Introduction - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 5

An examination of the security dynamics between Russia and Norway
opens the discussion, where Kristian Åtland and Torbjørn Pedersen use
securitization theory to analyse the ways in which Russian security politics
has developed in relation to the Svalbard archipelago. The authors note that
despite the thawing of relations due to the end of the Cold War, Norway's
continued membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
has been a source of suspicion for Russian leaders, influencing their percep-
tions of Norway's Svalbard policies in the region. The authors argue that a
historical analysis demonstrates that Russia's policies towards Svalbard post-
Cold War have much in common with the Soviet policies during the Cold
War, demonstrating that Russian attitudes have not changed much despite
the fall of the Soviet Union. Thus today's fears that Svalbard will be used for
military purposes by Norway (military security), that Russian mining will
be hindered by Norwegian environmental policy (societal security) and that
Russian fishing will likewise be negatively affected by Norwegian fisheries
policy (economic security) are rooted in Russian perceptions developed dur-
ing the Cold War. The authors show however that many of the security moves
(securitizing an issue) that took place after the fall of the Iron Curtain were
done by upper-level government officials or high-ranking military personnel
who were addressing a likeminded audience, taking their 'historical baggage'
with them into the post-Cold War period. Åtland and Pedersen provide a
strong historical analysis using securitization theory to show how perceptions
of security develop, how such perceptions can have staying power despite
changes in global politics and how such perceptions influence state policy.
The chapter by Lassi Heininen makes a case for comprehensive security,
where state-based security policy and practices are recognized as playing a
central role in our understanding of security, but that to obtain a holistic
picture of security in the Arctic, this perspective must be accompanied by
human and environmental security perspectives. Heininen does so by look-
ing at the Arctic as a region and developing a regional security approach that
integrates different perspectives. He takes as his departure point the military
and military security, but demonstrates that even this actor has had to expand
its understanding of security due to the influences of priorities and values
generated by environmental issues, such as nuclear waste, environmental deg-
radation and pollution. Further, other issues in addition to environmental
degradation are generating opportunities for cooperation between traditional
and non-traditional security actors, such as in the monitoring and use of
transportation in the Arctic, the development of hydrocarbon industries, the
impacts of climate change, processes of transnationalism and globalization,
and the development of governance.
Chapter 4 moves deeper into the concept of human security itself and its
possible relevance to the global North. Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv examines
the use of the concept when it first became popular in the 1990s, where it was
perceived as having a relevance to the global South, and assumed a role for