Bridging the GAPS between ecology and human security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 139

What is the connection between ecology and
human security?
Human security is a concept developed and championed by the United
Nations (Commission on Human Security 2003). Environmental security is
one of its many aspects (Dalby 2002). Some of the other commonly listed
dimensions of human security include: economic, health, food, personal, com-
munity and political security (Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy 2007). These areas can
be further broken down to even more specific areas, such as housing security
(Seifert 2005; Christensen 2011).
A fundamental tenet of human security is that its very meaning is defined
by local peoples and communities (Commission on Human Security 2003).
In other words, the framework of human security is indelibly rooted in what
it means, or what is required, for the individual members of any given com-
munity to be secure. As a concept and framework, the components that make
up human security are context-dependent . Notions of human rights are also
explicit in the genesis of human security as a concept. Human security pro-
vides a framework in which local peoples can identify issues and solutions that
will increase their security, and many policies, pathways and options become
available. Local knowledge is, consequently, a fundamental aspect of generat-
ing human security, and in this way is analogous to the ecological concept
that each and every ecological community and ecosystem has the potential to
follow multiple trajectories and outcomes within the same set of broad con-
straints and drivers.
There is a diversity of views among security researchers about the appropri-
ate scope and application of the human security concept (Dalby 2002; Krause
2004; Griffiths 2008; Hoogensen Gjørv, this volume). On the one hand, some
view human security as a concept that is applicable within a narrow range
of short-term, crisis-type circumstances (e.g. Krause 2004). While others
(e.g. Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy 2007) take a longer-term, broader view, and
acknowledge that short-term crises are nearly always years in the making, so
that human security must be a complex, multi-faceted project with a long
timeline.
Upon introduction to the human security concept (e.g. Tanentzap et al .
2009), most ecologists are more likely to appreciate its longer-term, broader
dimensions. This may be attributed to one of the messages of ecology being
the tendency of ecological systems to make rapid state-change switches, that
may appear to come out of nowhere, but that, in fact, are the products of a
slow accumulation of small changes (Krebs 1988; Box 8.1 ). Furthermore, eco-
system functioning and dynamics are always multi-factorial in terms of their
drivers of change or stability (Krebs 1988).
Once explained, the link between ecology and human security is clear to
ecologists. It is self-evident that even if all of the land mines in the world
were to magically disappear, and all armed conflicts were to be instantly