OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s energy minister on Thursday apologised to Indigenous Sami groups for the construction of wind turbines on reindeer pastures, calling it a “human rights violation”.
The apology by Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Aasland followed a week of protests by Sami activists and others that led to a growing crisis for the government.
“I have apologised (today) on behalf of the government to the reindeer herding districts for the fact that the permits (to build wind farms) constituted a violation of human rights,” Aasland told a news conference.
Norway’s supreme court ruled in 2021 that the turbines erected on two wind farms at Fosen in central Norway violated Sami rights under international conventions, but they remain in operation almost 17 months later.
Sami protesters, supported by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, have blocked the entrance to the oil ministry and other government buildings in the Norwegian capital Oslo over the past week, demanding the removal of 151 wind turbines and arguing that a transition to green energy should not come at the expense of Indigenous rights.
Aasland said the government had not ruled out any solutions, but added that he still believed it could be possible to uphold both power production and reindeer husbandry at Fosen.
(Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik and Susan Fenton)
