Conclusion - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 272

large energy projects, sometimes at the expense of marginalized local popula-
tions (Simpson 2007). It also demonstrates how a multiple-actor understanding
of security is extremely important for the purpose of recognizing the multiple
'bottom-up' voices of individuals and local communities with their perceptions,
interests, values and concerns towards (in)security.
Although extractive industries provide significant and real economic ben-
efits to local people both directly and indirectly in forms of taxes paid for the
local budget, building roads, development infrastructure and facilities, and
the creation of jobs (all not just important but necessary for the existence of
communities), it also increases the prevalence of contaminants, pollutions,
waste and ecological threats. It is essential that increasing extraction activi-
ties as well as their aftermaths can ideally have more positive than negative
consequences for local peoples and communities and contribute towards sus-
tainable development before, during and after the extraction projects. But one
of the key paradoxes of the security debate is that national security interests
does not always mean secure people, as the natural resources-led wealth of the
state does not lead automatically to human security and development for the
citizens (Hoogensen 2005).
It is thus both a political choice and active decision to employ a concept of
human security in the Arctic. It is a political choice to employ the concept of
human security in the Arctic because, as mentioned, the notion of 'security',
which is already in large use in the Arctic (often uncritically), invokes power,
and is usually employed and legitimated for the purpose of prioritizing cer-
tain activities and practices over others. Any argument for taking a human
security approach to the Arctic region must acknowledge the difficulty of
confronting the dominant security discourse that associates any notion of
security with the use of force, particularly by the military. To say that security
is purely a military issue is to reject the many other perceptions of security
that exist or to prove that security is not relevant at local levels. To say that
'human security' should not be employed in the Arctic context is to say that a
tool of communication, and a powerful one, is withheld from the possibilities
for local communities.
Using the language of security catapults Arctic community interests and
concerns to the same level as energy security interests or state security, for
example; it can capture, explain and deliver the concerns of Arctic peoples to
powerful audiences. It is important to hear from the local level about what
security means to communities, and how their conceptions might not be con-
sistent with state-based notions, and that community- and individual-based
notions of security need to be recognized when understanding a holistic pic-
ture of security in the Arctic.
It is also an active decision to use the concepts of human and environmen-
tal security in analysis of the Arctic context in order to learn more, in some
cases to 'map' different non-state actors' values or concerns and, not least,
to collect, measure and analyse data necessary for the broad governance and