Climate Justice for Veraibari

Climate Rights is developing a multimedia report on the impacts of climate change on Veraibari Village in the Kikori Delta, Papua New Guinea (PNG). The investigation aims to establish a material link between climate change and the forced relocation of the Veraibari community due to shoreline erosion. By integrating testimonies within a 3D environment and reconstructing the village before and after climate-induced changes using participatory mapping and geospatial data analysis, the project seeks to produce visual evidence of the lived experiences of the community, including the loss of homes, sacred places, and biodiversity.

Veraibari is a coastal village located at the mouth of the Kikori River—known as Ouro in the local Urama language—where the river flows into the Kikori Delta and meets the Gulf of Papua. The community, part of the Paia'a tribe, is one of only 11 villages where the endangered Urama language is still spoken, with deep ancestral and cultural ties to the land and sea.

The history of Veraibari is deeply intertwined with the impacts of climate change. In the early 1980s, the nearby village of Damaibari—once located behind Veraibari on the other side of the island—was completely destroyed by rising sea levels, forcing the community to relocate to what is now Veraibari. Today, Veraibari remains one of the few surviving villages in the region, but it faces increasing environmental threats.

This province is rich in resources, with extensive logging and extractive industries, including oil and gas projects operated by Exxon and Total. However, communities like Veraibari are left to bear the brunt of climate change impacts, without receiving any meaningful economic benefits from these industries. In Veraibari, these impacts include rising sea levels, storm surges, the previously unexperienced occurrence of cyclones, the decline and extinction of marine life, as well as the degradation of mangroves and other plant species. Freshwater sources have been damaged or contaminated, and the community faces the gradual loss of cultural heritage, social cohesion, and traditional political structures.

The project began as a short multimedia evidence video to support the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in their oral statements to the UN's International Court of Justice in December 2024. In partnership with INTERPRT and in collaboration with BlueOceanLaw, a field trip was conducted in Veraibari.

The fieldwork was made possible through the longstanding efforts and community engagement of the Piku Biodiversity Network, a local grassroots organization dedicated to environmental conservation of aquatic species and Indigenous advocacy. The project is continuing working closely with the Piku Biodiversity Network to develop an expanded multimedia report.

Our methodology integrates fieldwork with visual-spatial investigations, including remote sensing, GIS modeling, climate science, and legal research. During fieldwork, we video recorded testimonies and organized three days long participatory mapping workshops on the impacts of climate change in Veraibari. We also conducted aerial surveys using UAV drones, along with detailed video and image documentation, which formed the basis for developing an accurate 3D environment in Unreal Engine in collaboration with INTERPRT. This 3D environment integrates testimonies and participatory workshops, visual evidence, and field recordings along with geospatial, environmental, and climate data.

Our next steps focus on extending the video to reconstruct the historical landscape in more detail, develop visual strategies in representing cultural and biodiversity loss based on the participatory workshops and analyzing the role of anthropogenic climate change

Øyfjellet: Land Rights Case in Sápmi

Between 2023 and 2024, INTERPRT and Climate Rights assisted the Jillen-Njaarke reindeer herding district to review, interpret, analyze, and present visual evidence in collaboration and cooperation with Dalan Advokatfirma and Protect Sapmi. Jillen Njaarke is a Southern Sámi reindeer herding community in Vefsn municipality, or Vaapste in Southern Sapmi, in Helgeland in Nordland county.

The particular focus of the work was the Øyfjellet wind power plant and its supporting infrastructure. Øyfjellet is one of Norway's largest onshore wind energy projects, with 72 wind turbines and more than 70 km of roads covering an area of 40 square kilometers. The plant occupies a crucial migration route and grazing area of Jillen-Njaarke. The Jillen-Njaarke never consented to the green colonial project on their land – it was with this basis that they took the power plant's operators, Øyfjellet Wind AS, to court. Climate Rights produced video analysis to support Jillen-Njaarke's testimony in Helgeland District Court in Mosjøen. Principal investigator of Climate Rights, Nabil Ahmed, also testified as an expert witness, presenting spatial analysis of reindeer GPS data.

The Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people, have long faced land dispossession and cultural suppression under Norwegian policies. Beginning in the 19th century, the Norwegianisation campaign banned Sámi languages, restricted land rights, and justified marginalisation through scientific racism. While formal policies of forced assimilation ended in the 1960s, their effects persist, particularly in land disputes and legal struggles over Indigenous sovereignty.

Today, the Sámi face a number of emerging threats, such as climate change and green colonialism. Reindeer herding, intrinsic to Sámi culture, is under pressure from warming winters and shrinking pastures. Yet, despite Norway's claims of moral leadership on climate, it remains a major oil and gas exporter, while Indigenous lands in Norway are being dispossessed under the guise of a green transition.

This project began as a commission from the 2023 Helsinki Biennale, where INTERPRT had produced the exhibition COLONIAL PRESENT: Counter-mapping the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in Sápmi. The central question of the exhibition was: "How can past injustices be reconciled within the ongoing structures of colonialism?" To answer it, we interviewed and met with Sámi activists, archeologists, historians, journalists, and researchers and examined cartographic evidence, photographs and other archival sources. The relationships we built and the research we uncovered during this process led to our involvement in the Jillen-Njaarke legal action.

The Øyfjellet case was preceded by the Fosen wind power project, which the Norwegian Supreme Court declared illegal in 2021. Despite the ruling, the turbines remain in operation, prompting mass Sámi-led protests in 2023. A similar conflict is unfolding in Helgeland, where the Øyfjellet project was built without Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) from the Jillen-Njaarke reindeer herding community.

Øyfjellet Wind AS—owned by a German investment firm—has received direct state support despite the ongoing legal process. Both Fosen and Øyfjellet lie in Southern Sápmi, home to just 600 speakers of the endangered Southern Sámi language. For this minority, green colonial projects threaten their language, culture, and way of life. With no fair outcome at the district court, Jillen-Njaarke is now preparing to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The methodology developed for the Øyfjellet case was based on collaborative investigative methods that redefine evidentiary practices and foregrounded the perspectives of Sámi herders, whose ancestral knowledge encompasses reindeer herding practices, the animals, and the landscape. Like many other Indigenous communities, the Sámi have a legitimate concern that their knowledge is often excluded from legal-scientific contexts, despite its widely recognized importance in environmental protection and climate change mitigation.

At the core of this method is a state-of-the-art 3D environment that integrates spatial and environmental data, multimedia evidence, and testimonies into an immersive digital model built in Unreal Engine. This digital environment functions as a navigable database for legal evidence and analysis, offering a dynamic tool for visualizing environmental change and its impacts on Sámi herding practices.

Participatory workshops with Jillen-Njaarke Sámi herders, including Torstein Appfjell, Ole Henrik Kappfjell, and Nils Anders Appfjell, played a crucial role in ensuring that the data and visualizations accurately reflected their lived experiences and traditional knowledge. These workshops facilitated knowledge exchange, allowing herders to directly contribute to the representation of their landscape and its transformations. Aerial videography, captured via UAV by Jillen-Njaarke herder Ole Henrik Kappfjellallowed us to ground-truth and validate our digital representations in real-world conditions.

As part of our dissemination efforts—and in response to the overwhelmingly one-sided media coverage favoring the wind power company—Climate Rights, in collaboration with INTERPRT, produced the exhibition ØYFJELLET – From the Frontline of Land Rights in Sápmi at Stormen Public Library in Bodø.

The exhibition explores the question: How can we connect the broader responsibility for planetary climate change in the Arctic to local struggles, such as the Sámi's fight against green colonialism? As part of Climate Rights project on designing evidence for climate justice and land rights protection, the exhibition brings together maps, video, legal evidence, and an interactive 3D model—developed in collaboration with the Jillen-Njaarke reindeer herding community—to document their fight against Øyfjellet Wind in the courtroom and beyond.