presentation by Gunn-Britt Retter, Head of Arctic and Environmental Unit, Saami Council

Dear participants,

First of all I would like to thank the World Wildlife Fund for this opportunity to address some issues from the Saami perspectives here in the Arctic tent.

I would like to start off with a little story from home. The local children’s theatre showed a play last spring called “Eatnanspáppastallan”, in English it would translate “Playing with the globe”. In brief it is about the Christian God and the Sun losing hope in the human being due to their accelerating energy consumption on the globe having devastating impacts on life. Not being in the position to instruct the human to stop up to think about their behaviour, God and the Sun allies with the underground people, Ulda, who finds a child to help.

The play was created by the children improvising, while the play writer took notes. I spoke with the writer, she told me the children were very good in improvising the parts concerning the consequences of the overconsumption and climate changes, but when it came to solutions, they were stuck. In the play they use magic to solve the situation. This rises for me a number of questions: Can we, or rather the politicians, the COP Parties, the policy shapers - use magic to solve the climate change challenge? Or do we have tools and solutions at hand? And on the other side, what do we really communicate to the public about climate change, when the children do not even see any solutions at all?

My name is Gunn-Britt Retter, I am the head of the Arctic and Environmental unit of the Saami Council. The Saami Council is an indigenous peoples’ organisation, and we have 9 national level Saami organisations and associations as members in all the four countries the Saami peoples live in today: Finland, Norway, Russia and Sweden. We represent the Saami civil society and have
status as Permanent Participants to the Arctic Council and roster status in the United Nations Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC) and participate actively in various UN processes concerning indigenous peoples.

The Saami people is an Indigenous people living in Fennoscandia, in the north of Finland, Norway, Sweden and on Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. Traditionally the Saami people depended on a utilizing the living resources available in combination with each other. Reindeer husbandry is probably the most widely known livelihood of the Saami people. Our livelihoods holds unique knowledge developed on our lands over millennia.

As indigenous people in the high north, we already face many challenges related to climate change, not only to the biodiversity the environment and living resources that our culture still depend upon, but also related to the intensive change in land use when finding solutions to the challenges and in developing mitigation strategies.

Actually the efforts to mitigate climate change causes almost as great a problem to the Saami people as climate change itself. The exploding interest in renewable resources such as wind-mills, hydro-electric dams and nuclear power plants intensify pressure on our lands never seen before. The Saami have contributed little to climate change, and we are already suffering
disproportionally from its effect. Nonetheless, when our national states are exploring increased use of renewable resources, they wish to concentrate such industrial plants, with associated roads, power cords, mines and other infrastructure, on Saami traditional land.

We see not only a race for oil and gas resources in the Arctic, but also a race for development of renewable resources. Is that a more fair game?

For instance, in the Swedish news last Friday (http://www.sr.se/cgibin/sameradion/nyheter/artikel.asp?artikel=3285932) we heard that the joint company “Statkraft SCA Vind AB” (Norwegian Statkraft AS has merged with SCA AB and created the company Statkraft SCA Vind AB) has received the permission to start constructing the first one out of six wind mill parks in the
Jingevaerie Sameby (Saami reindeer herding community). The plans include all together 455 wind mills, 417 of which will be on the winter grazing lands of Jingevaerie Saami reindeer herding community. This cluster of parks alone is supposed to cover 10 % of Sweden’s CO2 reduction commitments to the EU.

In a similar case last winter, the Nothernmost Swedish County Administrative Board on 3 March 2009, in a formal response to the government stated that should a proposed construction of a wind-mill park within the reindeer grazing lands of Östra Kikkejaure Saami community result in the community no longer being able to pursue reindeer husbandry, the national interest to combat climate change still takes precedent. This would imply that the cultural roots of the Östra Kikkejaure reindeer herders are pulled up. They will be thrown out of the lands their forefathers have used since time immemorial, and that they are currently trying to pass on to their children. The same concern is raised within the Jingivarie Sameby.

We certainly need to look into alternative energy sources, but the burden should be more equally distributed. I would submit that it is not fair of the majority society, being the main contributors to the global warming, demanding such a sacrifice by its indigenous population.

Finally, the Saami often refer to that our elders hold unique and important knowledge. Also the UN system have seniors in their system, and I will advice all of you to pay attention to one in particular. The President of the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly H.E. Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann addressed the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change in
Anchorage in April this year and he appealed:

”(to) the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples, as contained in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, be respected and implemented. This includes respecting the right of indigenous peoples to have their free, prior and informed consent obtained before any climatechange-
related project is brought into their communities.”

I hope the parties now gathered here in Copenhagen have received Mr Brockmanns message from Anchorage last spring.

Conclusions
- Nuanced Information about impacts of climate change
- Recognize indigenous peoples’ rights (UNDRIP as standard)
- recognize the principle of free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples
- Full and effective participation of indigenous peoples in decision making process at all levels, from international to local level.
- utilize best available knowledge, both traditional and scientific, when planning for climate change actions. (Elna will talk more about this).

Thank you.