Reservoir lakes: Sami people’s rights ignored

The Lokka and Porttipahta reservoir lakes in Sodankylä, Finnish Lapland, were built during the 1960s and 70s to serve hydroelectric power generation. The impacts of these reservoirs were downplayed for decades and the indigenous rights of Sami people ignored. A project coordinated by the United Nations Association of Finland will examine the reservoir building processes from a Sami point of view.

At the time of their building in the 1960s and 1970s, the Lokka and Porttipahta reservoir lakes were explained to be a necessity for the Finnish society. From the Sami people's point of view the reservoir projects leave room for criticism. The issues of reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, berry-picking, arctic agriculture and the indigenous people's rights to land were largely ignored. Building the reservoirs also changed the local ecosystems by leaving forest areas under water and changing local climate and water systems. Officially the effects of this change were largely downplayed.

Building the reservoirs lakes has been the most important single act destroying the homelands of Sami people in Finnish Lapland. It has an ecological dimension - climate and biodiversity issues - and a political dimension, the power politics of energy production.

Together with Osuuskunta Lumimuutos and local Sami partners, Citizens' Global Platform will organise an investigation on the processes of Lokka and Porttipahta reservoirs during summer 2010. The processes will be viewed in a larger framework of indigenous people's juridical, social, cultural and political issues. Also the role of Sami women will be examined.

The investigation will reflect on the relationship between the Finnish society, Finnish state and Sami people. It will work as a reference point to reservoir lake projects conducted in other countries of the CGP network.

Earlier this week The Advisory Board on Human Rights (IONK), an independent advisory body on human rights issues within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, urged the Finnish government to take action to ensure the indigenous rights of Sami people.

In a statement the IONK urges the Finnish government to take action related to land rights and traditional livelihoods of Sami people, especially according to ILO pact 169. IONK states that Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen's government has not redeemed its promises of solving the land owning issues of Sami people.

IONK reminds that along with these promises Finland has set indigenous people's rights as one of the main goals of its human rights policy.

Read more: IONK statement (in Finnish, pdf)