On the Fosen peninsula in central Norway, the Storheia and Roan wind farms stand on winter pasture used by Sami reindeer herders. Reindeer avoid the turbines, leaving parts of the pasture unusable. In October 2021, Norway’s Supreme Court invalidated their licences. It ruled that the licences violated the herders’ right to enjoy their own culture, protected by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In March 2023, two ministers apologised to the Fosen herders on behalf of the Norwegian government, for licences that violated their human rights.

Two agreements

In December 2023, Sor-Fosen sijte, one of the two Sami herding groups in the Fosen reindeer grazing district, agreed with Fosen Vind that the Storheia turbines could operate until their current licence expires. The agreement with Fosen Vind makes Norway responsible for finding additional winter pasture outside Fosen. The company will contribute money for reindeer-herding measures, and Sor-Fosen can veto any extension of the licence. Sor-Fosen’s leader, Leif Arne Jama, said, “Now it’s up to the politicians to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

In March 2024, Nord-Fosen siida, the other group, reached its own agreement with Roan Vind. It lets the turbines operate until their current licence expires, gives the siida a veto over renewal, and provides money for reindeer-herding measures. The Energy Ministry said the agreement protected the herders’ rights and ended its review of Roan’s licence.

Replacement pasture?

Under the two agreements, Norway has promised the Fosen herders an additional winter pasture area, ready for use by December 2028. It is considering Hammalsfjellet-Salekinna as a possible site. Both groups support further study of the area; the government has not decided whether to use it.

In its response to the public consultation, the Innlandet county board of KS, the association of Norway’s municipalities and counties, advised against using the site, citing local control, farming and wild reindeer. The board said a solution could not shift the burden onto other communities, industries and nature that were not part of the original conflict.

The consultation closed at the end of October 2026. Three days later, the agriculture minister answered a written question in the Storting, Norway’s parliament. If the government chose the site, it would first try to reach voluntary agreements with the landowners. The minister believed that taking land from owners who did not agree would need a special law passed by the Storting.

A completely different address

In 2020, Society for Threatened Peoples Switzerland complained about BKW, a Swiss investor in Fosen Vind, to the Swiss National Contact Point. That office handles complaints under OECD business guidelines. The group said BKW had failed to check how its investment affected the herders’ rights.

After mediation, BKW updated its conduct code and strengthened its human-rights checks for energy projects. The code refers to free, prior and informed consent for vulnerable groups: people affected by a project should learn about it early and be able to withhold consent. BKW also agreed to raise these standards with business partners.

The Swiss National Contact Point’s follow-up report in 2022 said that BKW had taken steps to carry out the agreement. Those steps did not give the herders new pasture or remove the turbines.

At a 2023 consultation in Oslo, ten Sami and four Inuit participants told Michel Forst, the Aarhus Convention’s Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, that wind and mining projects tied to the green transition put pressure on their land. Such projects were harder to challenge when governments backed them. They reported threats and said they lacked money and staff for legal action.

Forst takes complaints about people penalised, persecuted or harassed for using their Aarhus rights. Anyone can file on a defender’s behalf, with the defender’s signed consent, and the complainant’s identity stays confidential. The defender decides whether their own name may be published.

For example, the mine in Barroso

In northern Portugal, residents of Covas do Barroso oppose a proposed open-pit lithium mine. In October 2026, residents formed a human chain in front of Savannah Resources’ machines to block its lithium prospecting. Nelson Gomes, of the residents’ association Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso, told local radio that residents would bear the consequences of the mine.

The Aarhus Convention gives people rights to environmental information and a say in decisions that affect the environment. Its Compliance Committee checks whether governments follow those rules. In 2021, environmental group Fundacao Montescola asked the Committee to examine Portugal’s handling of information and public participation for the mine.

The Committee’s 2025 findings say the 2021 consultation on the mine’s environmental assessment began with 30 working days and was extended to 60, which was reasonable. But some relevant documents were missing for the first 20 days, and Portugal should have provided them from the start. Montescola had argued that options were already closed by the time of the 2021 consultation; the Committee found it unsubstantiated.

In 2023 a revised environmental assessment and mine plan went out for consultation. The public had ten working days to read 1,776 technical files. The Committee found that far too short, and said the 60 days in 2021 did not make up for it.

The authorities could not simply allow more time. Under Portuguese law, extending the deadline risked the revised documents being approved by default. The Committee found that this rule breaks the Convention’s requirement of a reasonable time to participate, and recommended changes to the law and to administrative practice. Portugal’s environment agency had approved the revised assessment in May 2023, with conditions. The Committee’s findings did not cancel that approval or stop prospecting.

The European Commission named the Barroso lithium project a strategic project in March 2025, under the Critical Raw Materials Act. The designation gives the project priority in the permit process and sets deadlines for decisions. It does not authorise mining. Portuguese authorities still decide whether to grant permits.

Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso and the environmental law charity ClientEarth asked the Commission to reconsider the designation. The Commission refused. In February 2026, the residents’ association and ClientEarth challenged that refusal in the EU General Court. The case is pending. They are asking the Court to annul that refusal, not to cancel Portugal’s environmental approval.

The office regrets

The decisions that took Sami winter pasture at Fosen and may open a lithium mine at Barroso were not made there. They were made in Oslo, Lisbon and Brussels, by offices that answer to people who live far away. Each of those offices can be addressed and written to. So can the offices that take complaints about those decisions and the companies behind them: the Contact Point in Bern, the Compliance Committee in Geneva, the General Court in Luxembourg, and a member of the Storting.

“The document is not finished”

When Montescola asked for the mine files in 2021, Portugal’s environment agency said they would be released when the consultation opened. The Committee found that the Convention gives no basis for deferring a request. The information has to be supplied within a month, or two if the volume justifies it and the applicant is told why, or refused in writing with reasons and with directions for challenging the refusal. A report the developer has handed in is a completed document.

“Ask the other office”

Portugal’s geology directorate held the mine files and sent Montescola to the environment agency’s website. An authority that holds the information has to answer the request itself, and may pass it on only by saying that it does not hold it.

Several documents could not be opened for the first 20 days of the 2021 consultation. The agency called it “some computer bug”. MiningWatch Portugal filed screenshots of the server errors, and the Committee found that everything relevant the authority holds has to be available from the first day.

“Ten working days”

Two days into the 2023 consultation, Montescola asked in writing for at least 60 days. The agency refused within the week, citing the law. The refusal went into the file in Geneva, and the Committee found that an earlier consultation cannot make up for a later one that is too short. A refusal on paper is evidence.

“Strategic”

The Critical Raw Materials Act gives a strategic project priority and a deadline: 27 months for a permit that involves extraction. It changes no permit requirement, and leaves the obligations under the Aarhus Convention untouched. All permit decisions on one project go on one public website, and the promoter has to keep its own website on the project’s impacts, in a language local people understand. The Commission can withdraw the label if the criteria stop being met.

The label itself can be questioned: first by asking the Commission to review its own decision under the Aarhus Regulation, then at the General Court in Luxembourg.

“The matter must be thoroughly assessed again”

When the Norwegian government apologised to the Fosen herders in March 2023, a year and a half after the ruling, it added: “The matter must be thoroughly assessed again.” The Supreme Court had ruled the licences invalid but had not ordered the turbines removed, so what happened next was up to the energy ministry. In April 2023 the ministry started mediation, led by the national mediator. In the agreements of December 2023 and March 2024, the herders got money, a promise of pasture and a veto over renewing the licences.

“An additional area”

The agreements, and the minister’s answers in the Storting, call the new winter pasture an additional area: “tilleggsareal”.

“Additional”, that is, to the pasture at Storheia and Roan, which the Court of Appeal found the reindeer avoid so thoroughly that it “must be considered lost as pastures”.

Anna Molberg, a Conservative member of the Storting, asked about the site in plainer Norwegian. She called it “erstatningsareal”. A replacement area.

“Not visible as a company”

BKW, the Swiss investor in Fosen Vind, would not open its whistleblowing system to everyone its projects affect. Its reason was that most of its energy projects sit in separate companies in which BKW “is generally not visible as a company”. In its 2022 follow-up report, the Swiss National Contact Point answered that in joint projects BKW should use its leverage to get its partners to provide for remedy.

A National Contact Point takes complaints about companies based in its country, wherever the harm is. The Society for Threatened Peoples Switzerland complained in Bern, where BKW has its headquarters, about a wind farm in Norway.

Last known address

Bern took a year and a half to answer, and Geneva four years. Oslo took eight days. Molberg had asked the agriculture minister in writing whether the state would take the land if the owners did not agree.

The paper trail is public: Norway’s consultation documents, the Storting’s questions and answers, the Committee’s case file on Barroso and the General Court’s register.

The General Court has not ruled on Barroso. The pasture for Fosen is due by December 2028.