Protected areas and indigenous rights in Sapmi: an agonistic reading of conflict and collaboration in land use planning

Sammanfattning

The recognition of Indigenous Peoples' rights has sailed up as one of the most critical issues in land use planning, globally. In this paper, we use a recent planning process for a national park on traditional Sami territory in northern Sweden to demonstrate how state officials engaged in everyday conservation planning are pivotal in navigating colonial legislation and promoting policy change on Indigenous rights. The analysis contributes, among other, to scholarly debates about the role of conflict in land use planning and the practices of frontline bureaucrats in natural resource governance. Our contribution demonstrates the value of an agonistic lens that attends to the constructive role of conflict in democratic change in pluralistic societies. This concerns both how state officials approach disagreement as well as the way contestation can create novel spaces to promote structural changes towards sustainability and justice. By not assuming collaboration but respectfully seeking it, the state officials succeeded in re-designing a collapsed process to help actors explore larger structural issues around Indigenous rights and government policy. In our agnostic reading, then, contestation should be perceived not as oppositional to the establishment of collaboration but as a necessary, and productive, part of inclusive land use planning.

Nyckelord

Protected areas; Indigenous rights; conflict; Sami; agonism

Publicerad i

Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning
2023, volym: 25, nummer: 3, sidor: 342-354
Utgivare: ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR AND FRANCIS LTD

SLU författare

• Raitio, Kaisa

  • Institutionen för stad och land, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

Globala målen (SDG)

SDG16 Fredliga och inkluderande samhällen

UKÄ forskningsämne

Socialantropologi
Studier av offentlig förvaltning
Kulturgeografi

Publikationens identifierare

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2022.2137483

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/119739