Biodiversity Justice Against the Current
- vilmajohansson8
- Nov 19
- 10 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
BIOrdinary Summer School, Norrbotten, 15-19 June 2025
For two years in a row, the BIOrdinary team has organised a research summer school, bringing together people from different disciplines and career stages––from master’s students to senior researchers––to explore how biodiversity shifts are perceived, understood, and managed in ‘ordinary places’ as opposed to biodiversity-rich and secluded hotspots.
Over the course of three to four days, we embark on field excursions, experiment with different methods for data collection, and engage in theoretical dialogues with people offering diverse perspectives on a shared topic. The purpose of these schools is to learn from one another and to deepen our collective understanding of the ways in which biodiversity changes are addressed in places marked by habitation, trade, and agriculture.
Previous editions explored the long-term impact of mining on landscapes and biodiversity in Norberg (Bergslagen, 2023) and examined shifting marine biodiversity in Tjärnö and the Koster Sea (Bohuslän, 2024).
The 2025 BIOrdinary Summer School—our third and final one—set sail towards the vast but sparsely populated county of Norrbotten to explore a landscape deeply shaped by a century of hydropower expansion. During four long and bright midsummer days, we travelled upstream along the 461-kilometre-long and heavily dammed Lule River (Julevädno), tracing its path from the Bothnian Bay in the East toward the Sulitjelma massif on the Norwegian border in the West.
The Lule River has been harnessed to provide the country with power and light for over a hundred years. Names such as Harsprånget, Suorva, and Porjus are commonly synonymous with power plants. The river’s fifteen hydropower stations generate enough electricity to light up Sweden from north to south, day and night, all year round.
The theme guiding our journey was biodiversity justice against the current—a framework inviting us to consider not only ecological loss but also shifts in livelihoods, land relations, cultural practices, and the rights of the many human and more-than-human communities living with the legacies of extractivism. Hydropower, often celebrated as a cornerstone of Sweden’s “green” energy transition, has long been an instrument of land and resource dispossession in this northernmost part of the country, along with state-owned mining and forestry activities.
Throughout the week, we engaged in field excursions, museum visits, expert talks, and guided walks. We listened to stories of lost waterfalls and drowned valleys, explored the world of freshwater pearl mussels, met with an activist opposing the construction of an open-pit iron mine on Sámi land, and followed the river all the way up to the Sourva Dam, where the once-thundering Stora Sjöfallet (Stuor Muorkkegårttje) is now regulated and tamed.
With each stop, we encountered the river’s layered histories, its anthropogenic transformations, its multispecies entanglements, and the vibrant yet uneasy ecologies arising in the wake of disturbance. During this summer school, we asked:
What happens when we stop the river’s flow?
What happens when we intervene, interrupt, and disturb its course to harness its power in the name of renewable energy?
Moreover, is a dammed river still a river?
Day 1: Artificially reared fish, thundering rapids, and human-river relations
Travelling north was an adventure of its own. Participants gathered at Stockholm Central Station on Sunday evening to board a night train to Boden; a thirteen-hour-long journey that would take us 900 kilometres up north. To put this in perspective––travel the diametrically opposite direction southward, and you would find yourself in central Poland.
The train arrived on Monday morning, slightly delayed, as can be expected. Our first stop was Vattenfall’s fish farm in Boden, where we went to see how artificial induced life has replaced what once occurred naturally in the river. We witnessed a striking example of how interventions meant to mitigate ecological disruption often become further layers of human control. Fish farm manager, Henri Heimonen, gave a tour of the high-tech facility where 550,000 salmon, 100,000 sea trout, and 12,000 trout are bred and released every year to compensate for lost habitats and blocked migration routes caused by hydropower dams.
When we saw fish in their tanks, artificially reared, it made us realise how sterile the Lule River has become. Standing next to the long row of metal pools containing fish larvae, and with the river murmuring just beyond these four walls, we reflected on the paradoxes of restoration in heavily industrialised waterways: What does it mean to “help” a river whose life-forms have been redirected or constrained by design? Can such compensatory measures ever address long-term ecological fragmentation?
From Boden, we travelled to Europe’s largest unbound rapids, Storforsen (Liggá). Although part of the neighbouring Pite River rather than the Lule, Storforsen provided a powerful context for discussing river restoration in practice. Emma Palmgren and Josefine Strand from the County Administrative Board in Norrbotten gave an insightful presentation on their current work in Torneälven, one of Sweden’s four national rivers, guiding us through local restoration efforts aimed at increasing biodiversity in and around the rapids.
Biologist, ecologist, nature photographer, and beloved public educator, Thomas Öberg, took the lead as we walked from the hotel up to the rapids. The entire stretch is five kilometres long, but it’s the last two kilometres where the river drops 60 meters that make up the actual Storforsen. Thomas explained that while the Pite River is largely unregulated, Storforsen’s riverbed is in fact man-made, as it was used to transport timber from further inland down to the coast during the latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
At Storforsen, the river is allowed to surge, flood, and retreat. The thunderous flow created a stark contrast with the regulated stillness we would later encounter upstream.
After a short bus ride across protected old growth forest, pine plantations, and clear-cuts, accompanied by what we called ‘Transit Talks’, we arrived to Jokkmokk.
After dinner, we launched into our first session. Our special guest, assigned summer school guide, and PhD in Social Anthropology, Jannete Hentati, gave a talk on her book Älven i mig (The River in Me). Published in 2023, the book is a deeply personal account of the Swedish state’s exploitation of the Lule River through the development of large-scale hydropower. It is also an account of Sweden’s modern history of colonialism, she added.
Four hundred sixty kilometres in length. From the headwaters, up in the mountains, to the mouth, in the Gulf of Bothnia. First, it was wild. Then, it was regulated. Sixteen dams. Fifteen hydropower stations. Four enormous reservoirs. Now, a river that produces more electricity than any other in Sweden.
– Extract from book
Day 2: Pearl mussel ecologies and Sámi resistance
On Tuesday morning, we packed our bags with thermos coffee, cinnamon buns, and mosquito repellant, and journeyed to explore Pärlälven (Pearl River). Thomas introduced us to the ecology of the freshwater pearl mussel––an organism that can live for more than 250 years––and the historical freshwater pearl fishery, which was once common in this river. These mussels depend on pristine waters and specific fish hosts for their larval stages, making them sensitive indicators of ecological health.
Walking through the boreal mountain old-growth forest (fjällurskog) surrounding the river offered a stark contrast to the pine plantations that cover a significant areal of Sweden’s total landmass. While the Pearl River is spared from hydropower regulation, forestry poses a serious threat to these remarkable creatures that have been around since the time of the dinosaurs.
Lunch was served at the Ájtte––meaning 'storehouse' in Lule Sámi––in Jokkmokk, which is the main museum in Sweden for the Sámi culture and history. We spent the early afternoon exploring exhibits on––past and present––indigenous life, reindeer herding, and ecocultural landscapes. Here, the idea of the mountains as “the last wilderness” was critically examined. What appears untouched to tourists is, in fact, an enduring homeland shaped by millennia of Indigenous land stewardship.
Later, the Ájtte staff welcomed us to the underground research archive, where Thomas displayed and commented on pearl mussel binoculars and a pair of pearl tongs, among other antique objects, from the museum’s collection. Thanks for hosting us!
The artists Bengt Lindström and Lars Pirak are behind the murals on the Akkats Dam, which we passed on our way up north. These artworks were heavily criticised during the inauguration in year 2000, as some consider it inappropriate to decorate the dam with Sámi motifs, given that hydropower development has disrupted not only river ecologies but also reindeer migration routes, grazing patterns, and sacred geographies.
We then travelled to Gállok, where Sámi activist Tor Tourda guided us through the long and contested history of resistance against mining expansion in Norrbotten. The Gállok mining conflict has become emblematic of broader tensions between extractive interests and Indigenous rights in Sweden. Tor’s storytelling—layered with personal experience, political insight, and local knowledge—grounded our discussions of biodiversity justice in present-day struggles that should belong to the past.
Umeå-based artist and researcher, Isabelle Desjeux, used her phone to gather data about the iron-rich stone. Others applied a more old-school, analogue methodology to test its magnetic capacities.
A brief stop at Harsprånget (Njommelsaskam) ravine and adjacent power station, completed in 1952, allowed us to reflect on the various natural and man-made phenomena that shape river landscape. The impressive waterfall––illustrated at full capacity at the start of this blog post––was first mentioned by Johannes Schefferus in 1673, who described the rapids as squeezed between two mountains so close together that a hare can jump from one to the other in one leap, hence the name. Today, Harsprånget hydropower station is the largest in Sweden in terms of capacity.
On our way northward we passed Porjus (Bårjås), historically celebrated as the birthplace of Norrbotten’s hydropower. On 15 February 1915, the national newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, wrote:
A mighty monument has been erected in the wilderness – the Porjus power station – a symbol of Swedish engineering, Swedish determination, and Swedish enterprise.
This, by the standards of the time, gigantic infrastructure project was constructed to supply electricity to the railway transporting iron ore from the mines in Malmberget and Kiruna to the ports in Narvik and Luleå. Over dinner at a local burger shack, we discussed how narratives of national progress often obscure the environmental and cultural costs embedded in these megaprojects.
The day ended with our arrival at Stora Sjöfallet/Stuor Muorkke National Park, high in Arctic Circle, at the threshold of the Laponia World Heritage site. This site was turned into a conservation area in 1910 to protect the magnificent waterfall by the same name. Nine years later, however, the Swedish Government decided to regulate its rapids in order to tame the water and improve the efficiency of the newly built hydropower station in Porjus. Thus, the beauty of the falls became history, and the vast and silent Sourva Dam has since replaced the rumbling rapids of what was once called the "Niagara Falls of the North".
Day 3: Lost waterfalls and altered landscapes
Wednesday unfolded at a slower pace, allowing participants time to explore the mountainous landscape. Throughout the national park, the tension between 'protected nature' and human intervention is palpable. Here, the interplay of ecological richness and infrastructural control challenges simplistic notions of wilderness conservation. Far from a conventional national park, Stora Sjöfallet presents to us somewhat of an 'industrial wilderness', in lack of a better word.
After lunch, we walked to the Sourva Dam, tracing the path once dominated by thundering waterfalls. Our conversations drifted between intimate stories of human tragedies, geological timescales and our current dependence on electricity (the Age of Electricity), and collective responsibilities to damaged ecologies and local communities.
Huge concrete or infield dams and underground power plants prevent the water from flowing where it wants, when it wants, forcing it instead to adapt to our ever-growing need to produce and supply our industries, our shops, our homes and our hospitals, our phones, our toothbrushes.
– Extract from Älven i mig (2023)
Standing atop the dam, overlooking the vast reservoir that submerged valleys and ancestral sites, we confronted hydropower’s irrevocable reshaping of the region. It's a chapter of Sweden’s industrial history seldom discussed, yet one that Jannete captures with striking beauty in her book.
Later in the afternoon, we gathered at the architecturally impressive Naturum Laponia for a talk by KTH architect, Ulrika Karlsson, on her and colleague, Cecilia Lundbäcks's, research project, Where Waters Fall. Through ethnographic methods and 3D point cloud scans of Stora Sjöfallet, Ulrika discussed the ornamental role of nature, waters, and trees against the backdrop of functionalist architecture, and how different representations of these sites construct different narratives and histories.
After dinner, we reconvened for a workshop centred on bringing together the various themes that have surfaced during the week, all of which relating to biodiversity justice. Participants reflected on hydropower’s dual role as both a driver of national sustainability narratives and a source of ecological fragmentation and cultural disruption, tapping into topics revolving around exploitation, displacement, green-washed colonialism, multispecies entanglements, and environmental responsibility and repair.
Together, we envisioned what biodiversity justice might look like in a future shaped by climate change, renewable energy demands, and ongoing settler-colonial dynamics. These conversations—some hopeful, some uncomfortable—served as a powerful reminder that justice is as much a relational practice as a policy aspiration.
Day 4: Travelling downstream and encountering biodiversity in unexpected places
Thursday morning marked the final hours of the summer school. After breakfast and packing up, we gathered for a closing session, where participants shared insights, emotions, and ideas sparked throughout the week.
On our bus ride back to Luleå, we passed by the 17-kilometre-long Letsi dry riverbed––the largest in Europe. Once roaring with water, this reach has lien mostly barren for almost sixty years; ever since the Letsi hydropower station was put into operation in 1967.
While the deserted landscape echoed with the absence of life, we were surprised to encounter a swallows nest under the bridge of the dry stretch! Quite literally, biodiversity in ordinary, yet unexpected, places.
The 2025 BIOrdinary Summer School invited us to move against the current––geographically, conceptually, and politically. Travelling upstream along the Lule River meant tracing not only the hydrological flow but also the flow of history: the industrial ambitions that shaped the 20th century, the ecological consequences that continue into the 21st, and the dominant narrative of today that praise hydropower as a 'green' and abundant electricity without properly questioning its impacts on local communities and other species and habitats.
While this was our final summer school, we hope that participants feel encouraged to take up the banner and continue the tradition of interdisciplinary summer schools; thinking together at a specific place, about a common issue, through immersive and embodied learning. As we part ways, we do so with a deeper understanding of what it means to live with disturbed landscapes—and with renewed courage to envision biodiversity justice in a rapidly changing world, where environmental care is not about returning to a mythical “untouched” past but as a forward-looking commitment to multispecies flourishing.
Last but not least, a big thank you to all participants for coming along and, by learning together, growing our common understanding of what biodiversity justice can, or should, encompass!
Photo credit: © Petter Cohen