Abstract This article critically examines the ways in which transport and mobility sustainability regulation causes transport poverty and what can be done to reduce this impact in the Finnish Arctic region (Lapland). It explores how regulatory changes under the European Union’s Green Deal policy may either mitigate or exacerbate transport poverty in this sparsely populated area. Drawing on a comprehensive review of relevant EU and Finnish legislation, the article identifies key legal factors that influence accessibility, affordability, and reliability of transport. These factors are examined in the context of Lapland’s unique characteristics, including its low population density and high dependence on private cars. The analysis reveals that most regulatory measures – except for the Social Climate Fund – are likely to worsen transport poverty for vulnerable groups in Lapland. While the Social Climate Fund may offer short-term relief, it is not sufficient on its own to provide a sustainable long-term solution. To promote a fair and inclusive transition to sustainable transport, the article recommends that Member States prioritise the use of Social Climate Fund resources in remote areas to support alternative transport options such as mobility-on-demand and shared mobility services. While financial support or fiscal incentives for purchase of EV are possible, the prices of EV may still turn out to be too high for low-income households and many residents affected by transport poverty are likely to remain unable to afford electric vehicles in the near term. Despite this, only the minimum necessary should be allocated to direct income support, as it risks prolonging reliance on fossil fuels. The findings underscore the need for comprehensive strategies that effectively address the distinct challenges faced by vulnerable populations in remote regions, ensuring an equitable transition to sustainable transport.

Abstract The Arctic region is undergoing environmental, societal and geopolitical transformations that create commercial opportunities and attract increased attention from global powers, including the United States, Russia, and China. These dynamics profoundly affect small Arctic states such as Norway, which holds significant political, economic, and security interests in the High North. This article examines Norway’s complex balancing act between accommodating China’s economic interests in the region and its own national security concerns. Neoclassical realism serves as the analytical framework integrating both system-level and domestic-level variables, such as elite cohesion and state capacity, to assess Norway’s responses to Chinese interests. The significance of this study lies in its identification of the factors that affect Norway’s capacity to safeguard its national security amid growing interest from non-aligned foreign powers like China. Such analysis is important since it can inform policymaking that supports small-state autonomy and strategic interests in an evolving geopolitical landscape.

Abstract This article explores the extent to which the Finnmark Act, with the governance and land adjudication mechanisms it puts in place, is compatible with or advances the right of the Sámi people to self-determination as a matter of international law. The right of self-determination is a human rights standard that applies to Indigenous Peoples. Generally, the standard enables Indigenous Peoples to determine the governance mechanisms under which they live and requires that those mechanism allow them, on an ongoing basis, to freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. Against the standard of self-determination, this study assesses the process toward the Finnmark Act’s adoption and the formal design of the act’s mechanisms, with close attention to the domestic legal framework in which those mechanisms are made to operate. The study concludes that the Finnmark Act advances Sámi self-determination in accordance with international norms in certain respects but falls short in others. In any event, important lessons can be learned from the Finnmark Act that are relevant globally in regard to Indigenous Peoples’ rights in and governance, or co-governance, over lands and resources.

Abstract There is significant recognition at multiple levels of governance on the need for inclusion of Indigenous knowledge systems in collaborative environmental governance and land use decision-making. Considerable challenges in operationalization remain, however, specifically, the how of inclusion. This paper is a synthesis of and a reflection on a thematic series of papers contributing an understanding of the recognition and inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in environmental governance. All the research, in different ways, tackled the incorporation of Indigenous knowledges, values and perspectives into environmental and resource governance. These research papers include: methodological and philosophical approaches used in Australia with an Aboriginal knowledge program designed to facilitate values and decision-making in environmental governance; a study of barriers to recognizing local and Sámi knowledge of the environment in reindeer husbandry; land use governance in wind power development in Sámi areas in Norway; an interview study assessing how the forest industry seeks to integrate Sámi reindeer herding communities’ knowledge in land use planning in Sweden; a study on how Sámi reindeer herders from Northern Sweden are attempting to adapt to changing climate and land use conditions; and an insight into the Indigenous-state-industry dialogue during the (still ongoing) permit process of the so-called Násávárre mining case in Nordland County, Norway. Whilst highly diverse, these cases all point to epistemological, practical and political impediments to effective inclusion, and how these might be addressed.

Based on available data in an open-source environment, there was no military antagonism nor any provocative exercises between U.S. and Russian forces in the Arctic between 2022 and 2024. This contrasts the 2015–2021 period where the two rivals provoked each other outside the coast of Norway. Why have U.S. and Russian forces stopped antagonizing each other? Using brinkmanship as a theoretical model of explanation, this study finds the Ukraine War to be an Arctic tranquilizer. This is partly due to fear of nuclear escalation but also due to strategic necessity: neither U.S. nor Russian forces can afford an overstretch problématique in the contemporary international environment. As both protagonists forge self-imposed restraints, Russia’s 2022 invasion has inadvertently led to more Arctic stability.

A widespread governance response to land use conflict is to seek improved communication through the employment of dialogue-based instruments. In this paper, we interrogate the guiding presupposition that conflict can be planned away through a case study on the Reindeer Husbandry Plan (Renbruksplan), a tool used to address land use conflicts between industrial forestry and Indigenous Sámi reindeer herding. Drawing on critical policy analysis and environmental justice frameworks, we analyze the problematizations, silences, and effects emerging from the tool’s use in forestry planning and land use decisions. Our findings reveal that, operating in its current institutional and legal context, the tool offers limited improvements in procedural justice, exacerbates unequal distribution of burdens and benefits in terms of who gets to use forest resources, privileging a forestry-centered representation of the land use conflict. We therefore conclude that, in absence of institutional reform, the tool is likely to perpetuate conflicts and continue to reproduce the injustices embedded in Swedish forest and land use governance.

This paper offers an insight into a single case study, the permit process of the Nasa mountain – Násávárre mining case in Nordland County, Norway. At Násávárre, the Chinese-owned mining company Elkem plans to open a pit mine to extract quartz. The area in question has the highest reindeer density in Nordland County, and the proposed mining operation would affect five Indigenous Sámi reindeer herding districts on both the Norwegian and the Swedish side of Sápmi. Despite incentives aimed at improving corporate respect for Indigenous rights such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance, Indigenous peoples often face asymmetric power relations and uneven playing fields, particularly in terms of costs and capacity to respond to corporate positions on and understandings of Indigenous knowledges and rights. The knowledge base of this encounter, as it is experienced by the reindeer herders, can be discussed in terms of structural and agential factors. Our analysis focuses on the extent to which the reindeer herders have been enabled to engage with Elkem, with a particular emphasis on the reindeer herders’ experience of how their knowledges have been assessed by the company. The work is based on a review of case documents.

A dynamic world requires people to constantly adapt their behavior and make decisions to maintain or enhance relationships between each other and the environment. Where the combined effects of anthropogenic and environmental change affect the livelihoods of Indigenous people, their options to pursue preferred adaptation strategies are often restricted by competing land uses. In this context, we explore how Sámi reindeer herders in Northern Sweden navigate the complexity of decision-making on adaptation, specifically decisions regarding supplementary feeding when winter grazing resources are inaccessible. How are decisions made and where are they positioned on an adaptation-maladaptation continuum? In a participatory approach with two reindeer herding communities, we use fuzzy cognitive mapping to explore the multi-dimensional complexity surrounding supplementary feeding. Our results emphasize the herders’ conviction that supplementary feeding is not a preferred adaptation strategy. It is rather a forced response driven by complex system dynamics that transform their pastoral landscape. To maintain the preferred traditional herding practices, desired adaptation measures viewed from a herding perspective should thus center at the system level, such as halting the loss and restoring already lost grazing grounds. This would require meaningful recognition and demands inclusion of reindeer herders’ right to self-determination into adaptation policies to mitigate environmental change.