"For They Have Sown the Wind and They Shall Reap the Whirlwind" The Politics of Norwegian Wind Factories and Their Implications for Lived Experiences in Saepmi

• Main Author: Shokrgozar, Shayan
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: land grabbing; renewable energy; Post-Development; Degrowth; necropolitics; climate change; Norway; Whirlwind; saami
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10852/88110; http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-90740

Over three decades since the publication of the Brundtland Report, the world is witnessing changing patterns in forest fires, hurricanes, temperatures, and biodiversity loss at a pace without a previous analogy. These historical events have led many in the public and private sectors to advocate for a "green" future accomplished through technocratic and bureaucratic solutions such as transitioning to lower-carbon energy infrastructures, such as wind energy development. By drawing upon fieldwork conducted in the territory of the Southern Saami peoples (in Saepmi), the Åfjord municipality in western Norway, this thesis explores claims of land grabbing, green colonialism, and infrastructural harm. While powerful domestic and international forces, such as the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and the European Union, advocate the expansion of wind energy infrastructures, Saami herders confront pastureland dispossession, while conservationists fear the "industrialization of the mountains." This article explores how the domestic policies for de-carbonization through "electrifying society" and international agreements for trading energy and climate goals interact with socioecological challenges caused by land-use change. By arguing that an Ecomodernist and "green" growth approach has led to the needs of industrial capitalism taking precedence over the lives of human and more-than-human worlds, this thesis explores—following Achille Mbembe—an energy necropolitics in Norway which determines who may live, socioculturally, and who is let die. It concludes that when evaluated within a whole system approach, the assaults inflicted on the environment by industrial-scale lower-carbon energy infrastructures are not unlike conventional energy sources, questioning whether the Fosen Vind project can claim it is producing renewable energy. These findings demonstrate the need for solutions beyond reformist frameworks such as a "just transition" and thus calls for decolonial Degrowth pathways for combating the climate crisis and building a just, equal, convivial, and joyful society.