Recognition and participation of samebys in a national park project: The case of Vålådalen-Sylarna-Helags

With different interests at stake, conservation is at the centre of power relations and negotiations over how best to manage a landscape, and is thus a potential source of conflicts, not only about how to manage the land, but also more importantly about what is just. In 2008 Sweden's National Park Plan, the creation of a national park in the area of Vålådalen-Sylarna-Helags in the county of Jämtland was recommended. This area covers in part the land used by Handölsdalen, Mittådalen and Tåssåsen samebys for reindeer herding, and, in May 2016, the samebys declared that they would oppose the national park project. Negotiations between the samebys on the one hand, and the authorities in charge of running the project – the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the County Administrative Board of Jämtland – took place, until, in May 2017, the project actors officially met all for the first time. The samebys most notably demanded that reindeer herding and the Saami culture are recognised in the national park, and that the samebys have a clear influence in the project and later in the park management. Despite being overrepresented in national parks, Saami reindeer herders remain in fact underrepresented in the management of these parks, and still struggle locally to be included in conservation projects. In parallel to the progressive recognition of their rights as an indigenous people and within a national trend fostering local participation, they have been however increasingly included in the discussions on conservation projects at the local scale. This thesis aims at contributing to challenge the way conservation is still conceptualised and practiced in Sweden. It raises the question of what the opportunities are for the affected samebys to anchor their claims in the negotiations over the establishment of a planned national park in the area of VålådalenSylarna-Helags. The question is studied through the lens of the discursive institutional conflict management analysis, which allows to have a deep understanding of the negotiation process, by looking at its procedural as well as contextual aspects, and at the interdependence between the samebys and the authorities. Overall, the procedural aspects of the negotiation process are unfavourable to the samebys, the contextual