Whose Knowledge, Whose Crisis? : A Decolonial Analysis of Sámi Inclusion in Swedish Climate Policy

Sammanfattning

The tension between climate policy and Indigenous rights is gaining increasing recognition, as the green transition threatens the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples around the world. This thesis examines how colonial practices are enabled by problem representations in national climate policy, taking Sweden as a strategically revealing case. Combining Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Representation to Be?” approach with decolonial theory, the study analyses the Swedish Climate Action Plan (2023) against the normative benchmark of the Sámi Councils’ climate report. The analysis reveals that the policy constructs climate change as an economic, technological, and internationally located problem, rendering Sámi rights, knowledge, and governance invisible. The Sámi appear once, as a potential conflict of interest, while extractive expansion on their lands is framed as a climate solution. These problem representations actively perpetuate coloniality of power and knowledge, through green colonialism and culturalization. The thesis contributes a transferable analytical framework for uncovering how majority–minority hierarchies are reproduced through seemingly neutral policy domains.