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Press release · 25 August 2026

UN committee demands Sámi consent for energy projects in Finland, but overlooks the data centres adding to energy demand

Foundation for Gaia calls on Finland to bring data centres within the safeguards the Committee has set out for Indigenous lands.

For immediate releaseGENEVA, 25 August 2026

Foundation for Gaia today welcomed the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination's call for Finland to stop approving energy and mining projects on Sámi lands without the free, prior and informed consent of the Sámi people.1 Foundation for Gaia warned, however, that the Committee's findings, published on 25 August 2026, make no mention of data centres, even though the industry expects them to add significantly to Finland's electricity demand and to drive the construction of new wind power.2

In its review of Finland, the Committee found that Sámi rights to their traditional lands, waters and resources are still not adequately protected, pointing in particular to wind power and mining projects in and near the Sámi Homeland. The Committee said some of these projects had gone ahead without the free, prior and informed consent of the Sámi and without comprehensive impact assessments, while reindeer herding, fishing and hunting face growing pressure from competing uses of land.3

The Committee urged Finland to ensure that energy and mining projects affecting Sámi lands are not approved without Sámi consent, and that impact assessments are carried out together with the communities affected.4 It made this one of its priority recommendations, asking Finland to report back on progress within two years,5 and encouraged Finland to ratify ILO Convention 169 on the rights of Indigenous and tribal peoples.6

Foundation for Gaia says this guidance cannot be separated from Finland's push to attract data centres. The Finnish Government has set out measures to draw data centre investment to the country, including steps to enable more wind power,7 and companies such as Microsoft and TikTok have begun commissioning data centres there.8 Renewables Finland, the industry association, estimates that the electricity demand of Finnish data centres by 2030 will correspond to around 2.2 gigawatts of wind power capacity.9 That is almost a quarter of all the wind power capacity Finland had installed by the end of 2025, which stood at 9.4 gigawatts.10 Wind developers have told industry press that data centres will boost the wind power buildout, with one describing further investment as inevitable.10 Researchers have documented how wind farms in Finnish Lapland compete with reindeer herding for the same land.11

There is a real risk that the growing energy needs of data centres in Finland are being met, at least in part, by the kind of wind power projects the Committee has raised concerns about, including those in and near the Sámi Homeland. The Committee's findings did not address this link. Elsewhere in the UN system, however, the connection is beginning to be made: a study presented to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2026 called on governments to require the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples for data centre related projects.12

The Committee has sent Finland a clear message that there should be no energy projects on Sámi land without Sámi consent. The next step is to follow the demand. If new wind farms are being built to power data centres, then those data centres are part of the decision, and their impact should be assessed, with the Sámi consulted, from the very start. International law already requires this. What is missing is the political will to connect the dots.
Gloria de Waal-MontgomeryDirector of Law and Policy, Foundation for Gaia
Every data centre needs power, and that power has to be generated somewhere, often on land that people depend on for their livelihoods. The Committee has been clear that the Sámi must give their consent before energy projects go ahead on their lands. That principle should apply just as much when the energy is destined for a data centre. Finland has an opportunity to show that growing its digital economy and respecting Sámi rights can go hand in hand.
Mandie McKeownDirector of Advocacy, Foundation for Gaia

In line with the Committee's findings, Foundation for Gaia is calling on Finland to:

  1. Ratify ILO Convention 169, as recommended by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
  2. Secure the free, prior and informed consent of the Sámi before authorising data centres, the transmission infrastructure that serves them, or related extractive activities that affect their lands, territories, resources or water.
  3. Require an independent environmental, social and human rights impact assessment before any new data centre is authorised, covering the full life cycle of the facility and considering alternatives, including the option of not building it.
  4. Adopt a national framework that determines where data centres may and may not be sited, and sets a binding limit on the total emissions, water use and land that the sector as a whole may take.
  5. Require data centre operators to publicly disclose their electricity and water use, both direct and indirect, and publish the share of national electricity and water that the sector consumes.

Foundation for Gaia also invites the UN treaty bodies and special procedures to address the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence infrastructure in their forthcoming work.

ENDS

Notes to editors

About the review

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is a body of 18 independent experts that monitors how states implement the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It reviewed Finland at its 118th session in Geneva on 17 and 18 August 2026 and adopted its concluding observations on 21 August 2026. They were published on 25 August 2026 under the symbol CERD/C/FIN/CO/24-26.

Sources

  1. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 'Concluding observations on the combined twenty fourth to twenty sixth periodic reports of Finland' (CERD/C/FIN/CO/24-26, advance unedited version), 25 August 2026, paragraph 21 (b), which urges Finland to ensure that projects affecting Sámi lands, territories, waters and resources, including energy and mining projects, are not approved without the free, prior and informed consent of the Sámi; see also paragraph 19 (c), which applies the same standard to legislative and administrative measures that may affect the Sámi.
  2. Renewables Finland, 'There is already a solution to data centre electricity demand: more than 7 GW of renewable electricity is ready to be built in Finland', 16 June 2026. And: Montel News, 'Data centres to boost Finnish wind power buildout: industry', 24 April 2026.
  3. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 'Concluding observations on the combined twenty fourth to twenty sixth periodic reports of Finland' (CERD/C/FIN/CO/24-26, advance unedited version), 25 August 2026, paragraph 20.
  4. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 'Concluding observations on the combined twenty fourth to twenty sixth periodic reports of Finland' (CERD/C/FIN/CO/24-26, advance unedited version), 25 August 2026, paragraph 21 (b).
  5. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 'Concluding observations on the combined twenty fourth to twenty sixth periodic reports of Finland' (CERD/C/FIN/CO/24-26, advance unedited version), 25 August 2026, paragraph 42, which asks Finland to report within two years on paragraphs 21 (b) and (c), among others.
  6. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 'Concluding observations on the combined twenty fourth to twenty sixth periodic reports of Finland' (CERD/C/FIN/CO/24-26, advance unedited version), 25 August 2026, paragraph 35.
  7. Finnish Government, 'Finland sets out measures to attract data centres with high value added', 4 November 2025.
  8. Construction Digital, 'Why Winda & Gi21 are Building Data Centres in Finland', 15 April 2026.
  9. Renewables Finland, 'There is already a solution to data centre electricity demand: more than 7 GW of renewable electricity is ready to be built in Finland', 16 June 2026.
  10. Montel News, 'Data centres to boost Finnish wind power buildout: industry', 24 April 2026. The article reports Finland's installed wind power capacity of 9.4 gigawatts in 2025, citing Renewables Finland.
  11. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene (University of California Press), 'Wind energy projects and reindeer herders' rights in Finnish Lapland', 21 January 2021.
  12. UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 'Indigenous Peoples and artificial intelligence' (study E/C.19/2026/4), twenty fifth session, 20 April to 1 May 2026. Session page.

Background

Free, prior and informed consent is a principle set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It means Indigenous peoples must be able to give or withhold their consent to projects affecting their lands, before those projects are approved, and on the basis of full information.

Right to Know is Foundation for Gaia's project on data centre siting and human rights. It focuses on the right of communities to information about the water and energy that data centres will use, and on their right to take part in planning decisions.

Foundation for Gaia is a UK registered charity (no. 327843), founded in 1988. It holds UN accreditation and has engaged at the UN Human Rights Council and at UN climate negotiations for many years. It works to ensure that the communities who live closest to ecosystems can know about, and take part in, the decisions that affect them.

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