Katya Bonvoisin offers Kiruna rare-earth mine in Sweden’s Sápmi region: home to Sámi indigenous populations whose life, in tune with nature, contrasts with consumer lifestyles driving climate change. Important to energy solutions, rare-earth mining highlights a paradox of disrupting people and nature in one place for climate action in another.
Museum of the Anthropocene: Kiruna Rare-earth Mine
My object is a rare-earth metals mine project in Kiruna in the Sápmi region, home to the Sámi indigenous population. Rare earth metals are essential for many green energy technologies such as solar panels, and are part of many countries’ climate transition plans.
Their mining has significantly increased in recent years and is at the heart of political tensions to secure supply, as seen recently with Trump’s military interest in Greenland. They are important to create solutions to the climate crisis, but their mining often creates environmental damage and disrupts communities, in this case indigenous populations, highlighting a paradox of disruptions of people’s environments in one place for climate action in another.
We can trace the beginning of the Anthropocene to colonisation and the devastating effect it had on native populations and their environments. This was followed by centuries of overexploitation of our planet and the resulting high anthropogenic emissions and climate crisis that demand green energy solutions, often dependent on rare-earth minerals. Industries and governments turn to these critical materials with little conscience of the Indigenous land under which it lays, in a way, repeating a history of dislocation of indigenous communities.
The company LKAB currently has an iron-ore mine in Kiruna and is looking to explore further north to provide Europe with critical materials in areas situated under Sámi traditional reindeer grazing land. This would severely damage the environment, demand the relocation of people and change many reindeer herding practices, such as herding routes. The EU has ambitious climate action plans and the EU’s Critical Raw Minerals Act delineates their plan to access rare-earth elements for security and independence for their green transition. However, were the Sámi involved in the decision-making?
The expansion project has resulted in resistance from the Sámi, demanding recognition of their land and their property rights. They demand environmental justice through procedural rights such as inclusive decision-making and demand recognition of their history with the land and their ongoing rights. The Kiruna mine project highlights political agendas globally in the Anthropocene with, for example, the EU seeking to reduce their reliance on China’s rare earth elements because of China’s domestic and foreign policies. This can be seen as part of a bigger story where governments control land and people in different areas for their perceived good. Rare earth mining tends to cluster in politically marginal spaces, where states legitimise the disregard of those affected. Sámi people are speaking out and demanding recognition, but would this mean higher reliance on other mines, perhaps in countries where voices are not so loud?
The Sámi are an Indigenous population whose livelihoods are dependent on their environment and therefore are heavily impacted by climate change, although they have minimal contribution to it. Sámi life is threatened by climate change, for example because of the reindeers’ main food source, lichen, being increasingly hard to find and the movement of reindeer becoming difficult due to unpredictable weather. Their traditions rest upon a simple life, in tune with nature, contrasting with high consumption lifestyles which drive climate change. It therefore feels paradoxical to have people with marginal contributions to the climate crisis be at a disadvantage in the search for solutions.
However, how else could a green transition happen, and without rare-earth minerals, would Sámi suffer further due to global warming? And if not, would critical minerals just be imported from elsewhere, offshoring the problem to another country?