Indigenous Sovereignty, Self-determination, and Rights: Normative Agency through the Rights-Based Approach in Multilevel Arctic Environmental Governance

Abstract

This thesis revolves around the intersection of human rights, the environment, and international law as a governance tool, with a focus on managing Arctic environmental changes and promoting environmental and decolonial justice. This thesis aims to provide a new narrative by analysing the extent to which the discourse of Indigenous rights has helped Indigenous people gain normative agency in environmental governance. The primary focus of this thesis is to investigate the effectiveness of mobilising the language of Indigenous rights in fostering Indigenous normative agency within Arctic environmental governance. A fundamental assertion underlying this thesis is that embracing the paradox of employing human rights discourse beyond the confines of the nation-state can facilitate decolonisation. Additionally, this thesis develops an argument regarding Indigenous agency as the capacity to generate normative outcomes. In turn, these outcomes reshape power dynamics and control among actors engaged in environmental governance beyond the national space and state sovereignty. In an effort to explore concepts of sovereignty, self-determination, rights, and agency, this thesis conceptualises various spaces where environmental governance occurs and is shaped, encompassing physical, institutional, and legal dimensions of Arctic governance. Focusing specifically on the Arctic, this thesis analyses Arctic governance through three different levels geographical scales (i.e., global, regional, and local) and in different non-state context to assess how Indigenous rights are used to promote an aspect of self-determination and sovereignty: the ability to influence normative development with regard to the environment.