Sámi Rights and Climate Justice: Legal Pluralism, Customary Law, and the Green Transition
As the climate crisis deepens, the global shift toward renewable energy is widely framed as an urgent pathway toward sustainability. Yet for Indigenous communities, including the Sámi, this transition often reproduces historical patterns of dispossession, marginalization, and legal invisibility. Renewable energy infrastructure often overlaps with traditional Sámi territories and waters, revealing persistent tensions between environmental goals and Indigenous rights. These conflicts challenge not only regulatory procedures but also the dominant legal and epistemic frameworks that underpin contemporary climate and energy governance.
This seminar brings together researchers engaging with Indigenous, decolonial, socio-legal, and children’s rights perspectives for a dialogue on how Sámi legal traditions and rights are being interpreted, contested, and reimagined amid the green transition. The contributions explore what it means to take Sámi worldviews seriously within law and ask how plural, culturally grounded legal frameworks might enable more just and inclusive climate futures.
13:00 – 13:10 Welcome & Framing – Seminar host
13:10 – 13:25 Opening Keynote: Ande Somby, Associate professor, Faculty of Law - A Doctrine of Insignificant Presence: Legal Survivals and the Erasure of Indigenous Rights
13:25 – 13:40 Presentation 2: Marius Storvik, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law - Beyond Pluralism: The "Power of Faith" as a Mechanism for Legal Power in Sámi Rights and Climate Justice
13:40 – 13:55 Presentation 3: Apostolos Tsiouvalas, Researcher, Faculty of Law - The Coastal Sámi Lawscape
13:55 – 14:10 Presentation 4: Gilbert Ajebe Akame, PhD Research Fellow, Faculty of Law - Living Law through Children’s Eyes: South Saami Climate Consciousness and Legal Pluralism in Norway
14:10 – 14:25 Q&A with Presenters
14:25–14:40 Closing Reflections – Open floor for comments & future directions
The seminar is open for everyone to attend!