Few Canadians are likely ever to visit the Norwegian community of Hammerfest, billed as one of the world’s northernmost towns.
But one way to see it, at least figuratively, is as the controversial canary in the critical-mineral mine — the Nussir copper mine, in this case.
Norway, Europe and the world need copper to build electric vehicle batteries and other green technologies, as well as for the hi-tech space and defence industries. Northern Norway also needs the lure of jobs to reverse rural depopulation trends.
But with plans to dump the Nussir mine’s waste in the sea, and potentially huge disruptions to reindeer herds and the livelihoods of traditional herders, many scientists, environmentalists and Indigenous groups see the overall costs of the project as prohibitive.
“We have decided on the issue on several occasions, and we have concluded that this is not a feasible project,” Silje Karine Muotka, president of the Sami Parliament, said in an interview. The parliament is an elected body that advises the Norwegian legislature on the interests of the country’s Indigenous Sami people.
The underground mine in Hammerfest, a remote town of about 8,000 people that lies on the shores of the Barents Sea, has drawn the attention across Norway, Europe and the world.
In addition to Nussir being owned by Toronto-based Blue Moon Metals Inc., the issues that have made this copper deposit both so enticing and so controversial are ones that Canadians, too, could soon be facing.
In this week’s federal budget, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised an economy “turbocharged by major nation-building projects.”
Among other measures, the budget has proposed tax breaks, loans and investments through a $2-billion Critical Minerals Sovereign Fund, part of an overall strategy “to help more critical minerals projects get to final investment decisions within a two-year window.”
That bullish stance is something like what Norway has in mind with the Nussir mine, which began in the 1970s as an open-pit operation before market prices for copper plunged, making continued operations unprofitable until recently.
“It’s been considered as one of the important projects, and the government has given a go-ahead despite there being little social licence for mining,” said Erdem Lamapazhov, a research fellow at Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
The Nussir mine also has the backing of local politicians, who are sold on the promise of job creation, economic development and the possibility of attracting people to the region rather than bidding them farewell.
In response to written questions, Blue Moon Metals chief executive Christian Kargl-Simard said the mine would create about 250 high-paying jobs, and that the company would prioritize local hires as well as those willing to move permanently to the area.
But there is some marketing involved, too.
The Nussir project is being billed as the world’s first fully electric, zero-emissions mine. This may have helped secure a deal in June that named Nussir as among 13 projects located outside of the European Union that would provide the continent with access to “strategic raw materials.”
And in September, Blue Moon Metals announced it had negotiated financing of up to $140 million (U.S.) from Oaktree Capital Management and Hartree. The two global investment firms are subsidiaries of Brookfield Asset Management, the company chaired by Carney until last January, when he launched his campaign for the Liberal party’s leadership.
These deep-pocketed firms are stepping in where others have previously feared to tread.
In 2021, with the Nussir mine under different ownership, the German company Aurubis cancelled a deal to buy copper concentrate, saying that it could not in good conscience do business with the mine despite its promise of low emissions.
“For us, all sustainability criteria have to be fulfilled,” an Aurubis senior vice-president said at the time. “We can only be successful in the future if we continue spreading an understanding in all areas and activities of the company.”
It was clear what was troubling the Germans, even if the company made no specific mention of salmon and reindeer.
For more than a decade, the potential impact on the fish and the herds native to this part of northern Norway have fuelled opposition to the copper mine.
This summer, the Norwegian environmental group Nature and Youth set up a permanent camp about two kilometres from the mine site to protest the project. Kornelia Kristensen said she had been arrested five times, racking up thousands of dollars in fines, for breaking into the mine site, chaining herself to construction equipment and demonstrating against the project, which began preliminary tunnel excavation earlier this year.
“We can’t sacrifice our nature to stop the climate crisis,” Kristensen said. “The reason we want to stop the climate crisis is so that we can take care of our nature. And we can’t sacrifice Sami rights. That doesn’t allow for a fair green transition.”
A 2012 report into the mining project by the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research concluded that the mine’s operation would result in two-million tonnes of waste rock, including high contents of heavy metals, being dumped into the fiord.
The authors concluded that “the risk of serious negative impact on both trout, char and salmon is significant.”
It also judged the risks to be “incompatible” with the government’s goals of protecting salmon stocks through the designation of National Salmon Fiords and Rivers.
Norway is the world’s largest exporter of salmon, generating revenues of $17 billion (Canadian) in 2024.
Kargl-Simard, of Blue Moon Metals, downplayed concerns, saying mine waste would settle 90 metres below the water’s surface, that the deep-water organisms likely to be affected would “come back within three-to-seven years after production ends,” and that there would be “no impact” on salmon or other fish that stay within 40 metres of the water’s surface.
But for Muotka, the Sami Parliament’s president, it is illogical for the Norwegian government to promote high-standard salmon farming while also backing a mining project that would disturb and threaten a nationally protected salmon reserve.
“I think this is senseless politics,” she said. “I have told the different ministers from different governments for several years, but I do not understand this.”
The other issue with the Nussir mine is the threat it poses to reindeer, for whom the mine site serves as an annual calving ground, and to the livelihoods of Sami reindeer herders.
A 2020 report commissioned by the Sami Parliament said that the construction in and around the mine site, coupled with the regular explosive blasts to break up the rock inside the mine, risked scaring off the reindeer and reducing access to food, potentially resulting in disease and death.
This is a major concern for members of the Sami Parliament, but there are differing opinions.
The opposition party Nordkalottfolk campaigned in elections this fall on a pro-development platform, accusing the elected body of acting as a “no machine” that was constantly opposed to jobs, investment and modernization in northern Norway while putting the interests of several thousand reindeer herders above all others.
“It is equally Sami to work in industry, teach in the countryside, fish in the fiord or start a company,” Nordkalottfolk presidential candidate Vibeke Larsen wrote in July, presenting the election as a choice between a Sami government that “turns Northern Norway into a museum and reindeer herding reserve” and one that is open to development agreements so long as Sami interests are protected and their rights upheld.
These are issues that Indigenous Peoples around the world are grappling with as prospectors, powerful multinational and national governments seek access to buried mineral treasures or passage for things like pipelines, which are considered more critical than ever as the world seeks out secure, stable suppliers of vital energy and minerals.
Historically, Muotka said, Indigenous People have been pushed off their traditional lands by those seeking access to valuable resources, and made to suffer if they resist.
But she said that developed countries with mineral riches have an obligation now to proceed differently.
“What we should do in Norway is ensure that any kind of mineral projects meet the highest standard, both with regards to environmental issues but also human rights,” she said. “We are living in a country where we are able to do that.”
She is committed to that fight, not only for the benefit of her own people in Norway, but on behalf of the poor and exploited peoples of resource-rich nations.
“If we are giving in and if we don’t take up this issue, I fear for the children in blood diamond areas who can only hope for justice at some point,” she said. “So I think when you ask if this is an important question for us, I can truly say that this is an important question for us.”