Thank you very much for the invitation to take part in this meeting. I'm very honoured by it.
What I'm going to talk about is based on research projects here at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway. They are carried out through the co-operation of researchers in Norway, Sweden, Canada and Australia.
I must also say that I've thought a little bit about what Canada can learn from Norway. That was my first silly thought. But I've also been teaching in a joint master's program with a Canadian university and in my own, and I can see that we can learn from very different examples. What I'm going to talk about then is the situation in Norway. I have Norwegian examples, and maybe we can discuss how they can be used in the Canadian context.
Norway is a country very rich in resources, as you may know. I'm not going to go into the petroleum sector, but Norway has been a country rich in energy since about 100 years ago when Norway started to develop hydro power using waterfalls, building dams and using rivers to produce electricity. It was important for the development of Norway as an independent nation. After World War II, it was very important for having an income and developing the welfare state. Today we have a situation in which 95% of the electricity in Norway comes from hydro power.
It is a publicly owned resource, with 50% of the electricity production owned by the state, 40% owned by municipalities and counties, and only 10% owned privately. Today, if you are applying for a licence to build a new power plant, you need two-thirds public ownership and funding of that plant. In Norway there has for a long time been a political struggle for public ownership of electricity and electricity production and for national ownership of the perpetual resource that these rivers and dams represent.
Electricity has been important for infrastructure, for welfare in Norway, for the building industry, for employment, for export revenues and as a source of extra income for municipalities. Currently Norwegian municipalities receive about one billion Norwegian kroner each year in income from concession conditions on this electricity.
Electricity in Norway for many years was managed by the government. It still is. But between the two world wars and also after World War II, the state was the main actor. The state was controlling and the state was trying to control the system.
We got a new energy law in 1991, which changed the system radically, in the sense that the electricity system became market-based. Norway is connected to the Nordic electricity market and later also became connected to the European electricity market. The different producers compete in this market, whereas there is a monopoly on the grids, on the transmission lines, in Norway.
Today's debate is not so much about large hydro power projects. That era seems to be over. What we are debating today is wind and sun, and it's about the development of new renewable energy. Particularly wind farms are under debate as are, to some extent, solar plants. Wind farms are popping up in a lot of places in Norway. The production from wind is increasing. Figures from today, from Statistics Norway, show a 36% increase in 2018, but wind is still only 2.5% of the electricity production in Norway.
Another debate or issue concerns grids or power transmission lines. The goal is to strengthen the power grid in Norway to connect the country. As the first speaker said, that puts pressure on the use of land in different parts of Norway, but particularly in northern Norway with the grazing land for reindeer herders.
In terms of energy and the role of indigenous peoples, there is a history of conflict. In Norway this is mostly illustrated by the conflict between the state and the Sami people over the Alta River in the early 1980s. The state wanted to build a big dam and the Sami said they were not included in the process. The Sami and those who were against this, including those in the environmental movement, lost this battle, but it was the beginning of developing the main Sami institutions in Norway.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the three relationship models when it comes to indigenous people and energy. The first one is this Alta River conflict, with a rejection of the energy projects by indigenous peoples. We have conflict, very little or no participation, and continuous struggles between the state or government and the indigenous peoples. In the second model, we have participation, involvement in the decision-making processes, and formal requirements for participation. The third model is the one where I would say indigenous peoples or local communities take ownership of energy production and use it for local development and possibly income.
In my opinion, this third model is not present in Norway for either wind or solar. As far as I know, it is developing a little bit in Canada, but not in the Nordic countries. I can give several explanations for that, but I won't do that here. We do not have impact and benefit agreements, but municipalities that host large hydro power stations are compensated. That's been the model for about 100 years.
If we are looking for a Norwegian model, my suggestion would be the second one, which is participation. I will give a brief presentation on that. For Norway, indigenous rights and indigenous politics have been very much based on, and have had major input from, international law. UNDRIP is an example, but ILO C169 has been the most central. ILO C169 became important for the development of consultations as a tool in the contact and co-operation between the Norwegian state and the Sami Parliament from 2005. The consultation agreement that's currently in use says that the state has to inform the Sami Parliament or other Sami actors about the upcoming cases. The Sami Parliament can then demand consultation, and then they should ideally exchange opinions. The goal is to reach an agreement or consent between the actors.
Where are we today? We have formal processes that are used. The Sami Parliament and reindeer herders are invited in. They do participate. Another observation is that the Sami representatives and the Norwegian state disagree, and they do not achieve the agreement or consent that is the goal of the consultation procedures. If we look at consultations in general, one of the observations that is made is that the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate is a challenging case for the Sami Parliament. They emphasize an energy economy and obligations for more renewable energy before they eventually turn to the question of Sami rights and the reindeer herders' situation.
There are large windmill or wind farm projects, either planned or under construction. The conflicts over them may well end up in the courts. This intensifies the conflict over areas in cases where the local ownership is rather low.
So, if I return to the three models, we may argue that we are currently at the borderline between rejection and participation. Still, the track in Norway is still co-operation inspired by consultations. The government has said that it wants to change how the system of objections by the Sami Parliament can be managed. The question is, however, about making the system more efficient, not necessarily about finding solutions to the conflict. The trouble is to handle both the demand and the pressure for more renewable energy in Europe, and on the other hand to comply with indigenous rights at the international level. At the same time, there are very few benefits for local communities and also for Sami communities, because their energy prices are rather low, so there are very low taxes on the production of energy from wind parks.
Thank you.