A new northern security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 38

The primary hypothesis of this chapter is that a holistic picture of Arctic
geopolitics and northern security must consider many factors and approaches,
including when dealing with security. This is especially the case if security
is defined in a more comprehensive way, so as to include the perspectives of
human beings, societies and regions, rather than just states. Environmental
and energy security are considered to be among the main factors contributing
to a comprehensive security in the Arctic context. The empirical focus will
be the military and military security, and the ways that we can observe the
changes taking place in the concept of security through this traditional secu-
rity tool, particularly with regard to nuclear safety. Nuclear safety as a part of
environmental security thus acts as a metaphor for change in the definition of
traditional security, which was redefined by the Arctic states due to nuclear
problems within the Barents Sea area. Other factors include environmental
degradation and risks, impacts of climate change, competition for hydrocar-
bons and also trans-nationalism or globalization causing a need for a control
of state sovereignty in this 'borderless' space of the Arctic. Regional security,
which defines security from the point of view of a region, is a new and alterna-
tive approach to traditional security and security discourses.
New and comprehensive approaches are needed when trying to define
the security of the post-Cold War circumpolar North. Comprehensive secu-
rity has already become a part of political vocabularies and included onto
foreign policy agendas of some states, e.g. Canada and recently Iceland.
Environmental security and human security are also relevant for describing
foreign policy approaches. Following from this, the conceptual starting point
of this chapter is that security is not, and cannot be, objective, but is always
socially constructed, including aspects of culture, society and the environ-
ment (Buzan 1991).
This chapter first discusses different concepts of security, linking them
through a discourse on regional security. Second, it describes the relevant
stages of security in the circumpolar North from the Cold War period into
the beginning of the twenty-first century. Third, this chapter goes beyond
traditional security and discusses comprehensive security in the North, focus-
ing upon the EU's Northern Dimension policy that aims to increase stability
and comprehensive security. Finally, this chapter lists different aspects and
factors, hereafter 'key phenomena', that are important when trying to com-
prehensively define security in the North, i.e. a new northern security.
Discourses on security
Comprehensive security
Academic discourses on defining comprehensive security emphasize environ-
mental and human aspects and their relationship to traditional security (see
Buzan 1991; Käkönen 1994). When dealing with security there are terms