Bridging the GAPS between ecology and human security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 143

conference about the Canadian Arctic, an eminent northern politician asked
'What does that mean for me?' after a presentation that sought to explain
the resilience-stability-adaptation framework (Bazely, in litt ., 2 June 2009).
Additionally, by making the political context of the issues clear, the human
security approach clarifies how the framing of environmental and ecosystem
issues is a political, and not just a conceptual and cultural, issue.
'When we use the term “environment” it makes it seem as if the prob-
lem is “out there” and we need to “fix it,”' said Susan Clark, Executive
Director of the Columbia Foundation, who believes the Environmental
Grantmakers Association should change its name. 'The problem is not
external to us; it's us. It's a human problem having to do with how we
organize our society. This old way of thinking isn't anyone's fault, but it
is all of our responsibility to change.'
(Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004:12)
The human security approach provides a way for individuals to locate them-
selves in both local and global networks, and has the potential for mapping
out transformational pathways for personal and community limit-setting. As
social beings, humans are constantly setting limits and boundaries around
our behaviour. Can those individuals in Global North countries having large
individual or family ecological footprints implement behavioural limits that
will be beneficial to people living in distant locations, that they will likely
never meet? In fact, sociological data, from the Cultural Creatives Project in the
USA (Ray and Anderson 2000; Ray 2008), are encouraging in this respect,
because they indicate that a large proportion of the population of the USA
does, in fact, care about these issues, with 83.2 per cent of those interviewed
agreeing with the statement 'Each generation's duty is to make the world a
better place for future generations' (Ray 2008).
Is human security as a framework relevant for
understanding the impacts of ecological change on
Arctic peoples?
Arctic communities face major environmental challenges, resulting not only
from the already-stressful environment to which they have adapted over mil-
lennia, but also increasingly from socially induced changes to the relationship
between culture, survival and freedom (Watt-Cloutier 2005; Krupnik et al .
2011). Additionally, the effects of environmental change on Arctic ecology
will have enormous consequences for Arctic peoples, in the same way that a
range of human-induced impacts, on both the natural and agricultural eco-
systems of Africa, will continue to have huge repercussions for communities
seeking to recover from the effects of war, famine and epidemics such as HIV-
AIDS (Bilsborrow and DeLargy 1990; Dudley et al . 2002; Lewis 2005; Berhe