This story was published April 18, 2023 by Grist.

The rivers that run through the steep valleys and rocky cliffs of the Laponian Area are fed by crystalline alpine lakes and glacial streams. Many of the forests that tower over the land have stood for more than 700 years and teem with wildlife. In the spring and summer, when the midnight sun traces wide circles across the bright blue sky, crowberries blanket the meadows and yellow globe flowers dot the snow-capped peaks.

In those warm months, this region in the far north of Sweden provides a bounty for large migrating herds of reindeer: grass, birch, and herbs. Snow patches in the high mountains provide relief from insects on hot days, and the verdant lowland provides ample grazing as the nights cool. When winter arrives, rivers and marshes ice over, and the reindeer venture south beyond the Laponian Area along well-worn pathways, traveled by generations of Sámi reindeer herders, to winter grazing lands. This migration of both the reindeer and the Sámi who tend to them, reveals an ancient relationship with the land that persists to this day.

“It is the variation of landscape that makes the area so good,” said Helena Omma, who is Sámi and president of the Association of World Reindeer Herders. “Reindeer use all these landscapes during different times and conditions.”

Nestled deep in the heart of Sápmi, the traditional homelands of the Sámi, the Laponian Area covers nearly 4,000 square miles. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, considers it a place of “exceptional beauty” and its stewardship by Sámi hunters, fishers, and herders “an outstanding example” of traditional land use. That combination of natural and Indigenous values was essential in the agency’s decision to declare it a World Heritage Site. 

Since earning that designation in 1996, Sámi leaders and the Swedish government have, for the most part, enjoyed a successful and cooperative relationship managing the area. But an iron mine, recently approved on land barely 20 miles south of the Laponian Area’s border, is straining that collaboration. If the British-owned Kallak mine is built, it will impede the migration of reindeer to critical winter grazing lands and sever routes Sámi families and villages have relied upon for centuries. 

“We need the lands outside of Laponia to ensure that the Sámi culture within Laponia can survive,” said Omma, who is also co-chair of the Laponiatjuottjudus Association, the administrative body that oversees the World Heritage Site. “We want to protect the land because the reindeer need the land, and we need the land.”

To protect the Laponian Area, their culture, and their livelihoods, Sámi leaders say Sweden must stop the mine. By threatening their way of life, they argue, the mine threatens the Laponian Area’s status as a UNESCO site.

These tensions highlight growing international concerns about UNESCO’s treatment and inclusion of Indigenous communities in establishing and managing World Heritage Sites. Although this occurs around the world, it is perhaps most explicit in Thailand and Tanzania, where violent evictions and killings define relations between Indigenous peoples, governments, and the U.N. agency’s reputation.

The issue, which has unfolded over decades, could grow more widespread. World Heritage Sites, which are protected by the United Nations, are rich with biodiversity, making them a small, but essential, part of the successful implementation of the global conservation program 30×30. That ambitious effort calls for setting aside 30 percent of the world’s land and sea for permanent protection against development by 2030. Given that Indigenous territories comprise almost 20 percent of Earth’s land and shelter almost 80 percent of its remaining biodiversity, human rights experts worry that a history of systemic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples coupled with so rapid a timeline could be detrimental — even deadly — if it does not specifically include and respect those communities and their knowledge. 

“UNESCO cannot turn away from its obligations,” said Lola García-Alix, senior adviser on global governance at the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, or IWGIA, a human rights advocacy organization. “States can, but not UNESCO, and we should not allow it to do so.”

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