Opposing ‘green’ extractivism: Voices of resistance in the case of the Gállok iron mine, Sápmi

Sammanfattning: Embedded in a history of global colonial capitalism and the system’s crisis ridden tendencies and fixes for capital accumulation, extractivism increases globally. The intensive exploitation of resources is increasingly framed as compatible with and necessary to climate change mitigation for the possibility of a low-carbon future, opening new extractive frontiers through a path of ‘green’ extractivism (GE). The present case study seeks to understand implications of GE in the context of the political economy of expanding commodity frontiers for a green economy in the Swedish part of Sápmi. It examines motivations for and contestation of extractivist practice and frontier racism in the zone of a planned iron ore mining project in Gállok (so called Kallak), highlighting voices and acts of resistance to it. The thesis finds that the project is promoted in the name of climate change mitigation with significant cumulative impacts on indigenous Sámi reindeer herding and people living in the closest city Jåhkåmåhkke (so called Jokkmokk). It suggests that the ‘greening’ of capital accumulation and a focus on capitalist technological ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis perpetuate expropriation and exploitation for the profit of few, socio-ecological destruction, frontier racism and the expansion of capitalist energy-intensive large-scale infrastructures. This is important to recognize colonial capitalist and racist dynamics of hegemonic and ‘market-based’ climate action, pointing to the deeper roots of the intersecting global crises, contradictions of capitalism and to fuel organised resistance and just transitions.