from a single third country”. In light of this, Sweden and the EU are both looking to undertake mineral resource exploitation in the “sparsely populated north”. The problem with this is that these plans put the land, livelihoods, and rights of the Indigenous Sámi people – who live and herd reindeer in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland – at risk. In Kiruna particularly, the Sámi community feels like they are now being treated as “the enemy of development”.

🌱 Why is reindeer herding at risk?

The Per Geijer deposit which LKAB plans to mine lies beneath land used by the Gabna. The Gabna are an Indigenous “Sámi reindeer-herding community whose territory has already been fragmented by mining, roads, railways and the expansion of Kiruna”. According to the Gabna, the “proposed mining development near Kiruna could [now] sever the last viable route used by its reindeer” and “end reindeer husbandry as the community knows it”. As “[r]eindeer herding carries knowledge, language, family relationships and cultural practices between generations”, the land fragmentation is “a cultural-rights issue as well as an environmental and economic one”.

🌱 Why do Sámi rights need to be protected?

The Swedish government has a responsibility to protect Sámi rights. Similarly, the EU institutions that “hav[e] elevated the project’s strategic importance, also have a responsibility to ensure that faster permitting does not weaken [its] scrutiny”. It is also worth noting that both Swedish and EU law require impact assessments and consultations before mining can begin. The key question is therefore currently whether effective consultation will occur and “whether industrial planning can still change when evidence shows that a project threatens the continuity of an Indigenous livelihood”.