Sara Fusco
This article applies the concept of Environmental Restorative Justice (ERJ) to examine how constitutional law can reconcile environmental protection with Sámi collective rights within Norway’s legal framework. It centres on intergenerational equity to show how land, culture, and development rights are deeply connected for Indigenous Peoples. Positioned within the context of the green transition, the article highlights how emerging environmental policies, while aimed at ecological restoration, can produce systemic tensions and cultural displacement when imposed without Indigenous participation. It argues that environmental justice requires recognizing Indigenous Peoples as rights-holders, whose customary norms and relationships with land must inform legal and environmental systems. In this context, environmental restorative justice offers a pathway to rebalancing legal systems in ways that honour Indigenous sovereignty and the continuity of their lifeways. The paper analyses the Fosen Vind dispute in Norway to illustrate the conflicts that may arise when environmental policies disregard Indigenous cultural survival. It proposes three evaluative criteria – distributed-management of natural resources, community engagement, and the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives in environmental impact assessments – to assess the enforcement of core international environmental principles into constitutional frameworks. The article demonstrates how constitutional law can serve as an interface between international obligations and the domestic protection of Indigenous rights, advocating for participatory governance models that align ecological sustainability with the preservation of Indigenous heritage.
