The rise of mining in Finland

The rise of mining in Finland
Photo by Natalia Batrakova

We are witnessing an accelerating pace in the exploration and mining of metals and minerals. In this ongoing race, Finland becomes one of the colonial frontiers of extraction.

Iuliia Gataulina/kuva Jonne Renvall.
Iuliia Gataulina
The writer is a postdoctoral researcher in the Politics department at Tampere University.

 

We are witnessing an accelerating pace in the exploration and mining of metals and minerals. This rapid increase is intrinsically linked to two key processes: the ongoing energy transition and technology production (Bittle, 2025). In this ongoing race, Finland becomes one of the colonial frontiers of extraction.

The energy transition signifies a shift from fossil fuels, which have dominated energy production for the last 200 years, to alternative means of energy storage and production, particularly through the use of various batteries. This transition demands a substantial increase in the mining of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper.

Additionally, the minerals discovered and extracted are essential for technology production. These technologies permeate various aspects of life, from everyday devices like smartphones, laptops, and electric cars to military projects. The scope of mined minerals and metals required for both everyday and military technologies is extensive.

Minerals are political in various ways in the Anthropocene era

These metals and minerals are political in various ways. Their search, discovery, and extraction are deeply intertwined with political economy, especially in the Anthropocene era.

Our energy and technology consumption are not value-neutral or inevitable, as they might appear. This consumption is part of a specific capitalist mode of production, designed not only to supply humans with essential needs—such as life-sustaining energy and life-easing technologies—as industries and decision-makers often portray. This mode of production is fundamentally rooted in generating revenues, profit, and growth. These aspects frequently remain beyond the discussion and drive the anthropocentric search for minerals on an already damaged and wounded Earth. (Brand and Wissen, 2021; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2018)

Minerals become political not only from the perspective of political economy but also geopolitics. They are intended to serve the needs of specific groups rather than all of humankind. In the geopolitical environment of military conflicts and ideological divisions, states and groups of states have realized their dependence on global supply chains and “unreliable” producers.

In the geopolitical environment of military conflicts and ideological divisions, states and groups of states have realized their dependence on global supply chains and “unreliable” producers.

For example, the European Union, recognizing its dependence on China for minerals, is making considerable efforts to restructure and reshape the supply chains necessary for technological, energy, infrastructural, and military production. This effort is now solidified by various institutional and bureaucratic procedures and documents, one of which is the Critical Raw Materials Act (European Commission, n.d.). This Act lists all the important minerals for production and self-sufficiency and prioritizes a “strategic search” for minerals through reliable partners and supply chains.

Frontiers of extraction: Sakatti, Saimaa, Käsivarsi

In this geopoliticized environment fueled by the imperatives of growth, extractivism seeks new frontiers of extraction. One such frontier has recently become the minerals, lands, and waters lying on and under the territories of the Finnish state. In the EU’s program “Mining Regions,” five out of the ten mining regions are located in Finland (European Commission, 2024). Sixteen mining projects from Finland applied for strategic status by the European Commission, and six of them were granted it. The status guarantee priority in permit processing and facilitates access to funding. The strategic status might also be instrumental in bypassing environmental legislation and protection, such as the Natura 2000 network, as seen in the case of the Sakatti mine near Sodankylä (see also Lassila, 2021).

The Sakatti mining project is an important precedent in encroaching extraction. The Viiankiaapa bog where the mine is planned is a doubly protected bog: under a bog conservation area (851/1988) according to Finnish legislation, and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and a protected area (SPA) under the Birds Directive, in the EU’s Natura 2000 network. The bog serves as a habitat for many endangered species of birds, moss, and insects. In March 2025, the European Commission granted Sakatti the status of a “strategic project” for the mineral self-sufficiency of the European Union. If environmental protection is overridden and the mine is executed, AA Sakatti Mining Oy promises to compensate for the destruction of this unique environment through conservation actions in the Inari Collective Forest. However, for humans and nonhumans from this land, the relation to this specific environment cannot be replaced.

In opposition to the new mining projects by the EU, the Finnish state, and transnational mining industries, various self-organized activist groups in Finland voice their concerns or opposition towards the expansion of the mining industries. Examples include Saimaa ilman kaivoksia ry (Saimaa Without Mines), Rajat Lapin Kaivoksille (Borders to the Lapland Mines), and Ei kaivoksia Suomen Käsivarteen-liike (No Mines in the Finnish Käsivarsi), among others.

Mining and extractive industries alter landscapes and waterscapes in two equally significant ways: physically and ontologically. Physically, they disrupt landscapes and waterscapes through digging, extracting, and polluting.

Mining and extractive industries alter landscapes and waterscapes in two equally significant ways: physically and ontologically. Physically, they disrupt landscapes and waterscapes through digging, extracting, and polluting. This creates new toxic environments that persist across time and space, affecting humans and non-humans even decades or centuries after a mine is closed. A significant example of contamination due to the mining industry in Finland is the Talvivaara mine incident in 2012, where a major leak of toxic metals and chemicals into nearby water bodies caused severe environmental damage.

Extractivism also disrupts landscapes and waterscapes ontologically. The modernist, anthropocentric, and capitalist imperatives of growth and extraction are in stark conflict with other cosmologies, including Indigenous ones, which view lands and waters as incommensurable parts of the cycle of life. This prompts us to investigate the coloniality of this new extractive expansion.

Coloniality of extractive expansion

The encroachment of new mining projects is not only colonial along the usual lines between the Global North and Global South but also within these epistemic and political spaces. In the case of the Finnish state, the encroachment of the mining industries, similar to recurring colonial tropes, is imagined through the discourse of empty spaces available for exploration and extraction to meet the economic and geopolitical demands of the state, geopolitical blocks, and transnational capital of the mining industries (Finnish Government, 2021; Junka-Aikio, 2023).

The coloniality of such expansion is evident through the encroachment of mineral exploration activities on the Indigenous lands of Sápmi, for example, in Käsivärsi (Giehtaruohtas in northerm Sámi) or near Utsjoki (Ohcejohka in northerm Sámi).

While Sápmi lands are currently protected from mining under legislation such as the Act on the Sámi Parliament and the Reindeer Husbandry Act, encroachment occurs through mineral explorations. Minerals are attempted to be discovered and mapped on Sámi lands, which, according to the Finnish state, is permissible since explorations do not physically alter the environments or cause damage. However, the process of identifying minerals and putting them on maps, while not altering the materiality and physicality of the environments, can still be seen as a politically and ontologically violent act against Indigenous ontologies and cosmologies. The maps themselves create uncertain futures for the populations (both human and non-human) on these lands by bringing to life knowledge about the existing and economically valuable minerals underground. (Lassila, 2018)

While Sápmi lands are currently protected from mining under legislation such as the Act on the Sámi Parliament and the Reindeer Husbandry Act, encroachment occurs through mineral explorations. Minerals are attempted to be discovered and mapped on Sámi lands, which, according to the Finnish state, is permissible since explorations do not physically alter the environments or cause damage.

In 2021, three sisters from a Sámi reindeer herding family in Käsivarsi filed a complaint against the Finnish state for granting mineral exploration permits on their traditional lands without proper consultation or impact assessment. Käsivarsi is a wilderness area in north-west Finland, part of Sápmi, in the municipality of Enontekiö. In 2024, the UN Committees on the Rights of the Child and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights found that Finland had violated the sisters’ rights to their culture and land. The Committees highlighted that this lack of consultation amounted to intersectional discrimination against them as Indigenous children. (The Sámi Parliament of Finland, 2025)

The coloniality of extraction is evident not only in relation to the Indigenous lands of Sápmi but also concerning local Finnish populations.

The coloniality of extraction is evident not only in relation to the Indigenous lands of Sápmi but also concerning local Finnish populations. Across Finland, various self-organized groups and associations resist mining projects on their lands; the most active of them are Saimaa ilman kaivoksia ry (Saimaa Without Mines) and Rajat Lapin Kaivoksille (Borders to the Lapland Mines).

These activist groups are concerned about the intoxication and destruction of the environment caused by the mining industry. They demand a more controlled mining industry, emphasizing stricter environmental regulations and mining taxation. According to critical voices, these regulations and taxation are inadequate in Finland, with most of the profit from the mining industry going abroad, leaving local populations to deal with the toxic aftermath. In September 2025, the third addition of the event “Maamme Rikkaudet” (The Riches of Our Land) will be organized in Outokumpu where the civil society will critically discuss the implications of the mining activities to the environments, human and non-human health, and economy.

Thus, the workings of colonial extraction are brought forward along two dimensions. Economically, the rise of extraction in Finland is understood as the economic exploitation of the peripheries by transnational capital. However, the issue lies even deeper than that. Ontologically, it is not only about economic justice—receiving a portion of the financial profit and revenues back through taxation within the current capitalist extractive system—but also about cultural justice. This involves respecting the ontological and cosmological premises of being in care-full relationships with the Earth and other species. Such relations fundamentally undermine the extractive, exploitative, and anthropocentric/capitalocentric practices of the recent mining boom.

Acknowledgements

This text is written within the project “Pluriversal Waters: Tracing Hydro-Ontologies Across Colonial-Extractivist Assemblages,” financed by the Kone Foundation in 2024-2028 (project number 3122801458).

I would like to thank Kalle Laurinen and Katri Mäkelä, the project’s research assistants, for their help in the data collection process. I also want to acknowledge Natalia Batrakova, an artist collaborator in the project, for our collaborative data analysis.

The exhibition ”Frontiers and temporalities of extractivism” in Hirvitalo will be held on 14.09-5.10 and will be based on this research project. The exhibition invites visitors to travel through different temporalities and geographies of extractivism in Finland, exploring post-extractivist pasts as well as extractivist presents and futures.

References

Brand, Ulrich, and Markus Wissen. The Imperial Mode of Living. Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism. London: Verso, 2021.

Bittle, Jake. A guide to the 4 minerals shaping the world’s energy future. Grist: 2025. Available at: https://grist.org/energy/critical-minerals-renewable-energy-rare-earth-lithium-cobalt-nickel-mining/ (Accessed: 1 April 2025).

European Commission. Critical Raw Materials Act. No date. Available at: https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/raw-materials/areas-specific-interest/critical-raw-materials/critical-raw-materials-act_en (Accessed: 1 April 2025).

European Commission. Enhancing EU Mining Regional Ecosystems to Support the Green Transition and Secure Mineral Raw Materials Supply. 2024. Available at: https://reform-support.ec.europa.eu/what-we-do/green-transition/enhancing-eu-mining-regional-ecosystems-support-green-transition-and-secure-mineral-raw-materials_en (Accessed: 1 April 2025).

Finnish Government. Finland’s Strategy for Arctic Policy. 2021. Available at: https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/163247 (Accessed: 1 April 2025).

Junka-Aikio, Laura. “Whose Settler Colonial State? Arctic Railway, State Transformation and Settler Self-Indigenization in Northern Finland.” Postcolonial Studies 26, no. 2 (2023): 279–301. doi:10.1080/13688790.2022.2096716.

Lassila, Maija M. “Mapping Mineral Resources in a Living Land: Sami Mining Resistance in Ohcejohka, Northern Finland.” Geoforum 96 (2018): 1–9. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.07.004.

Lassila, Maija. “The Arctic Mineral Resource Rush and the Ontological Struggle for the Viiankiaapa Peatland in Sodankylä, Finland.” Globalizations 18, no. 4 (2021): 635–49. doi:10.1080/14747731.2020.1831818.

Petras, James F, Henry Veltmeyer, and Paul Bowles. Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier. 1st ed. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014.

The Sámi Parliament of Finland. The Sámi Parliament has released a webinar discussing UN findings regarding the Mining Act in Finland – “Scandalous how the first exploration permit immediately led to a human rights violation”. 2025. Available at: https://samediggi.fi/en/news/the-sami-parliament-has-released-a-webinar-discussing-un-findings-regarding-the-mining-act-in-finland/ (Accessed: 1 April 2025).

 

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