In Sweden, a city moved to expand a giant mine

Located in Sweden in Norrbotten County, 300 km north of the Arctic Circle, the city of Kiruna has existed since the discovery in 1899 of a gigantic iron deposit. But this mining city of 20,000 inhabitants is now threatened by the expansion of the extractive industry. LKAB (Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag), the company operating the mine, discovered an important deposit of rare earths essential to the electronics industry and to allegedly “green” technologies (LEDs, wind turbines, wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, car batteries, etc.). Faced with this, the authorities impose their solution: the displacement of the city.

Kiruna: when industry takes precedence over everything else

The city of Kiruna has a particularity: it was founded in 1903 by the LKAB company and is based entirely on the exploitation of iron. The latter is a key metal for the industrial world since it represents more than 93% of the total volume of metals plucked annually from the Earth's crust by the technological system. For twenty years, the displacement of the city has been discussed by the authorities.

The reason? The expansion of the exploitation of the eponymous mine affected the basements of the city, threatening to collapse. Considering stopping production? Impossible, it would destroy the city's economy, which is based on the production of this mine.

In 2019, already, the city center was moved by the authorities. The historic buildings — including the Church — were dismantled piece by piece and then rebuilt on a new location. The company LKAB had everything planned out. She bought land to rehouse the owners, offered rent-free apartments to the tenants and bought the land at 25% above market prices.

While residents of Kiruna remain enthusiastic about the announcement of this project — with the deputy mayor saying that “everyone was ready to leave” — the news was not well received by the region's indigenous peoples. In fact, the company LKAB plans to extend the mine in the region where the last crossing point for the transhumance of Saami reindeer herders is located. This corridor allows them to guide their herds to winter and summer pastures. The mining town had already encroached on their territory when it was founded, which shows once again that the ethnocide of indigenous peoples is a systematic consequence of industrial development.

“If a mine is built, it will be impossible for us to maintain our way of life as we have done for centuries.” — Karin Kvarfordt Niia, spokesperson for Sameby, a group of Saami herders

Industrialists seem to have no trouble prioritizing mining interests over the lives of the Saami people, who have been living in this territory for over 6,000 years. As compensation, the company LKAB built a bridge to allow reindeer to move between their summer and winter pastures. No opposition to the mining project was tolerated.

An active collaboration between LKAB, the Swedish State and the municipality

The realization of this project is a consequence of an ultimatum from society. LKAB in 2004, having threatened the local authorities to get rid of the construction site if permission to continue operating and extending it was not granted. It should also be noted that the company LKAB has been 100% owned by the Swedish State since 1950.

An additional particularity: the municipality has almost no land in Kiruna. Indeed, the vast majority of the land is owned by the LKAB company, the rest belongs either to the State or to individuals. This therefore leaves free room for the company and the State to operate according to their own free will.

But for all that, the municipality remains conciliatory with LKAB and, indirectly, with the Swedish State. With municipal politics, no protests were issued. The project seems to have been received with great enthusiasm. The story of Kiruna is also very reminiscent of this Russian city where the main employer is the largest asbestos mine in the world.

However, the good faith of these actors is questionable: no ecological or health studies have been seriously conducted in order to prevent the possible negative consequences of the exploitation of rare earths. The city's movement has been accelerated and the authorities only seem to be interested in the potential of this new discovery.

However, the exploitation of soils in order to obtain rare earths remains extremely polluting. Because of the areas where waste accumulates, but also because the extraction itself requires a significant amount of energy, water and chemicals. To make matters worse, rare earths also have ionic radiation similar to uranium. Clearly, exploitation has a lasting and severe impact on the wild nature in the region.

How often, citizens have not really been consulted directly. The only consultations organized by the authorities concern details related to rehousing (on architectural style, for example). Citizens have never had the opportunity to express themselves directly about the project itself.

Kiruna, a typical example of greenwashing

The Kiruna project is of strategic importance for the global economy, so it will be completed and any opposition will be crushed. Indeed, rare earths make it possible to manufacture components for high-tech devices. In addition, they are needed to produce car batteries, for LEDs, for smartphones; just as they are needed for photovoltaic panels and wind turbines. Rare earths therefore remain an essential raw material for the proper functioning of the technological system and its economy.

Moreover, this mine is at the heart of a major geopolitical issue. Today, the leading producer of rare earths is China. Seeking relative techno-economic independence, Europe shows a pressing need for this raw material; even if it means displacing a city and hindering the life of a population with a non-industrial lifestyle. The interests of the industry come first.

To justify this destruction, the Swedish authorities paradoxically put forward the argument of an ecological organization of the new city under construction. They try to reconcile the ecological ideal with the expansion of the mine, whose economic profit allows the mining town to survive. But how can such a configuration be ecological?

Behind these promises and this manipulation of the ecological cause, serious problems are not being addressed. The authorities claimed to reuse materials from the old city to build the new one. But these materials are almost a hundred years old! The problem of car pollution is being erased by the electric car solution and the planned location for the new city of Kiruna requires the artificialization of land, forests and pastures.

Rare earths are becoming an increasingly recurring motif in the industrialization of the few remaining wild places on the globe. The example of Kiruna shows once again that nothing can stop techno-industrial expansion, not even the annihilation of an ancestral culture or the displacement of a city of 20,000 inhabitants. It is high time for the ecological movement to abandon the defensive strategy — which consists in wanting to stop one industrial project at a time — to move on to a offensive strategy.