Arctic environmental security and abrupt climate change - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 99

more crucial may be the role of the Arctic (and Antarctic) in potentially abrupt
climate system changes. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the key role
the Arctic plays as a geographic locus for catastrophic environmental risks, and
how these present new and untraditional security risks. Exploration of both top-
ics has implications not only for the Arctic states, but for how cascading effects
of climate change may have severe security impacts on the rest of the world.
Security and climate change
Connections between environment and security began with medical concerns
over nuclear weapons tests in the early 1960s, but the debate over environ-
mental determinants for security concerns dates to the mid-1980s. Dominant
among earlier 1990s studies were those postulating that increased resource
scarcities would lead directly to violent conflict between states, often as a
result of population increases in less-developed countries (Homer-Dixon
1991, 1994). Such scarcity-conflict models relied upon traditional models
of security as interstate conflict, and largely assumed linear relationships
in terms of both causality and decision-making. Academic criticisms high-
lighted that scarcity does not necessarily result in conflict, that such causal
relationships were nearly impossible to substantiate even post-facto and that
a focus on the state level misleadingly ignored interstate economic relation-
ships that exploited natural resources from afar (Gleditsch 1998; Hauge and
Ellingsen 1998; Buhaug et al . 2008). From a policy perspective, the scarcity-
conflict theses could result in a form of paralysis, as conflicts were blamed on
natural conditions and population levels in foreign countries, with little if
any direct connection to wealthier, western states (Kaplan 1994). Although
general development may help in the long term, the logical response to scar-
city-conflict explanations was to bolster border defences and justify the issue
as an external problem. Even those concerned with cross-border environmen-
tal issues in environmental security tended to downplay the potential role of
climate change (Homer-Dixon 1991).
An alternative set of views was promoted by Canadian and Nordic scholars
and governments, as exemplified by the Global Environmental Change and
Human Security (GECHS) project based in Oslo, the work on resilience and
the environment in Stockholm, or International Polar Year projects examin-
ing impacts of industry upon the environment and human security (GAPS
and MODIL-NAO). Research in this field (Bazely et al ., this topic) empha-
sized the human dimensions of environmental change, whether in terms of
economic relations, human geography or the interconnections between global
shifts and human existence. Such studies attempted to shift the focus from
the state level and traditional measures of interstate violence, illuminating
the importance of interrelationships at more local levels. These approaches
to security, whether associated with Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tromsø,
Helsinki or Ottawa, have allowed a space in security studies to examine