While global ecological breakdown disproportionately benefits a small elite, the impacts are imposed on the global majority, largely Black, Indigenous and people of color, especially women and workers. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Both private and state-owned companies increasingly claim that their projects in S\u00e1pmi are \u201cgreen\u201d and could help ease the impacts of climate change. For example, Swedish companies like Sveaskog rebranded its tree plantations in the region as \u201ccarbon storage facilities.” Meanwhile, LKAB legitimizes its mining operations in S\u00e1pmi through decarbonization, and Vattenfall obscures the detrimental environmental impact of their dams by emphasizing that they produce \u201crenewable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since its inception, Swedish governments repeatedly refused to take measures that would counteract the systemic violation of the Indigenous inhabitants who live on the lands Sweden claims for itself. For example, they have not ratified international conventions for the protection of Indigenous rights, including the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention Nr. 169 by the International Labour Organization. Quite the contrary, Swedish colonialism is sustained and promoted via a revolving door between the leadership of international corporations, industry lobbyists and high-ranking government officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Together, they advocate false climate solutions across economies that stretch well beyond S\u00e1pmi. For example, a new deep-sea wire recently set up to transfer wind and water energy extracted from S\u00e1pmi to continental Europe has been dubbed \u201cthe green link.\u201d Despite the well-established disastrous impacts<\/a> of wind and water industries on S\u00e1mi communities, the Dutch, German and Norwegian companies behind the initiative pride themselves on making \u201cgreen energy available safely and affordably in the E.U.<\/a>\u201d This exemplifies the widespread disregard of these actors when it comes to the upstream consequences of their projects, especially for Indigenous communities like the S\u00e1mi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greenwashing colonial exploitation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast to common perceptions, colonization is not driven exclusively by settlements, military conquest and corporate expropriation \u2014 nor are its impacts limited to far off people and lands. Today, colonization is maintained via neo-colonial institutions. Authorities simply point to seemingly objective legal codes and technocratic administrations to repackage and legitimize their exploitative violence as a necessary evil for the so-called greater good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To distract from the structural devastation of extractive economies on Indigenous people, colonial states like Sweden often point towards consultations as a mechanism to ensure checks and balances. However, Indigenous communities and researchers regularly report how such processes end up in favor of corporations. In practice, most of these consultations are merely a smoke-screen for colonial exploitation, ignoring key principles like free, prior and informed consent. These principles are protected by international human rights recognizing the right of people to self-determine how they chose to pursue their economic, social and cultural development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, for example, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination evaluated a mine, similar to the one proposed in G\u00e1llok, built on the lands of the Vapsten S\u00e1mi reindeer herding community. In its report<\/a>, the committee highlighted how state-sanctioned consultation processes in Sweden create a perception of choice while reducing fundamental rights to mere economic interests. For example, consultations do not allow S\u00e1mi communities to reject projects \u2014 their inclusion is only meant to \u201cpolish the project somewhat from a reindeer herding perspective.\u201d The committee declared these practices as acts of racial discrimination on several accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we are to avert a climate dystopia and create a just, healthy and sustainable future for all, then we must support Indigenous communities\u2019 self-determination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Beyond attempts at greenwashing, Western states continue to justify colonial practices by rendering the colonized unfit to govern themselves and their lands. This approach invalidates traditional livelihoods and allows for the creation of sacrifice zones, for example, as happened by the flooding of areas in S\u00e1pmi during the construction of water dams. Concerns for the climate crisis result in the creation of new sacrifice zones. This green colonialism is facilitated by the expansion of the wind industry in S\u00e1pmi<\/a>, promoted by private investors like German Aquila Capital or international banks like Credit Suisse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the West\u2019s continuous prioritization of economic growth<\/a>, every stopped project in one sacrifice zone increases pressures in another. This is not a matter of single-issue politics; it is a systemic failure that turns the entire planet into a sacrifice zone. Decisions like a mine in G\u00e1llok strengthen the role of short-term economic gains to guide how social progress is evaluated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While global ecological breakdown disproportionately benefits a small elite, the impacts are imposed on the global majority, largely Black, Indigenous and people of color, especially women and workers. This is exemplified by the fact that high-consumption countries in the global North alone are responsible for 92 percent of emissions in excess of the planetary boundary<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bottom line is that most current climate solutions promoted by Western governments ransom our collective future by pitting people against one another. In S\u00e1pmi, for example, these solutions rely on forest workers, miners, and public servants to carry out fundamental rights violations, forced displacements and extermination of ecosystems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We must hold actors that promote such unjust and misleading climate solutions accountable. A key aspect of this work is to resist the spread of fraudulent environmentally-friendly language, dismantle racism and nurture narratives to counter the monolith of Western techno-utopias. As Indigenous communities across the world have repeatedly highlighted: the idea of destroying nature to protect her is ill-fated at best and fatal at worst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2022\/05\/Gallok_FFF_Saminuorra_5feb22_230_2160px_CJUTSI-1024x683.jpg\")