Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
climate change is to threaten traditional diets, which has raised concerns
about food security. The traditional diet of many northern indigenous
peoples is endangered due to the new climate conditions, because 'the
continued and predictable availability and access to food, derived from
northern environments through Indigenous cultural practices', is no
more (Paci et al . 2004:1). Other possible impacts include smuggling and
other associated uncontrolled traffic in northern seas, which is defined
as a challenge, or even a threat, to the state sovereignty and national
security of the Arctic states such as Canada and its sovereignty claim
over the Canadian Arctic archipelago (see Huebert 2001; CARC et al .
2002). Thus, in the conditions of climate change, a growing and partly
uncontrolled traffic might also become a new kind of security issue to the
sovereignty of coastal states.
4
Trans-nationalism and globalization: Growing international cooperation
and region-building and trans-nationalism reflect the influence of the
globalized world and global economy in the North. These all influence
human security in the North, especially because most northern inhabit-
ants live in cities and no northern settlement remains isolated from the
rest of the world (Bogoyavlenskiy and Siggner 2004). It is not, however,
fair or even possible to claim that globalization only brings problems to
the North, and is thus a threat, because there are both negative and posi-
tive impacts (see Heininen and Southcott 2010). Among the negative ones
are impacts of climate change, privatization and liberal global economy,
and weakening of nation-states. Correspondingly, among the positive
impacts are decolonization and growth of regional autonomy, recognition
of indigenous peoples' rights, the rule of law and multilateral environmen-
tal initiatives. The problem is often that 'local actors resist the effects of
globalization, and they adapt to globalization by using the same tool kit
that globalization uses or is constructed of' (Helander-Renvall 2010:207).
Trans-nationalism and globalization also indicate the importance
of a borderless space, where cooperation occurs across national borders,
e.g. building an international region like the Barents Euro-Arctic region.
Trans-nationalism and borderless spaces certainly indicate the impor-
tance of regional cooperation and regionalization, but they also create
new possibilities of threat and, thus, there is also a need, or a feeling of
need, to control national borders.
5
Innovations in governance: In the circumpolar North there are also influ-
ences and examples of innovations in governance, i.e. 'the development
of innovative political and legal arrangements that meet the needs of the
residents' of the region (Young and Einarsson 2004:287-8). This is on
the one hand due to devolution, giving self-determination, which is not
against the larger, mostly national, political systems that are influential
in the region (Bankes 2004), regionalization, indicating mostly a bot-
tom-up activity, and finally region-building, which is mostly led by state
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search