7
votes
Norway's supreme court stripped two wind farms of their operating licences in a case that could boost the legal rights of the country's indigenous Sámi people
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Two Norway wind farms lose licence in landmark ruling over indigenous rights
- Published
- Oct 11 2021
- Word count
- 404 words
The UN's panel on the rights of indigenous peoples, The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), have a pending case on the same issue.
The Norwegian government refused to follow CERD's request to stop the building of the Storheia powerplant until CERD had finished their treatment of the case. CERD's request for the stoppage of work was later rescinded.
This looks bad for Norway's treatment of its indigenous peoples. A total of 6 Sámi reindeer herders work in the area these two (and several more) wind farms are located in. Three are impacted by the Roan plant and the other three by the Storheia one.
These two facilities total of 171 wind turbines and around 90 kilometers of internal roads represented more than a third of Norway's total wind power production in 2020.
Disclosure: I've worked on/in both these wind farms, among others, although my work doesn't primarily relate to power production or wind energy.