Scaling Up: Strategic and collaborative planning for handling mineral related land use conflicts in Swedish Sápmi

Transition to a sustainable society and implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals require access to renewable and mineral resources. Resource extraction has far-reaching impacts on rural environments and local and indigenous communities.

Sweden’s planning framework has an urban bias and lacks proper mechanisms for dealing with land use issues on a landscape-scale.

Trade-offs between conflicting goals and interests and mechanisms for stakeholder engagement are other pressing challenges.

The aim of this project is to explore how strategic and collaborative planning in rural areas can help handling land use conflicts related to natural resources in ways that are perceived as fair and legitimate. “Scaling Up” applies a comparative and transdisciplinary approach to develop new knowledge and planning solutions for mineral-related land use conflicts in Swedish Sápmi.

By learning from good examples and involving key actors in co-production of new knowledge, it generates planning solutions targeting the landscape scale, integrates different knowledge systems, and links planning to its proper context.

The project specifically addresses the importance of landscapes and institutions embedding the collaborative system, trade-offs and claims to justice.

While the empirical focus of this project is on mineral extractions in northern Sweden, the conceptual approach and planning solutions can be applied to other contexts and support transition to a sustainable society.