Conclusion - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 270

outside of the Arctic. Nor is it a contest - which region in the world has the
greatest human security issues? By its very nature, human security and inse-
curity cannot be so easily encapsulated. This is why definition is so difficult,
because at the level of individuals and communities, values, priorities and
identities upon which human security perspectives are based can be so dif-
ferent. Human security and insecurity depends very much upon the context
upon which we speak.
This topic is instead a call to awareness and dialogue. We see that, in the
few examples we have provided in this topic, human security and insecurity
cannot be assumed in broad, sweeping generalizations. As Gabrielle Slowey
points out, even when Canada ranked in the top 10 countries in the world
to live, it ranked much lower when taking into account the experiences of
its indigenous peoples. We see how indigenous and non-indigenous experi-
ences differ from one another in the region, but also that, between indigenous
groups, there are significant human security differences, where the experiences
of the Canadian Inuit are significantly different than that of the Norwegian
Sami. Russian women fare considerably differently than Norwegian women,
and are generally at much greater risk of violence, economic insecurity and
political marginalization. Large-scale conflict may not be the issue, but vio-
lence in communities, and not least the home, is all too commonplace.
New challenges in the shape of greenhouse gas emissions, transbound-
ary pollutants, climate change and environmental hazards form not only a
new context for understanding the notion of 'security' in the region, but also
expose us to another comprehensive security concept which is increasingly
finding relevance within both global intergovernmental policy discourse,
as well as in the Arctic - environmental security. The debates about how
environmental and human security issues interact - an examination of social
systems and ecosystems as, Oran Young argues - need even greater focus. Part
of this interaction includes the ways in which the human and environmental
security concepts themselves interact.
While analysts differ on drawing images of contemporary security in the
Arctic, and different writers have focused on different aspects within the
myriad of connections between two forces - nature and politics - the con-
sensus seems to indicate that a new security environment in the region is
emerging (Huebert et al . 2012:6). The complex contemporary Arctic con-
text emphasized a complicated, and sometimes contradictory, image of a new
security environment, which simultaneously includes elements of traditional,
environmental and human security discourses. Traditional security concerns
(military and geopolitical) in the region have not lost their relevance, and
have even re-emerged and been re-shaped in some sense, whereby some Arctic
states still have a variety of overlapping sovereignty claims that have yet to be
resolved, helping keep the traditional security debates in the Arctic alive and
well (Yalowitz et al . 2009:xi), but that is not to the exclusion of other emerg-
ing human and environmental securities in the Arctic.