Kort sammendrag
Jenny Bondevik og Endre Stavang legger et privatrettslig perspektiv til grunn for en mye kritisert vindparksak i Norge. Det gjelder to vindmølleparker på Fosenhalvøya i Trøndelag, som ifølge Høyesterett utgjør et privatrettslig brudd på beiteretten, samt en krenkelse av rett til kulturutøvelse.
Siden konsesjonene ikke blir trukket tilbake av myndighetene, analyserer forfatterne potensialet for å bruke privatrettslige virkemidler for å rette opp disse overtredelsene.
Artikkelen er på engelsk og kan leses i sin helhet i Nordisk miljörättslig tidskrift 2023:2 s.7-13
Abstract
Remedying the Fosen “accident” – Reflections on private law remedies in a wind mill project gone wrong Jenny Bondevik and Endre Stavang
Two windfarms are currently in operation at the Fosen Peninsula close to Trondheim in Norway, to the detriment of the commercial viability of reindeer herding in the area. This harm is excessive and constitutes not only a private law violation of grazing rights, but also a violation for the relevant indigenous families of the international human right to exercise of culture – according to wording of a unanimous Norwegian Supreme Court administrative law case in a related matter. Our paper asks a hypothetical question, in that its starting point is that it is up to the Sami families to take legal action, both to ask a court to order the wind farm operations to cease, and/or to order the facilities to be removed. We hypothesise such an injunction suit under private law principles. We discuss an important exception to injunctive relief, conditioned upon an ex post cost benefit balancing test, in combination with generous monetary damages, thus contributing to the commercial viability of owning and herding reindeer – perhaps also supplemented by other court orders that assume co-existence between green energy production and reindeer ownership in the area. Overall, we find that the case for injunctive relief for the Sami families is not clear – either under property principles, or under international law principles for physical restitution claims. However, this assumes that the investor has not exercised “culpa” ex ante, and that the investor is liable to provide generous monetary compensation (“vederlagserstatning”)