After a 15-year dispute, the private company Nordic Mining has been given the go-ahead to dispose of 170m tons of mining waste at the bottom of the Førde fjord, which critics say will threaten marine life and put biodiversity at risk.
The decision means Norway joins only two other countries – Papua New Guinea and Turkey – who still grant new licences for marine waste disposal.
The court ordered Friends of the Earth Norway and Nature and Youth, the two environmental organisations who brought the case, to pay legal costs of about £110,000. They could still take the case to the court of appeal, but say their resources are too diminished to continue their fight.
“This contravenes the Aarhus convention, which states that access to justice in environmental matters should not be financially prohibitive,” said Truls Gulowsen, the head of Friends of the Earth Norway. “We just don’t have the money to pursue the case at this moment in time.”
He added that the verdict might discourage future lawsuits to protect the environment against commercial forces.
I’m not Norwegian and I’ll probably come off as ignorant for asking this but is there anyway that I or anyone else can do stop to this from happening? I would like to feel that I made a difference instead of sitting on my ass behind a computer monitor.