The launch of a legal claim from the Indigenous Sámi people against the government of Finland involving climate change and cultural traditions is drawing on an Australian precedent in which Torres Strait Islanders won against the Commonwealth.

The Muddusjärvi Reindeer Herders' Cooperative brought a discrimination complaint in October to the United Nations' human rights committee in Geneva.

It alleged the Finnish government had allowed multiple breaches of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which sets out the rights for Sámi people - Europe's only recognised Indigenous tribes - to enjoy their own culture and family life, in addition to non-discrimination and self-determination provisions.

The cooperative has practised Sámi reindeer herding for centuries before Finland's independence from Russian and Swedish 18th century claims, and remain a part of three remaining herding communities that still use the Inari Sámi language that is considered endangered.

Within its legal complaint the cooperative says it has been dispossessed from land traditionally used for reindeer herding, as a result of climate change and decades of intensive logging from the Finnish state-owned forestry agency.

Both issues have allegedly "severely damaged" the Sámi's customary land on which they depend, the group's lawyers, Hogan Lovells, argues.

The loss of lichen-rich, old-growth forests and changes to snow conditions have made it harder for reindeer to access natural food sources, the lawyers say, creating an "existential threat", which also "places in jeopardy the viability of the Muddusjärvi community's way of life", according to papers filed for the complaint.

While the Finnish government provides additional funds to compensate reindeer herders during harsh winters, this does not go far enough, the 33 members of the Muddusjärvi community involved in the case argue.

The herders have previously said they have lost lost 32 million euros throughout 2019 and 2020, but the Muddusjärvi apparently only received six million euros in compensation.

There have already been a number of lawsuits brought on by the Sámi people across not only Finland but also Sweden and Norway in an effort to protect their lands and tradition. The Norwegian government had to pay out an undisclosed amount - believed to be in the millions of euros.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights published their decision in June this year after reviewing three complaints that were filed by different members of the Kova-Labba Siida Sámi semi-nomadic herding community that included three children over mining projects granted on their traditional Indigenous lands.

The Kova-Labba Siida people are another of the three traditional reindeer herding villages but from the separate Käsivarsi Reindeer Herders Cooperative.

Two of these three cases were related to the granting of the mineral exploration permit on their land, while the other is related to the granting of a reservation area on their land, all of which happened without an impact assessment or a process of effective participation in the decision-making from the relevant Finnish government authority.

The precedent for the latest case over the interplay of climate change and cultural traditions is relying in part on a landmark first set in 2022, brought by an Torres Strait Islanders, whereby the Australian government had initially been ordered to compensate the Zenadth Kes claimants, who argued that global warming affects had a direct harmful consequence on their livelihood, culture and traditional ways of life.

Despite a Federal judge three years later finding that the Commonwealth no longer owed a duty of care to Torres Strait Islander people to protect them from the impacts of climate change and fund adaptation measures after Canberra appealed, lawyers that are involved with the case in Finland remain optimistic.

Judge Michael Wigney had ruled that while Australia's greenhouse gas emissions targets are a matter of "core government policy", they should be decided by the Federal parliament and not the courts.

However, he added the Torres Strait Islanders had proven many of the factual elements of their case, which did not fail because there was no merit in their allegations, but rather because negligence law did not allow compensation for matters of government policy.

Finnish human rights law professor and practitioner, Martin Scheinin, told a British climate change science online publication that the Torres Strait Islander case would support the Sámi people's argument.

"The UN committee broke a new path by focusing on Australia's adaptation obligations as positive human rights obligations," he told the Carbon Brief.

"As the committee also established that the right of minorities and Indigenous peoples to enjoy their own culture includes the right to transmit a distinctive way of life to new and even future generations, it was natural that the Indigenous Sámi people in Finland...want to build upon all these elements in their own case before the same committee."

The Finnish government is yet to give a formal response to the complaint that is expected come within the next month.

The Sámi are a Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic cultural region of Sápmi, which also encompasses parts of Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Kola Peninsula of Russia.

The 10,500 Sámi residents that live in Finland are also known for a unique culture including for handicrafts and speaking three different Indigenous regional languages.