Constructing In/Security in the Arctic: Polar Politics, Indigenous Peoples, and Environmental Change in Canada and Norway
by
Wilfrid William John Greaves
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science University of Toronto
© Copyright by Wilfrid William John Greaves 2016
Constructing In/Security in the Arctic: Polar Politics, Indigenous Peoples, and Environmental Change in Canada and Norway
Wilfrid William John Greaves
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Political Science University of Toronto
2016 Abstract
As climate change transforms the circumpolar Arctic, ‘Arctic security’ has increasingly been used as a concept to address the most urgent related policy questions. But security is a contested concept, and there is contradiction among the various understandings of what it actually entails in the Arctic region. This dissertation investigates competing conceptions of security and environmental change by state and non-state actors in the Arctic regions of Canada and Norway. It asks why, despite being understood as a threat to national and global security by other states and in other regional contexts, has climate change not been constituted as a security threat by Arctic states? I examine this question through a comparative analysis of Canada and
Norway’s foreign and security policies, how they construct the significance of climate change, and those policies’ correspondence with local Indigenous conceptions of Arctic security. The findings suggest that the conception of security held by Arctic Indigenous peoples have been structurally excluded from official Arctic security discourse. The dissertation makes three central contributions: it offers a comparative analysis of circumpolar states’ understandings of
Arctic security; it undertakes the first comparative analysis of Indigenous understandings of
Arctic security; and it proposes a revised theory of how certain identities condition the process through which in/security is socially constructed. ii
Acknowledgments
This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my doctoral supervisor, Matthew J. Hoffmann, and my committee members, Steven Bernstein and Rauna Kuokkanen. It has also benefited greatly from the suggestions and knowledge of my internal and external readers, Graham White of the University of Toronto and Simon Dalby of the Balsillie School of International Affairs. I have been fortunate to receive advice and support from numerous faculty members of the University of Toronto, including professors Nancy Bertoldi, Wendy Wong, and the late Stephen Clarkson. I owe many debts to friends and graduate student colleagues at the University of Toronto, including: Megan Dersnah, Craig Damian Smith, Dave Zarnett, Aarie Glas, Jodi Adams, Kiran Banerjee, Jerald Sabin, and Adrienne Davidson. I also appreciate the valuable research assistance of Amir Fleischmann.
My interest in and knowledge of the Arctic has been constantly informed and motivated by the work and support of professors P. Whitney Lackenbauer of St. Jerome’s University, Rob Huebert of the University of Calgary, and Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv of the University of Tromsø. I am indebted to all three of them. This dissertation project benefited greatly from the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation and the Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, particularly Tom Axworthy and Sara French. My fieldwork was also greatly assisted by Else Grete Broderstad and the faculty, staff, and students at the Centre for Sámi Studies at the University of Tromsø.
My research was supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Government of Ontario, the former Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, and the Department of Political Science, School of Graduate Studies, and Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice at the University of Toronto.
Lastly, none of this would have been possible without the support of my wife, Carolyn Cornford Greaves, to whom I owe so much, and our daughter, Eleanor, whose impending arrival was a fine motivation to get the thing done.
This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Sherry Dolores Greaves, grandmother, Peggy Dolores Greaves, and grandfather, Wilfrid Edmund Greaves, who began this journey with me but did not see its finish. Their love remains a constant source of inspiration.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ...... iii
Table of Contents ...... iv
List of Figures ...... viii
List of Appendices ...... ix
Chapter 1 ...... 1
1 Climate, Change, and the Arctic ...... 1
1.1 Changing Global Climate ...... 4
1.2 The Changing Arctic ...... 8
1.3 Defining the Arctic ...... 12
1.4 Changing Arctic Security ...... 17
1.5 Methodology, Case Selection and Evidence ...... 22
1.5.1 Case Selection ...... 24
1.5.2 Evidence of (Attempted) Securitization ...... 25
1.6 Outline of Dissertation ...... 29
Chapter 2 ...... 33
2 Indigeneity, Non-Dominance and Research ...... 33
2.1 Indigeneity and Non-Dominance ...... 35
2.1.1 Colonialism and Power ...... 39
2.2 Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic ...... 41
2.3 Research, Non-Dominance and Indigenous Peoples ...... 46
2.3.1 Decolonization and Indigenist Research ...... 48
Chapter 3 ...... 54
3 Security, Theory, and the (Arctic) Environment ...... 54
3.1 Constructing In/Security ...... 55
iv
3.2 Securitization Theory: The Copenhagen School and Its Critics ...... 63
3.2.1 Normal Politics and Non-Securitized Issues ...... 71
3.2.2 Intersubjectivity and Illocutionary Speech Acts ...... 74
3.2.3 Identity and Securitization ...... 77
3.3 Revising Securitization: Non-Dominance and In/Security ...... 81
3.3.1 Silencing and Subsuming Indigenous Insecurity ...... 85
3.4 Insecurity and the Environment ...... 90
3.4.1 Securitizing Climate Change ...... 94
3.5 Why Securitize ...... 97
3.6 Conclusion ...... 103
Chapter 4 ...... 106
4 Understanding In/Security in the Canadian Arctic ...... 106
4.1 Indigenous Peoples and In/Security in the Canadian Arctic ...... 108
4.1.1 Indigenous Insecurities ...... 114
4.1.2 Inuit Perspectives on Security and Sovereignty ...... 118
4.1.3 In/Security, Resources, and Climate Change ...... 124
4.1.4 Security and Self-Determination ...... 128
4.1.5 Synthesizing Indigenous Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic 131
4.2 State Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic ...... 132
4.2.1 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Liberal Years ...... 137
4.2.2 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Harper Conservatives ...... 141
4.3 Summarizing State Insecurity in the Canadian Arctic ...... 151
4.4 Conclusion ...... 153
Chapter 5 ...... 156
5 Non-Dominance and Securitization in the Canadian Arctic ...... 156
5.1 Non-Dominance in the Canadian Arctic ...... 157 v
5.2 Securitization Non-Dominance: Silenced Insecurity ...... 161
5.2.1 Marginalized Voices ...... 162
5.2.2 Boundaries and Definitions ...... 168
5.2.3 Foundational Issues ...... 173
5.3 Subsumed Insecurity ...... 176
5.4 Conclusion ...... 184
Chapter 6 ...... 187
6 Understanding In/Security in Northern Norway ...... 187
6.1 Scandinavian Colonialism ...... 188
6.1.1 Stuck in the Middle: Sámi and the Modern State ...... 189
6.2 Changing In/Security in the Norwegian High North ...... 197
6.2.1 A Post-Cold War Region ...... 201
6.2.2 A New High North Initiative ...... 208
6.3 Identifying Norway’s Arctic Security Priorities ...... 213
6.3.1 Fearing the Bear ...... 213
6.3.2 Northern Riches and the Welfare State ...... 218
6.4 Conclusion ...... 226
Chapter 7 ...... 228
7 Explaining In/Security in Norwegian Sápmi ...... 228
7.1 Sámi in Norway ...... 228
7.2 Sámi Understandings of In/Security ...... 235
7.3 Explaining Sámi Non-Securitization ...... 247
7.3.1 Ecological Difference ...... 247
7.3.2 Social Inclusion ...... 251
7.3.3 Geography ...... 255
7.4 Conclusion ...... 257 vi
Chapter 8 ...... 260
8 Conclusion ...... 260
8.1 Indigenous Understandings of Arctic In/Security ...... 260
8.2 State Understandings of Arctic In/Security ...... 263
8.3 Indigenous Securitization and Non-Securitization ...... 267
8.4 Indigenous Peoples and Securitization Non-Dominance ...... 269
8.5 Security, States, and Radical Environmental Change ...... 273
8.6 Critical Environmental Security in the Arctic ...... 281
8.7 Seeking Security in the Anthropocene ...... 289
Appendices ...... 292
vii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Political Map of the Circumpolar Arctic…………………………………………16
Figure 2: Map of Arctic Indigenous Peoples………………………………………………..43
Figure 3: CS Securitization Process………………………………………………………...64
Figure 4: Revised Securitization Process…………………………………………………...88
Figure 5: Map of the Canadian Arctic……………………………………………………...108
Figure 6: Map of Sápmi…………………………………………………………………….191
Figure 7: Map of Norway and surrounding areas…………………………………………..198
Figure 8: Revised Securitization Process…………………………………………………..271
viii
List of Appendices
Appendix 1: Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Securitizing Moves, 2001-2011………293
Appendix 2: Sámi Securitizing Moves, 2001-2011………………………………………...296
ix 1
Chapter 1 1 Climate, Change, and the Arctic
The circumpolar Arctic is undergoing unprecedented ecological, political, and social transformation, compounding already dramatic changes over the course of the 20th century. More than ever, events in the Arctic region are relevant far beyond its boundaries, and actors from around the world are increasingly interested and involved in the circumpolar area. In addition to the governments of Arctic states, neighbouring and distant countries, militaries, international organizations, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, civil society groups, Indigenous peoples, academics, journalists, and general publics have all noted the rapid changes in the region. Many of these actors have attempted to influence the direction of change in the Arctic, seeking to shape circumpolar affairs in ways that suit their interests, values, or worldviews. The Arctic has become a hot topic with high stakes, and how changes occur and are managed, indeed, the very vision for the Arctic’s future that is embraced by powerful actors, will have profound implications for states, peoples, and individuals. To those observers principally concerned with global climate change and growing demand for hydrocarbon energy, changes in the Arctic have implications for the entire world.
Anthropogenic, or human-caused, environmental change – particularly global climate change but also local or regional environmental degradation – is the most significant current driver of the interrelated changes affecting the Arctic, and occupy a central place in policy, research, and media attention. Among the many responses to environmental change has been a renewed interest in the meaning of in/security in the Arctic region.1 The confluence of increasingly evident climate change with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s-2000s led many states to re- examine their Arctic interests in light of the changing political and physical environment, generating a wave of new Arctic foreign and security policies by circumpolar states. However, other actors – including sub-national governments, Indigenous peoples, NGOs, scholars, and
1 I refer to ‘in/security’ because of the inherent duality of the concepts of security and insecurity. As discussed in Chapter 3, the construction of one object as ‘secure’ entails the construction of others as ‘insecure’, or beyond the boundaries of the security being sought. Thus, what is secure (Inside) is only comprehensible in relation to what is insecure (Outside). Referring to ‘in/security’ recognizes both aspects of this dynamic, acknowledging that security for some usually entails insecurity for others.
2 corporations – have also articulated conceptions of ‘Arctic security’ that both support and challenge the security interests identified by Arctic states. While there are similarities among the understandings of Arctic security articulated by circumpolar states, these are often paradoxical, and frequently diverge from or contradict the understandings of security articulated by non-state actors within those states. Overall, there is variation among the different representations of in/security in, to, and for the Arctic region, and its fundamental meaning remains contested.
One of the central differences among these understandings of Arctic security is how to understand the relevance of environmental change. All contemporary representations of Arctic security, including the policies of circumpolar states, acknowledge that climate change is occurring: it is the common backdrop against which re-evaluations of in/security in the Arctic are considered. However, climate change has been constructed very differently within the security discourses of states and non-state actors in the Arctic region. Despite widespread concern over the implications of climate change for the regional ecology and its human inhabitants, particularly Indigenous peoples and their traditional ways of life, Arctic states have not constructed climate change or its direct impacts as threats to their security. Instead, state understandings of Arctic security tend to emphasize two core national interests: traditional and unconventional military threats to their territorial sovereignty, and the extraction of renewable and non-renewable natural resources essential to their economies. Though climate change is the catalyst for these re-imaginings of Arctic security, circumpolar states have not considered the impacts of climate change as the principal hazards to be secured against. Rather, Arctic security is understood to relate to protection against second order phenomena enabled by climate change, or, paradoxically, as pursuit of economic activity that will directly contribute to climate change.
This dissertation investigates how contemporary understandings of Arctic in/security and environmental change have been constructed. It explores two related research questions linked to the process of constructing security threats, called securitization. Why, despite being understood as a threat to national and global security by other states, in other regional contexts, and by Arctic states in other contexts, has environmental change not been constituted as a security issue by states in the Arctic region itself? In particular, why has environmental change not been constructed as threatening when it is understood and articulated as such by many Arctic Indigenous peoples? The failure to securitize environmental change in the Arctic is the central puzzle of this dissertation, and is puzzling precisely because there would seem to be a felicitous
3 combination of factors for the issue to be successfully constructed as a security threat: environmental security claims employ the grammar and vocabulary of in/security; the actors making those claims are well-established, legitimate representatives of Arctic Indigenous peoples; and there is a significant material basis to the hazards held to be threatening.
Drawing on research from securitization theory, critical security studies, Indigenous politics, and the history and politics of the Arctic region, this project investigates how in/security has been constructed by circumpolar states and Indigenous political actors, and offers a revised account of securitization to explain why Indigenous understandings of in/security have not been incorporated within their national Arctic security policies. In sum, it argues that certain factors intervene in the securitization process to impede particular understandings of security from being adopted. I argue that: a) identities of securitizing actors, and b) the material and social context within which in/security claims occur exercise a powerful influence on the articulation of security claims and the likely success of those claims within a given set of politics. Specifically, the identities of Arctic Indigenous peoples as historically oppressed and currently marginalized structurally limit their ability to successfully ‘speak’ security to the state. Rather than succeed, Indigenous understandings of in/security are silenced and subsumed within discourses that do not threaten the preferred policies of circumpolar states. Indigeneity thus acts as a mechanism by which settler-colonial institutions that ultimately determine how Arctic in/security is constructed reject or ignore security claims made by Indigenous peoples.
Meanwhile, the impacts of environmental change are highly contextual, and are mediated by individual and community relations with the broader society. Thus, the mere fact of pan-Arctic climate change is insufficient to generate a conception of environmental change as existentially threatening, including for some Indigenous peoples. The role of Indigenous peoples as principal advocates linking Arctic insecurity with climate change is a key feature of why it has not been securitized within the policies of Arctic states, but the differing material experiences of environmental change also contribute to diverse views among Indigenous peoples over how threatening environmental change actually is. This dissertation thus consists of two distinct components: an empirical analysis of how Arctic in/security is understood by state and Indigenous actors, and a revised account of the process of securitization that better incorporates the roles of identity and materiality in explaining the success or failure of particular understandings of in/security.
4
The remainder of this chapter outlines the regional backdrop against which this project is situated, and explains its research design. First, it lays out the context of global climate change, and the specific environmental changes occurring in the Arctic. It discusses how these changes complicate the very definition of what the Arctic is, and how they pose widespread challenges to states and peoples in the region. The chapter then outlines the research design, case selection, and methodology of this dissertation, details its empirical and normative goals, and concludes with a brief summary of each of the subsequent chapters.
1.1 Changing Global Climate
Earth’s climate is changing as increasing concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG) such as methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide (CO2) leads to retention of solar energy and warming of the planet’s surface.2 Primarily caused by human activity since the Industrial Revolution such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and other changes in land use, climate change has warmed Earth’s average surface temperature by nearly one degree Celsius since 1880, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a total 2-3 degrees warming by the end of the 21st century.3 Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased by nearly 50 per cent from 280 parts per million (ppm) prior to the industrial period (circa 1750) to over 400 ppm in 2014, exceeding the estimated limit of 350 ppm required to limit global temperature rise to a nominally manageable increase of two degrees.4 With CO2 concentrations predicted to reach 490-1200 ppm by 2100 depending on the rate of global emissions increase, since at least the 1980s it has been widely understood that “humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate
2 IPCC, “Summary for Policymakers,” in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contributions of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 3 The most recent IPCC report states this warming to be caused by human activity with a confidence interval of greater than 95%, meaning that it is extremely likely the globalized burning of fossil fuels through industrial, commercial, and individual use that is causing the Earth to warm. IPCC 2013, 5-20. 4 The Copenhagen Accord agreed to at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in 2009 set a target to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. See UNFCCC, "Copenhagen Accord,” (United Nations, December 18, 2009). Accessed at http://www.unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf on May 5, 2014.
5 consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.”5 Current GHG concentrations will already drive climate change throughout this century, but “continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,”6 through decarbonization of the global economy or technological innovation.
Unfortunately, current estimates “indicate that recent [GHG] emissions and future emission trends imply higher 21st century emissions levels than previously projected. As a consequence, the likelihood of 4˚C warming being reached or exceeded this century has increased … In the absence of further mitigation action there is a 40 per cent chance of warming exceeding 4˚C by 2100 and a 10 per cent chance of it exceeding 5˚C in the same period.”7 Current GHG concentrations are higher that at any time in the last 800,000 years, with rates of combined natural and manmade annual emissions exceeding those of any period in the last 22,000 years.8 These conditions are well outside the range in which human civilization has developed, and will likely result in a global climate radically different than the one in which contemporary social, political, and demographic configurations of human life have emerged. The possibility of such significant increases in global temperature has caused concern over the prospect of ‘tipping points’ or threshold effects that might catalyze rapid, uncontrollable climate change with catastrophic consequences for ecological integrity and biological resilience around the globe.9 In particular, there is growing concern that positive feedbacks generated by the warming climate may significantly contribute to climate change, including, inter alia, the release of methane currently stored in Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost, the melting of polar ice reducing global
5 Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, Statement of the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security (Toronto, Government of Canada: 1988), 292. Accessed at http://www.greenparty.ca/releases/30.06.2008 on March 1, 2013. 6 IPCC 2013, 19. 7 World Bank, Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience. A Report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013), xv. 8 IPCC 2013, 11. 9 Timothy M. Lenton, “Early Warning of Climate Tipping Points,” Nature Climate Change 1, no. 4 (2011): 201- 209; Timothy M. Lenton, Hermann Held, Jim W. Hall, Wolfgang Lucht, Stefan Rahmstorf, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, “Tipping Elements in the Earth’s Climate System,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 6 (2008): 1786-1793.
6 reflectivity of solar radiation (albedo), or the collapse of the Greenland or Antarctic ice-sheets.10 Recent data also suggest that most models used to study global climate change are conservative in their estimates, and that, particularly for vulnerable ecosystems such as the Arctic, changes may be occurring faster and more acutely than previously predicted.11
While impacts vary significantly by region, global warming is already causing: species extinction, biodiversity loss, desertification, rising sea levels, coastal flooding, declining crop yields, reduced freshwater, increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and mass displacement of vulnerable people, particularly in the Global South.12 Due to their scope, climate impacts extend across the social, cultural, political, and economic sectors of human life, but disproportionately affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations, who are also least responsible for historical emissions of GHGs and least economically able to fund adaptation and mitigation efforts.13 Estimates of the total economic costs of climate change vary depending on a range of included factors and assumptions about both climate change and human adaptation. However, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report suggests that “incomplete estimates of global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2˚C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income … [and] losses are more likely than not to be greater, rather than smaller, than this range.”14 The estimates of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, commissioned for the British Government and released in 2006, are even higher: “The overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.”15 The Stern Review estimates the costs of
10 IPCC 2013, 16; Timothy M. Lenton, “Arctic Climate Tipping Points,” Ambio 41, no. 1 (2012): 10-22. 11 Chris Derksen and Ross Brown, “Spring snow cover extent reductions in the 2008-2012 period exceeding climate model projections,” Geophysical Research Letters 39, no. 19 (2012): 1-6; Glenn Scherer, “Climate Science Predictions Prove Too Conservative,” Scientific American (December 6, 2012). Accessed at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm ?id=climate-science-predictions-prove-too-conservative on March 1, 2013. 12 IPCC 2013; World Bank 2013. 13 World Bank 2013. 14 IPCC 2013, 19. 15 Nicholas Stern, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (London: HM Treasury, 2006), vi.
7 mitigating climate change to be relatively small at approximately 1% of global GDP per year,16 but the economic imbalance between mitigation versus continuing current levels of global GHG emissions has thus far failed to motivate significant global emissions reductions.
The effects of climate change are exacerbated by the fact that it represents only one aspect of a broader ecological crisis facing Earth and its inhabitants. Climate change, along with biodiversity loss and human interference in the nitrogen cycle, form three (out of a total seven) global ecological boundaries thought to have already been exceeded due to human activity, with two others, ocean acidification and interference in the phosphorus cycle, approaching their estimated safe thresholds.17 The cumulative effects of an industrialized civilization of over seven billion human beings have begun to strain the carrying capacity of the global biosphere. Anthropogenic climate change that began with “the emergence of wide-scale fossil-fuel use in the industrial revolution period … has become a worldwide transformation of rocks into air, a geological reversal of hundreds of millions of years of carbon sequestration from the atmosphere.”18 Together with other contemporary and recent-historical interactions between humanity and the biosphere, the result is the emergence of a new geological era, the Anthropocene, characterized by humanity’s ability to fundamentally affect the global ecological context that it relies upon for survival.19
Anthropogenic alteration of the biosphere has been a major subject of scientific inquiry since the 1970s, but only emerged as a leading, albeit divisive, political issue in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1972, the UN Conference on the Human Environment first drew global attention to planet- wide environmental problems, the same year that Limits to Growth examined the constraints to economic growth on a finite planet, catalyzing widespread concern over the sustainability of the
16 Stern 2006, vi. 17 Johan Rockström, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, Jonathan A. Foley, “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461, no. 7263 (2009): 472-475. 18 Simon Dalby, Security and Environmental Change (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 99. 19 Paul J. Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415, no. 23 (2002): 23.
8 human-environment relationship.20 In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development popularized the idea of ‘sustainable development’, one year before the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere issued its dire warning equating the risks of climate change to those of nuclear conflict. The much-heralded 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and subsequent signing of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), suggested recognition by global leaders of the need to seriously engage with the ecological challenges of the late 20th century.
Initially, climate change was the subject of significant political activity, even optimism, as the waning of superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union enabled greater international cooperation around what emerged as one of the foremost global issues of the post- Cold era. The signing of the UNFCCC, and later its additional Kyoto Protocol, were seen as major milestones on the road towards mitigating humanity’s warming of the biosphere. However, these and other multilateral and national efforts to mitigate GHG emissions have failed to curb the trend of humanity’s growing volume of total emissions. This failure has led to increased concern over the corresponding acceleration of the pace and severity of climate change impacts around the world. In particular, the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, released in 2001 and 2007, respectively, catalyzed widespread fear over the scope and scale of global climate change, as well as the broad inadequacy of existing efforts to affect significant emissions reductions.21 The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, released in 2014, reiterates the emergent severity of climate change, articulating the litany of worldwide environmental hazards attributed to anthropogenic interference, and underscoring the consequences of our collective lack of progress in effectively reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.22
1.2 The Changing Arctic
The effects of the changing climate are perhaps most visible in the circumpolar regions, where
20 Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (New York: New American Library, 1972). 21 IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 22 IPCC 2013.
9 warming temperatures are reshaping the Arctic’s ecology, and fundamentally affecting human, animal, and plant life across the region. As the most sensitive parts of the globe to climate variation, the polar regions – both the Arctic and Antarctica – act as barometers of the health of the global climate system; they are ‘canaries in the coalmine’ experiencing the fastest and most dramatic climate change-related impacts on the planet. As identified by numerous studies, notably the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and IPCC’s Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports, Arctic sea ice is melting rapidly, glaciers are receding, snow cover is reduced, and temperatures are increasing at approximately twice the average global rate.23 Seasonal changes on land have been dramatic, including warmer temperatures with more extreme winter-summer variation, melting permafrost, changing terrestrial water systems, increased lake temperatures, stress on plant and animal populations, invasive species, and other impacts on flora and fauna.24
However, particularly significant effects are occurring in marine systems, since the Arctic region is a cryosphere largely composed of frozen water. Sea ice volume is estimated to have decreased by between 9-13% per decade between 1979-2012,25 reaching an historic low of 35% less than the 1979-2000 average in the summer of 2011.26 In total, “over the past three decades, Arctic summer sea ice retreat was unprecedented and sea surface temperatures were anomalously high in at least the last 1,450 years.”27 Recent studies observe that sea ice is melting even faster than predicted by recent warming models, resulting in record low summer ice levels years before they
23 IPCC 2013, 9; IPCC 2007; J.N. Larsen, O.A. Anisimov, A. Constable, A.B. Hollowed, N. Maynard, P. Prestrud, T.D. Prowse, and J.M.R. Stone. “Polar Regions,” in V.R. Barros, C.B. Field, D.J. Dokken, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White, eds, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014). 24 ACIA, Impacts of a Warming Climate: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004); IPCC 2007; IPCC 2014. 25 IPCC 2013, 9. 26 Wynne Parry, “Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low, According to One Measure,” LiveScience (September 12, 2011). Accessed at http://www.livescience.com/16023-arctic-sea-ice-record.html on May 2, 2014. 27 IPCC 2013, 9.
10 were predicted to occur.28 The Arctic, a region characterized by its frigid climate and the frozen ocean at its core, is predicted to be free of summer sea ice in as few as 30 years,29 marking a radical and irreversible alteration to the most definitive feature of the northern polar region.
The scope and scale of this transformation is such that it is altering the ecological basis upon which all human activity in the Arctic has been based. Climate change is affecting, and undermining, established ways of living in one of the harshest and most challenging survival environments in the world.30 Researchers have identified up to eleven direct and indirect climate related impacts on Arctic human health, including: new physical hazards related to the changing landscape, increased rates of accidents and fatalities due to unpredictable ice and weather patterns, new vectors for communicable disease, changes to food- and water-borne pathogens, increased exposure to environmental contaminants, and ozone depletion causing increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation.31 Concerns over traditional food sources, particularly large mammals, fish stocks, and plant life, have spread as the quality and availability of ‘country foods’ have become increasingly eroded.32 This, in turn, exposes human populations to greater vulnerability to changes in local economies towards market-based waged systems, as people and communities become increasingly unable to support themselves using traditional subsistence methods.33 It also affects Indigenous cultures that are closely linked to the natural environment, including animals whose hunting and consumption is central to cultural and spiritual practices.34
28 IPCC 2014, 3; Institute of Environmental Physics, “Arctic sea ice extent small as never before,” (September 8, 2011). Accessed at http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/seaice/amsr/; National Snow and Ice Data Center, “Arctic sea ice at minimum extent,” (September 15, 2011). Accessed at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2011/091511.html. 29 M. Wang and J.E. Overland, “A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years?” Geophysical Research Letters 36, no. 7 (2009): 1-5. 30 AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004). 31 Jacinthe Séguin, ed, Human Health in a Changing Climate: A Canadian Assessment of Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity (Ottawa: Health Canada, 2008), 324-327; Carl M. Hild and Vigdis Stordahl, “Human Health and Well-being,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 155-168. 32 Hild and Stordahl 2004; Stephanie Meakin and Tiina Kurvits, Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on Food Security in the Canadian Arctic (Ottawa: GRID-Arendal, 2009). 33 Gérard Duhaime, “Economic Systems,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 69-84; Nils Aarsæther, Larissa Riabova, and Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, “Community Viability,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 139-154. 34 Yvon Csonka and Peter Schweitzer, “Societies and Cultures: Change and Persistence,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 45-68.
11
The warming environment is also undermining the physical integrity of communities and infrastructure in vulnerable areas across the Arctic. Due partly to recent studies of the West Antarctic ice sheet, estimated rates of glacier melt are expected to raise global sea levels by as much as 10 feet over the next few centuries,35 and “in some cases, communities and industrial facilities in coastal zones are already threatened or being forced to relocate.”36 Impacts are already apparent in damage to critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, airstrips, pipelines, homes, and sewage systems as a result of melting permafrost and the destabilization of the ground upon which many Arctic communities are built. Some communities have been forced to relocate as coastal erosion renders their homes uninhabitable; the US Army Corps of Engineers identifies as many as 178 Alaskan villages as threatened,37 as are coastal communities in Canada, Greenland, and Russia.38 According to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment: “The sum of these factors threatens to overwhelm the adaptive capacity of some Arctic populations and ecosystems. The increasingly rapid rate of recent climate change poses new challenges to the resilience of Arctic life.”39 This assessment of the severity of climate-related challenges affecting the Arctic is confirmed by the more recent findings of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which notes that “the rapid rate at which climate is changing in the Polar Regions will impact natural and social systems and may exceed the rate at which some of their components can successfully adapt.”40 Overall, it is clear that environmental changes have profound implications for medium and long-term human wellbeing in the Arctic, and require significant efforts to facilitate adaptation and mitigation of their worst impacts.
These major ecological changes are occurring roughly concurrent with major political and social
35 Justin Gillis and Kenneth Chang, “Scientists warn of rising oceans from polar melt,” The New York Times (May 12, 2014). Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/earth/collapse-of-parts-of-west-antarctica-ice- sheet-has-begun-scientists-say.html?_r=0 on May 15, 2014. 36 Christine K. Durbak and Claudia M. Strauss, “Securing a Healthier World,” in Felix Dodds and Tim Pippard, eds, Human and Environmental Security: An Agenda for Change (London: Earthscan, 2005), 134. 37 EPA, “Coastal Alaska Native Villages Plan for Relocation,” Adaptation Examples in Alaska. Accessed at http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/alaska-adaptation.html on May 6, 2014. 38 ACIA 2004, 81; K.R. Barnhart, I. Overeem, and R.S. Anderson, “The effect of changing sea ice on the physical vulnerability of Arctic coasts,” The Cryosphere 8 (2014): 1777-1779. 39 ACIA 2004, 5. 40 IPCC 2014, 3.
12 changes across the region, as well. The post-Cold War period has witnessed the transformation of the Arctic from a zone of conflict to one of cooperation; the creation of new regional governance structures, such as the Arctic Council, to manage changing regional relations; growing interest by non-regional state and non-state actors; and global economic phenomena, such as growing resource scarcity and concerns over ‘peak oil’ that have focused significant attention on the Arctic’s undeveloped hydrocarbon resources, estimated at 13% of global oil and 30% of global gas reserves.41 But dramatic as it is, environmental change is occurring against a familiar Arctic backdrop: sparse population density and few urban centres; limited infrastructure; ongoing and unresolved questions of Indigenous peoples’ claims to rights, land, and self- determination; the relative underdevelopment of regional governance arrangements to facilitate dispute resolution, interstate negotiation, and multilateral policymaking; and persistent rivalry between Russia and its Arctic neighbours. The shift from a seasonally ice-bound to eventually ice-free region will fundamentally alter domestic and regional politics, opportunities for economic development, the salience of traditional indigenous knowledge based on changing ecological conditions, and the viability of subsistence ways of life. These interrelated changes are generating a basic transformation of every aspect of social, political, and economic life in the circumpolar Arctic.
1.3 Defining the Arctic
Taken together, regional ecological changes affect the definition of ‘the Arctic’ itself, which has typically been understood on the basis of its distinct ecosystem. There is no authoritative definition of the Arctic region, but most characterize the Arctic based on its unique ecological features, such as high latitude, extreme winter temperatures, specific biota, and encirclement of the Arctic Ocean.42 Definitions of the Arctic have also become more attentive to the human and
41 Donald L. Gautier, Kenneth J. Bird, Ronald R. Charpentier, Arthur Grantz, David W. Houseknecht, Timothy R. Klett, Thomas E. Moore, Janet K. Pitman, Christopher J. Schenk, John H. Schuenemeyer, Kai Sørensen, Marilyn E. Tennyson, Zenon C. Valin, Craig J. Wandrey, “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,” Science 324. no. 5931 (2009): 1175-1179. 42 The ACIA (2004, 4) defines the Arctic in ecological terms, while the AHDR (Young and Einarsson, 17-18) relies on a hybrid definition incorporating ecological, geographical, and socio-political dimensions. Typical ecological
13 political factors that constitute the region as a distinct arena of global politics. But the Arctic as an ecological region is, in many ways, easier to define than the Arctic as a socio-political region, which is why the region-ness of the Arctic is complicated by the changing climate.43 As the Arctic Human Development Report notes:
There is nothing intuitively obvious about the idea of treating the Arctic as a distinct region … [since it] consists largely of segments of nation states whose political centers of gravity lie, for the most part, far to the south … It is possible to resort to the use of biophysical criteria to determine the extent of the Arctic as a region … [but] this approach has little to recommend it in cultural, economic, or political terms, [and] it also fails to produce a clear cut result … [Many] writers have questioned the appropriateness of treating the Arctic as a region at all.44
Nonetheless, the Arctic is now generally viewed as a distinct and coherent region defined by its ecological distinctiveness and the complex governance regime that has emerged to manage its interstate relations.45 As many scholars have discussed, shifts in global politics and increasing cooperation among circumpolar states caused the gradual emergence of an Arctic region from the 1970s onwards.46 No longer a liminal buffer-zone separating distinct regions in North America, Northern Europe, and Soviet Eurasia, in geopolitical terms the Arctic has rapidly progressed “from Cold War theatre to mosaic of cooperation.”47 Importantly, this cooperation has been premised from the outset on conserving and protecting the fragile Arctic environment,
definitions of the Arctic include the area above the latitude of 66˚30 N, circumscribed by the Arctic Circle; the 10˚C July isotherm, i.e. the area where the average July temperature does not exceed 10˚C; and the northernmost tree line. 43 For instance, the political grouping of the ‘Arctic 5’ is comprised of states that are littoral to the Arctic Ocean, resulting in the exclusion of three states typically considered to belong to the Arctic but lacking immediate proximity to the Arctic Ocean. 44 Oran R. Young and Níels Einarsson, “Introduction,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 17-18. 45 Andrew Chater and Wilfrid Greaves, “Security Governance in the Arctic,” in Jim Sperling, ed, Handbook on Governance and Security (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2014). 46 Kristian Åtland, “Mikhail Gorbachev, the Murmansk Initiative, and the Desecuritization of Interstate Relations in the Arctic,” Cooperation and Conflict 43, no. 3 (2008): 289-311; Carina Keskitalo, “International Region-building: Development of the Arctic as an International Region,” Cooperation and Conflict 42 no. 2 (2007): 187-205; Oran Young, “Governing the Arctic: from Cold War Theater to Mosaic of Cooperation,” Global Governance 11, no. 1 (2005): 9-15; Oran Young, “Whither the Arctic? Conflict or Cooperation in the Circumpolar North,” Polar Record 45, no. 232 (2009): 73-82. 47 Young 2005, 9.
14 and ecological factors have remained key to interstate relations and the constitution of the Arctic as a political region. The famed speech by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Murmansk in 1987, which ushered in a new era of Arctic cooperation and signified the beginning of the end of the Cold War, emphasized Arctic environmental issues as key to East-West cooperation.48 Thus, some see Arctic security relations as forming a “regional environmental security complex” centred on the ecological holism and interdependence that characterizes the circumpolar region.49
As depicted in Figure 1, today, the Arctic is generally understood to comprise territories and sub- national regions within eight sovereign states (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the USA), and contain roughly 4 million inhabitants (half of them Russian) spread across an approximately 40 million km2 area surrounding the Arctic Ocean, accounting for about 8 percent of the Earth’s surface.50 However, with the exception of Iceland, the Arctic consists only of territories in the northern margins of each of these countries, reflecting the historical reality that “the Arctic is a region of peripheries … Matters of policy relating to the Arctic have traditionally involved interactions between northern peripheries and the metropoles of states located far to the south.”51 Partly for this reason, circumpolar politics are notable for the high level of political engagement of Arctic Indigenous peoples.52 Though varying significantly based on national context, overall they are perhaps the most politically empowered Indigenous peoples in the world.53 Some Arctic Indigenous peoples have achieved significant degrees of autonomous self-government or devolved sub-national governments, as in Greenland and for First Nations and Inuit in the Canadian territories of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and
48 Åtland 2008. 49 Heather Exner-Pirot, “What is the Arctic a Case of? The Arctic as a Regional Environmental Security Complex and the Implications for Policy,” The Polar Journal 3, no. 1 (2013): 120–35; Chater and Greaves 2014. 50 Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report (Oslo: AMAP, 1997). 51 Young 2005, 9-10. 52 Iceland is the exception as the only circumpolar state located entirely north of 60 degrees latitude and the only one without an Indigenous population. 53 Timo Koivurova and Leena Heinämäki, “The Participation of Indigenous Peoples in International Norm-Making in the Arctic,” Polar Record 42, no. 221 (2006): 101-109; Monica Tennberg, “Indigenous Peoples as International Political Actors: A Summary,” Polar Record 46, no. 238 (2010): 264-270.
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Nunavut.54 Others are represented by non-state or quasi-official bodies such as the Alaska Native Regional Corporations or the three Sámi Parliaments in Fennoscandia.55 Indigenous peoples have achieved a particularly high degree of formal political involvement in the Arctic Council, the premier forum for regional interstate cooperation, where six Permanent Participants represent Indigenous peoples alongside the states that govern them. The Permanent Participants “sit at the same table with the Arctic states and may table proposals for decision. Even though final decisions [of the Arctic Council] are made by the Arctic states in consensus, the permanent participants must … be fully consulted, which is close to a de facto power of veto should they all reject a particular proposal.”56 Some, notably Inuit in Greenland and Canada, even engage in political practices and assert a range of legal rights usually reserved for sovereign states.57 Thus, to a significant extent, the Arctic as a political region is also defined by the inclusion of its Indigenous peoples.
In terms of its region-ness, it is therefore reasonable to suggest the Arctic consists of three distinct but inter-related features: its eight sovereign states, the presence and political agency of its Indigenous peoples, and the unique ecological context that links them together. The emergence of a distinct post-Cold War polar region is noteworthy because it signifies a redrawing of the Arctic imaginary, as well as the geopolitical implications of new opportunities for political agency to state and non-state actors from across, and beyond, the circumpolar region. But as the Arctic transforms due to the warming climate, the ecology that has underpinned human activities in the region, and formed the basis for regional cooperation, is eroding. As climate change has become increasingly visible around the circumpole, Arctic
54 Natalia Loukacheva, Arctic Promise: Legal and Political Autonomy of Greenland and Nunavut (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 55 Finland, Norway, and Sweden each have a separate Sámi Parliament representing their respective Indigenous populations. There is also a Sámi population on the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia who have observer representation at the transnational Sámi Parliamentary Conference, but no formal political structure within Russia. 56 Koivurova and Heinämäki 2006, 104. 57 Frances Abele and Thierry Rodon, “Inuit Diplomacy in the Global ERA: The Strengths of Multilateral Internationalism,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 13, no. 3 (2007): 45-63; Inuit Circumpolar Council, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic (ICC, 2009); Jessica Shadian, “From States to Polities: Reconceptualizing Sovereignty through Inuit Governance,” European Journal of International Relations 16, no. 3 (2010): 485-510; Jessica Shadian, The Politics of Arctic Sovereignty: Oil, Ice, and Inuit Governance (New York: Routledge, 2014); Gary N. Wilson, “Inuit Diplomacy in the Circumpolar North” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 13, no. 3 (2007): 65-80.
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Figure 1: Political Map of the Circumpolar Arctic
Arctic administrative areas ) y r o it compiled by rr Te Winfried K. Dallmann, ( Norwegian Polar Institute ka at ch m Ka Koryakia (former Aut. Okr.) Magadan Chukotka (Oblast) Alaska (Aut. Okrug) (U.S.A.) Yukon Territory
Sakha (Yakutia)
N
Northwest (Republic) A
Terri- O
D tories
I
A T
N A
A R Evenkia (former Aut. Okrug)
C Taimyr E
Nunavut (Dolgano-Nenets)
(former D
Aut. Okrug) Krasnoyarsk (Territory)
E
F
Frans Josef
Land
(R.F.) N Yamalo-Nenets (Aut. Okr.) A
I
Nunavik o 80 Novaya S Svalbard Tyumen (Oblast) Zemlya Nenets (Norway) (R.F.) Khanty-Mansi S Greenland (Aut. Okr.) (Denmark) (Aut. Okrug) U Komi (Republic) R Finnmark Murmansk Troms (Oblast) o 70 Lappi Arkhangelsk Norr- (Oblast) botten Karelia Nordland Oulu (Rep.) Väster- ICELAND botten FINLAND Faroe Islands Y S W (Denmark) A
W E D R o E O N 60 N
governments have acknowledged the magnitude of its impacts, proposed policies to address them, and claimed to recognize the significant challenges already unfolding or predicted to arise. As the subsequent chapters will discuss, many of these challenges have been articulated as security issues, though climate change itself has not been constructed as such by circumpolar states. The widely employed link between the changing environment and in/security speaks directly to academic debates over the merits and implications of ‘securitizing’ the environment, i.e. treating environmental factors as relevant to state and international security. These debates have yet to be resolved, but have developed in important ways in light of the increasing severity of climate change and its impacts, as discussed in Chapter 3.
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1.4 Changing Arctic Security
There is little question that understandings of in/security in the Arctic have changed profoundly over the past several decades. This change has been driven by the political developments of the post-Cold War period, and the growing accessibility of the Arctic as a result of environmental change. During the Cold War, the Arctic suffered from a dichotomy whereby its over- militarization as a buffer between competing superpowers resulted in an under-politicization from which it has still only partially emerged.58 The geopolitical conditions that transformed the Arctic “first into a military flank, then a military front or even a ‘military theatre’” restricted the development of effective political institutions.59 The end of the Cold War thus altered the geopolitical context that had kept the Arctic frozen in a state of superpower competition, stifling opportunities for regional development and necessitating the deployment of substantial military resources to the region. This political shift has interacted with the changing environment to affect the security of Arctic states in at least three ways: it has catalyzed regional cooperation; it has made the Arctic more accessible to state and commercial actors, raising the stakes for outstanding boundary disputes and resource development; and it has contributed to the emergence of various unconventional security issues.
Cooperation on environmental issues catalyzed a major improvement in Arctic security towards the end of the Cold War, as the impending collapse of the Soviet Union opened space to normalize inter-state relations. Gorbachev’s 1987 Murmansk speech called for the Arctic to become a “zone of peace” characterized by a nuclear weapons-free zone in Northern Europe, negotiations on restricting military activity and scaling down conventional armaments in the region, and implementation of confidence-building measures.60 Environmental issues were the locus of these efforts as Soviet/Russian officials engaged with their Western counterparts on a range of initiatives, resulting in greater scientific and environmental cooperation and establishment of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy,
58 Keskitalo 2007, 194 59 AHDR 2004, 218 60 Åtland 2008, 294.
18 and eventually the Arctic Council.61 The Murmansk speech set in motion the new institutional structure for the post-Cold War Arctic in which states and Indigenous Peoples are permanently represented, and commitment to a cooperative and rule-governed regional order. From the perspective of conventional inter-state security, the Arctic of the 1990s and early 2000s was far more secure than it had been during the preceding decades.
However, in recent years the Arctic has undergone a moderate remilitarization and relative increase in inter-state tension. Arctic states have increased military spending and activities, and some have employed bellicose rhetoric while asserting their regional interests.62 While the United States never really decreased its Arctic military presence, militarized rhetoric and activities have increased in Canada,63 Norway,64 and Russia.65 Circumpolar states have reinvested in Arctic military capabilities and infrastructure; undertaken sovereignty assertion patrols and more frequent military exercises; renewed activities such as long range bomber patrols and ‘buzzing’ neighbours’ airspace; reacted and over-reacted to each other’s military activities; and dismissed claims of non-Arctic states like China and South Korea to a legitimate role in the region, despite the latters’ investments in Arctic research and ice-breaking capabilities.66 Growth in civilian activity, primarily related to tourism and destinational
61 Johan Eriksson, “Security in the Barents Region: Interpretations and Implications of the Norwegian Barents Initiative,” Cooperation and Conflict 30, no. 3 (1995): 259-286; Geir Hønneland, “East-West Collaboration in the European North,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (2010): 837-850. 62 Rob Huebert, Heather Exner-Pirot, Adam Lajeunesse and Jay Gulledge, Climate Change and International Security: The Arctic as a Bellwether (Arlington: Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 2012). 63 Rob Huebert, “Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security in a Transforming World,” Foreign Policy for Canada’s Tomorrow, No. 4 (Toronto: Canadian International Council, 2009); Rob Huebert, The Newly Emerging Arctic Security Environment (Calgary: Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, 2010); P. Whitney Lackenbauer, “Mirror Images? Canada, Russia, and the Circumpolar World,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (2010): 879-897; Kristofer Bergh, “The Arctic Policies of Canada and the United States: Domestic Motives and International Context,” SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, no. 2012/1 (2012): 1-19. 64 Kristian Åtland and Torbjørn Pedersen, “The Svalbard Archipelago in Russian Security Policy: Overcoming the Legacy of Fear – or Reproducing It?” European Security 17, no. 2-3 (2008): 227-251; Øystein Jensen and Svein Vigeland Rottem, “The Politics of Security and International Law in Norway’s Arctic Waters,” Polar Record 46, no. 236 (2010): 75–83. 65 Caitlyn L. Antrim, “The Next Geographical Pivot: The Russian Arctic in the 21st Century,” Naval War College Review 63, no. 3 (2010): 15–37; Katarzyna Zysk, “Russia’s Arctic Security Strategy: Ambitions and Constraints,” Joint Forces Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2010): 103–10; Kristian Åtland, “Russia’s Armed Forces and the Arctic: All Quiet on the Northern Front?” Contemporary Security Policy 32, no. 2 (2011): 267-285. 66 Huebert et al. 2012
19 shipping, also requires military assets be stationed regionally to provide search and rescue capabilities in case of accidents. While some military activities have been cooperative, such as joint exercises between multiple Arctic states and several meetings of all Arctic military chiefs, it is unclear how regional relations will be affected by new tensions related to non-Arctic phenomena, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea in spring 2014 and support for armed separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, and subsequent Western sanctions against Russian officials. But pan-Arctic cooperation continues, and though some scholars have expressed concern over the prospect of regional conflict,67 most reject the likelihood of armed violence in the region.68
This increased militarism has been catalyzed by environmental change, particularly the increasing navigability and accessibility of historically ice-covered waters. When the Arctic Ocean was frozen for most of the year, states had little incentive to quarrel over regional disagreements. Disputed Arctic boundaries had little effect on core national interests, and states were unwilling to risk destabilizing the global strategic balance or their diplomatic relations over trivial Arctic issues. The inaccessibility of most offshore Arctic resources made them geopolitically insignificant. As sea ice has receded, however, states have paid greater attention to the delimitation of their Arctic maritime boundaries and expressed interest in settling outstanding disputes. This has coincided with the need to submit claims to their extended continental shelves within ten years of ratifying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).69 While Norway and Russia negotiated their boundary in the Barents Sea in 2010, maritime disputes remain between Canada and Greenland (Denmark) and Canada and the United States, and there is geographic overlap between the Canadian, Danish, and Russian continental shelf submissions under UNCLOS to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). Although generally expected to be resolved through negotiation, cooperation in determining their extended continental shelves might be one area strained by the recent
67 Huebert 2009, 2010. 68 Young 2009; Kathrin Keil, “The Arctic: A New Region of Conflict? The Case of Oil and Gas,” Cooperation and Conflict 49, no. 2 (2014): 162-190. 69 Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon, “Canada and Arctic Politics: The Continental Shelf Extension,” Ocean Development and International Law 39, no. 4 (2008): 343-359; Klaus Dodds, “Flag Planting and Finger Pointing: The Law of the Sea, the Arctic and the Political Geographies of the Extended Continental Shelf,” Political Geography 29, no. 2 (2010): 63-73.
20 deterioration in Western-Russian relations, and, given the lengthy and non-binding nature of CLCS determinations, their outcome is uncertain.
In addition to the symbolic value and national attachment to certain Arctic geographies, notably the North Pole, what lies behind states’ interests in asserting and expanding their Arctic sovereignty is desire for the greatest possible future economic benefits from Arctic resources.70 At stake are shipping lanes, fisheries, and hydrocarbons, the latter estimated to be 90 billion barrels of oil (13% of undiscovered global resources) and 46 trillion cubic metres of natural gas (30% of undiscovered global resources).71 Major conflicts are unlikely given that doubt remains over the viability of developing these resources, and because the majority are believed to lie in undisputed sovereign territory.72 But the link between sovereignty assertion and energy resources is clear: “Issues of Arctic energy and development and Arctic sovereignty are linked … When no one was talking about actually developing Arctic resources, the many sovereignty issues could be and were ignored.”73 In practice, many continue to be ignored, though the stakes involved in the symbolic politics of Arctic territory have grown as resource extraction has become a greater possibility. Though all Arctic states continue to emphasize the absence of conventional military threats in the region and reaffirm their commitments to peaceful resolution of Arctic disputes, many have also constructed Arctic resources as central to their national economic security interests.74 Thus, while there is little evidence the warming environment will directly result in interstate violence, the opening of the Arctic has led to a renewed emphasis on military activity, and the prospect of resource wealth has raised the stakes for states asserting and defending their Arctic sovereignty claims.
70 Jeffrey Mazo, “Who Owns the North Pole?” Survival 56, no. 1 (2014): 61-70. 71 Gautier et al. 2009. 72 Keil 2014. 73 Benoit Beauchamp and Rob Huebert, “Canada’s Sovereignty Linked to Energy Resources in the Arctic,” Arctic 61, no. 3 (2008): 342. 74 Leif C. Jensen and Pål Wilter Skedsmo, “Approaching the North: Norwegian and Russian Foreign Policy Discourses on the European Arctic,” Polar Research 29, no. 3 (2010): 439-450; Leif C. Jensen, “Seduced and Surrounded by Security: A Post-Structuralist Take on Norwegian High North Securitizing Discourses,” Cooperation and Conflict 48, no. 1 (2012): 80-99.
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Finally, environmental change has led to the emergence of unconventional security issues. Though they have yet to actually materialize, prospective risks such as illegal shipping, smuggling, irregular migration, and even terrorism, in increasingly accessible Arctic waters have attracted high-level concern and informed training scenarios for some armed forces.75 Many unconventional security issues are also directly or indirectly related to the extraction of Arctic resources. New security governance practices are being established to respond to threats related to the growing volume of maritime traffic, such as new agreements on regional search and rescue and oil spill emergency response.76 In this respect, the changing environment causes new threats, such as increased risk of damage to vessels and oilrigs from sea ice and unpredictable weather, and new objects of security, including the Arctic ecosystem itself. Indeed, significant popular concern has emerged over the possibility of a major oil spill, shipwreck, or extraction related accident occurring in the region, with some Arctic communities employing legal or advocacy tactics to prevent resource projects from taking place nearby.77 However, several circumpolar states have also characterized activism or protests related to climate change and resource extraction as illegitimate, criminal, terrorist, or threatening to their national interests. Canada and Russia, in particular, have been accused of enacting new legislation to police domestic dissent and allow the state to pursue its goal of resource extraction.78 Thus, while the environment has long mediated understandings of security threats in the Arctic, both the direct impacts of environmental change and activities enabled as a result are being constituted as security issues in the Arctic. As discussed in greater detail in Chapters 4-7, current security issues identified by Arctic states highlight the relationship between environmental change, national defence, sovereign territoriality, resource extraction, and domestic political opposition.
75 Michael Byers, Who Owns the Arctic: Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 16-18; Meagan Fitzpatrick, “Arctic military exercise targets human-smuggling ‘ecotourists’,” CBC News (August 24, 2012). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/arctic-military-exercise-targets-human- smuggling-ecotourists-1.1166215 on July 6, 2014. 76 Chater and Greaves 2014 77 Gail Fondahl and Anna Sirina, “Oil Pipeline Development and Indigenous Rights in Eastern Siberia,” Indigenous Affairs 2, no. 3 (2006): 58-67; Berit Kristoffersen and Brigt Dale, “Post-Petroleum Security in Lofoten: How Identity Matters,” Arctic Review on Law and Politics 5, no. 2 (2014): 201-226. 78 Atle Staalesen, “Putin arms Arctic drillers,” Barents Observer (April 23, 2014). Accessed at http://barentsobserver.com/en/security/2014/04/putin-arms-arctic-drillers-23-04 on July 6, 2014; Tina Dafnos, “First Nations in the Crosshairs,” Canadian Dimension 49, no. 2 (2015). Accessed at https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/first-nations-in-the-crosshairs on August 19, 2015.
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1.5 Methodology, Case Selection and Evidence
This project takes as its starting point that understandings of in/security are socially constructed, essentially contested, and governed by relations of power within a given political community. On this basis, it seeks to explain how particular understandings of the relationship between environmental change and security have been incorporated into the foreign and security policies of circumpolar states. To do this, it employs the conceptual tools of securitization theory, which views understandings of security not as objective analyses of material conditions, but as efforts to securitize – raise to the discursive level of existential threat – issues relevant to the interests of particular sets of actors. Regardless of their accuracy or normativity, all representations of in/security constitute securitizing moves that attempt to designate particular phenomena as requiring immediate attention and superordinate status within relevant policy discussions, usually by identifying a threat to a certain referent object.
According to Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, whose ideas are discussed extensively in Chapter 3, “securitization studies aims to gain an increasingly precise understanding of who securitizes, on what issues (threats), for whom (referent objects), why, with what results, and, not least, under what conditions (i.e., what explains when securitization is successful).”79 Securitization, the process of constituting a political issue as a security issue, can thus be studied through asking five questions:80
1) What is the referent object of a securitizing move?
2) From what does the referent object require protection (i.e., what is the threat)?
3) What actions are proposed to protect against the specified threat?
4) What actions are actually taken?
5) What are the consequences of the actions taken for the referent object?
79 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 32. 80 These questions are inspired by the five-step defence policy model in Philippe Lagassé and Paul Robinson, Reviving Realism in the Canadian Defence Debate (Kingston: Centre for International Relations, 2008), 58.
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Such questions of referents, threats, policies, and consequences have been the typical lines of inquiry of securitization analyses. But the ubiquity of ‘security’ in various political and policy discourses inoculates many analysts to the properties of security that make it a signifier of socio- political power and driver of government action. Securitization theory has increasingly been pressed to incorporate other questions that more effectively address how the identities of actors at different points in the securitization process co-constitute particular constructions of in/security. Such questions include: What is the relationship between the actor making a security claim and the audience adjudicating it? Why are particular referent objects secured over others? Why are particular policy-responses taken over others? Whose conception of in/security do such policies reflect, and whose conceptions of in/security are omitted? Whose interests are securitized is particularly important when studying the security policies of democratic societies, where security is considered a public good and the political system is expected to respond to the demands of citizens. The question of whose understanding of security informs state policy is a crucial indicator of broader societal relations of power, authority, and political inclusion, and is deeply implicated in constituting the conditions of in/security for specific groups of people.
This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of how security and environmental change are understood in government policies, and by Indigenous peoples, in two circumpolar states: Canada and Norway. For each case, official understandings of Arctic security are compared and contrasted with those of sub-national and non-state actors representing Inuit and Sámi peoples, respectively. It explores historical trends and some more recent developments, but its emphasis is on contemporary understandings during the period 2001-2011, which encompasses several important milestones in the production of knowledge around climate change, including the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and the Arctic Human Development Report. It also includes the period during which all circumpolar states released new Arctic security policies, and in which a number of flashpoint events related to the Arctic ecosystem, regional governance, and interstate relations catalyzed varying degrees of public and policymaking concern over issues pertaining to Arctic security.
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1.5.1 Case Selection
As part of a holistic ecological region, all Arctic states are experiencing similar forms of environmental change that is generating or reinvigorating national debates over Arctic security. Theoretically, therefore, any Arctic state could be a subject of this analysis. In practice, however, there are a number of factors that direct this research to focus principally on Canada and Norway. First, Canada and Norway are especially suitable comparators: both are middle- power Arctic states, with neither having their foreign and security policies or regional interests filtered through a global role or history of Great Power status in the same way as, for instance, the United States or Russia. Similar political, social, and economic features – including strong liberal democratic political systems; peripheral Arctic geographies but strong Northern identities; sizeable Indigenous minorities and devolved forms of Indigenous governance; significant but limited military capabilities; and mixed primary-tertiary national economies – make Canada and Norway appropriate for in-depth case studies. Both are also members of NATO, offering an important control for possible variation in terms of each state’s need to defend itself against external threats. Finally, prominent inclusion of human security perspectives in their post-Cold War foreign policies make these two cases the most-likely examples for the success of securitizing moves that identify environmental threats to human security in the Arctic.81
The other three coastal states – Greenland/Denmark, Russia, and the United States – are more idiosyncratic, and while instructive of certain trends in Arctic security are more difficult to compare with their circumpolar neighbours. Denmark is only an Arctic state by virtue of its suzerainty over Greenland, which is self-governing and increasingly autonomous in domestic affairs, though foreign policy remains a Danish responsibility. The process of constructing Greenland’s security interests is thus subject to different political forces than for Arctic territories less independent and subject to more centralized political control from their non-Arctic national capitals. Russia is the largest and most populous circumpolar state, but is also historically, culturally, and geopolitically distinct from its Arctic neighbours. Russian security interests in the region are shaped by its antagonistic history with the West during the Cold War, and by enduring political rivalries with the United States and some European states. Russia is
81 Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 121.
25 also the only Arctic state not to be fully democratic, meaning that its internal political processes would not be expected to be as open or responsive to non-state securitizing moves. Indeed, as a quasi-authoritarian polity, there are strong reasons to expect securitization to operate quite differently in Russia than in the Arctic democracies.82
The United States is also an outlier, as its role as a declining hegemon means that Arctic issues are filtered through the lens of its global security interests. For this reason, the United States is not a signatory of UNCLOS, the legal regime governing the Arctic region, which places it outside of the framework through which many Arctic issues are adjudicated. The United States is also only an Arctic state by virtue of Alaska, which was the most recent state to join the Union and is, with Hawaii, the most peripheral to the American heartland. The United States thus lacks a strong Arctic identity, which shapes its attitudes and interactions towards the region. The three remaining Arctic states – Finland, Iceland, and Sweden – are excluded primarily because they are not littoral to the Arctic Ocean, making them largely irrelevant to the central object of Arctic security concern, namely the new challenges and opportunities afforded by climate change and the melting sea ice.83 Iceland also lacks an Indigenous minority population, making it inapplicable to significant portions of this project.
1.5.2 Evidence of (Attempted) Securitization
Following on Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, “securitization can be studied directly; it does not need indicators. The way to study securitization is to study discourse and political constellations.”84 Data on different understandings of Arctic in/security were collected through various methods, including textual and documentary analysis, primary interviews, and
82 Juha A. Vuori, “Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization: Applying the Theory of Securitization to the Study of Non-Democratic Political Orders,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 1 (2008): 65-99. 83 Iceland is arguably littoral to the Arctic Ocean, but was excluded from the grouping of the Arctic 5, those states which identified themselves as bordering the Arctic Ocean. However, as a small state of fewer than 300,000, a small economy, limited military capabilities, and no Indigenous population, Iceland is limited in its political agency in the Arctic region. 84 Buzan et al. 1998, 25.
26 participant observation.85 Official state understandings of Arctic in/security are derived from detailed examination of government documents, policy decisions, speeches, and relevant secondary sources. For Indigenous understandings of Arctic security, I undertook textual analysis of documents, pubic statements, and media that conceptualize Arctic in/security or articulate securitizing moves produced by organizations representing Arctic Indigenous peoples during the period 2001-2011. Such documents include policy statements, research papers, press releases, speeches, parliamentary and other public testimonies, films, and academic contributions by such groups as national Indigenous organizations, Indigenous governments, the Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council, and individual Indigenous leaders. All texts, documents, and media examined for this dissertation are available publicly and were produced or professionally translated into English, with the sole exception of certain Norwegian language online news media, which I translated using Google. Internal or confidential documents by these organizations were not available for this analysis. Appendices of texts making security claims on behalf of Indigenous peoples are included at the end of this dissertation.
Unsurprisingly, there were far more texts available in English for Indigenous peoples in Canada than in Norway. Therefore, to supplement the limited number of documents in English available for Sámi understandings of in/security, I conducted 12, in-person, semi-structured English language interviews with leaders and individuals representing prominent Sámi organizations, including: the Sámediggi (Sámi Parliament of Norway), the Sámi Reindeer Herders’ Association of Norway, and the Saami Council. Interviewees were determined using a combination of key informant and snowball selection methods.86 I also conducted participant observation over the course of five months as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Sámi Studies at the University of Tromsø from April-July 2014. During this time I observed and engaged with Sámi politicians, academics, activists, community members, and reindeer herders in northern Norway and elsewhere in Sápmi. I also participated in a seven-day excursion to five communities in Sápmi located in the Norwegian county of Norland and the Swedish county of Norrbotten. These occasions afforded me a variety of opportunities to observe activities and discussions pertaining to climate change, natural resource development, Sámi politics, and Norwegian state policy.
85 Participant observation was limited to the case of Sámi in Norway. 86 These 12 interviews represent a response rate of approximately 1:3.
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Findings from this fieldwork are discussed in Chapter 7. In May 2014, I also conducted a supplementary interview with Canadian Inuit leader Mary Simon by telephone. Transcripts and recordings of all interviews are stored with the author. The data from this textual analyses, for Inuit, and primary interviews, for Sámi, provide the core evidence for this project’s empirical goal of mapping official and Indigenous understandings of Arctic in/security, supported by appropriate secondary sources for comparative analysis of the two case studies.
The research findings were analyzed to identify securitizing moves pertaining to the Arctic made by state- and Indigenous actors, with the goal of providing a representative picture of how in/security is articulated in the circumpolar region. The focus is not on uncovering an underlying ‘true’ or ‘real’ conceptualization of in/security, but rather on examining how actors have depicted their in/security in an effort to mobilize state action. Securitizing moves are identified when they discursively construct issues in the Arctic region as security issues using the “general grammar of security … plus the particular dialects of the different sectors, such as talk[ing] identity in the societal sector, recognition and sovereignty in the political sector, [and] sustainability in the environmental sector.”87 While this exercise is necessarily interpretive, requiring judgments about what should be considered ‘security’-relevant, it is not arbitrary. Indicators of the attempts at securitization include, but are not limited to, use of terms such as ‘security’, ‘insecurity’, ‘threat’, ‘hazard’, ‘danger’, and ‘risk’ to articulate what is threatening, what is threatened, and a proposed defence-response. Less important than which specific words or terms are used is the meaning they convey. “Security is about survival … it is when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object,”88 denoting a situation of crisis, emergency, or fear that legitimates extraordinary action. It is when the survival of a referent object is depicted as threatened that in/security is invoked.
Since in/security is socially constructed, these data represent efforts to depict Arctic in/security in specific ways, and afford an opportunity to compare how depictions differ between the official securitizations of circumpolar governments and Arctic Indigenous peoples. Methodologically, it is important to consider securitizing moves that have both succeeded in becoming complete
87 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. 88 Buzan et al. 1998, 21.
28 securitizations, i.e. been accepted by the state, and those that have not. Solely considering successful securitizations risks conflating the security preferences of dominant societal actors with the security concerns of all groups within the state. Inattention to the limited ability of certain groups to engage the state on ‘their’ security issues omits consideration of groups with different security concerns co-habiting the same political space. It renders the security interests of non-dominant social groups invisible because the authoritative audience, perhaps hostile or oblivious to their concerns, may never accept their securitizing moves. Failed securitizations must also be examined in order to identify what types of securitizing moves, originating from which political actors, appear unlikely to succeed. When the security claims of particular actors fail to be accepted by the state we have an entry point to examine the power relations operating within a given social context that render only some security claims successful, while marginalizing others as insufficient for the elevation in political attention suggested by successful invocation of security language.
As discussed in Chapter 3, various analysts have examined the link between security and environment. Researchers have examined how security in the Arctic is being undermined by environmental hazards including climate change, pollution, ecological degradation, and resource depletion,89 but the changing environment is also the centrepiece of state efforts to reconceive their Arctic security interests in the post-Cold War era. Since 2006, all five coastal Arctic states have released new Arctic security policies in direct response to the changing regional climate.90 As this dissertation examines, though varied in their focus and emphasis, official state articulations of Arctic security nonetheless ascribe a shared significance to the changing circumpolar environment, particularly the opening of the Arctic Ocean to maritime traffic,
89 Commission on Arctic Climate Change, The Shared Future: A Report of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change (Washington DC: The Aspen Institute, 2011); Jayantha Dhanapala, John Harris, and Jennifer Simons, eds, Arctic Security in the 21st Century: Conference Report (Burnaby: School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, 2008); Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Dawn R. Bazely, Maria Goloviznina, and Andrew J. Tanentzap, eds, Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic (New York: Routledge, 2014); James Kraska, ed, Arctic Security in an Age of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Kenneth S. Yalowitz, James F. Collins, and Ross A. Virginia, The Arctic Climate Change and Security Policy Conference: Final Report and Findings (Hanover: Dartmouth College, 2008). 90 Canada, Canada’s Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2009); Denmark, Kingdom of Denmark Strategy for the Arctic 2011-2012 (Copenhagen: Government of Denmark, 2011); Norway, The Norwegian Government’s High North Strategy (Oslo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2006); Russia, National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2020 (Moscow: Russian Federation, 2009); White House, National Strategy for the Arctic Region (Washington DC: White House, 2013).
29 resource extraction, and potential rivals. Climate change, even more than the end of the Cold War, has forced a reassessment of how security is understood and pursued in the Arctic region.
But there are distinct parameters to how Arctic states understand the security implications of environmental change. Official state understandings of Arctic in/security are primarily concerned with some combination of: politico-legal sovereignty over Arctic land, maritime areas, and submarine resources; extraction of those resources; and defence against foreign military action and unconventional security issues. Within this framework, people, communities, and the broader Arctic ecology are not constructed as the primary referent objects of security policy. Thus, despite the centrality of climate change, circumpolar security policies remain focused on defence against potential geostrategic and sovereign territorial threats exacerbated by climate change, or the opportunities for profitable development of oil, natural gas, and other natural resources made possible by climate change. Given the magnitude of climate change in the Arctic, the construction of climate change as a security threat by other states, and the participation of Arctic states in the construction of climate change as a security issue in other contexts – all discussed in Chapter 3 – the failure to construct environmental change in itself as a threat remains a puzzling dimension to the social construction Arctic in/security. Given that favourable conditions for successful securitization appear to be present, the puzzle is why have understandings of in/security and environmental change, largely made by Arctic Indigenous peoples, generally failed within their domestic political contexts?
1.6 Outline of Dissertation
The remainder of this dissertation consists of seven chapters, of which the first two contribute the theoretical and conceptual building blocks on which this research is based. Chapter 2 discusses the concept of indigeneity and the constitutive relationship between political non-dominance and Indigenous peoples. It provides an overview of Arctic Indigenous peoples, focusing on their emergence as central political actors in the circumpolar region. It also discusses some of the challenges and implications of research on Indigenous peoples, and outlines three contributions of this project to an indigenist research program.
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Chapter 3 discusses in/security as a social construction, and outlines its changing nature over the modern period. It then outlines securitization theory, describing the original Copenhagen School account before discussing three interrelated critiques of their approach related to: normal politics and desecuritization; intersubjectivity and illocutionary speech acts; and the role of identity in the securitization process. The chapter proposes a revised account of securitization that better incorporates the role of identity and materiality for the making and acceptance of security claims. It argues that securitization must better incorporate identity and materiality in explaining the social construction of in/security. In this revised theory, the material context of securitizing actors within their broader society affects the motivation to make political claims as security claims to begin with. Subsequently, the identity of actors making security claims, and their relationship to the audience empowered to adjudicate them, structures the likely failure or success of their securitizing moves.
Recognizing that securitization is structured by the power relations between the actor making security claims and the audience adjudicating them, for Indigenous peoples this means that security claims must be ‘heard’ by an audience consisting of power-holders in the settler-colonial states they inhabit, which I argue results in Indigenous securitizing moves being either silenced or subsumed within colonial security discourses. The outcome is securitization non-dominance, the structural inability to have one’s securitizing moves accepted by an authoritative audience, which results in Indigenous peoples being unable to mobilize the sovereign to defend them against material hazards they consider threatening to their survival or wellbeing. Chapter 3 concludes by examining debates over linking environmental issues with in/security, and defends the security-relevance of anthropogenic environmental changes by arguing that securitization might be necessary to defend valued referent objects in the face of ineffectual political responses to objective material hazards.
Chapters 4-7 contain the empirical contributions of this dissertation, examining the construction of Arctic in/security within the official policies of the circumpolar states and the views of Arctic Indigenous peoples. Chapter 4 examines the historical and contemporary construction of in/security in the Canadian Arctic. It first outlines the views of Indigenous peoples – primarily Inuit but also perspectives of representatives of some Athabaskan peoples such as Gwich’in and Dene – then compares these with the official policies of the Canadian state. In contrast to the human security account articulated by Indigenous peoples that centres on climate change and its
31 impacts for the environment, culture and identity, and autonomy, the chapter identifies official Canadian Arctic security discourse and policy as based on twin pillars of military defence of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and the exploitation of Arctic resources. This juxtaposition indicates the tension between the state understanding of security and the views of Indigenous peoples, and the degree to which Indigenous views are not represented in government discourse.
Chapter 5 explains the absence of Indigenous understandings from mainstream Arctic security discourse in Canada. It shows the ways in which Indigenous views have been silenced and subsumed, through such channels as limited access to legislators and political decision makers, the restrictions of operating under colonial legal structures, and the incorporation of claims to Inuit sovereignty over Arctic territories into the legal basis for Canadian sovereignty claims. It argues that Inuit, and other Indigenous peoples in northern Canada, are securitization non- dominant in that they are unable to have their security claims accepted by the state.
Chapter 6 shifts to the second case study, and examines the construction of in/security in the Norwegian High North. It explores how Norway’s Arctic security interests were constructed during the Cold War and how they have changed both post-Cold War and in the context of regional climate change. It demonstrates the Norwegian government’s Arctic security interests are defined around managing relations with its Russian neighbour, and on the continued extraction of hydrocarbon resources. The official Norwegian view of Arctic security is thus similar to Canada’s in its dual focus on militarism and resource extraction, and shared worries with respect to Russia, though marked by a difference in rhetorical tone.
In Chapter 7, these security priorities are compared with those of Sámi in Norway, who identify protection of traditional reindeer grazing areas in Sápmi and preservation and revitalization of culture and language as the core interests relevant to their survival as Indigenous people. The chapter also examines the development of Sámi as an Indigenous minority, specifically their important role in the historical formation of the modern Scandinavian states and the emergence of Sámi political institutions. However, despite a clear conception of what in/security means to Sámi in Norway, they have not attempted to construct their most serious issues as security issues within Norwegian political discourse. As such, Sámi have not functioned as securitizing actors in Norway the way Inuit and other Indigenous peoples have in Canada. The chapter concludes by hypothesizing three factors to explain why Sámi have not sought to securitize their highest
32 priority issues: the relatively less severe effects of climate change in Sápmi; the high degree of social inclusion of Sámi within Norwegian society; and the influence of Russia on maintaining a more robust national security discourse in Norway.
Chapter 8 summarizes six central findings of this dissertation. It outlines the three main empirical findings related to the understandings of Arctic in/security held by Indigenous peoples and the states in which they reside, and the exclusion or omission of Indigenous views from the Arctic security policies of Canada and Norway. It then identifies three implications of these findings for securitization theory and our understanding of the relationship between in/security and the environment. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what in/security in the Arctic means in the context of the Anthropocene. It provides a normative argument for why a sustainable understanding of Arctic security requires a critical disposition towards the relationship between conditions of in/security and human-caused environmental change. It outlines how such a critical understanding of Arctic security and the environment might look, and how it must differ from dominant current accounts reflected in the policies of circumpolar states. The final suggestion of this dissertation is that incorporating the understandings of in/security articulated by Indigenous peoples is one route towards establishing a more sustainable conception of Arctic security. Thus, we should seek to decolonize and indigenize dominant understandings of what in/security in the Arctic means under conditions of radical and transformative environmental change.
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Chapter 2 2 Indigeneity, Non-Dominance and Research
As the changing Arctic attracts growing attention from outsiders, and from the southern-based governments of circumpolar states, the roles and rights of Indigenous peoples have become increasingly important.91 Though historically marginal to regional geopolitics and national policymaking within their own states, Arctic Indigenous peoples have emerged as a key set of actors in circumpolar politics. The political, economic, and social conditions in which they live vary considerably across their different home countries, but nearly half a million Indigenous people currently reside in the northern polar region. Most are represented within unique structures of governance, and in some cases self-government, within their respective states, and all are represented at the regional level through the six Indigenous organizations recognized as Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council. With the exception of those in Russia, Arctic Indigenous peoples also enjoy certain benefits as citizens of wealthy, industrialized states in the Global North, including: robust legal frameworks ensuring certain indigenous rights; legal recourse when those rights are violated; social benefits including public welfare, employment insurance, health care services, and support for Indigenous language and education; and, in some cases, established rights to Indigenous land use, land title, and collective land ownership. Compared to the challenges facing Indigenous populations in much of the world, Arctic Indigenous peoples enjoy relatively high qualities of life, relatively high degrees of political autonomy, and relatively benign contemporary relationships with the settler-colonial governments whose sovereign authority they live under.
Nonetheless, non-dominance remains an integral part of the lived experience of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic, and is a recurring component of how indigeneity itself is defined.92 It is this non-dominance – defined as the structural inability to affect the decisions that shape the conditions of peoples’ own lives – that differentiates indigeneity from other forms of origination or belonging to a particular geographic space or region. Non-dominance is constitutive of
91 In this dissertation, ‘Indigenous’ is capitalized when referring to specific peoples, as in the case of the Arctic, but not capitalized when referring generally to indigenous peoples or applying indigenous as a non-specific adjective. 92 Although it could be argued this is not the case for Inuit of Greenland and Nunavut; see Loukacheva 2007.
34 indigeneity, and of relations between Indigenous peoples and non-indigenous majorities within settler-colonial societies. Recognizing the role of non-dominance allows for meaningful distinction between, for instance, Inuit as indigenous to the Arctic and the English as native inhabitants of England. As a category, indigeneity derives less from phenotypical, ethno-racial, or geographic factors than it does from how these affect distributions of social and material power within a given polity. The English may be the original inhabitants of England, but since they enjoy a preponderance of political power within their territory and are not subject to political control by a group originating from beyond their territorial boundaries, they are not considered an ‘indigenous’ people.93 Without the fact of non-dominance or subordination to a separate and distinct group, indigeneity possesses little meaning: when they control the particular area where they live, people from that place aren’t indigenous, they’re just people.94
This chapter examines indigeneity and non-dominance in the circumpolar Arctic. It first surveys debates over how indigeneity is defined and how it is reflected in contemporary global politics. It then reiterates a conception of indigeneity as linked to non-dominance within one’s own home territory, outlining the significance of both material and ideational forms of non-dominance for Arctic Indigenous peoples. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the significance of research into Indigenous understandings of in/security in the circumpolar region, and offers some reflections on research, decolonization, and Arctic Indigenous peoples
93 That ‘the English people’ are not, per se, the original inhabitants of the southern portion of the isle of Britain both underscores and complicates discussions over how indigeneity is defined. The contemporary English people are descended from a variety of tribal and early medieval societies with distinct languages and customs (such as the Britons, Saxons, Celts, Picts, and others) who were conquered and assimilated by both Saxon and French Norman kings over a period of several centuries, supplemented by genetic material from Norse raiders and successive migrations from across the British Isles, the European continent, and eventually around the world. As with many other majority populations who inhabit their own traditional homelands, the English are not so much the ‘original’ inhabitants as they are an amalgam of conquering and subject populations transformed into a cohesive people only during the modern era of sovereign state formation and national identity construction. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to now consider them as native to England because they have subsumed and assimilated all prior inhabitants and existed in their contemporary form for nearly a thousand years. This thousand-year occupancy alone imparts no meaning to the English as an indigenous people, however, because they exercise power over their territory and decision-making over their own future. For further discussion of the history of the English people, see Catherine Hills, The Origins of the English (London: Duckworth, 2003). For further discussion of national identity construction in the modern era, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). 94 Indigeneity for various Western European peoples is disputed, however. For instance, on the basis of their colonization and subjugation by the English, it could be argued that the Scots and Irish constitute indigenous peoples within their ancestral countries.
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2.1 Indigeneity and Non-Dominance
As discussed in Chapter 1, a defining feature of the Arctic region is the prior occupation, continued presence, and political involvement of its Indigenous peoples. But the category of Arctic Indigenous peoples is diverse, and their historical experiences and current political situations vary greatly according to national context. Moreover, any effort to discuss ‘Arctic Indigenous peoples’ presupposes a clear definition of who such peoples are. Although there have been significant advances in recent years with respect to the international recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights, most notably through the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPS), defining who is indigenous is a fraught and divisive task. Historically, settler- colonial governments determined various categories of indigeneity (such as ‘Indian’, ‘Native’, ‘Aboriginal’, etc.) as methods of exercising control over and encouraging division among indigenous peoples. Government designation of who is and is not indigenous is thus, unsurprisingly, a delicate subject that evokes much of the taxonomic racism of the colonial era; in several countries, how indigenous status is legally determined remains subject of active political debate. The result is that ‘indigenous peoples’ is often left undefined rather than prescribing criteria for inclusion.
Thus, there are no universal or binding legal criteria for who qualifies as an indigenous person or as an indigenous people. Neither the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues nor UNDRIPS offers a formal definition, relying instead on individual and collective self- identification for determining indigeneity. Social scientists have also struggled extensively with this question, debating the anthropological versus socio-political dimensions of indigenous identity, whether disparate experiences of political domination suffice to warrant the strategic essentialism and (neo)colonizing potential of labelling people(s) as indigenous, and the legitimacy of indigeneity versus other identity claims as ‘first peoples’.95 Some indigenous scholars, supported by organizations including the ILO and other bodies within the UN, insist “the question of ‘who is indigenous’ is best answered by indigenous communities themselves …
95 Mathias Guenther et al, “Discussion: The Concept of Indigeneity,” Social Anthropology 14, no. 1 (2006): 17-32; Quentin Gausset, Justin Kenrick, and Robert Gibb, “Indigeneity and Autochtony: A Couple of False Twins?” Social Anthropology 19, no. 2 (2011): 135-142.
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‘only indigenous peoples could define indigenous peoples’.”96 As such, it can be difficult to specify which groups or individuals are properly understood as indigenous; resolve tensions between ‘indigenous’ and other terms used to describe, categorize, and govern indigenous peoples; and determine whether ‘indigenous’ itself is an appropriate or meaningful descriptor.97
Generalizations about indigeneity are perilous, but some broad conclusions are possible. First, though indigeneity is often rooted in primordial or essentialist social identities associated with particular geographic places, as the basis for collective identity and modern political claims it is clearly a social construct. In the context of global trends towards decolonization of occupied and subject peoples in the latter 20th century, a common indigenous identity was fostered in order to link the shared experiences of more than 350 million diverse people in more than 70 countries around the globe.98 Despite this diversity, some common elements for defining indigeneity have been established within social science and international law. Ronald Niezen has studied the emergence of indigenous identity as the basis of an international social movement making political claims against domination by colonizing states. Acknowledging that “the ambiguity of the term is perhaps its most significant feature,” he notes that indigeneity has been defined in at least three ways: legally/analytically, practically/strategically, and collectively.99 These three approaches roughly correspond with different roles of indigenous peoples as, respectively: objects of academic study and subjects of legal and political control; agents and actors within domestic and international political systems; and a globe-spanning identity group for colonized peoples. In the first instance, indigeneity is defined by outside experts and/or colonial states, in the second it is based on self-identification, and in the third it is intersubjectively determined between discrete indigenous groups and the broader global community of indigenous peoples,
96 Jeff J. Corntassel, “Who is Indigenous? ‘Peoplehood’ and Ethnonationalist Approaches to Rearticulating Indigenous Identity,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 9, no. 1 (2003): 75-100. 97 As Niezen (2003) describes, the concept of indigeneity has entered popular and academic usage only in recent decades, largely as a result of developments within international law. Other political and legal terms are used in specific national contexts. For example, in Canada there are three constitutionally recognized groups of Aboriginal people (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis), with all three living in Canada’s Arctic territory. Indigenous peoples in the Russian Arctic region are often referred to as the Small Numbered Peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East. ‘Indigenous peoples’ is thus an umbrella term that encompasses numerous specific Indigenous groups. 98 Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 99 Niezen 2003, 19.
37 including political structures such as the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Under these circumstances, the potential for definitional confusion and contradiction is clear.
While no definition of indigenous peoples is universal, a commonly accepted working definition was developed by former UN Special Rapporteur on Discrimination Against Indigenous Peoples José Martínez Cobo. In a seminal report, “Study on the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations,” he proposed that:
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.100
The Cobo definition is generally considered to be “comprehensive and durable,” leading to its widespread adoption in studies of indigeneity even if it imperfectly captures the conditions of some indigenous peoples (such as those who have been displaced from and thus no longer occupy their traditional territories) and of societies that have experienced more complex forms of migration, social hierarchy, and autochthonous inter-ethnic power relations (such as India).101 This definition has broadly influenced indigenous scholarship and politics since its formulation in the early 1980s, and remains the touchstone conceptualization of indigeneity within the field.
A second generalization about definitions of indigeneity is that they emphasize the centrality of political non-dominance to the constitution of indigenous peoples as social actors and to their historical and contemporary lived experiences. Non-dominance is an explicit feature of the Cobo definition that has also been incorporated into subsequent work by both indigenous and non- indigenous scholars. Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel characterize indigeneity as “the struggle to survive as distinct peoples … against colonizing states’ efforts to eradicate [indigenous peoples] culturally, politically and physically … They remain, as in earlier colonial
100 José Martínez Cobo, “United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and its Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations,” UN Doc. E./CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7/Add. 4 (1986), para 379. Emphasis added. 101 Niezen 2003, 20.
38 eras, occupied peoples who have been dispossessed and disempowered in their own homelands.”102 Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras contend: “The concept of indigenous peoples involves those descendants of original occupants who acknowledge their distinctiveness and marginalisation, and use this politicised awareness to mobilise into action.”103 Tedd Gurr describes indigenous peoples as “conquered descendants of earlier inhabitants of a region who live mainly in conformity with traditional social, economic, and cultural customs that are sharply distinct from those of dominant groups,”104 though it is debatable whether overt conquest is requisite to establish a people as politically non-dominant, as this would exclude the experiences of indigenous peoples in much of Canada and northern Europe. These and other scholars premise their understandings of indigeneity on the fact that indigenous peoples do not retain ultimate political authority over their own traditional territories, and furthermore that the settler- colonial states that do exercise such authority have done so in a way antagonistic to their interests. The definitional emphasis upon a continuous state of being colonized, dominated, or oppressed has led some scholars to question the conceptualization of indigeneity as an identity,105 but is nonetheless a defining feature of how indigenous peoples are understood, and their rights and interests articulated. These definitions recognize non-dominance as a common aspect of the lived experiences of indigenous peoples around the world, partly defined by the lack of political autonomy over a group’s communal existence. Decision-making power over indigenous peoples’ traditional territories remains in the hands of non-indigenous systems of political authority that consider their own legitimacy to supersede indigenous forms of governance and political organization.
On this basis, some scholars go one step furthering in also identifying resistance to political domination as a component of indigeneity. While non-dominance partly defines indigenous people, resistance to it is central to indigenism as a political movement and indigenous peoples
102 Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel, “Being Indigenous: Resurgences Against Contemporary Colonialism,” Government and Opposition 40, no. 4 (2005): 597-598. 103 Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005), 30. 104 Tedd Gurr, Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000), 17. 105 Adam Kuper, “The Return of the Native,” Current Anthropology 44, no. 3 (2003): 389-402.
39 as political actors. To Alfred and Corntassel, “it is this oppositional, place-based existence, along with the consciousness of being in struggle against the dispossessing and demeaning fact of colonization by foreign peoples, that fundamentally distinguishes Indigenous peoples from other peoples of the world.”106 Similarly, Maaka and Fleras claim “Aboriginal peoples share a common desire to transcend colonial mentalities, contest existing constitutional principles, challenge the normalisation of injustices within systems of power, and transform the structures of dominance that distort and disrupt.”107 For indigenous peoples, understood to “derive much of their identity from histories of state-sponsored genocide, forced settlement, relocation, political marginalization, and various formal attempts at cultural destruction,”108 non-dominance and resistance to it, experienced both personally and inter-generationally, are defining features of indigenous identity and lived experience. Though indigenous peoples are non-dominant to different degrees and in different ways, their political, economic, and social domination by historical and contemporary settler-colonial societies constitutes the political salience of their claims to indigeneity. As theorized in Chapter 3 and examined empirically in Chapters 4-7, non- dominance is also central to the forms of in/security experienced by Indigenous peoples in the circumpolar region. Despite recent achievements and significant progress in global indigenous politics, which signify improvement in the relationships between many Indigenous peoples and their colonial metropoles, I suggest that Arctic Indigenous peoples experience non-dominance in terms of their ability to define and pursue security.
2.1.1 Colonialism and Power
Non-dominance results from the shortage or absence of power, defined by Barnett and Duvall as “the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate … the capacities of actors to determine the conditions of
106 Alfred and Corntassel 2005, 597. 107 Maaka and Fleras 2005, 9. 108 Niezen 2003, 5.
40 their existence.”109 Power takes at least four different forms depending on the kinds and specificity of social relations through which it operates: compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive.110 All four forms of power have historically structured the relations between indigenous peoples and settler-colonial states, but in modern Arctic societies compulsory power has generally receded as political actors have increasingly acknowledged Indigenous peoples’ inherent, constitutional, and legal rights. However, institutional power as “actors’ indirect control over the conditions of action of socially distant others,” structural power “as the constitutive relations of a direct and specific [kind],” and productive power as “diffusive constitutive relations to produce the situated social capacities of actors,”111 all remain applicable to the power states exert over Arctic Indigenous peoples. In reverse order, the very establishment of settler states constitutes Indigenous peoples by producing them as a sub-altern population within their own territories (productive power). Specific indigenous peoples have been constituted and shaped through the policies and actions of settler states, for example in terms of policies of relocation and amalgamation of indigenous communities, or through the very designation of specific peoples as indigenous or not through legal and constitutional instruments (structural power). Finally, the institutions and agents of settler governance continue to exercise direct and indirect authority over the political and collective decisions of Indigenous peoples, structuring Indigenous self-government and constraining their capacity to realize self- determination (institutional power).
Non-dominance is not a phenomenon limited to indigenous peoples, and its social significance is certainly not restricted to its relevance for in/security. Since “these effects [of power] work to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others,”112 non-dominance is reflected in various material and non-material forms throughout the world: groups experience poverty, prejudice, injustice, disenfranchisement, and violence by virtue of their structurally determined subordinate, marginalized, or liminal positions within their societies. Non-dominance is thus constituted in
109 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, “Power in International Politics,” International Organization 59, no. 1 (2005): 42. 110 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 43. 111 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 48. 112 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 42.
41 varying ways along multiple societal cleavages dependent upon the specific context, and not all forms of societal non-dominance may be relevant to securitization. However, understanding the relationship between power and non-dominance is important to this dissertation project because it also influences who is able to contribute, and in what ways, to public discourse: “Relations of dominance and non-dominance determine who defines norms and practices and who must follow them; who is important and who is not; who defines the parameters of the debate and who does not; who is valuable and who is not.”113 In some cases, non-dominance may translate into structural or systematic restrictions upon a group’s ability to influence government policy regarding designation and defence against security threats to that group. Securitization non- dominance reflects both structural and institutional power, because it is both direct and constitutive of actors, and diffused through regulation of the interactions between particular social actors. Securitization non-dominance is thus a reflection of broader forms of non- dominance as they pertain to the ability to construct and respond to in/security. The argument of securitization non-dominance is fully developed in Chapter 3, and the forms of non-dominance experienced by Arctic Indigenous peoples are discussed further below and in their specific national contexts in Chapters 4-7.
2.2 Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic
Indigenous peoples in the circumpolar region exhibit both typical and atypical traits for indigenous peoples in contemporary global politics. On the one hand, they are historically colonized populations who no longer exert full decision-making authority over their traditional lands. They also demonstrate clear continuity with pre-colonial practices and social organization, due in part to the relatively recent experiences of colonization by many Arctic Indigenous peoples, especially in North America. On the other hand, most of the Arctic states are stronger democratic systems with rule of law, economic and social benefits, and respect for indigenous rights than many other countries with indigenous populations. As discussed below, Arctic Indigenous peoples enjoy among the highest qualities of life and greatest degrees of
113 Gunhild Hoogensen and Kirsti Stuvøy, “Gender, Resistance, and Human Security,” Security Dialogue 37, no. (2006): 219.
42 political autonomy and inclusion of any indigenous peoples in the world. With the notable exception of Russia, Arctic Indigenous peoples have politically organized themselves into formations that sometimes challenge the preferences of their colonial state governments without fear of overt political repression, violence, or retaliation. They thus enjoy a higher degree of political freedom than most, while also experiencing material conditions and political non- dominance that curtail their political agency, reflecting their status within their settler-colonial political contexts.
While debates over indigeneity and identity remain relevant in the circumpolar region, by virtue of their distinct structures of political representation Arctic Indigenous peoples are somewhat more clearly identifiable than elsewhere. By definition, they comprise the Indigenous peoples living in the Arctic regions of the eight circumpolar states. Informed by the Cobo definition, the Arctic Human Development Report defines Indigenous peoples as:
Those peoples who were marginalized when the modern states were created and identify themselves as indigenous peoples. They are associated with specific territories to which they trace their histories. They exhibit one or more of the following characteristics: they speak a language that is different from that of the dominant group(s); they are being discriminated against in the political system; they are being discriminated against within the legal system; their cultures diverge from that of the remaining society; they often diverge from the mainstream society in their resource use by being hunters and gatherers, nomads, pastoralists, or swidden farmers; they consider themselves and are considered by others as different from the rest of the population.114
Indigenous peoples number approximately 500,000 out of the total 4 million inhabitants of the circumpolar region, and, as shown in Figure 2, form a ring of overlapping trans-state populations surrounding the Arctic Ocean. A majority of these live in Russia, which also has the greatest diversity of Indigenous peoples with over 41 different groups, including the more populous Chukchi, Evenki, Khaka, Khanty, Nenet, Tuvan, and Yakut peoples. Aleuts are indigenous people in the easternmost Russian region of Kamchatka who also inhabit the islands off western Alaska. Mainland Alaska is home to Athabaskan, Gwich’in, and Inuit (Alaskan Eskimo) peoples whose territories cross into northern Canada. Inuit form a majority of the Indigenous population
114 Csonka and Schweitzer 2004, 46.
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Figure 2: Map of Arctic Indigenous Peoples
Aleut previously Ainu Ainu
previously Aleut Aleut Ainu previously Ainu Kamchadal Taz Even Orochi Udege Itelmen Orok Alutiiq Koryak Ulchi Nanai Nivkh Negi- Central Koryak dal Alaskan Kerek Yup'ik Chukchi Alyutor Haida Alutiiq Evenk Nootka Siberian Dena’ina Yup'ik Chuvan Eyak Tanacross Even Even Kwakiutl ALASKA Tlingit Ahtna Upper Tsimshian Kuskokwim Chukchi Yukagir Upper Tanana Iñupiat Tsetsaut Evenk Salish Carrier Tuchone Tanana Deg Tahltan Tlingit Hit'an Babine Holikachuk Sakha Tagish (Yakut) Sekani Hän Koyukon Iñupiat Yukagir R Sarsi Blackfoot Gwich'in Sakha Evenk Kaska Even (Yakut) U Southern Beaver Slavey Bear Northern Buryat A Atsina Lake Slavey S
A Inuvialuit S Dogrib Assiniboine Buryat S Evenk I Yellowknife Evenk Soyot Cree D A Chip ewyan Buryat Inuit
N Tofa Tuvinians U A Dolgan Tuvinian- Cree Todzhin Inuit Nga- Evenk
nasan F N Tuvinians
Khakas Chelkan
Ket Ket E Chulym Cree Enets Shor Telengit
Tuba
A Teleut
D Kuman- Altai NUNAVUT
Selkup din
Ojibwa
Cree C Kalaallit SelE kup
Nenets
Nenets Inuit KhantR
Haudeno- Algonkin Inuit
saunee o Khant
Huron Cree 80 A
Nenets Mansi T
Haudeno- Izhma-
Komi I
saunee Montagnais- GREENLAND Komi
Naskapi Kalaallit O
Kalaallit Komi- Naskapi Komi PermyaksN Abnaki Saami o Kalaallit 70 Karelians Saami Karelians Beothuk ICELAND FIN- Vepsians LAND FAROE Saami ISLANDS Faroese NORWAY 60o SWEDEN
DENMARK
50o
Indigenous peoples of the Arctic countries
Subdivision according to language families Eskimo-Aleut family Notes: Na'Dene family Inuit group of Eskimo branch For the USA, only peoples in the State of Alaska are shown. For the Russian Federation, only peoples of the North, Siberia and Far East are shown. Athabaskan branch Yupik group of Eskimo branch Aleut group Majority populations of independent states are not shown, not even when Eyak branch they form minorities in adjacent countries (e.g. Finns in Norway). Tlingit branch Uralic-Yukagiran family Areas show colours according to the original languages of the respective Haida branch Finno-Ugric branch indigenous peoples, even if they do not speak these languages today. Samodic branch Overlapping populations are not shown. The map does not claim to show Penutan family exact boundaries between the individual groups. Yukagiran branch Macro-Algonkian family In the Russian Federation, indigenous peoples have a special status only when Altaic family Algonkian branch numbering less than 50,000. Names of larger indigenous peoples are written Turkic branch in green. Wakasha branch Mongolic branch Salish branch Tunguso-Manchurian branch Macro-Sioux family Chukotko-Kamchatkan family Sioux branch Iroquois branch Ket (isolated language)
Indo-European family Nivkh (isolated language) Germanic branch Ainu (isolated language) compiled by W.K. Dallmann © Norwegian Polar Institute
44 and a plurality of the total population in the Canadian Arctic, as well as a large majority of nearly 90 percent in neighbouring Greenland. Sámi are the only recognized Indigenous people in all of Europe, comprising the entire indigenous populations of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, with a small number also on the Kola Peninsula in western Russia.115 While now rooted in the social and political structures of particular states, the sociological boundaries of Arctic Indigenous peoples are not consistent with the colonial boundaries that have been imposed upon them. Indigenous peoples serve as living reminders of pre-modern patterns of habitation in the circumpolar region, and reflect relationships and associations that transcend sovereign borders.
The formal political involvement of Indigenous peoples in the circumpolar region is one of the key features of the post-Cold War Arctic order. In addition to significant degrees of self- government, political autonomy, or elected representation exercised by Indigenous peoples throughout much of the region – particularly Self Rule for the Inuit majority in Greenland; self- government or high representation in public governments for Canadian Inuit through the establishment of four land claim areas; and the separate Sámi Parliaments of Norway, Sweden, and Finland – Indigenous peoples have also been central to the establishment and activities of the Arctic Council. Founded in 1996 to provide a dedicated regional forum for dialogue and cooperation, the Council owes much of the impetus for its creation to the organization and activism of Indigenous advocacy groups. Since the 1960s, Indigenous peoples across the Arctic increasingly established representative organizations to both lobby governments and speak on behalf of their people, who at the time very much remained colonial subjects of their southern- based governments. John English, historian of the Arctic Council, credits the efforts of these organizations and the leaders they produced with the eventual success of the Arctic Council negotiations: “Voices that were silenced in the fifties became audible in the sixties, eloquent in the seventies, and powerful and influential later. The colonized now came to the colonial capitals no longer as subjects but as actors shaping their times and the lives of their people.”116 The emergence of Indigenous voices as a potent political force would substantially alter the shape of the circumpolar region.
115 Antoine Dubreuil, “The Arctic of the Regions: Between Indigenous Peoples and Sub-National Entities – Which Perspective?” International Journal 66, no. 4 (2011): 923-938. 116 John English, Ice and Water: Politics, Peoples, and the Arctic Council (Toronto: Penguin, 2013), 95.
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Arising from social movements for Indigenous rights and representation, six groups were formally incorporated into regional governance through their inclusion as Permanent Participants on the Arctic Council: the Arctic Athabaskan Council, Aleut International Association, Gwich’in Council International, Inuit Circumpolar Council, Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, and the Saami Council. As the first international intergovernmental body in the world to grant indigenous peoples formal status with rights to membership and participation approximating that of the Member States, the Council provides Indigenous peoples with representation at the premier forum for regional cooperation. English argues that “it is a mark of the historic change that the growing prominence of the Arctic Council with its indigenous participants means that many rules will now be set not only in imperial southern capitals but often by northern peoples.”117 English’s detailed analysis of the Council’s origins concurs with the conclusions of other leading scholars like Oran Young that it is partly through the efforts of Indigenous peoples that the Arctic has developed from a “region of peripheries” into a coherent region of its own,118 and with Timo Koivurova and Leena Heinämäki that Arctic Indigenous peoples have become so key to regional politics as to enjoy a status close to that of veto- holders.119 Although they continue to reflect the significant differences of opportunity afforded by their respective historical experiences and contemporary circumstances, Arctic Indigenous peoples have been at the forefront of advancing the political interests of indigenous peoples and their inclusion in organizations and fora previously reserved for states.
In this respect, Arctic Indigenous peoples reflect the global achievements of indigenous peoples in fostering an awareness of indigeneity as a basis for rights and political inclusion, and establishing a social movement to support the political project of “global indigenism.”120 The adoption of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, the creation of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and moves towards recognition and reparations for colonially inflicted wrongs all signify the contemporary emergence of indigenous
117 English 2013, 298. 118 Young 2005, 9-10. 119 Koivurova and Heinämäki 2006, 104. 120 J. Marshall Beier, “Inter-national Affairs: Indigeneity, Globality, and the Canadian State,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 13, no. 3 (2007): 121-131; Niezen 2003.
46 peoples as political actors. The terms of this inclusion remain constrained, however, by the interests and actions of settler-colonial states and the international institutions over which they exhibit significant influence. Although “the most egregious expressions of colonialism have been discredited … what remained untouched are those ‘colonial agendas’ that have had a controlling (systemic) effect in privileging national (white) interests at the expense of indigenous rights.”121 Despite the significant progress that has been made by settler-colonial governments and legal authorities in terms of acknowledging and respecting indigenous rights and title, the relationships between indigenous peoples and their governments remain structured by the dominance of settler-colonial values, institutions, and interests. Though more empowered than ever before, and more so than most indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world, even in the Arctic, Indigenous peoples lack the power to control their own collective futures.
2.3 Research, Non-Dominance and Indigenous Peoples
The non-dominance of Arctic Indigenous peoples is reflected in two distinct forms: material and non-material (ideational). The material reflections of political non-dominance vary by country and are discussed in subsequent chapters, but generally include lower qualities of life, forms of governmental control, and restrictions upon indigenous rights and autonomy resulting from “the demoralising effects of dispossession, forced removals, open racism and discrimination, and destruction of language, identity, and culture.”122 Less overt but more pernicious, however, is the ideational non-dominance that has resulted in the discrediting of indigenous forms of knowledge and knowledge production, the privileging of settler-colonial legal and political systems, and the ongoing marginalization of indigenous ways of knowing and being relative to those of settlers. Ideational non-dominance is a form of power that operates “in underlying social structures and systems of knowledge that advantage some and disadvantage others.”123 Indigenous traditional knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge have long been viewed as threatening to the colonial order, and have been subjected to concerted efforts at destruction,
121 Maaka and Fleras 2005, 12. 122 Maaka and Fleras 2005, 26. 123 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 42.
47 erasure, and forgetting. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith asserts, “the negation of indigenous views of history was a critical part of asserting colonial ideology, partly because such views were regarded as clearly ‘primitive’ and ‘incorrect’ and mostly because they challenged and resisted the vision of colonization.”124 Colonial authorities sought to render indigenous populations legible to new forms of state power, which necessitated structuring the social terrain on which indigenous/non-indigenous relations would occur in a manner advantageous to the colonizer. This included depriving prior indigenous knowledge and forms of organization of the legitimacy to challenge settler-colonial organization and Western forms of knowledge by subjecting them to alien standards of colonial law and morality, preventing their transmission to younger generations, and eventually co-opting them into certain settler-colonial decision-making processes and academic research.125 The result has been the widespread discrediting of the scientific validity, legal weight, and moral worth of indigenous knowledge precisely on the basis of its difference from settler-colonial/scientific rationalist modes of thought and action.126
The ideational dimension of indigenous non-dominance is important to specify because it sets the context for the material dimension that is more readily visible in indigenous/non-indigenous relations. The two are intimately linked, as it is the severing of indigenous peoples’ ties to their cultural and epistemological heritage that facilitates the material dispossession of their lands, rights, and resources, and establishes the context for settler domination in their new societies. Erasure occurs in two ways: through the exclusion and enforced forgetting of traditional indigenous knowledge, and through the displacement and disruption of societies guided by and responsible for generating that knowledge. Vandana Shiva observes: “Over and above rendering local knowledge invisible by declaring it non-existent or illegitimate, the dominant system also makes alternatives disappear by erasing or destroying the reality which they attempt to represent.”127 The current Arctic context exemplifies this dynamic, wherein traditional knowledge has been denied scientific authority and excluded from official decision making at the
124 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed, 1999), 29. 125 Deborah McGregor, “Coming Full Circle: Indigenous Knowledge, Environment and Our Future,” American Indian Quarterly 28, no. 3/4 (2004): 385-410; Tuhiwai Smith 1999. 126 Claude Denis, We Are Not You: First Nations and Canadian Modernity (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1997). 127 Quoted in Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 100.
48 same time that settler-colonial political, economic, and social policies have wrought changes on Arctic societies and ecosystems that undermine the applicability of traditional knowledge in the first place. Relevant examples range from human impacts on the Arctic ecosystem such that traditional ecological knowledge no longer reflects the characteristics of the circumpolar climate, to settler-colonial policies that have discriminated against indigenous women with impacts on traditional structures of community authority.128 The rejection and delegitimization of indigenous knowledge provides a vital precondition for the material non-dominance experienced by indigenous peoples, particularly as it pertains to the inability to make decisions regarding traditional land-use on ancestral territories, and related decisions over how indigenous peoples can and should live in the modern world.
2.3.1 Decolonization and Indigenist Research
A central component of this dissertation involves the understandings of Indigenous peoples towards the meaning of in/security in the Arctic region. Given the importance of epistemology and knowledge production to power relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, pursuing appropriate and respectful research involving indigenous peoples is complicated by a history of Western academic research fraught with deceit, injustice, abuse, appropriation, and perpetuation of the very structures that render indigenous peoples non-dominant within their national communities. One of the key functions that academic research has performed in this process is the explicit or implicit privileging of settler-colonial and state perspectives, resulting in the erasure and denial of indigenous histories, epistemologies, and contemporary interests.129 Far from just the objective interpretation of facts through theory, Tuhiwai Smith notes the “problem is that academic writing is a form of selecting, arranging and presenting knowledge. It
128 The differences between Western scientific and indigenous observations of Arctic climate change are shown in the film Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, which highlights some of the disagreements and differing interpretations between indigenous and scientific understandings of the changing environment. The film is available at http://www.isuma.tv/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change. For a discussion of traditional knowledge and traditional forms of community authority see Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, Jackie Price, and Elena Wilson-Rowe, “Women’s Participation in Decision-Making: Human Security in the Canadian Arctic,” in Hoogensen Gjørv et al., Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic (New York: Routledge, 2014). 129 Marie Battiste, ed, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000); Tuhiwai Smith 1999.
49 privileges sets of texts, views about the history of an idea, what issues count as significant; and, by engaging in the same process uncritically, we too can render indigenous writers invisible or unimportant while reinforcing the validity of other writers.”130 If research into issues pertaining to indigenous peoples is undertaken without consideration of their views, including but not limited to the inclusion of indigenous voices and perspectives, then that research contributes to the “cognitive imperialism” that underpinned colonization.131 Perhaps especially for disciplines such as political science, international relations, and security studies that have primarily focused on state behaviour, the international system of sovereign states, and the mechanisms of interstate violence and cooperation that constitute global order, there has been little account of indigenous peoples: “On the international scene it is extremely rare and unusual when indigenous accounts are accepted and acknowledged as valid interpretations of what has taken place.”132 Therefore, contemporary research must be conscious of its role in supporting or silencing the voices of indigenous peoples and other non-dominant groups, and the ethical implications of writing them out of academic accounts of modern politics.
To this end, Tuhiwai Smith promotes an ‘indigenist’ research agenda to help decolonize the methodological and epistemological approaches of academic research. For indigenous scholars, decolonizing research may be integral to their individual and collective senses of Self as indigenous people,133 but for non-indigenous scholars, like myself, the drive for an indigenist research agenda “evolves from a need to comprehend, resist, and transform the crises related to the dual concerns of the effect that colonization has had on Indigenous peoples and the ongoing erosion of Indigenous languages, knowledge, and culture as a result of colonization.”134 In this way, indigenist research “borrows freely from feminist research and critical approaches to research, but privileges indigenous voices.”135 For me, the desire to help decolonize research through this dissertation stems from: recognition that the Euro-centric theoretical traditions of
130 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 36. 131 Battiste 2000, xvii. 132 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 35. 133 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 38. 134 Battiste 2000, xx-xxi. 135 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 147.
50 academia offer an incomplete understanding of the social and natural worlds; acknowledgment of the historic and contemporary harms inflicted on indigenous peoples by the convergence of state practices and mainstream scholarship; and understanding that circumpolar research is empirically incomplete without incorporating the views of Arctic Indigenous peoples. Decolonization – in this case of how in/security is understood in the circumpolar Arctic – is thus an analytical and normative goal of this project.
It is important to note, however, that decolonization does not and cannot mean returning to a pre- colonial reality; the cognitive, material, and affective legacies of colonialism may be repaired, but they can never be undone. As such, decolonization “does not mean and has not meant a total rejection of all theory or research or Western knowledge. Rather, it is about centring [indigenous] concerns and worldviews and then coming to know and understand theory and research from [indigenous] perspectives and for [indigenous] purposes.”136 Indigenist research seeks to bring indigenous peoples’ views back into the realm of knowledge production from which they have typically been excluded. Such an understanding of the possibility and limits of decolonization will not satisfy those who call for decolonization to be applied literally to settler- colonial political, social, and economic systems and institutions currently extant on Indigenous lands, and who decry the use of “decolonization as metaphor … because it turns decolonization into an empty signifier to be filled by any track towards liberation.” These critics argue that “decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of land simultaneous to recognition of how land and recognition of land have always been differently understood and enacted; that is, all the land, and not just symbolically.”137
On such terms, decolonizing the foreign and security policies of settler-colonial states is an oxymoron; real decolonization would involve fully disassembling settler societies’ power over indigenous peoples through the restoration of all settler-occupied territories to the descendants of their original inhabitants. This literal view of decolonization is rejected in this dissertation as neither a useful starting point nor even a desirable objective for political or academic praxis. Such a maximalist and literal conception of decolonization elides profound normative questions
136 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 39. 137 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 7. Emphasis in original.
51 regarding the future of native-born settler descendants and more recent immigrants inhabiting indigenous lands, and offers no reasonable starting point for political negotiation, cooperation, and reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Instead, this dissertation employs an understanding of decolonization that aspires towards a post-colonial politics capable of guiding social scientific inquiry and informing meaningful political change, rather than contemplating an impossible restoration of pre-colonial reality. It seeks to bring the voices and views of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic to the same page as the perspectives of Arctic states, incorporating the original inhabitants of the circumpolar region into a discourse of Arctic security from which they have been excluded.
In outlining possible parameters for an indigenist research agenda, Tuhiwai Smith identifies 25 different projects that comprise a comprehensive research program for indigenous peoples. The projects have both empirical and methodological goals, namely to incorporate indigenous knowledge and indigenous knowledge production into academic research:
The projects are not claimed to be entirely indigenous or to have been created by indigenous researchers. Some approaches have arisen out of social science methodologies, which in turn have arisen out of methodological issues raised by research with various oppressed groups. Some projects invite multidisciplinary research approaches. Others have arisen directly out of indigenous practices … Most fall well within what will be recognized as empirical research, [but] not all do.138
As a non-indigenous person, and moreover as a privileged, male member of settler-colonial society in Canada, one of the Arctic states under examination in this dissertation, some of these research projects are unavailable to me. It is neither possible nor would it be appropriate for me to engage in claiming, naming, or giving testimony to indigenous experiences. Other projects such as revitalizing, restoring, and returning indigenous practices, language, culture, or territory are beyond the scope of this dissertation. However, elements of three indigenist projects are contained within this research, and can be meaningfully and appropriately contributed to by me as a non-indigenous scholar examining indigenous political issues:
Indigenizing consists of two dimensions: “The first one is similar to that which has occurred in literature with a centring of the landscapes, images, languages, themes, metaphors, and stories in the indigenous world … [The second] centres a politics of
138 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 142-143.
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indigenous identity and indigenous cultural action … grounded in the alternative conceptions of world view and value systems.”139
Representing: “The representing project spans both the notion of representation as a political concept and representation as a form of voice and expression. In the political sense colonialism specifically excluded indigenous peoples from any form of decision making. State and governments have long made decisions hostile to the interests of indigenous communities … Being able as a minimum right to voice the views and opinions of indigenous communities in various decision-making bodies is still being struggled over.”140
Reframing: “Reframing is about taking much greater control over the ways in which indigenous issues and social problems are discussed and handled … The framing of an issue is about making decisions about its parameters, about what is in the foreground, what is in the background, and what shadings or complexities exist within the frame. The project of reframing is related to defining the problem or issue and determining how best to solve that problem.”141
To be sure, this dissertation presents detailed examinations of the Arctic policies of two circumpolar states. As such, it could be said to (re)produce the conceptions of Arctic in/security employed by settler societies that have marginalized, instrumentalized, and oppressed Indigenous peoples in the region. However, the dissertation also provides the first detailed case-based and comparative analysis of the views of Arctic Indigenous peoples towards the meaning of in/security in their homelands. In doing so, it builds upon and contributes to recent literature, especially in Canada, that centres indigenous peoples in the foreign and security policies and practices of the states in which they reside.142 This project thus reframes the way in which
139 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 146. 140 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 150. 141 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 153. 142 J. Marshall Beier, International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology, and the Limits of International Theory (New York: Palgrave, 2005); Beier 2007; Leanne Broadhead, “Canadian Sovereignty versus Northern Security: The Case for Updating Our Mental Map of the Arctic,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (2010): 913-930; Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan, “Settler Governmentality in Canada and the Algonquins of Barriere Lake,” Security Dialogue 43, no. 5 (2012): 421-438; Cameron Harrington and Emma Levcavalier, “The Environment and Emancipation in Critical Security Studies: The Case of the Canadian Arctic,” Critical Studies on Security 2, no. 1 (2014): 105-119.
53 issues vital to Indigenous peoples – such as environmental change, linguistic and cultural preservation, natural resources, and self-government – are typically understood by policymakers and academic audiences in the metropolitan south of Arctic states. In doing so, it represents those issues that Indigenous peoples have articulated as most pressing to their continued survival and wellbeing as security issues, extending the theoretical logic of socially constructing in/security beyond states and privileged national actors to include Indigenous peoples. And in examining the ways in which Indigenous views of Arctic security have not been successfully incorporated into the foreign and security policies of circumpolar states, it indigenizes that discourse and challenges it to account for the exclusion of Indigenous views. As an academic study rooted in interpretivist, Western social scientific methodology that also considers the views and practices of settler states, this is at best a hybrid indigenist research project. However, it aspires to contribute towards the decolonization of how Arctic security is understood through the deliberate and focused incorporation of those indigenous voices that have been silenced or subsumed. Perhaps once the discourse has been decolonized, the policies and practices of Arctic states will follow.
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Chapter 3 3 Security, Theory, and the (Arctic) Environment
As the climate changes, the circumpolar Arctic has often been discussed using the language of in/security to describe threats and challenges emerging in the region. Arctic states have articulated new and longstanding regional security interests, and a range of non-state actors have responded with their own views on what issues constitute various forms of in/security in the region. Some of these views correspond with those expressed by Arctic states through their regional foreign and security policies, while others diverge, or even fundamentally challenge them. Arctic security, then, remains contested, and there is no consensus among the different representations of in/security in and for the region; indeed, there is outright contradiction. This variation draws attention to questions of how the understanding of in/security contained within state policy is determined, whose understanding of in/security it reflects, and whose interests it serves. Fundamentally, it raises the question of how is security constructed, and why are particular constructions of in/security accepted? The theoretical challenge has been to account not only for what security is, but also how it comes about and under what conditions it can change.
This chapter discusses securitization theory, the most prominent framework for explaining the social construction of in/security to have emerged within International Security Studies. First, it provides a brief genealogy of the dominant contemporary understanding of security, before explaining how in/security is an essentially contested concept and a social construct. It then outlines securitization theory as originally developed by the members of the Copenhagen School, before detailing three interrelated critiques of the CS approach that suggest the need for a revised analytical formulation of securitization. Building, in particular, on the inadequate role of identity in the securitization process, the chapter explains how non-dominant social groups can be prevented from having their issues successfully securitized. I propose that better incorporation of identity allows securitization to explain how official and popular understandings of in/security in the Arctic have been constructed through structural limitations upon the capacity of particular actors, specifically Arctic Indigenous peoples, to engage in securitization processes. Drawing on the work of Lene Hansen, I present a model for explaining the role of non-dominance in silencing and subsuming the securitizing moves of certain groups. In this respect, I propose that
55 non-dominant groups, including Arctic Indigenous peoples, may experience a double form of insecurity: they are confronted by social and material phenomena serious enough to desire securitizing them, but are then unable to generate an effective or sufficient state response to those issues by being unable to transform them into security issues. This securitization non-dominance may exacerbate material hazards for non-dominant social groups by preventing them from effectively mobilizing sovereign power in defence against particular threats. In the case of some Arctic Indigenous peoples, this applies to their unsuccessful attempts to securitize human-caused environmental changes. The chapter then examines the theoretical debates over linking security and the environment and assesses climate change as a security issue. Finally, it presents an argument for why we should reconsider securitization as a valuable part of policymaking and important aspect of political inclusion.
3.1 Constructing In/Security
It is far more common to encounter references to ‘security’ than to ‘insecurity’ within contemporary International Relations (IR) and International Security Studies (ISS). The latter field’s very name illustrates this point. Security is used widely and often to refer to a desirable or aspirational condition to be pursued and defended. In this way, security is conventionally understood in quite objective ways, with insecurity usually defined implicitly by security’s absence. In this dissertation, however, I prefer a dual concept of in/security, separating the two only when specifically differentiating them or referring to the work of others. The reason for this is that security is always linked to insecurity, and not solely as its opposite.143 I argue that most uses of ‘security’ – in the context of IR and ISS – possess dual significance. In identifying what/who is to be secured one also indicates what/who is not. The concept of security implies a negative: every (re)production of security depicts what is relegated to the zone of insecurity beyond the boundary of its concern. Like the sovereign state itself, in/security is characterized
143 Roberts employs a different justification for employing ‘insecurity’ over ‘security’. See David Roberts, Human Insecurity: Global Structures of Violence (London: Zed Books, 2008).
56 by a dynamic of Inside/Outside: what is Inside (secure) is constitutive of what is Outside (insecure), and vice versa; neither is comprehensible without the other.144
By employing the term in/security, I emphasize the inherent normative aspect of using security language, what Jef Huysmans refers to as “the normative dilemma of writing security.”145 Making security claims is an inherently social and political activity that necessarily involves people, whether as the referent objects to be secured or those whose interests are served by securing non-human objects. The effects of in/security discourse can be profound because it is people in their individual lives and collective groups – be they families, communities, identity groups, or nations – who are rendered as existing within or beyond the legitimate parameters of security concern. Emphasizing security alone enables those whose security is not being raised, questioned, pursued, or implemented to be overlooked. Moreover, focusing on security may obscure the ways in which security for some is generated through the insecurity of others. The Inside/Outside in/security dynamic exercises material power because of how it directs resources towards protecting some persons/peoples/groups over others, and exercises ideational power through the shaping of our cognitive imaginaries of how we are made secure, and what relationship our security has with the in/security of others. This co-constitution of security and insecurity is captured here through the use of ‘in/security’ unless there is a specific purpose in referring to one condition separately from the other.
In the modern period, in/security has traditionally been associated with the maintenance of the sovereign territorial state, the use of state-authorized violence, and the distribution of power and interests within the international state system. The exercise of power by the sovereign was necessary to protect individuals from threats of violence within the context of a territorially bounded space. Sovereign power actually constitutes the modern state, as in the classic Weberian definition of the state as possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical
144 R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and R.B.J. Walker, “The Subject of Security,” in Keith Krause and Michael Williams, eds, Critical Security Studies (London: UCL Press, 1997), 61-81. 145 Jef Huysmans, “Defining Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma of Writing Security,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27, no. 1 (2002): 41-62.
57 force.146 Since the power to defend individuals primarily resided with the state, and the principal threat of mass violence emanated from other states, security was understood as defending one state against all others. This is the essence of in/security in the Westphalian era: territorially bounded, juridically equal political units engaged in relations of competition and conflict, with the wellbeing of individuals fundamentally tied to the survival and prosperity of their respective states. Security was seen “as a condition both of individuals and of states … A condition, or an objective, that constituted a relationship between individuals and states or societies.”147 By virtue of the anarchic structure of the international system, however, preserving the state necessarily came first. This idea of security continued to evolve through the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, during which time the state as the provider of security for individuals shifted towards an understanding of national security which emphasized the state-qua-state as the object to be protected.148 Security gradually came to mean national security: the protection of the state against military threats to its survival and national interests.
In epistemological terms, objectivist accounts tend to treat in/security as an objective condition that exists out there, something determinable through positivist inquiry and obtained or avoided through prudent policymaking.149 Commonplace both historically and today, such uses typically accept the prior actuality of the threats and referent objects they examine, (re)producing them as if the threat unproblematically existed and the referent object naturally merited and required protection. It is the fact that objective understandings reify the threats and referents under examination that makes them problematic: “Even if one wanted to take a more objectivist approach … doing so would demand an objective measure of security that no security theory has yet provided.”150 Objectivism is evident in the normalization of a conception of in/security
146 Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans and eds, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 [1919]), 78. 147 Emma Rothschild, “What is Security?” Daedalus 124, no. 3 (1995): 61. Emphasis in original. 148 Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 22-30; Rothschild 1995, 61. 149 For epistemology in security studies and International Relations see: Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Smith 2005; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 32-43. 150 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 30.
58 focused on military violence employed by or against sovereign states, even though states have highly divergent understandings of when their national security is militarily threatened. Bill McSweeney notes: “The centrality of the state-as-actor is assumed, and with it the need to measure, or quantify, the conditions in which its security or insecurity is achieved.”151 In general usage, ‘security’ still connotes the defence of the state and its national interests from military threats and challengers. But such an understanding is neither natural nor given; rather, it results from particular developments in modern global politics and the field of ISS.152 The objectivist account of national security became dominant during the 20th century, when two world wars, countless small ones, and the forty year-long prospect of nuclear conflict constituted widely accepted threats, and strongly suggested the relevance of organized state violence to conditions of security at the national and international levels. This view of in/security was shaped by circumstance and historical context, but was never natural, inevitable, or structurally determined.
The dominant national security understanding of in/security became contested from the 1970s onwards as ISS underwent a series of theoretical and empirical shifts. As the Cold War dragged on and states and people around the world became confronted by serious challenges unrelated to the bipolar balance of power or the risk of nuclear conflict, the understanding of security as inherently tied to the state and organized violence became increasingly challenged. Actors within academia and beyond sought to alter, undermine, or re-appropriate how security was understood and pursued at the individual, national, and international levels. In the West, the anti-nuclear peace research community sought to frame the existence and potential use of nuclear weapons as a source of insecurity rather than viable protection against the Soviet threat.153 Scholars and practitioners of development emphasized the critical situation of the global poor and many states in the ‘Third World’, as well as the indirect costs of prioritizing military
151 Bill McSweeney, Identity, Interests, and Security: A Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 15. 152 For a comprehensive account of the emergence of International Security Studies and the dominant conception of security, see Buzan and Hansen 2009. 153 Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167-191; Arthur Westing, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment (London: Taylor and Francis, 1977); David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
59 expenditures over social investments.154 The women’s movement and global processes of decolonization inspired feminist, critical, and postcolonial approaches to directly engage dominant academic depictions of in/security, seeking to radically reorient the subjects and contexts of in/security by inquiring into the lived experiences of women, children, minorities, and other subaltern groups.155 Lastly, environmentalists, invoking the local, national, and global impacts of military and economic activities on the environment, began observing the need for certain ecological conditions to be maintained in order for conditions of security to be sustainable.156 Dominant state-, military-, and Western-centric accounts of security thus became widely challenged, especially following the proliferation of new and varied usages of in/security that emerged post-1990.157
As a result of these and related developments within academia, civil society, and global politics, scholars became increasingly aware of the multiple meanings of security that had entered into use. McSweeney observes that security possesses “nominal” and “adjectival” forms that connote different things; negative ‘protection from’ and positive ‘ability to’, respectively: “The familiar distinction between ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’ illustrates the difference, and it is closely related.”158 He and others have noted the incompatibility of these different conceptions, and argued that far from having a given meaning tied to military defence of the sovereign state, ‘security’ varies according to national and social context, and had been re-imagined at different points in history. Several scholars explicitly sought to ‘redefine security’, arguing that
154 Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (New York: Clarendon Press, 1982); Peter Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986); Jacques Fontanel, “The Economic Effects of Military Expenditure in Third World Countries,” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 4 (1990): 461-466. 155 Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defence Intellectuals,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12, no. 4 (1987): 687-718; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (London: Macmillan, 1988); J. Ann Tickner, “Hans Morgenthau’s Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation,” Millennium 17, no. 3 (1988): 429-440; Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990). 156 Richard Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (New York: Random House, 1971); Norman Myers, “The Environmental Dimension to Security Issues,” The Environmentalist 6, no. 4 (1986): 251-257; Norman Myers, “The Environment and Security,” Foreign Policy 74 (1989): 23-41. 157 Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, “The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies,” Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 329-352. 158 McSweeney 1999, 14.
60 conventional national security discourse was simply inadequate to capture the full range of emerging security issues.159 Writing in 1952, Arnold Wolfers was among the first to observe the mutability of in/security, noting: “When formulas such as ‘national interest’ or ‘national security’ gain popularity they need to be scrutinized with particular care. They may not mean the same thing to different people. They may not have any precise meaning at all.”160 He explored this mutability by examining shifting meanings of national security in US government policy between the Great Depression and the 1950s, noting the change from an economic to military conception of the American national interest. Wolfers was undeniably ahead of his time, as the onset of the Cold War would largely cement the state- and military-centric meaning of security, in the US and elsewhere, for several more decades. But his work paved the way for future inquiries into the question that stalked academic and policy discussions of in/security: what does a concept meaning such different things to different people actually mean?
Beginning in the 1980s, and increasing considerably in the 1990s, the answer offered by constructivist scholars is that in/security has no given meaning; rather, it is a social construct whose substantive content is ascribed by social actors. Perhaps the single most important constructivist contribution to International Relations has been to highlight how concepts that are central to the field – such as anarchy, power, security, or the state – only appear normal because they have been made to appear so. Rather than objective, such phenomena are, to paraphrase Alexander Wendt, whatever social actors make of them.161 In the case of in/security, however, not only does it have no necessary meaning, no objective definition is possible. Drawing on W.B. Gallie’s insight that there is no objective meaning for inherently normative concepts such as ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, or ‘justice’, Steve Smith argues that security is also a “contested concept” whose basic meaning is a matter of inherent dispute: “No neutral definition is possible … [because] any meaning depends upon and in turn supports a specific view of politics … All
159 Lester Brown, Redefining National Security. Worldwatch Paper 14 (Washington DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1977); Richard H. Ullman, “Redefining Security,” International Security 8, no. 1 (1983): 129-153; Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Redefining Security,” Foreign Affairs 68, no. 2 (1989): 162-177. 160 Arnold Wolfers, “‘National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol,” Political Science Quarterly 67, no. 4 (1952), 481. 161 Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” International Organization 46, no. (1992): 391-425.
61 definitions are theory-dependent, and all definitions reflect normative commitments.”162 Smith thus echoes one of the basic tenets of critical theorizing, famously articulated by Robert Cox: “Theory is always for someone, and for some purpose.”163 In arguing that it is the state that must be secured – often because insecurity is structurally determined by the imperative for survival under conditions of international anarchy – objectivist accounts exhibit prior views about states, anarchy, and the behaviour of rational actors, and express preferences for how politics should be conducted, typified by Stephen Walt’s exemplar account of Realist security studies.164
Far from being natural, a seemingly inherent link between the state and the meaning of security was naturalized by powerful actors such as state, military, and economic elites whose interests were advanced by securing the state.165 In a general sense, this has been part of the process of modern statebuilding: the construction of sovereign territorial entities as the normal units of global politics and the natural objects to be secured under conditions of anarchy. From its inception, the territorial state has also been linked to the promotion of economic interests for elite actors.166 Studies have also examined the role of key actors in (re)producing particular accounts of in/security within Western governments and academia, such as the significant role played by RAND Corporation in objectifying deterrence and second-strike retaliation within American nuclear doctrine during the Cold War.167 But while powerful, the state-centric and military meaning of security is not fixed: rather, as an essentially contested concept and a social construct, it is inherently contestable and possible, if difficult, to change.
162 Steve Smith, “The Contested Concept of Security,” in Ken Booth, ed, Critical Security Studies and World Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 27-28. 163 Robert W. Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10, no. 2 (1981): 128. Emphasis in original. 164 Stephen M. Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1991): 211- 239. 165 Rothschild 1995, 62; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 22-30. 166 Hendrik Spruyt, “Institutional Selection in International Relations: State Anarchy as Order,” International Organization 48, no. 4 (1994): 527-557; Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 167 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983); Trine Villumsen Berling, “Science and Securitization: Objectivation, the Authority of the Speaker and Mobilization of Scientific Facts,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 385-397.
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Absent a unified, objective definition of security, ISS has been challenged to define a common core that encompasses often-conflicted understandings of its foundational concept. One approach has been to assert that the social construction of security only means that it has no inherent or natural meaning with respect to specific types of threats to particular types of referent objects or at certain levels of analysis. But what unifies disparate constructions of in/security is the shared view that “security is about survival. It is when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object.”168 If security’s basic meaning is about survival, then the essentially contested components of in/security are what should be understood as security-relevant (threat construction) and who is deserving of having their survival secured through the exercise of the state’s sovereign power. Such an approach allows for traditional state- and military-centric accounts of in/security to co-exist within the same academic field as accounts that emphasize non-state referent objects and non-military sources of threat.169 This definition allows ISS to encompass the tremendous diversity of scholarship and praxis that has occurred within the framework of ‘security’. This is crucial because the lexicon and grammar of security are routinely applied to realms such as the economy, environment, energy, identity, culture, language, water, food, health, and cyberspace, and to alternative referent objects above and below the state (such as individuals, peoples, cultures, species, the international system, the planet, etc.). Generally referred to as the widening and deepening of security, this shift signifies both a broad acknowledgement of the numerous phenomena relevant to the survival and wellbeing of peoples and states, and the ongoing contestation within the field over how in/security should be understood.170
A definitional grounding in survival, though not without certain problems, has the benefit of bringing some order to a widened concept of in/security while also emphasizing its normative dimension. If in/security is about survival, then asserting that it is socially constructed does not imply that it is devoid of meaning or that its definition makes no difference. To the contrary, it matters precisely how security is understood and implemented, because the answer will influence who or what enjoys the benefits of security under sovereign power and who or what does not.
168 Buzan et al. 1998, 21. 169 Buzan et al. 1998, 27. 170 Buzan et al. 1998, 2-7; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 187-225.
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The meaning of security is disputed precisely because it is a powerful social and political concept that deeply affects people’s lives, today and throughout modern history: “The very act of defining security and making a claim for that definition is an act of power, supporting the politics that depend on that definition, or making a normative claim for why security ought to be defined in a particular way.”171 Security is powerful because the basic core of its meaning is understood to invoke the prospect of survival to some object of social value. What follows, then, must be some determination of what is deemed worthy of survival, and what is not. If security is about survival, then what matters is how the determination of what is to survive is actually made.
3.2 Securitization Theory: The Copenhagen School and Its Critics
Emerging from debates over the widening and deepening of security in the late Cold War period, securitization theory (ST) has become the most significant constructivist approach within International Security Studies. The subject of a vast literature and a significant number and variety of internal debates, ST was initially developed through the individual and co-authored work of Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan, the core members of the so-called Copenhagen School of International Relations (CS).172 The impossibility of identifying a single objective meaning of security led the CS to focus instead upon what gives ‘security’ its particular social and political power. Rather than debating its definition, the CS focused instead on what invoking security does, namely the process by which political issues are transformed into security issues. Taking seriously in/security as socially constructed, the CS understands in/security not as something that is, but as something that becomes. Their seminal theoretical contribution lies in outlining the process through which the transformation into security relevance, namely securitization, occurs.
171 Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv and Marina Goloviznina, “Introduction,” in Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Dawn Bazely, Marina Goloviznina, and Andrew Tanentzap, eds, Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic (New York: Routledge, 2014), 2. 172 Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era. 2nd ed (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991); Ole Wæver, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, ed, On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995): 46-86; Ole Wæver, Concepts of Security (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 1997); Buzan et al. 1998; Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
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In the CS account, designating an issue as a security issue means that it supersedes all others, moving it beyond the realm of ‘normal’ politics by legitimizing extraordinary measures to address it. Securitization is equivalent to saying “if we [the political community] do not tackle this problem, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way).”173 Successfully securitizing an issue thus (re)produces a particular social meaning of in/security by designating that which we should be most afraid of because it threatens our ability to do everything else. The continual reproduction of particular meanings of in/security can accumulate over time, creating dominant, even axiomatic, understandings of what in/security means within a given context. But such meanings are never fixed, nor do they become naturalized or reified through their (re)production. Rather, it is the capacity for in/security to change, for security problems to “emerge and dissolve,”174 how, and under what conditions, that is of interest to securitization theory.
Figure 3: CS Securitization Process
Drawing on John Austin’s linguistic theory of “performative utterances,”175 the CS securitization process involves two steps, as laid out in Figure 3. First, a social actor – in theory any actor,
173 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 174 Thierry Balzacq, ed, Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (New York: Routledge, 2011). 175 John Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975 [1962]).
65 though as discussed later, not all actors are equally positioned to make security claims – makes a securitizing move, thus becoming a securitizing actor. A securitizing move identifies a threat to a referent object whose survival is endangered. The CS understands the securitizing move to be a speech act that employs the grammar and logic of in/security: “A speech act is interesting because it holds the insurrecting potential to break the ordinary, to establish meaning that is not already in the context. It reworks or produces a context by the performative success of the act.”176 For most securitizing moves, the logic is one of emergency, danger, of current or impending crisis.177 Often employing language such as, but not limited to, ‘security’, ‘insecurity’, ‘threat’, ‘survival’, ‘danger’, and ‘existence’, securitizing moves invoke an existential threat to a specified referent object with the goal of mobilizing political power in response. Though the CS privileges the term ‘security’, this meaning – the discursive construction of something as threatened and requiring an urgent and public response for its survival – is more important than the specific language used. While the CS understands securitization as primarily a discursive process, it is inherently performative in the sense that when securitization succeeds something is actually done. Wæver clearly notes the linguistic and performative aspects of securitization when he claims: “The word ‘security’ is the act; the utterance is the primary reality.”178 If successful, securitization transforms something into a security issue legitimating action in correspondence with the urgency of the security designation.
For a securitizing move to become a complete securitization, however, it must be accepted by an authoritative audience with the power to invoke exceptional measures in defence of the referent object. This is the second step in the securitization process: the adjudication of security claims by an audience “who have to be convinced in order for a securitizing move to be successful.”179 Securitizing moves alone are easy to make and abundant to find; they are evidenced by the
176 Buzan et al. 1998, 46. 177 This logic is influenced by the political theory of Carl Schmitt; see Filip Ejdus, ed, “Carl Schmitt and the Copenhagen School of Security Studies,” Western Baltic Security Observer 4, no. 13 (2009), 1-77. For a contrasting view see Didier Bigo and Anastasia Tsoukala, eds, Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes After 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2008). 178 Wæver 1995, 55. Emphasis in original. 179 Ole Wæver, “Securitisation: Taking Stock of a Research Programme in Security Studies,” unpublished paper (2003): 11-12. Quoted in Sarah Léonard and Christian Kaunert, “Reconceptualizing the Audience in Securitization Theory,” in Thierry Balzacq, ed, Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (New York: Routledge, 2011), 59.
66 proliferation of ‘security talk’ that has accompanied the post-Cold War widening of security away from military violence and its deepening above and below the state. But the power of the complete securitization lies in securitizing moves crossing the threshold of acceptance by the proper audience, which is often but not exclusively tied to a sovereign state.180 It is by this acceptance “through which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential threat to a valued referent object, and to enable a call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat.”181 Although often vague and somewhat contradictory, as discussed below, the CS formulation relies upon the audience’s acceptance of a securitizing move because of their emphasis upon the extraordinary measures and legitimate rule-breaking such acceptance enables.182 Once completed, “‘security’ is the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics … justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure.”183 The role and nature of the audience are among the most important and debated aspects of securitization theory, since there is an inconsistency between the argument that the audience must accept a securitizing move and Wæver’s assertion that by merely uttering ‘security’ something is done. This debate – over whether securitization is an intersubjective or an illocutionary process – is taken up below.
The utterance of a securitizing move forms the internal dimension of securitization, but the successful construction of in/security also requires certain external dimensions to be in place.184 Still drawing on Austinian language theory, the CS describe three facilitating conditions that structure the likely success or failure of a securitizing move: use of the grammar of security, the social capital and authority of the securitizing actor, and the features of the object held to be
180 Various audiences are specified in the CS’s work: it is usually implied to be a democratic public, but may also be a legislative body, political executive, or supranational organization such as the European Union or United Nations Security Council. 181 Buzan and Wæver 2003, 491. 182 Buzan et al. 1998, 21, 26; Wæver 1995, 55. 183 Buzan et al. 1998, 23-24. 184 The distinction between internal and external dimensions of securitization is discussed in Holger Stritzel, “Towards a Theory of Securitization: Copenhagen and Beyond,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (2007): 359-360.
67 threatening.185 These conditions shape and constrain whether certain securitizing moves will be accepted, whether certain securitizing actors will be heard, and whether certain phenomena can be credibly securitized. They also reflect the concession – which only emerged in the Copenhagen School’s later writings – that securitizing moves do not operate in discursive vacuums where all speech acts are equally likely to succeed. In contrast with the stricter post- structuralism of Wæver’s sole-authored work that “points to the centrality of studying in a text, how it produces its own meaning, rather than relating it to a ‘context’,”186 the CS collectively acknowledges that security “is a structured field in which some actors are placed in positions of power.”187 Which issues will be securitized is thus subject to specific social context, and vary by place, era, prevailing attitudes, and material circumstances.
In its aims, CS securitization theory is explicitly not concerned with identifying real or objective security threats, but rather the discursive process through which security threats are established.188 Even conceding the role of facilitating conditions, the CS remains “radically constructivist”189 in that in/security is determined by the success of particular securitizing moves in elevating an issue to the fore of the audience’s consciousness and the apex of political priority. Whether or not a material danger corresponding to a securitizing move exists is irrelevant to the construction of security threats, just as the normative or practical implications of responding to a particular threat are inconsequential to its validity as a successful securitization. To the CS, “‘security’ is thus a self-referential practice, because it is in this practice that the issue becomes a security issue – not necessarily because a real existential threat exists but because the issue is presented as such a threat.”190 Successful securitizations may represent objectively dangerous material phenomena, or have little or no basis in materiality, with the latter emerging either from a subjective perception of threat or from instrumental use of security language.
185 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. 186 Ole Wæver 2004. Quoted in Stritzel 2007, 361. Emphasis in original. 187 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 188 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 189 Buzan et al. 1998, 35. 190 Buzan et al. 1998, 24.
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The CS view of security as self-referential means it is neither characterized by the absence of a threat, per se, nor understood as a binary opposite to insecurity. Instead, “insecurity is the situation when there is a threat and no defence against it; security is a situation with a threat and a defence against it.”191 Security is not constituted by the absence of threats, but by the specification of a threat and a suitable defence-response. By contrast, the absence of threats – not their material absence, but lack of issues socially constructed as such – is a condition outside the realm of security the CS refers to as “normal politics.”192 As Wæver explains:
When there is no security problem, we do not conceptualize our situation in terms of security; instead, security is simply an irrelevant concern. The statement, then, that security is always relative, and one never lives in complete security, has the additional meaning that, if one has such complete security, one does not label it ‘security.’ It therefore never appears. Consequently, transcending a security problem by politicizing it cannot happen through thematization in security terms, only away from such terms.193
The Copenhagen School envisions all possible social issues falling along a spectrum ranging from depoliticized-politicized-securitized. Issues can move from politicized to securitized, but also from security back into the realm of normal politics through the reverse process of desecuritization. Throughout their work, the CS is clear in their preference for issues to be desecuritized rather than the opposite. For them, “security should be seen as negative, as a failure to deal with issues as normal politics. Ideally, politics should be able to unfold according to routine procedures without this extraordinary elevation of specific ‘threats’ to a prepolitical immediacy.”194 While the CS acknowledges that securitization may sometimes be necessary, they always consider it regrettable because of the societal cost to the normal operation of political institutions, protection of particular rights, and the rule of law.
This preference for desecuritization is one of the central distinctions between the Copenhagen School and other theoretical approaches to security, including subsequent accounts of securitization. Both objectivist and critical security theories tend to emphasize maximizing the
191 Ole Wæver, “Securitisation: Taking Stock of a Research Programme in Security Studies,” unpublished paper (2003). Quoted in Rita Floyd, Security and Environment: Securitisation Theory and US Environmental Security Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 30-31. Emphasis in original. 192 Buzan et al. 1998, 28-34. 193 Wæver 1995, 56. Emphasis in original. 194 Buzan et al. 1998, 29.
69 provision of security, whether through the expansion of material power for sovereign states or the pursuit of “positive security” for individuals and communities.195 Wæver dismisses this position, arguing “the trick was and is to move from a positive to a negative meaning … We want less security!”196 For the CS, rather than more security for threatened referent objects, “desecuritization itself – as the absence of a world framed in terms of security – is the emancipatory ideal.”197 Their position exhibits an unqualified preference for the operation of normal politics lacking the emergency connotations and anti-democratic potential of securitization. It also suggests the radicalism of the CS position, especially in the early post- Cold War context in which the theory was first articulated: arguing for less security was, and remains, a bold and counter-intuitive approach to ISS.
Not content to simply redefine in/security, the Copenhagen School sought to develop a theory that would make it possible to transcend the threat-response dynamic and its perceived negative social and political consequences. Their articulation of a radically constructivist approach to in/security inaugurated a vibrant branch of International Security Studies that has sustained theoretical discussions and empirical analyses of diverse contexts for over twenty years, inspiring scores of books and hundreds of articles by scholars around the world.198 Securitization theory provides explanatory leverage into how competing or contradictory
195 For discussions of positive security and securitization see Paul Roe, “The ‘Value’ of Positive Security,” Review of International Studies 34, no. 4 (2008): 777-794; Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, “Security By Any Other Name: Negative Security, Positive Security, and a Multi-Actor Security Approach,” Review of International Studies 38, no. 4 (2012): 835-859; Paul Roe, “Is Securitization a ‘Negative’ Concept? Revisiting the Normative Debate Over Normal Versus Extraordinary Politics,” Security Dialogue 43, no. 3 (2012): 249-266. 196 Wæver 1995, 56. 197 Floyd 2010, 48-49. 198 A small sample of examples not already cited includes: Hazel Smith, “Bad, Mad, Sad, or Rational Actor? Why the ‘Securitization’ Paradigm Makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea,” International Affairs 76, no. 1 (2000): 111-132; Paul Roe, “Securitization and Minority Rights: Conditions of Desecuritization,” Security Dialogue 35, no. 3 (2004): 279-294; Rita Abrahamsen, “Blair’s Africa: The Politics of Securitization and Fear,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 30, no. 1 (2005): 55-80); Claire Wilkinson, “The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is Securitization Theory Usable Outside Europe?” Security Dialogue 38, no. 1 (2007): 5-25; Wolfram Lacher, “Actually Existing Security: The Political Economy of the Saharan Threat,” Security Dialogue 39, no. 4 (2008): 383-405; Luis Lobo-Guerrero, “‘Pirates,’ Stewards, and the Securitization of Global Circulation,” International Political Sociology 2, no. 3 (2008): 219-235; Mark B. Salter, “Securitization and Desecuritization: A Dramaturgical Analysis of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority,” Journal of International Relations and Development 11, no. 4 (2008): 321-349; Holger Stritzel, “Security as Translation: Threats, Discourse, and the Politics of Localisation,” Review of International Studies 37, no. 5 (2011): 2491-2517; and Scott Watson, “The Human as ‘Referent Object’? Humanitarianism as Securitization,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 1 (2011): 3-20.
70 representations of in/security are constructed within a particular context or for a particular referent object: “It is from here that the empirical theorizing takes its origins. Knowing different security discourses and analysing how ‘the other’ is constructed within each allows the observer to see potential policy fault-lines and securitization processes.”199 Securitization offers a powerful explanatory framework for the social construction of in/security, providing a theoretical account for understanding how in/security is always susceptible to contestation.
As originally conceived, however, the CS conceptualization has been critiqued on theoretical, analytical, and normative grounds. Some critiques include: the alleged inability to assess the normative implications of securitization;200 inadequate incorporation of materiality into threat construction;201 unsatisfactory examination of the external context in which securitizing moves occur;202 theoretical inconsistency about the role of the audience;203 and disputes over how securitization actually occurs and the salience of emergency or crisis in legitimating security practices.204 These debates have encouraged some scholars to work towards improving the validity and coherence of the securitization framework: the original CS theory provides the foundation on which several different formulations of securitization have been built. These share a common premise that in/security is socially constructed through the interaction of different social actors, but differ in their understandings of the form, components, and significance of those interactions. Several critical accounts of securitization inform the following analysis, which examines three interrelated problems in the CS theory. The first of these is the CS account of normal politics and its preference for desecuritization. Second is the tension within the CS formulation between securitization as an intersubjective process and as an illocutionary
199 Stefano Guzzini, “Securitization as a Causal Mechanism,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 331. 200 Rita Floyd, “Can Securitization Theory Be Used in Normative Analysis? Towards a Just Securitization Theory,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 427-439. 201 Thierry Balzacq, “The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context,” European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 2 (2005): 171-201. 202 Balzacq 2005; Stritzel 2007; Matt McDonald, “Securitization and the Construction of Security,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 4 (2008): 563-587. 203 Floyd 2010, 50; Léonard and Kaunert 2011, 57-76. 204 Didier Bigo, “When Two Become One: Internal and External Securitisation in Europe,” in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams, eds, International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration: Power, Security and Community (London: Routledge, 2000); Bigo and Tsoukala 2008.
71 speech act, which foregrounds theoretical questions about the role of the audience in adjudicating securitizing moves. Third is the conceptual development of the identity of securitizing actors, audiences, and analysts within the CS theory. Taken together, these critiques provide the basis for a revised approach to securitization proposed in the next section.
3.2.1 Normal Politics and Non-Securitized Issues
The Copenhagen School’s preference for desecuritization is derived from a particular view of normal politics and the nature of the authoritative audience that adjudicates security claims. The conception of politics underlying the CS account of securitization is democracy-centric: it assumes possibilities for socio-political actors to more or less freely engage in political processes, and generally equates the audience to a democratic public. Other possible audiences include legislative bodies, political executives, elites, or supranational organizations such as the European Union or United Nations Security Council; the audience must be empowered to act, and so varies according to the specific threat and referent object in question. The CS allows for the possibility of securitization to operate in non-democratic contexts, but provides no account of how it would differ in contexts where people cannot speak openly or there is no independent authoritative audience.205 Some scholars thus question whether the CS theory can explain the construction of in/security in non-democratic systems.206 Wæver has acknowledged that the audience in the original theory is strongly implied to be a democratic public,207 and scholars employing securitization theory often structure their empirical analyses around the role of an electorate in accepting securitizing moves.208 But the assumption of a democratic audience relies upon received views of the responsiveness of political institutions to the demands of citizens, and offers elections as the only account for how the public can be authoritative when sovereign power is vested in the institutions of the state. This has led Rita Floyd to argue:
205 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 206 Wilkinson 2007; Vuori 2008. 207 Ole Wæver, “Taking Stock,” 11-12. Quoted in Léonard and Kaunert 2011, 59. By contrast, “consumer society” is identified as the audience in Bigo and Tsoukala 2008, 5. 208 Floyd 2010, 51; Jarrod Hayes, “Securitization, Social Identity, and Democratic Security: Nixon, India, and the Ties That Bind,” International Organization 66, no. 1 (2012): 69.
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The audience in [CS] securitization theory is not an analytical concept at all, but rather a normative concept in analytical disguise. This is because through the idea of ‘intersubjectivity’ Wæver can show, and indeed shows, a normative commitment … Wæver believes that politics should be done consensually and through dialogue and deliberation, as opposed to politics being a top-down process … The concept of audience arises from Wæver’s view of what politics ought to be, therefore not necessarily from how it actually is.209
Securitization moves issues away from normal politics and into the realm of security, but the actual process of securitization takes place within the realm of normal politics because the issue has not yet been securitized. The CS is so committed to an ideal of normal politics as democratic politics that they adopt a view of the audience that limits their theory’s applicability and may not reflect empirical realities.
The CS requires a democratic view of normal politics because it is essential to justifying their preference for desecuritization, which rests on the assumption that if issues remain in the normal political realm they will be tackled through normal political means. Wæver insists that whereas securitization forecloses political discussion and debate, desecuritization results in politicization, whereby issues can be resolved without the crisis and emergency connotations of being labelling security issues.210 Unmentioned in the CS account is the possibility that issues that remain desecuritized may also remain depoliticized, a prospect raised by Floyd: “Following desecuritization, an issue may no longer be part of the political agenda for those in power, even if it is still a concern for other actors.”211 This observation points to a vital gap in securitization theory: material phenomena endangering people’s lives or wellbeing of groups of people do not vanish simply because they fail to succeed as securitizations or are not conceived in security terms. Wæver’s claim that “transcending a security problem by politicizing it cannot happen through thematization in security terms, only away from such terms,”212 relies upon the view that normal (democratic) politics effectively addresses serious social issues. Unfortunately, this
209 Floyd 2010, 50-51. Emphasis in original. 210 Wæver 1997, 3. 211 Floyd 2010, 57. 212 Wæver 1995, 56.
73 is an overly optimistic reading of democratic politics, particularly when confronting complex, divisive, or “wicked” problems such as human-caused environmental change.213
The danger of relying upon politicization to address non-securitized issues is made clear when one considers the distinction between radically constructed security threats and objective hazards that are often the subjects of securitizing moves. The CS reserves the designation of ‘threat’ for those moves which succeed in being accepted by the authoritative audience; threats are not based on their materiality but on the sovereign’s discursive agreement to mobilize its power against a designated phenomenon. Something may be dangerous, but it is not elevated to the status of threat unless the state decides to do something about it. Thierry Balzacq effectively notes the problem with this exclusively discursive account of security threats, though he invites confusion by employing the term ‘threat’ in both constructed and objective ways:
In its attempts to follow a more radical approach to security problems … the CS has neglected the importance of ‘external or brute threats’, that is, threats that do not depend on language mediation to be what they are – hazards for human life … In [the CS] scheme, there is no security problem except through the language game. Therefore, how problems are ‘out there’ is exclusively contingent upon how we linguistically depict them. This is not always true. For one, language does not construct reality; at best, it shapes our perception of it. Moreover, it is not theoretically useful nor is it empirically credible to hold that what we say about a problem would determine its essence ... Some security problems are the attribute of the development itself.214
In emphasizing the radically constructed nature of security threats to “avoid a view of security that is given objectively,”215 the CS downplays the material consequences of serious issues that fail to be securitized. A single sentence in their seminal book, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, invites analysts to “show the effects of … not securitizing – the inability to handle an
213 Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Richard J. Lazarus, "Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future," Cornell Law Review 94, no. 5 (2009); Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore, Steven Bernstein and Graeme Auld, “Overcoming the Tragedy of Super Wicked Problems: Constraining our Future Selves to Ameliorate Global Climate Change” Policy Sciences 45, no. 2 (2012): 123-152. 214 Balzacq 2005, 181. Emphasis in original. 215 Buzan et al. 1998, 31.
74 issue effectively unless it is securitized.”216 But the CS schema allows no room for objective material dangers to be understood as security-relevant unless successfully securitized. Their approach to in/security thus marginalizes the physical world and material objects in which and upon which security logic operates: “Precisely because the Copenhagen School holds that something becomes a security problem only when it is spoken of, or regarded as a security problem, they deny the objective existence of security threats.”217 This is consistent with the CS’s radically constructivist approach, but moves away from the central conceptual core of security as focused on survival.
The limitations of normal politics combined with the existence of objective material hazards call into question the Copenhagen School’s default normative objection to securitization. The preference for desecuritization is only tenable if politicization is more likely to effectively resolve a given problem; if not, there is no a priori basis on which to prefer desecuritization to securitization. If desecuritization without effective politicization may result in disaster for a given referent object, then “in the case of brute threats, securitisation may well be a more viable political strategy than desecuritisation, considering that securitisation’s unique mobilisation power can deal with problems faster and more effectively than mere politicisation.”218 In the Arctic, for instance, desecuritizing environmental change in the absence of effective politicization may affect the survival of a range of referent objects.
3.2.2 Intersubjectivity and Illocutionary Speech Acts
Understanding the conceptualization of the audience is also key to one of the most fundamental debates around the CS theory: whether securitization operates as an intersubjective process or an illocutionary speech act.219 Several scholars have observed that the CS theory suffers from an incompatible view of securitization as both an intersubjective agreement that transforms
216 Buzan et al. 1998, 40. 217 Floyd 2010, 31. 218 Floyd 2010, 33. 219 The distinction between illocutionary and other types of speech act is also taken from John Austin (1962), and is explained in greater detail in Balzacq 2005, 175.
75 securitizing moves into complete securitizations, and as an illocutionary speech act whereby merely speaking security transforms something into a security issue.220 As Stritzel asks: “How can the idea of the performative force of a security articulation … be reconciled with the concept of a (social or intersubjective) process of securitization?”221 The inconsistency can be summarized as conflicting accounts of the audience as, on the one hand, essential to securitization because “the issue is only securitized if and when the audience accepts it as such,”222 but on the other, as superfluous because “security is determined by [securitizing] actors … It is the actor … who decides whether something is to be handled as an existential threat.”223 The result is confusion over whether securitization is intersubjective – constructed between actor and audience and therefore not solely self-referential – or illocutionary, and thus self-referential but not based on some form of social agreement. Put another way, the question is over where the “social magic”224 of securitization actually lies: with the securitizing actor through a performative speech act or with the audience with the power to accept or reject securitizing moves.
The distinction matters because it shapes our understanding of who is required to make securitization work, and because it directly affects the CS’s justification for preferring desecuritization. If securitization is intersubjectively established between social actors, then it has a basis of meaning outside the grammar and language of in/security. The three facilitating conditions would then matter significantly because they provide the “heuristic artefacts [which] a securitizing actor [must] use to create (or effectively resonate with) the circumstances that will facilitate the mobilization of the audience … [The] outcome is to open up the politics and methods of creating security, since discourse involves practice and refers to variables that are extra-linguistic.”225 Intersubjectivity exposes securitization to the influence of social context,
220 Balzacq 2005; Floyd 2010. As Stritzel (2007: 363) observes, this inconsistency is sometimes apparent on the same page of the Copenhagen School’s published works. 221 Stritzel 2007, 363. 222 Buzan et al. 1998, 25. 223 Buzan et al. 1998, 31, 34. 224 Thierry Balzacq, “A Theory of Securitization: Origins, Core Assumptions, and Variants,” in Thierry Balzacq, ed, Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (New York: Routledge, 2011), 1. 225 Balzacq 2005, 178-179.
76 and retains a role for the audience to reject security claims. But if securitization operates as an illocution then it is not a process at all, because it is through the mere utterance of a threat’s existence by a powerful securitizing actor that something is securitized. Whether securitization operates in one way or the other is an analytical question, but the answer has significant normative implications. Intersubjectivity maintains space for democratic inclusion, affording the possibility of involvement by members of a political community in determining what in/security is. Illocutionary securitization radically empowers the agents of the state, since it reserves for the sovereign the right to decree what in/security is, reducing it to an expression of the views of those who already possess political power. Securitization-as-illocution thus conflicts with the CS ideal of normal (democratic) politics because the audience’s agreement is not required for the success of the speech act. Conversely, an audience-centric intersubjective approach may conform to Wæver’s democratic ideal but requires significant compromise on the performative power the CS imparts to security utterances.
Ultimately, the Copenhagen School is unclear whether securitization is intersubjective or illocutionary, though other analysts have inferred answers based on close readings of the CS’s published works. The CS does not clearly theorize who comprises the audience, but expends significant effort establishing the self-referential and illocutionary nature of security speech acts. Consequently, Balzacq concludes that “by examining the units of analysis of the CS, which negate the audience … the CS leans towards self-referentiality [illocution], rather than intersubjectivity.”226 Floyd concurs, though she and Balzacq differ in their response to the de facto account of securitization-as-illocution, with Balzacq advocating better inclusion of the external dimensions of securitization and Floyd seeking to move away from performative speech acts altogether.227 Stritzel also determines that the CS favours an “internalist” conception of securitization, and joins Balzacq in emphasizing the need for better analysis of external dimensions that incorporate other factors and actors into securitization.228 Though distinct in their own revised approaches to employing securitization, all three agree that securitization-as-
226 Balzacq 2005, 179. 227 Floyd 2010, 52. 228 Stritzel 2007.
77 illocution is analytically limiting because it is unlikely to capture the external dimensions that contribute to the real-world success or failure of securitizing moves.
3.2.3 Identity and Securitization
One of the most important, yet under-developed, external dimensions of securitization theory is the identity of the actors involved. From the outset, the CS exhibited a distinct but circumscribed interest in, and relevance to, questions of identity. Some of their earliest writings focused on the securitization of national, cultural, and linguistic identities in post-Cold War Europe, often in tandem with the re-emergence of far right ideologies and political parties.229 Distinct from contributions that viewed identity as a causal factor in the determination of security priorities,230 or saw it as (re)produced through security processes,231 the CS proposed a conception of societal security in which “the referent object is large-scale collective identities that can function independent of the state.”232 Noting the inherent conservatism of attempting to secure ‘authentic’ collective identity, the CS details how identity(ies) that link a group’s members have typically been perceived as threatened through evolution (change over time) and dilution (contact with outside influences), including individuals within a community represented as outside an identity group and threatening to it.233 How a communal identity is constructed is therefore key, since the hazards that are considered to threaten it will vary according to how identity-holders understand the bonds that link them together: communities experience in/security differently “depending upon how their identity is constructed.”234 However, the construction of threats to an identity also serves as a powerful tool for reproducing it: “Threats to identity are thus always
229 Ole Wæver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Order in Europe (London: Pinter, 1993). 230 Peter J. Katzenstein, ed, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identities in World Politics. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 231 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); McSweeney 1999. 232 Buzan et al. 1998, 22. 233 Buzan et al. 1998, 119-140. 234 Buzan et al. 1998, 124.
78 a question of the construction of something as threatening some ‘we’ – and often thereby actually contributing to the construction or reproduction of ‘us’.”235 Its emphasis on social construction has made securitization theory applicable to examining communal identities that are themselves socially constructed but which often claim historic, primordial, or essentialist qualities.236
What the CS pays less attention to is identity as part of the facilitating conditions for the securitization process itself. At first glance, the CS appears attuned to the importance of identity: they note that security is a “structured field” and that “social power” shapes the influence of securitizing actors and the societal perception of particular security issues.237 Socio-political and state elites, through their control of political and economic resources, mass media, prior legitimacy, and social capital, occupy dominant positions within securitization processes that privilege their securitizing moves over those of other actors.238 But the CS moves quickly to limit the exceptional securitizing role of elites, claiming: “This power, however, is never absolute: no one is guaranteed the ability to make people accept a claim for necessary security action, nor is anyone excluded from attempts to articulate alternative interpretations of security. The field is structured and biased, but no one conclusively ‘holds’ the power of securitization.”239 The CS thus sees identity as relevant to the interests of actors in making securitizing moves, but specifies that a securitizing actor’s identity is not determinative of a move’s success. Subsequent analyses also focus on exploring how securitizing actors’ identities relate to securitization, and how those identities are affected by external factors.240
Here, again, the CS demonstrates insufficient attention to the audience: they raise the relevance of identity for the securitizing actors, but not for the audience receiving securitizing moves. When the CS refers to “the social conditions regarding the position of authority for the
235 Buzan et al. 1998, 120. Emphasis in original. 236 For the social construction of national identity see Anderson 2006. 237 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 238 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. Citing Pierre Bourdieu, Balzacq (2005, 190-191) makes a similar point. 239 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 240 Roxanna Sjöstedt, “Ideas, Identities and Internalizations: Explaining Securitizing Moves,” Cooperation and Conflict 48, no. 1 (2013): 143-164.
79 securitizing actor – that is, the relationship between speaker and audience and thereby the likelihood of the audience accepting the claims made in a securitizing attempt,”241 the relevance of social conditions is vested in the actor. They insist that “one can not make the actors of securitization the fixed point of analysis,” but specify that “in concrete analysis, however, it is important to be specific about who is more or less privileged in articulating security.”242 The focus on securitizing actors rather than audience reinforces the arguments made by Balzacq, Floyd, and Stritzel that in the tension between securitization as intersubjective or illocutionary, the CS favour illocution because it sustains their commitment to the performative power of the securitizing move. Since the audience is rendered superfluous it is not the subject of conceptual elaboration.243 Alternatively, the omission may stem from the CS theory’s democratic bias: the identity of the audience does not have to be theorized in detail because it is assumed to be a democratic identity, varying by national context but neutral in its function of adjudicating security claims. But insofar as the CS maintains the intersubjectivity of the securitization process, it emphasizes the relevance of identity for securitizing actors without extending it to the audience.
This emphasis is ironic, however, because the CS denies the role of security analysts as securitizing actors themselves, overlooking how the identity of the analyst matters to securitizing processes they examine. The CS sees analysts and actors as “functionally distinct”: the role of the former is restricted to examining the actions of the latter in producing securitizing moves or successful securitizations.244 They insist, “the security analyst [is] in no position to assume the role of the securitising actor at any point in the analysis.”245 But this is inconsistent with the CS’s own radically constructivist approach, since it minimizes:
the role of the political (social) scientist in co-constituting political reality … The securitisation analyst in writing (speaking) about a particular social reality is in part responsible for the co-constitution of this very reality, as by means of her own text this
241 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. 242 Buzan et al. 1998, 32. Emphasis added. 243 Léonard and Kaunert 2011. 244 Buzan et al. 1998, 33-35. 245 Buzan et al. 1998, 33-34.
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reality is (re)produced … In writing or speaking security, the securitisation analyst herself executes a speech act; this speech act is successful if the problem raised becomes recognised as a security problem in the academic literature and/or in the wider policy- making discourse.246
Certainly, analysts examine the securitizing moves of others, but while doing so will either support the validity of the securitizing move, (re)producing the issue as a security issue, or critique its empirical validity or successful social construction, undermining its security-ness. Clearly, “when security analysts ‘observe’ acts of security of security moves, the analyst has immediately contributed to the politics of the process by recognizing (or not recognizing) an actor as a security actor and a securitizing move as being successful or not.”247 Especially when analysing non-traditional security issues, analysts cannot avoid challenging or reproducing their security-relevance, as evidenced by studies of such diverse phenomena as: gender,248 migrants,249 illegal drugs,250 HIV/AIDS and other epidemic diseases,251 capitalist consumerism,252 and human-caused environmental change.253
246 Floyd 2010, 47. 247 Hoogensen and Goloviznina 2014, 2. 248 Gunhild Hoogensen and Svein Vigeland Rottem, “Gender Identity and the Subject of Security,” Security Dialogue 25, no. 2 (2004): 155-171; Hoogensen and Stuvøy 2006; Roberts 2008. 249 Jef Huysmans, “The European Union and the Securitization of Migration,” Journal of Common Market Studies 38, no. 5 (2000): 751-777; Roe 2004; Maggie Ibrahim, “The Securitization of Migration: A Racial Discourse,” International Migration 43, no. 5 (2005): 163-187. 250 Kyle Grayson, Chasing Dragons: Security, Identity, and Illicit Drugs in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Emily Crick, “Drugs as an Existential Threat: An Analysis of the International Securitization of Drugs,” International Drug Policy 23, no. 5 (2012): 407-414; Danny Kushlick, “International Security and the Global War on Drugs: The Tragic Irony of Drug Securitisation,” in Richard Pates and Diane Riley, eds, Harm Reduction in Substance Abuse and High Risk Behaviour: International Policy and Practice (Chichester: Wiley- Blackwell, 2012), 101-110. 251 Susan Peterson, “Epidemic Disease and National Security,” Security Studies 12, no. 2 (2002): 43-81; Stefan Elbe, “Should HIV/AIDS Be Securitized? The Ethical Dilemmas of Linking HIV/AIDS and Security,” International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2006): 119-144. 252 Simon Dalby, “Geopolitical Identities: Arctic Ecologies and Global Consumption,” Geopolitics 8, no. 1 (2003): 181-201; Vanessa Pupavac, “The Consumerism-Development-Security Nexus,” Security Dialogue 41, no. 6 (2010): 691-713. 253 Heather A. Smith, “Choosing Not to See: Canada, Climate Change, and the Arctic,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (Autumn 2010): 931-942; Matt McDonald, “The Failed Securitization of Climate Change in Australia,” Australian Journal of Political Science 47, no. 4 (2012): 579-592.
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This conclusion is hard to avoid using the Copenhagen School’s own constructivist logic. It is more theoretically consistent and intellectually honest to consider analysts as securitizing actors who help construct in/security by contributing epistemological and theoretical innovations that widen (or narrow) the field of security research, and by articulating particular threats they consider worthy of investigation or urgently requiring action.254 Conversely, they may work to desecuritize issues they consider to be inappropriately or problematically constructed as security threats. Denying the securitizing role of analysts contributes to the naturalization of the security phenomena that they study, and overlooks the role of experts in co-constituting their fields of study. Just as important, acknowledging expert analysts as co-constituting political reality recognizes the role they play in conferring academic authority to particular conceptions of in/security, and the influence they sometimes exert over political and public opinion.
3.3 Revising Securitization: Non-Dominance and In/Security
Two implications of these critiques inform a revised account of securitization. Revisions are necessary because, “while securitization gives us powerful tools for analyzing the security process, it is not a complete theory of security … [It] only begins to address factors that facilitate or inhibit securitization.”255 First, securitization should be understood as an intersubjective process, not an illocutionary speech act. While the tension in the Copenhagen School’s account is difficult to fully resolve, their emphasis upon facilitating conditions directs us towards a view that securitization must be negotiated between social actors. From the outset, the CS have made clear that even the most authoritative actors do not possess the power to simply invoke their preferred meaning of in/security.256 This appears both empirically valid – even powerful actors’
254 Johan Eriksson, “Observers or Advocates? On the Political Role of Security Analysts,” Cooperation and Conflict 34, no. 3 (1999): 311-330. 255 Hayes 2012, 67. 256 Wæver (1995: 58-62) examines how the communist order in Eastern Europe collapsed through the failure of securitizing moves by state and Communist party elites. Subsequent events in global politics emphasize the point that not even power state actors can successful construct in/security solely through their securitizing moves, as demonstrated by such major developments as: the lead-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003; the events of the Arab uprisings in 2011-2012; and the threat by President Obama to use force against the Syria in the summer of 2012 that was rejected by the US Congress.
82 securitizing moves sometimes fail – and normatively desirable, as it retains a role for public involvement and political negotiation over whether securitization should occur. It preserves the possibility that determinations of in/security can result from a democratic process, and that authoritative actors may sometimes be forced to respond to securitizing moves initiated by non- state actors. This latter point is particularly salient in the Arctic, where non-state actors, including academic and media “purveyors of polar peril” have successfully initiated successful securitization.257 Intersubjectivity also takes us beyond the confines of the speech act as the sole form of securitizing move: in/security claims can be made in spoken, written, visual, enacted, and embodied ways, all of which represent efforts by actors to securitize ‘their’ issues.258 Regardless of the form they take, having securitizing moves made and adjudicated by an authoritative audience is the core of securitization theory.
The second implication for a revised account of securitization is that the identities of the securitizing actor, authoritative audience, and analyst all matter. Recognizing the significance of the audience’s identity is particularly important because it has typically been overlooked. If one of securitization’s facilitating conditions lies in “the relationship between speaker and audience and thereby the likelihood of the audience accepting the claims made in a securitizing attempt,”259 then analysis of identity must also be extended to the audience. Who the audience is determines the locus of decision making for designating security threats, and their disposition towards the securitizing actor may be crucial for the outcome of his or her securitizing moves. These identities, in turn, are shaped through historical and ongoing processes of identity and interest-construction, requiring an account of securitization as context-dependent and power-
257 Franklyn Griffiths, “Arctic Security: The Indirect Approach,” in James Kraska, ed, Arctic Security in an Age of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 3; Franklyn Griffiths, “Canadian Arctic Sovereignty: Time to Take Yes for an Answer on the Northwest Passage,” in Frances Abele, Thomas J. Courchene, F. Leslie Seidle, and France St-Hilaire, eds, Northern Exposure: People, Power, and Prospects in Canada’s North (Montreal: IRPP, 2009), 13. 258 Michael C. Williams, “Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics,” International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2003): 511-531; Juha A. Vuori, “A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object,” Security Dialogue 41, no. 3 (2010): 255-277; and Mark B. Salter and Can E. Mutlu, eds, Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2013). 259 Buzan et al. 1998, 33.
83 laden.260 Securitization must be examined in light of the context in which it is undertaken, and the unequal abilities of actors to successfully invoke security because of who they are and whom they are speaking to. In states with high inequality, colonial histories, or political legacies of marginalizing, disempowering, or oppressing segments of their population, the significance of the audience and their past and contemporary relationships to the securitizing actor is readily apparent. Given the political and existential implications of speaking security, the actor- audience dynamic can never be presumed to be power-free, but requires examination of the relationships that connect the securitizing actor and audience. A democratic, inclusive, and pluralistic audience cannot be taken for granted.
My revised approach proposes that whether issues identified by an actor on behalf of a group with a particular identity are actually securitized is a function of the power relations that exist among the holders of that group identity and the authoritative audience. I suggest that groups with oppositional, antagonistic, or threatening identities to the authoritative audience will have their security claims rejected. I term this securitization non-dominance: groups who are structurally unable to successfully speak, write, or perform securitizing moves on the basis of who they are. Following Stritzel’s call for securitization to pay greater focus to the social context within which securitizing moves occur,261 what is “proposed here [is] to view identity as a catalyst or gate-keeper in accepting a particular idea as a threat.”262 This does not mean that dominant groups will always succeed in securitizing their issues, or that all non-dominant groups will fail to securitize theirs. But it suggests that identity determines why some securitizing moves fail: not because of the relative seriousness of a danger or the value of a referent object, but because of the speaker making the in/security claim. In the following chapters, I employ this theoretical approach to explain the limited power of Indigenous actors to successfully securitize environmental changes in the Arctic region.
This approach differs from other revised approaches to securitization. First, it challenges standard accounts of how open and accessible securitization processes actually are. For the CS
260 Balzacq 2005, 179. 261 Stritzel 2007. 262 Sjöstedt 2013, 153. This quotation is taken from Sjöstedt, but her account differs from mine because it continues to focus exclusively on the identities of securitizing actors, not the audience.
84 and many subsequent accounts, securitization closes a given issue to democratic debate by moving it from the realm of normal to exceptional politics. In so doing, it restricts the actors empowered to speak to that issue and limits room for debate, negotiation, or the expression of dissenting views. Prior to the move from politics to security, however, issues are held to be generally open, allowing for “attempts to articulate alternative interpretations of security.”263 This inheres in the idea of normal politics and is implicit in justifying the CS preference for desecuritization. The concept of securitization non-dominance challenges this assessment of the relative openness of normal politics by contending that some actors are precluded from effectively being able to make securitizing moves: for them, securitization is closed from the outset. This suggests an important corollary to the CS assessment that security “is structured and biased, but no one conclusively 'holds' the power of securitization.”264 This may be accurate, but some actors are precluded from accessing the power of securitization, which qualifies our understanding of security issues and further complicates the CS preference for desecuritization.
Second, this approach extends the focus on identity beyond the securitizing actor to also include audience and the analyst. The relevant securitizing audiences for this study are not neutral actors, but the governing powers of the settler-colonial states in which Arctic Indigenous peoples reside. Since the actor-audience relationship is between colonized-colonizer it is inherently relevant to securitization because of the basic power inequality, historical legacy, and ongoing social attitudes that structure relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. For an authoritative settler-colonial audience to accept securitizing moves by indigenous peoples would necessitate an acknowledgement of their own role in the constitution of insecurity for indigenous peoples in the first place. As discussed in Chapter 2, relations of non-dominance are constitutive of indigeneity, and by definition indigenous peoples have had their rights, interests, property, and persons violated by their colonizers. When indigenous peoples make securitizing moves to sovereigns that are at least partly responsible for the hazards that they are facing, the significance of their imbalanced power relationship and antagonistic identities is unavoidable.
263 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 264 Buzan et al. 1998, 31.
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Although this research project is theoretically and empirically grounded, my identity as the analyst is important to the analysis in the following way. I am a young Canadian scholar fascinated with the Arctic, and an engaged citizen disturbed by the ongoing social and political relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. I am also deeply concerned over the present and future implications of human-caused environmental changes, which has motivated my political engagement with climate change-related issues. The contribution of my identity to this research project is the very decision to focus on how Arctic in/security has been constituted in the first place, as well as the choice to highlight Indigenous understandings of in/security alongside those of Arctic states. I am not responsible for making the securitizing moves identified here, but in situating them as the focus of study I contribute, in whatever limited way, to reproducing them as security-relevant and to legitimizing the actors making them. As an analyst, I have “contributed to the politics of the process by recognizing (or not recognizing) an actor as a security actor and a securitizing move as being successful or not.”265 Reiterating Floyd’s argument about security analysts as securitizing actors: “In writing or speaking security, the securitisation analyst [him]self executes a speech act; this speech act is successful if the problem raised becomes recognised as a security problem in the academic literature and/or in the wider policy-making discourse.”266 Keeping with Huysmans, there is an unavoidable normative dimension to writing about security issues, and I acknowledge the aspect of my research that draws attention to those actors and issues often overlooked within dominant discourses of in/security in the Arctic.
3.3.1 Silencing and Subsuming Indigenous Insecurity
Understood as the historical and contemporary relationships between Indigenous peoples and the settler/colonial states in which they reside, indigeneity is an identity that results in securitization non-dominance. In the context of the contemporary Arctic, I argue that Indigenous securitization non-dominance operates through two specific mechanisms: the silencing and subsuming of insecurity, respectively. Lene Hansen first identified these mechanisms in her feminist critique
265 Hoogensen and Goloviznina 2014, 2. 266 Floyd 2010, 47.
86 observing the absence of gender within the original CS securitization theory.267 She notes the CS approach suffers from two:
blank spots … which prevent the inclusion of gender … ‘Security as silence’ occurs when insecurity cannot be voiced, when raising something as a security problem is impossible or might even aggravate the threat being faced. ‘Subsuming security’ arises because gendered security problems often involve an intimate inter-linkage between the subject’s gendered identity and other aspects of the subject’s identity, for example national and religious.268
In effect, security as silence arises from an exclusive focus upon speech acts for communicating in/security, while subsuming security occurs due to the absorption of a particular referent object within a more-encompassing one that eclipses or obscures the particular security concerns of the former. Hansen also emphasizes the appropriateness of gender as a mid-level referent object occupying space between the individual and international levels of analysis.269 As a socially constructed collective identity that mediates the distribution of material security hazards for an identifiable group of people, gender is analogous to national or other communal identities, and is appropriate to securitization analysis.270 Hansen’s insights are equally applicable to other non- dominant identity groups, and the gendered construction of indigeneity as subordinate to, dependent upon, and ultimately inferior to settler/colonial identities makes the stretch from gender to indigeneity a modest one.
I suggest these mechanisms operate somewhat differently than in Hansen’s original formulation. Hansen derives ‘security as silence’ from the inability of women in conservative Islamic societies to speak about the sources of their insecurity without the prospect of further violence, and thus the greater security they gain by remaining silent. Instead, I emphasize ‘silenced insecurity’ to examine restrictions upon Indigenous peoples’ abilities to make security claims. Securitizing moves can be impeded or ignored in an effort to prevent an utterance of in/security
267 Lene Hansen, “The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 25, no. 2 (2000): 285-306. 268 Hansen 2000, 287. 269 Hansen 2000, 294. 270 For another discussion of gender and insecurity see Roberts 2008.
87 from being heard or seen.271 Studies of Indigenous politics often emphasize the concept of voice precisely because Indigenous peoples have had to fight in order to speak for themselves and to be heard.272 Silenced insecurity draws attention to how securitizing moves may be prevented from being made, and thus unable to be heard or acknowledged. As Hansen notes, imposed silence can result in non-verbal securitizing moves, since, even if words are not heard, actions can draw attention to the bodily enactment of securitizing moves by individuals or groups unable to effectively voice their interests.273
‘Subsuming insecurity’ operates as Hansen describes, only substituting indigeneity for gender as the identity subsumed within a larger referent object. Indigeneity is also not “clearly delineated” from the state or other societal referent objects, and is thus difficult to construct as a coherent, self-reproducing subject of security.274 Indigeneity is only one aspect of an indigenous person’s identity, and, by definition, indigenous persons will also have political citizenship of a non- indigenous settler polity, even if they do not choose to participate in it. This renders it possible for claims made on the basis of indigeneity to be incorporated into in/security claims made on the basis of other identities, including citizenship to the state responsible for subjugating indigenous peoples in the first place. In this respect, there is a strong parallel between Hansen’s study of gender identities within fundamentalist societies and indigeneity in settler/colonial societies. She writes: “The construction of appropriate gendered norms of behaviour within a highly religious discourse functions to link gender and religion in a way which prevents the articulation of ‘gendered insecurity’, because it would be in opposition to the (constructed) foundational essence of the religious community.”275
271 Buzan et al (1998: 29) acknowledge the silencing potential of security discourse as part of their reluctance to securitize: “National security should not be idealized. It works to silence opposition and has given power holders many opportunities to exploit “threats” for domestic purposes, to claim a right to handle something with less democratic control and constraint.” 272 Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds, Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London: Sage, 1995); Battiste 2000; Bartholomew Dean and Jerome M. Levi, eds, At the Risk of Being Heard: Identity, Indigenous Rights, and Postcolonial States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Tennberg 2010. 273 Hansen 2000, 303-304. See also “The Corporeal Turn” in Salter and Mutlu 2013, 139-172. 274 Hansen 2000, 297-299. 275 Hansen 2000, 299.
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I propose that the same formulation can be applied to how subsumed insecurity occurs for indigenous peoples with respect to the national identities of their respective states. Replacing ‘gendered’ with ‘indigenous’ and ‘religious’ with ‘settler-colonial’ offers a clear articulation of how security for indigenous people can be subsumed. The amended statement reads: the construction of appropriate indigenous norms of behaviour within a highly settler-colonial discourse functions to link indigeneity and settler-colonialism in a way which prevents the articulation of ‘indigenous insecurity’, because it would be in opposition to the (constructed) foundational essence of the settler-colonial community. Through subsumed insecurity, securitizing moves may appear to have been successful, but are actually incorporated within securitizations that contradict the substance of the non-dominant group’s original security claims. As a result, as illustrated in Figure 4, there are three possible outcomes for securitizing moves made by non-dominant groups: 1) they may be silenced, and thus never reach the authoritative audience that must adjudicate them; 2) they may be subsumed within a broader but distinct securitizing move, thus nominally succeeding while substantively failing to advance the original security claim; or 3) they may simply fail on their own terms if rejected by the audience.
Figure 4: Revised Securitization Process
In part, this study examines how Indigenous peoples are rendered securitization non-dominant through the mechanisms of silenced insecurity and subsumed insecurity. Securitization non- dominance reflects power in both structural and institutional forms, as defined by Barnett and
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Duvall.276 It is both direct and constitutive of actors (structural power), and diffused through regulation of the interactions between particular social actors (institutional power). Although there is some overlap between them, silencing insecurity tends to reflect institutional power, whereas subsuming insecurity is a manifestation of structural power. These are mechanisms because they affect whether or not the effects of securitization will occur, namely whether exceptional measures are legitimated: “The effects are determinate, but triggering the mechanism itself contingent … [Securitization is] the process that is triggered by something else.”277 Having their security claims silenced or subsumed within dominant security discourse is mechanistic in two ways: one negative, one positive. It is negative in that it prevents the triggering effect of a successful securitization through the acceptance of a securitizing move, and positive in that it is through the silencing and subsuming of their security claims that groups are rendered securitization non-dominant.
The securitization non-dominance of Arctic Indigenous peoples also has implications for the construction (or not) of environmental change in the circumpolar region. As Chapters 4-7 demonstrate, Indigenous peoples in Canada and Norway have attempted to securitize environmental changes, arguing that both climate change and regional land-use and environmental degradation constitute threats to their cultural practices, traditional ways of life, and ultimately their identities as Indigenous peoples. Since environmental change is at the heart of the security claims made by Arctic Indigenous peoples, the silencing and subsuming of Indigenous claims contribute to the non-securitization of environmental change in the region. These efforts to securitize the environment are relevant to one other theoretical debate within International Security Studies: whether securitization is, in fact, a desirable or effective way of addressing environmental hazards. This debate is outlined in the following section, and the benefits of treating Arctic environmental change as a security issue discussed.
276 Barnett and Duvall 2005. 277 Guzzini 2011, 336.
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3.4 Insecurity and the Environment
It has taken decades for environmental issues to become established as a valid part of International Security Studies. This trajectory illustrates the difficulty of changing dominant conceptualizations of in/security, while underlining that such change is possible. The Cold War period witnessed the slow development of a conceptual link between environmental phenomena and in/security as critics began to highlight the significance of environmental factors for political, economic, and social stability. Concerns over domestic and transnational environmental issues such as nuclear irradiation; chemical use in industry, agriculture, and warfare; and eventually human-caused environmental change began to influence alternative conceptions of security mobilized in opposition to the dominant military-nuclear-strategic discourse centred on bipolar superpower rivalry.278 Scholars including James Lovelock, Norman Myers, and Arthur Westing pioneered research linking the natural and social sciences, and called for recognition of the significance of human impacts on the natural environment for continued conditions of human and planetary wellbeing.279 Though this work was highly analytical, and largely eschewed explicit framing in terms of in/security, it posed clear securitizing moves positing human-caused degradation of the natural environment as threatening the “ultimate security” of humanity and all other life on “this endangered planet.”280
Beginning in the late 1970s, multiple academic efforts drew on these early contributions in order to “redefine security”, arguing the military-nuclear-strategic security discourse was inadequate to capture the full range of threats to states’ core national interests.281 One major new focus was
278 Buzan and Hansen 2009, 128. 279 James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere: The Gaia Hypothesis,” Tellus 26, no. 1-2 (1974): 2-10; Arthur Westing, Ecological Consequences of the Second Indochina War (Stockholm: SIPRI, 1976); Westing 1977; James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press (1979); Norman Myers, The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979); Arthur Westing, Warfare in a Fragile World: Military Impact on the Human Environment (London: Taylor and Francis, 1980); Norman Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species: Storehouse for Human Welfare (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983); Myers 1986; Myers 1989; Norman Myers, Population, Resources, and the Environment: The Critical Challenges (New York: United Nations Population Fund, 1991). 280 Falk 1971; Norman Myers, Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Security (New York: Norton, 1993). 281 Brown 1977; Ullman 1983; Michael Renner, National Security: The Economic and Environmental Dimensions. Worldwatch Paper 89 (Washington DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1989); Tuchman Mathews 1989.
91 examining so-called ‘resource wars’ for causal links between environmental scarcity and interstate and communal violence. The Toronto group of environmental conflict research, led by Thomas Homer-Dixon, argued that human-caused environmental changes and scarcity of key resources could be important catalysts of inter-group conflict, generating significant debate over the conceptual and empirical links between environmental conditions and political violence.282 Popular writing, such as Robert Kaplan’s “The Coming Anarchy”, capitalized on this theme, casting environmental change and resource scarcity as threatening the stability of the global order and the security of states in the Global North.283
Research into environmental violence precipitated debate along two distinct axes. First, critics challenged its empirical validity, suggesting that proponents had inferred causality between scarcity and conflict in situations where other factors intervened.284 Some noted that the emphasis on scarcity overlooked the potential of resource abundance as a contributing factor for the outbreak or perpetuation of conflict, further complicating the question of causality.285 Second, and more pertinently for this dissertation, some challenged the very effort to link environmental issues and in/security. Critics variously argued this would dilute the integrity and academic rigour of security studies,286 undermine the actual goals of environmentalists by securitizing another realm of policymaking,287 and risk militarizing state responses to
282 Thomas Homer-Dixon, “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict,” International Security 16, no. 2 (1991): 76-116; Thomas Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases," International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 5-40; Thomas Homer-Dixon and Jessica Blitt, eds, Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population, and Security (Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); Thomas Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 283 Robert Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” Atlantic Monthly 273, no. 2 (1994): 44-76. 284 Thomas Homer-Dixon and Marc A. Levy, “Correspondence: Environment and Security,” International Security 20, no. 3 (1995/96): 189-198; Marc A. Levy, “Time for a Third Wave of Environment and Security Scholarship?” Environmental Change and Security Project: Report 1 (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1995): 44-46; Carsten F. Ronnfeldt, “Three Generations of Environment and Security Research,” Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 4 (1997): 473-482; Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Armed Conflict and the Environment: A Critique of the Literature,” Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 3 (1998): 381-400. 285 Philippe Le Billon, “The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts,” Political Geography 20, no. 5 (2001): 561-584; Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts, eds, Violent Environments (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). 286 Marc A. Levy, “Is the Environment a National Security Issue?” International Security 20, no. 2 (1995): 35-62; Stephen M. Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1991): 211-239. 287 Daniel Deudney, “The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 19, no. 3 (1990): 461-476.
92 environmental problems in a manner inconsistent with the threat and unconducive to their resolution.288 These claims, in turn, generated rebuttals suggesting critics were perpetuating the dominant Realist conception of security as linked to state referent objects and the use of military force initially rejected by moves towards environmental security.289 This debate is taken up at the end of this chapter.
The form of environmental security that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s broadened the range of potential security threats, but remained state-centric in that it focused primarily on the defence of sovereign states and their interests. States remained the primary objects and providers of security, and were generally considered to have the power to improve their environmental security by curtailing certain practices, investing in specific defences, or moderating particular attitudes. These accounts thus widened security while failing to deepen it.290 They also perpetuated the dynamic of locating security threats outside the bounds of the political community, ascribing “responsibility for threat … to the distanced Other on the outside.”291 Environmental security, so conceived, precluded serious consideration of environmental threats to non-state referent objects, or the role of states and peoples in constituting the conditions of their own environmental insecurity through, for instance, unsustainable consumption, non- renewable resource depletion, military activities affecting the environment, or poor land use management and urban planning. Environmental security remained narrowly defined, minimizing the potential radicalism of incorporating the environment into security analysis.
By contrast, more critical scholarship has articulated a conception of environmental or ecological in/security that widens and deepens security analysis, rejects state-centrism, and is reflexive about people’s role in undermining the environmental conditions necessary for their own
288 Ken Conca, “The Environment-Security Trap,” Dissent 45, no. 3 (1998): 40-45. 289 Nina Graeger, “Environmental Security?” Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1 (1996): 109-116; Gregory D. Foster, “Environmental Security: The Search for Strategic Legitimacy,” Armed Forces and Society 27, no. 3 (2001): 373-395; Richard A. Mathew, “In Defense of Environment and Security Research,” Environmental Change and Security Project Report 8 (2002): 109-124. 290 For discussion of widening and deepening security studies, see Buzan and Hansen 2009: 187. 291 Jon Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics and Policy in the New Security Era (London: Zed Books, 2001), 31.
93 survival and wellbeing.292 Jon Barnett outlines such an approach in The Meaning of Environmental Security, a watershed text in the turn towards critical environmental security. He distinguishes between environmental security “as the threats to national security that arise from environmental degradation” and ecological security “as the human impacts on the security of the environment itself,” with corresponding implications for populations dependent on that environment.293 Barnett conceives of environmental security as human security, emphasizing the integral link between human survival and ecological systems. This reflects the post-Cold War conceptual widening of security that has increasingly embraced a broader recognition that security cannot be exclusively focused upon sovereign states and their interests, or upon the threat and use of military force. Instead, human beings must be understood as experiencing in/security at different levels of aggregation – including the local, regional, national, and global levels – depending upon the nature of the threat, and from a variety of different sources, such as threats in the physical, economic, societal, and environmental sectors of human life.294
The cumulative impacts of contemporary environmental issues are now widely understood to be confronting regions, states, and peoples around the planet with significant, and increasing, insecurity at the local, national, regional, and global levels.295 Such recognition transcends theoretical boundaries; for instance, Buzan and Wæver, self-described “post-structural realists,” write: “The environment, modified by human interference, sets the conditions for socio-political- economic life. When these conditions are poor, life is poor.”296 Though certainly less common
292 For a more detailed discussion see Wilfrid Greaves, “Naturally Insecure: Critical Environmental Security and Critical Security Studies in Canada,” Critical Studies on Security 2, no. 1 (2014): 81-104. 293 Barnett 2001, 12. 294 UNDP, Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security (New York: United Nations Development Program, 1994). 295 Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now (New York: United Nations, 2003); Felix Dodds and Tim Pippard, eds, Human and Environmental Security: An Agenda for Change (Sterling: Earthscan, 2005); CNA Corporation, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change (Alexandria: CNA Corporation, 2007); Robin Leichenko and Karen L. O’Brien, Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Felix Dodds, Andrew Higham, and Richard Sherman, eds, Climate Change and Energy Insecurity: The Challenge for Peace, Security and Development (London: Earthscan, 2009); Richard A. Mathew, Jon Barnett, Bryan McDonald, and Karen L. O’Brien, eds, Global Environmental Change and Human Security (Cambridge: MIT University Press, 2010); Christian Webersik, Climate Change and Security: A Gathering Storm of Global Challenges (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010). 296 Buzan et al. 1998, 84.
94 within the security and environment literature, critical dispositions towards environmental security have become increasingly visible, especially with respect to examining the ways in which contemporary forms of human social, economic, and organization are driving current conditions of ecological crisis.297 Though debates persist, at a minimum, environmental issues have been established as a valid part of International Security Studies.298
3.4.1 Securitizing Climate Change
Outside of academia, the global environment has increasingly been recognized as generating serious security issues by states and international organizations. In particular, the current and predicted impacts of anthropogenic climate change have been widely securitized, and recognizing their security implications is not new. Speaking in 1990, then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated: “The threat to our world comes not only from tyrants and their tanks. It can be more insidious though less visible. The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices … Our ability to come together to stop or limit damage to the world’s environment will be perhaps the greatest test of how far we can act as a world community.”299 Baroness Thatcher later expressed scepticism about the regulatory methods by which many proposed addressing climate change, but was nonetheless an early exponent of climate change as an issue confronting humanity with existential danger. In this, she echoed the 1988 warning of the Toronto Conference comparing climate change to nuclear war, and foreshadowed future warnings that identified the potential for climate change “to disrupt our
297 Simon Dalby, Environmental Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Dennis Clark Pirages and Theresa Manley DeGeest. Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspective on Globalization (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004); Dalby 2009; Matthew A. Schnurr and Larry A. Swatuk, eds, Natural Resources and Social Conflict: Towards Critical Environmental Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 298 Alexandre S. Wilner, “The Environment-Conflict Nexus: Developing Consensus on Theory and Methodology,” International Journal 62, no. 1 (2006/07): 169-188. Numerous research projects at think tanks and universities are now dedicated to investigating environmental insecurities, including, inter alia: the Environment and Security Program of the Pacific Institute; the Environment and Security Research Group at the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California at Irvine; the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the Environmental Security and Peace Program at the U.N. University for Peace; the Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project; the Institute for Environmental Security; and the Millennium Project of the World Federation of U.N. Associations. 299 Margaret Thatcher, “Speech at 2nd World Climate Conference,” (Geneva: November 6, 1990). Accessed at http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108237 on May 5, 2014.
95 way of life and to force changes in the way we keep ourselves safe and secure.”300 Earlier studies of global environmental hazards, such as the report of the Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future, were less dire in their language while clearly communicating a realization of the global and existential implications of humanity’s converging environmental challenges.301
In the ensuing years, as climate change has become more acute and more widespread, powerful actors from around the globe have contributed to its securitization: it is ubiquitously, if not universally, regarded as a security issue, and has been widely examined as such. The United Nations system has treated climate change as a security issue since at least 1994, when the UN Human Development Report introduced an environmental dimension as part of its concept of human security, and environmental issues have been a core feature of the human security literature ever since.302 States in the Global South that are particularly vulnerable to climate change were among the first to view climate change as a security issue, such as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) articulating sea level rise as an existential threat to their survival.303 Island states such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and others in the South Pacific region have increasingly sought to draw attention to the severe implications of climate change for the future of their populations, with some even investigating possible evacuations and resettlement of their people on neighbouring mainland territory. For these states, facing submersion and uninhabitability, the existential quality of the threat associated with climate change is clear.304 With the increasingly alarmed assessments of climate change contained in the IPCC’s Third and
300 CNA 2007, 6. 301 World Commission on Economy and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 302 For examples see Jon Barnett, “Security and Climate Change,” Global Environmental Change 13, no. 1 (2003): 7-17; Hans Günter Brauch, “Environment and Human Security: Toward Freedom from Hazard Impacts,” Intersections No. 2 (Bonn: United Nations University Institute for Environment and Security, 2005); Karen O’Brien, “Are We Missing the Point: Global Environmental Change as an Issue of Human Security,” Global Environmental Change 16, no. 1 (2006): 1-3; Jon Barnett and W. Neil Adger, “Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict,” Political Geography 26, no. 2 (2007): 639-655. 303 Jon Barnett and John Campbell, Climate Change and Small Island States: Power, Knowledge and the South Pacific (Washington DC: Earthscan, 2010); Elaine Stratford, Carol Farbotko, and Heather Lazrus, “Tuvalu, Sovereignty and Climate Change: Considering Fenua, the Archipelago and Emigration,” Island Studies Journal 8, no. 1 (2013): 67-83. 304 Lilian Yamamoto and Miguel Esteban, “Vanishing Island States and Sovereignty,” Ocean and Coastal Management 53, no. 1 (2010): 1-9.
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Fourth Assessment Reports released in 2001 and 2007, states and organizations in the Global North also began to incorporate climate change into their security policies and institutions.305 While attention has often focused on the climate-security related policies of Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, at least 17 states have constructed climate change as some degree of security threat.306 Climate change was also repeatedly taken up at the highest levels of the UN system in the General Assembly and the Security Council between 2007 and 2011. The language employed in these debates leaves no doubt as to the discursive construction of climate change as threatening national, global, and human security, even if the discourse is not matched by commensurate action to mitigate emissions or invest in climate adaptation.307
Some Northern states have rejected calls to securitize environmental change, or reversed previous depictions of climate change as a security issue. Scholars have examined these as cases of limited, aborted, or unsuccessful attempts to construct climate change as a security issue within state policies.308 But these cases also highlight ongoing efforts by powerful actors to securitize climate change even within states that have failed to do so. This is particularly the case for the United States, one of the most complex and challenging cases for the (non)securitization of climate change. Though climate change is divisive among the American public, and has not been accepted as a security issue at the highest legislative level of the US Congress, the negative implications of climate change for American national security have been repeatedly articulated by actors including branches of the US Armed Services, federal
305 Alan Dupont, “The Strategic Implications of Climate Change,” Survival 50, no. 3 (2008): 29-54; Maria Julia Trombetta, “Environmental Security and Climate Change: Analyzing the Discourse,” Cambridge Review of International Studies 21, no. 4 (2008): 585-602. 306 Michael Brzoska, “Climate Change as a Driver of Security Policy,” in Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link, and Janpeter Schilling, eds, Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict: Challenges for Societal Stability (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2012), 168. 307 Nicole Detraz and Michele M. Betsill, “Climate Change and Environmental Security: For Whom the Discourse Shifts,” International Studies Perspectives 10, no. 3 (2009): 303-320; Matt McDonald, “Discourses of Climate Security,” Political Geography 33, no. 1 (2013): 42-51. 308 Margaret Purdy and Leanne Smythe, “From Obscurity to Action: Why Canada Must Tackle the Security Dimensions of Climate Change,” International Journal 65, no. 2 (2010): 411-433; Smith 2010; McDonald 2012; Wilfrid Greaves, “Risking Rupture: Integral Accidents and In/Security in Canada’s Bitumen Sands,” Journal of Canadian Studies 47, no. 3 (2013a): 169-199.
97 government agencies, and, under both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, even the President.309 Under the Obama Administration, in particular, there has been a marked shift in rhetoric to one more closely aligned with critical environmental security, clearly equating climate change to traditional security issues:
The question is not whether we need to act ... The planet is warming and human activity is contributing to it. So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren ... I’m here to say we need to act. I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing … The challenge we must accept will not reward us with a clear moment of victory. There’s no gathering army to defeat. There’s no peace treaty to sign ... Our progress here will be measured differently – in crises averted, in a planet preserved.310
The discourse of climate change and security has increasingly emphasized the catastrophic, even apocalyptic, dimensions of predicted climate impacts.311 Specific to securitization theory, Buzan and Wæver, though sceptical of securitizing the environment, identify climate change as one of two contemporary “macro-securitizations”: constructions of in/security with a global referent object structuring all other understandings of global security in the 21st century.312
3.5 Why Securitize
Returning to the debate over linking the environment to in/security, some scholars have argued
309 CNA 2007; Joshua Busby, “Who Cares About the Weather? Climate Change and US National Security,” Security Studies 17, no. 3 (2008): 468-504; Floyd 2010; Naval Studies Board, National Security Implications of Climate Change for US Naval Forces (Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2011). 310 Bloomberg News, “‘We Need to Act’: Transcript of Obama’s Climate Change Speech,” (Washington, DC: June 25, 2013). Accessed at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/-we-need-to-act-transcript-of-obama-s- climate-change-speech.html on July 5, 2013. 311 Kurt M. Campbell, Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign and National Security Implications of Climate Change (Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2008); Vuori 2010; Maximilian Mayer, “Chaotic Climate Change and Security,” International Political Sociology 6, no. 2 (2012): 165-185; Chris Methmann and Delf Rothe, “Politics for the Day After Tomorrow: The Logic of Apocalypse in Global Climate Change Politics,” Security Dialogue 43, no. 4 (2012): 323-344. 312 The other macro-securitization is the ‘global war on terror’: Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, “Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation Theory,” Review of International Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 253-276.
98 against securitizing environmental issues, including climate change, on the grounds that this invites state-centric and militarized solutions to inherently transnational and non-military problems. Responding to the security ‘wideners’ of the 1980s, Daniel Deudney provides perhaps the most widely cited such argument, claiming: “It is analytically misleading to think of environmental degradation as a national security threat, because the traditional focus of national security – interstate violence – has little in common with either environmental problems or solutions.” He goes on to wonder whether “the effort to harness the emotive power of nationalism to help mobilise environmental awareness and action may prove counterproductive” to resolving global environmental issues.313 Marc Levy builds on these arguments, asserting: “The existential view … that certain aspects of the global environment are so intimately connected to our deepest national values that they are constitutive of our security interests … has no basis except as a rhetorical device aimed at drumming up greater support for measures to protect the environment.” Levy explicitly analogizes strategies for defending against environmental threats to those used by the United States to fight communism, arguing “that to ‘roll back’ global environmental change is forbiddingly costly, and that a better policy consists of a combination of ‘containment’ and ‘co-existence’.”314 Both authors, US-based scholars writing for a primarily American academic audience, readily accept the significant implications of human-caused environmental changes for the American national interest, but contend that framing environmental problems as security issues is neither conducive to their resolution nor consistent with the logic that has structured ISS and the related policy realm.
However, these arguments suffer serious limitations and, in light of developments within ISS and the worsened global environmental conditions from when they were first presented, they have not aged well. As their titles make clear, Deudney and Levy focus exclusively upon national security considerations; even some rebuttals framed their arguments in exclusively national security terms.315 But retaining the discourse of national security results in two linked analytical problems: residual militarism and state-centrism in security analysis. First, conflating securitization and militarization is an anachronistic aspect of security studies that has been
313 Deudney 1990, 461. 314 Levy 1995, 36. 315 e.g. Foster 2000.
99 widely disputed and largely rejected. Critical security scholars, including many identifying with human security, have laboured for decades to defend the validity of non-military threats to security, and non-military solutions to security threats. In the post-9/11 era, even traditional security studies has expanded to include civilian activities such as counter-terrorism, complex peace-building, law enforcement, and intelligence gathering. The need for a widened approach has been argued specifically with respect to environmental security issues, whose incompatibility with militarized solutions has no particular bearing upon their capacity to severely threaten a range of valued referent objects and state interests.316 As discussed above, the association with military violence is not an immutable part of the meaning of security, but emerged because of the specific 20th century context, as well as the unique influence exerted by the United States on the development of security studies during that time.317
Second, Deudney and Levy were responding to the widening of security, but were writing concurrently or slightly prior to the deepening of security studies that occurred in the early and mid-1990s, which neither engages with. Their shared view that environmental issues are not properly viewed as national security issues may or not be accurate, but it takes no account of environmental threats to objects above or below the state. Environmental issues may well be more relevant to non-state referents ranging from local communities to the global biosphere. Their state-level analysis of the relative merits of environmental threats to US national security constrains the scope of their critique, but Levy, at least, is not arguing against the general validity of environmental threats, simply that the United States (in the early 1990s) faced no such threats to its core security interests. Deudney’s objections are more firmly rooted in an objection to linking environmental issues to security, but are based on an understanding of securitization-as- militarization that reflects the dominant Realist conception of security at the time in which he was writing. Both articles also reflect 25-year-old perspectives on the relative severity of global environmental issues. For instance, both authors were writing prior to the IPCC Assessment Reports on global climate change, and the significant increase in concern over climate-related security impacts that followed their release. Similarly, neither Deudney nor Levy is able to take
316 Barnett 2001; Daniel H. Deudney and Richard A. Matthew, eds, Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999); Richard A. Mathew, “In Defence of Environment and Security Research,” ECSP Report, Issue 8 (Summer 2002); Dalby 2009. 317 Rothschild 1995; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 21-37.
100 into consideration the potential security implications of the multi-faceted ecological crisis identified by Johan Rockström and colleagues, which shows human interference exceeding or nearly exceeding the safe threshold of five out of seven quantifiable planetary boundaries.318
In addition to these rebuttals against arguments opposed to linking environmental issues with in/security, two further reasons suggest the validity of securitizing environmental issues in the contemporary period. First, the sheer gravity of the predicted impacts of climate change and other environmental challenges recommend it. Climate change is existential: it is already undermining conditions of sustainable human security for people in the Global South and vulnerable parts of the Global North. In time, even citizenship of wealthy, industrialized states and residency in areas not particularly vulnerable to environmental changes will offer scant protection against the range of social and economic challenges that will accompany transformative global climate change. The scope of damage caused by other anthropogenic environmental changes – including freshwater depletion, massive deforestation, resource extraction mega-projects, and industrial accidents such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill or Fukushima Daiichi earthquake-tsunami-meltdown triple disaster – are similarly existential. I do not call for an a priori securitization of environmental change everywhere or in all contexts, but it is difficult to sustain the argument that environmental issues should be excluded from being framed as security issues simply because they are not necessarily linked to organized violence. The vast and growing body of literature examining the ways in which environmental changes are undermining the capacity of people to survive in the ways and in the places that they have historically done so is a powerful argument for their security relevance.
Deudney argues against securitizing environmental issues because he claims doing so is likely to impede an effective political response to them. This echoes Wæver’s preference for normal politics because it makes it easier to resolve challenging social issues. If securitization empowers the state to take extraordinary measures to defend against a specified threat, the argument goes, then securitizing climate change will centre political authority to respond in state institutions, including the military. This will foreclose space for democratic engagement and inhibiting the involvement of the very actors needed to enact the social and economic changes
318 Rockström et al. 2009.
101 required to address climate change. Perhaps. But this argument relies upon a view similar to Wæver’s of the capacity of normally functioning, non-securitized political processes and institutions to respond effectively to climate change, which they have so far failed to demonstrate. Looking back over 20 years of sustained efforts to implement a binding global climate regime and mitigate the exponential growth in global GHG emissions – including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change multilateral process, regional carbon trading schemes, carbon taxes, and the varied assortment of sub-state, local, and individual efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate global climate change – normal politics has failed to deal effectively with the issue of climate change.319 Global carbon emissions continue to increase at alarming rates and to unprecedented levels, exceeding the targets and expectations set by efforts at global climate governance from the 1990s to the failure of the UNFCCC framework to deliver a binding agreement at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009.320 The UNFCCC framework is widely regarded as incapable of delivering a comprehensive climate change agreement,321 and its failures are seen by some as emblematic of the political ineffectiveness of the environmental movement’s within many democratic societies.322 Of course, the specifics of environmental policy and regulation vary by domestic context, but recent trends in North America include sustained focus on conventional and unconventional oil and gas extraction and transportation, including bitumen mining and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.323 Scandinavia is experiencing a major new push for resource extraction across its northern regions, complementing expanding
319 For a discussion of global and domestic climate politics, see Kathryn Harrison, Global Commons, Domestic Decisions: The Comparative Politics of Climate Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010). 320 Daniel Bodansky, “The International Climate Change Regime: The Road from Copenhagen,” Policy Brief, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements (Cambridge: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, October 2010); Remi Moncel and Harro Asselt, “All Hands on Deck! Mobilizing Climate Action Beyond the UNFCCC,” Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 21, no. 3 (2012): 163-176; Tove Ryding, “Climate Protection: Between Hope and Despair,” (Greenpeace International, June 2012). 321 Jon Hovi, Tora Skodvin, and Stine Aakre, “Can Climate Change Negotiations Succeed?” Politics and Governance 1, no. 2 (2013): 138-150. 322 Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post- Environmentalism World (Oakland: Breakthrough Institute, 2004). 323 Senate of Canada, Now or Never: Canada Must Urgently Seize its Place in the New Energy World Order (Ottawa: Senate of Canada: 2012); Council on Foreign Relations, “A Conversation with Stephen Harper,” (Washington, DC: May 16, 2013) Accessed at http://www.cfr.org/canada/conversation-stephen-harper/p30723 on June 23, 2013; IEA, Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map: World Energy Outlook Special Report (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2013).
102 offshore oil and gas development along the Norwegian coast. In such a business-as-usual context, maintaining a commitment to the ability of conventional politics to effectively address severe, compounding, and accelerating environmental threats to human and planetary wellbeing appears both naïve and dangerous. Securitization may well be sub-optimal, but it may also be necessary to mobilize significant action against issues that appear to elude the efforts of normal politics.
There is a further reason why we should consider climate change as a security issue, which relates to one of the core empirical questions of this dissertation: who has depicted environmental change in the Arctic as an existential threat to human security and survival? Often, the answer has been those most immediately affected by climate change or those speaking on their behalf. Both globally and within states, those most vulnerable to environmental change are those who are already poorest and most marginalized. In this respect, the articulation of climate change as a security issue has most often come from those most at risk of “chronic threats … [and] sudden and hurtful disruptions in the pattern of daily life.”324 The ability to ‘speak’ security – to claim that something endangers one’s life, livelihood, or way of living, have that claim accepted, and suitable protection offered – is not something that should be reserved for the elite few or those already empowered. To the contrary, making security claims and having them acknowledged denotes membership in a political community. More than just security in the adjectival sense (national security, food security, energy security, etc.), security is a “thick public good”, and the process of determining how in/security is understood “is so pivotal to the very purpose of community that at the level of self-identification it helps to construct and sustain our ‘we-feeling’ – our very felt sense of ‘common publicness’.”325 Far from being an abstract or ideal concept, security is a foundational aspect of the social contract that underpins the modern conception of legitimate political order. It is the responsibility of governing authorities to provide security to the members of their political community, and if some groups are precluded from having the issues they perceive to affect their community addressed by the sovereign then, in this vital way, they are effectively excluded from that community.
324 UNDP 1994, 23. 325 Ian Loader and Neil Walker, Civilizing Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 164.
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Securitization is the process through which security threats are constructed as such, but security as a noun is a condition of safety, greater certainty, and freedom from care to which people aspire. In an ideal form, what Floyd describes as morally just securitizations, when a material hazard is defended against or avoided through securitization, security as a noun denoting the protection of valued referent objects can be achieved.326 This position is consistent with the view that security is socially constructed because distinct political communities, or groups within those communities, will understand different conditions as rendering them secure: there remains no given or objective definition of how security is or should be defined. Such definitions are only established through efforts at securitization. Security is thus an essential component of communal life, and the ability to securitize – not always to have one’s claims accepted, but at least to receive a fair hearing – is a marker of political inclusion and an important component of belonging within pluralistic, democratic societies.
3.6 Conclusion
This chapter has examined securitization theory, outlining the original theory proposed by the Copenhagen School and suggesting a revised approach on the basis of two central critiques: one analytical, one normative. The analytical critique of the CS highlights the insufficient incorporation of identity for all actors into the process of securitization. The revised account proposes that the identities of all actors in securitization is important because the facilitating conditions for a securitizing move’s success partly rests in the relationship between actors and audience. The historical relationships between them, and the power relations that result, are fundamental to the likely success or failure of securitization. Furthermore, the identity of the analyst matters for setting the parameters of which actors and phenomena are considered relevant for in/security and, by extension, security studies. More fully incorporating identities into securitization makes the theory more sensitive to the multiple vectors along which power structures the outcome of securitizing processes. This offers an explanation for the puzzling non-securitization of Arctic environmental change, given that the three external factors for securitization are present and seemingly favourable. Why, given the felicitous combination of
326 Floyd 2010.
104 securitizing grammar, securitizing actors with high social and political capital, and objective material hazards with existential implications, has the securitization of environmental change in the Arctic failed? I propose better incorporation of the identities of the actors involved in this securitization process, and the non-dominance of securitizing actors making security claims about the Arctic, helps offer an explanation.
As explored in the following chapters, two mechanisms through which the power of non- dominant groups to make successful security claims is structurally limited are silenced insecurity and subsumed insecurity. The normative critique focuses upon the unsatisfactory response of the CS approach to objective material hazards that fail to be securitized, in this case, environmental change in the Arctic. As discussed above, the CS framework is premised on a view of securitization as a negative, as a failure of normal politics; it prefers desecuritization because it supposedly allows for the more effective resolution of political issues. But the CS fails to take adequate account of the possibility that desecuritization may not, in fact, result in effective politicization, and the potential implications of the failure of normal politics when faced with a material hazard to an identifiable group of people. Non-securitized objective phenomena that endanger the survival or wellbeing of a group of people are of no further interest to their account of in/security. Taking account of the analytical critique that securitization processes are tilted towards the powerful, and may actually preclude some who are particularly powerless, I suggest that securitization may actually be necessary to motivate political action on issues of existential importance. For issues that have been ineffectively dealt with through normal politicization, securitization may prove a more powerful discourse to employ.
As Chapters 4 and 7 demonstrate, Arctic Indigenous peoples have, in varying ways and to varying degrees, depicted environmental change as threatening their security, but these claims have failed to be accepted by the sovereign power of the states in which they reside. Those who are most affected by Arctic climate change are thus least able to mobilize an adequate political response due to their inability to successfully make security claims about issues confronting their communities. The non-securitization of environmental issues compounds the physical hazards Indigenous peoples are experiencing as a result of environmental changes, resulting in a double form of insecurity as a result of their securitization non-dominance. This implicates the political inclusion of Indigenous peoples within the settler-colonial states in which they reside, which, after all, imposed themselves upon Indigenous peoples’ lands and lives in the first place. How
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Indigenous peoples have articulated what environmental change means for their security says something about the severity of the environmental issues they are facing. That the in/security claims of Indigenous peoples are structurally denied, however, says something about the restrictions those states impose upon the voices of Indigenous peoples living within settler/colonial societies. I suggest that current understandings of climate change within the security policies of circumpolar states raise important questions about the values and priorities of those states, the openness of their political systems, and ultimately the political inclusion of their Indigenous peoples. If “to ‘securitize’ an issue … [is] to challenge society to promote it higher in its scales of values and to commit greater resources to solving the related problems,”327 then we should ask why the issues advocated by Indigenous peoples seem consistently unable to reach the highest level of political priority.
327 Michael Sheehan, International Security: An Analytical Survey (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 52.
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Chapter 4 4 Understanding In/Security in the Canadian Arctic
The Canadian North, and the wider circumpolar Arctic region, has experienced a surge of interest in recent years. Motivated by changing global energy politics, ongoing territorial disputes related to control over resources, the growing political dynamism of Arctic Indigenous peoples, rapid regional climate change, and periodic “flashpoint events”328 that catalyze media, public, and official attention, the Arctic re-emerged as a major political issue in 21st century Canada. Much of the attention from analysts and policy-makers has focused on Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, which has been described as the “zombie” issue of Canadian politics because it keeps returning to life long after most experts feel it has been buried.329 Driven in large part by the interaction between transformative regional climate change and unresolved questions over Canada’s Arctic maritime boundaries and the legal status of the Northwest Passage, many experts suggest the need for new approaches to sovereignty and security in the North.330 As the Arctic changes, there is widespread recognition that how Canada and other states articulate and exercise their interests in the region should also change. Running through much of this analysis are longstanding and multifaceted critiques of how the federal government handles Arctic policy, particularly the preoccupation with sovereignty at the expense of other issues. Prominent among these critiques are the voices of Arctic Indigenous peoples fearing that the issues of greatest significance to their communities will continue to be omitted from the sovereignty-as-security framework employed by the federal government.331
328 Peter Russell, “Oka to Ipperwash: The Necessity of Flashpoint Events,” in Leanne Simpson and Kiera Ladner, eds, This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, 2010): 29-46. 329 Ken S. Coates, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, William R. Morrison, and Greg Poelzer, Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2008), 1. 330 See Andrea Charron, “The Northwest Passage: Is Canada’s Sovereignty Floating Away?” International Journal 60, no. 5 (2005): 831-848; Rob Huebert, “Renaissance in Canadian Arctic Security?” Canadian Military Journal 6, no. 4 (Winter 2005/2006): 17-29; Adam Lajeunesse, “The Northwest Passage in Canadian Policy: An Approach for the 21st Century,” International Journal 63, no. 4 (2008): 1037-1052; Rob Huebert, The Newly Emerging Arctic Security Environment (Calgary: CDFAI, 2010); and Bjorn Rutten, Security in Canada’s North: Looking Beyond Arctic Sovereignty (Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada, 2010). 331 Terry Fenge, “Inuit and the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement: Supporting Canada’s Arctic Sovereignty,” Policy Options 29, no. 1 (2007/2008); Inuit Circumpolar Council, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the
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This chapter examines Arctic security discourse from the perspectives of Indigenous peoples in northern Canada and the Canadian state, focusing on the period between 2001-2011. The first section examines how Indigenous peoples in northern Canada have articulated the meaning of Arctic security. Drawing on data collected from organizations and individuals representing Arctic Indigenous peoples – primarily Inuit, but also some Athabaskan peoples – this section analyzes Indigenous understandings of security in northern Canada and how they frame the significance of climate change. It finds that Indigenous peoples principally identify a conception of security in the Arctic that emphasizes protection of the natural environment, preservation of Indigenous identity, and maintenance of political autonomy within the context of the Canadian state. Moreover, climate change underpins Indigenous peoples’ understandings of what security means in the Canadian Arctic. The second section outlines the historical context of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and security policies, and examines the official policy frameworks under recent Liberal governments and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. It analyses how the Conservative government, in particular, understood Arctic security principally in terms of the military protection of Canada’s territorial sovereignty claims and the extraction of natural resources, with little significance afforded to the effects of climate change. In government discourse, ‘sovereignty’ functions as a rhetorical substitute for ‘security’ in the Arctic, reinforcing a narrow and state-centric definition of security for the Canadian North. As such, the security concerns of Indigenous peoples are virtually absent from the official framework for understanding in/security in the Arctic employed by the Canadian state. Since Indigenous peoples are among the most prominent actors articulating a human and environmental conception of Arctic security, the absence of Indigenous voices from official Arctic security discourse in Canada results in the omission of human-caused environmental change understood as a pressing security issue.
Arctic (ICC, 2009); and Mary Simon, “Inuit and the Canadian Arctic: Sovereignty Begins at Home,” Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 2 (2009): 250-260.
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4.1 Indigenous Peoples and In/Security in the Canadian Arctic
Figure 5: Map of the Canadian North
332 Source: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Arctic Indigenous peoples are not numerous, but form the majority of northern Canada’s population of roughly 110,000 and are central to its social fabric and political institutions. Inuit – the most populous of Canada’s Arctic Indigenous peoples at approximately 55,000 persons – primarily live in 53 communities across the North and are the historical inhabitants of much of Canada’s Arctic territory.333 As shown in Figure 5, the four Inuit regions in Canada – Nunavut, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Northwest Territories), Nunavik (northern Quebec), and Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador) – are collectively known as Inuit Nunangat, which forms only
332 Accessed at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-644-x/2010001/m-c/11281/m-c/m-c1-eng.htm on March 7, 2016. 333 Statistics Canada, 2006 Census: Aboriginal Peoples in Canada in 2006: Inuit, Metis and First Nations (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2006). Accessed at https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-558/p6- eng.cfm on March 7, 2016.
109 part of the broader Inuit homeland of Inuit Nunaat also comprising territories in Alaska, Greenland, and Russia. With First Nations and Métis, Inuit are one of three constitutionally recognized groups of Aboriginal people in Canada, and have become highly organized through political institutions such as: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization; the Inuit Circumpolar Council, one of the Permanent Participants at the Arctic Council; a range of local and regional organizations and governments; and the Government of Nunavut, where Inuit make up approximately 85% of the territorial population.334 Actors such as the Gwich’in Council International, the Arctic Athabaskan Council, and First Nations governments provide comparable political representation for other Indigenous peoples in northern Canada.
These Indigenous political actors have increasingly articulated their most pressing political issues using the language of in/security. Although security is a Euro-American conception that may not map well onto the worldviews of Indigenous peoples, it appears to have been adopted as a tactic for mobilizing public and political support on important issues. Such use of security language is consistent with the understanding of securitization as an extension of politics that seeks to elevate specific issues higher in the hierarchy of political priorities.335 In addition to its political use, the essential meaning of ‘security’ as referring to protection from danger also has ontological relevance that can be translated into Indigenous languages, albeit imperfectly. In the case of Inuit, Kevin Kablutsiak suggests sapummijauniq, meaning “to be protected,” as the closest Inuktitut translation, but his explanation of the term demonstrates the extent to which this translation affirms a conception of security most consistent with the national security discourse associated with the sovereign state: “The meaning here refers to the Coast Guard, deep sea ports that can accommodate naval ships, and the Canadian Rangers.”336 Other Inuit scholars have indicated they believe sapummijauniq to also be an appropriate term for capturing the relation between Inuit and climate change.337 It is unclear what Inuktitut word or phrase, or analogue in
334 Heather A. Smith and Gary Wilson, “Inuit Transnational Activism: Cooperation and Resistance in the Face of Global Climate Change,” in J. Marshall Beier, ed, Indigenous Diplomacies (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009); Shadian 2010; Tennberg 2010; Mary Simon, “Canadian Inuit: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going,” International Journal 66, no. 4 (Autumn 2011): 879-891. 335 Buzan et al. 1998; Chapter 2 of this dissertation. 336 Kevin Kablutsiak, “Almost Lost in Translation,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 4. 337 Rebecca Mearns, personal communication December 11, 2014.
110 other Arctic Indigenous languages, best captures a conception of security that displaces the state or emphasizes a wider array of security issues. Regardless, the basic idea underlying in/security appears universal: survival, the defence of valued objects, the absence of immediate danger, and some knowledge of how to respond in case of a future threat. According to one Inuit elder, “when we were living on the land, the main meaning of security was survival,”338 and that quality persists in current invocations of securitizing language.
What security means to Arctic Indigenous peoples varies across cultures, communities, and regions, but in practice Indigenous efforts at securitization appear to be increasingly focused on the growing significance of human-caused environmental change, and a critical reaction to global political processes responding to such change.339 Until recently, the predominant use of security language by Arctic Indigenous peoples was on maintaining the integrity and survival of their languages and cultural identities.340 This emphasis on cultural and linguistic security was a reaction against the historical injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples and concerns that economic modernization was eroding traditional cultural practices and leading towards assimilation, particularly among young people. The assimilation of Indigenous peoples into the dominant social and economic system was seen to threaten the identities at the “heart and soul of Indigenous nations: a set of values that challenge the homogenizing force of Western liberalism and free-market capitalism; that honor the autonomy of individual conscience, non-coercive authority, and the deep interconnection between human beings and other elements of creation.”341 Such identities were thus positioned as the referent object to be protected in early articulations of Indigenous in/security.
338 Nilliajut: Inuit Voices on Security. Dir. Jordan Konek, Curtis Konek, and Ian Mauro. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013. Accessed at http://www.inuitknowledge.ca/content/nilliajut-inuit-perspectives-arctic-security-1 on April 21, 2014). 339 Heather A. Smith, “Disrupting the Global Discourse of Climate Change,” in Mary Pettenger, ed, The Social Construction of Climate Change (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007). 340 George Erasmus, "Militarization of the North: Cultural Survival Threatened," Information North (Fall 1986); Mary Simon, "Security, Peace and the Native Peoples of the Arctic," in Thomas R. Berger, ed, The Arctic: Choices for Peace and Security (Vancouver: Gordon Soules, 1989). 341 Taiaiake Alfred, Power, Peace, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1999), 60.
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Culture and identity remain central to Indigenous security discourses, but have increasingly been incorporated into a new discourse that emphasizes the threats posed not by modernization per se, but by environmental change. Nowhere is this more acute than in the Arctic, where Indigenous peoples are witnessing environmental changes that implicate every aspect of individual and community life. As discussed in Chapter 1, the region is experiencing significant and worsening ecological changes due to erratic weather patterns, increased lake temperatures, thawing permafrost, stress on plant and animal populations, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and disappearing sea ice.342 Across the region, but particularly in the Western Arctic, “communities reported concern that the coasts and riverbanks in this region have been falling into the water at an alarming rate. Homes and buildings … have already been relocated as a result, and the communities are concerned about the possibility of the need for complete community relocation in the future.”343 Researchers also note that greater incidence of death among hunters and other people working on the land are associated with changing ice conditions and unpredictable weather patterns.344
In addition to new physical hazards, environmental change affects Indigenous peoples through the connection between cultural identity and the natural environment. Many Indigenous cultural practices are predicated upon a close relationship between communal identity and the natural environments of their ancestral territories: “Cultural survival, identity and the very existence of Indigenous societies depend to a considerable degree on the maintenance of environmental quality. The degradation of the environment is therefore inseparable from a loss of culture and hence identity.”345 Physical changes to the land that alter how Indigenous peoples subsist, and undermine multi-generational knowledge of weather and climate patterns, animal movements, and methods of hunting, gathering, and survival have far-reaching implications for Indigenous
342 ACIA 2004; IPCC 2007, 2013. 343 Scot Nickels, Chris Furgal, Mark Buell, and Heather Moquin, Unikkaaqatigiit: Putting the Human Face on Climate Change – Perspectives from Inuit in Canada (Ottawa: Joint Publication of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Nasivvik Centre for Inuit Health and Changing Environments at Université Laval and the Ajunnginiq Centre at the National Aboriginal Health Organization, 2005), 83. 344 James D. Ford, Ashlee Cunsolo Wilcox, Susan Chatwood, Christopher Furgal, Sherilee Harper, Ian Mauro, and Tristan Pearce, “Adapting to the effects of climate change on Inuit health,” American Journal of Public Heath 104, no. S3 (2014): e9-e17. 345 Chris Cocklin, “Water and ‘Cultural Security’,” in Edward A. Page and Michael Redclift, eds, Human Security and the Environment: International Comparisons. (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2002), 159.
112 cultures and identities. For instance, reduced quality and availability of country foods affects food and physical security, but also contributes to the erosion of cultural practices, since “to hunt, catch, and share these foods is the essence of Inuit culture. Thus, a decline in [country foods] … threatens not only the dietary requirements of the Inuit, but also their very way of life.”346 Research on food security in the North increasingly calls for recognition of the cultural importance of traditional foods for Indigenous peoples, and the integral link between food security and the challenges of climate change.347
Harmful social phenomena also have widespread negative implications for communities, and are differently distributed according to both indigeneity and gender, as some hazards disproportionately affect Indigenous men and women based on gendered divisions of labour, exposure to environmental phenomena, or gender-based violence.348 For instance, in 2001 the average life expectancy for all Canadian men was 77 years compared to 62.6 years for Inuit men, while the gap between Inuit and all Canadian women’s life expectancies was more than 10 years.349 Across northern Canada, rates of suicide among Indigenous people range from 5-10 times higher than for non-Indigenous people, with widespread suicide among youth being especially corrosive for the wellbeing of families and communities.350 Approximately 135/100,000 Inuit per year take their own lives, 11 times the national average and the highest of any Aboriginal group in Canada. Over 85% are young men, and the rate of suicide is increasing,
346 ACIA 94. 347 See Jill Lambden, Olivier Receveur, and Harriet V. Kuhnlein, “Traditional Food Attributes Must be Included in Studies of Food Security in the Canadian Arctic,” International Journal of Circumpolar Health 66, no. 4 (2007); Elaine M. Power, “Conceptualizing Food Security for Aboriginal People in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Public Health 99, no. 2 (2008). 348 Connie Deiter and Darlene Rude, Human Security and Aboriginal Women in Canada (Ottawa: Status of Women Canada, 2005). 349 Statistics Canada, Projections of the Aboriginal Populations, Canada, Provinces and Territories 2001 to 2017 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2005). 350 Laurence J. Kirmayer, Gregory M. Brass, Tara Holton, Ken Paul, Cori Simpson, and Caroline Tait, Suicide Among Aboriginal People in Canada. (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2007); Jack Hicks, Statistical Data on Death by Suicide by Nunavut Inuit, 1920-2014 (Iqaluit: Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, September 2015). Accessed at http://www.tunngavik.com/files/2015/09/2015-09-14-Statistical-Historical-Suicide-Date-Eng.pdf on March 10, 2016.
113 having more than doubled in the past decade.351 While the causes are complex, “this pattern has been associated with a view of young males not seeing a future for themselves as hunters and contributors to their community and at the same time not fitting into the cash employment structures that are becoming the dominant lifestyle.”352 Practices such as hunting and traveling on the land require traditional knowledge that is being lost as older generations die out, or is undermined as the physical landscape is radically altered. Lack of optimism in the future is thus driven by the interaction between coloniality, rapid cultural change, and the changing environment that limits opportunities for subsistence and the acquisition and practice of valued cultural skills.353 Higher rates of male suicide, in turn, place a disproportionate economic burden on surviving female relatives to provide for their families. By further degrading the relationship between Indigenous peoples and their traditional lands and practices, climate change fuels the erosion of traditional knowledge and lifestyles that is considered crucial to the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people. Worsening climate change and its impacts on methods of subsistence and ways of life will aggravate what are already epidemic conditions of suicide in the North. Recent environmental changes thus contribute to long-standing social and economic problems in Northern communities, exacerbating already disproportionate levels of suffering and hardship.
At levels ranging from the individual to families, communities, and the region as a whole, environmental change is driving an array of challenges for Indigenous peoples. Taken together, these changes constitute immediate and long-term challenges to human wellbeing, and have necessitated a range of adaptation responses by local communities and other organizations.354 Adaptation, however, will likely be inadequate; the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment found “the sum of these factors threatens to overwhelm the adaptive capacity of some Arctic populations and ecosystems. The increasingly rapid rate of recent climate change poses new challenges to
351 ITK, “Inuit Approaches to Suicide Prevention.” Accessed at https://www.itk.ca/inuit-approaches-suicide- prevention on December 22, 2014. 352 Kirmayer et al. 2007, 157. 353 Michael J. Kral, “‘The weight on our shoulders is too much, and we are falling’: Suicide among Inuit male youth in Nunavut, Canada,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2013): 63-83. 354 Nickels et al. 2013, 157.
114 the resilience of Arctic life.”355 The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report also notes that “the rapid rate at which climate is changing in the Polar Regions will impact natural and social systems and may exceed the rate at which some of their components can successfully adapt.”356 The fact that environmental changes are occurring too quickly for Indigenous peoples to sufficiently adapt is a likely driver of the increase in securitizing moves identifying the environment as the leading threat to Arctic security. Some scholars have also noted that if the Arctic has historically been a “regional environmental security complex” wherein security has been structured by specific ecological conditions, then the changing environment threatens the material basis upon which regional conditions of human survival and prosperity have been built.357 As a result, Indigenous peoples have framed the changing environment as an issue that affects their security as inhabitants of northern Canada.
4.1.1 Indigenous Insecurities
Since the turn of the millennium, leaders and organizations representing Indigenous peoples in northern Canada have articulated distinct conceptions of security that broadly align with human, as opposed to national, security discourse. Arctic Indigenous peoples behave as securitizing actors by employing the grammar and language of in/security to identify threats to the continued wellbeing of valued referent objects linked to their survival as indigenous peoples. Based on the threat-referent relationships they articulate, Indigenous peoples in northern Canada primarily understand security to mean: protecting the Arctic environment from degradation and radical climate change; preserving their identities through the maintenance of indigenous cultural practices; and maintaining their autonomy as self-determining political actors within the context of the Canadian settler state. This conclusion is based on data from a variety of sources, including: surveys; textual analysis of public statements and documents; articles and speeches by members of northern Indigenous communities; interviews and correspondence with Indigenous
355 ACIA 2004, 5. 356 IPCC 2014, 3. 357 Exner-Pirot 2013; Chater and Greaves 2014.
115 leaders; and relevant academic sources. Though not exhaustive, this section forms the first detailed scholarly analysis of Indigenous securitizing moves pertaining to the Canadian Arctic.
This analysis suggests Indigenous peoples in northern Canada have principally operationalized security in terms of the direct and indirect effects of human-caused environmental change. For instance, in an earlier study I examined all of the publicly available online documents – including declarations, press releases, speeches, journal articles and other publications – produced between 2001 and 2011 by four organizations representing Arctic Indigenous peoples in Canada.358 The three Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council with Canadian members – the Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC), Gwich’in Council International (GCI), and Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) – and the national Inuit organization in Canada, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), had a total of 538 available documents covering all manner of advocacy, awareness-raising, and public relations topics. As shown in Appendix 1, of these, 25 documents contained securitizing moves, invoking such referent objects as: general environmental insecurity (19); food security (11), especially the welfare of caribou herds (4); culture, language, or traditional ways of life (9); Indigenous people’s health (5); and Indigenous peoples’ human rights (4). All of these objects were linked to the changing environment; in fact, none of the documents makes a securitizing move without identifying the direct or indirect impacts of climate change as the source of the threat. In effect, these organizations reserved ‘security talk’ for discussions of climate change, and the multiple ways in which it is affecting, and will affect in future, the material and cultural wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic.
Other quantitative evidence supports the importance of the environment to Indigenous conceptions of in/security. The first Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey was conducted in 2010 for the Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, a collaboration between the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation and the Munk School of Global Affairs. The survey includes samples of Northern and Southern Canadians large enough to be statistically significant responding to questions interrogating various aspects of security in the Arctic, including ranking which factors are most important to respondents’ conceptions of what Arctic security means. The survey is distinct in both its subject matter and the disaggregation of Northern and Southern
358 Wilfrid Greaves, “Turtle Island Blues: Climate Change and Failed Indigenous Securitization in the Canadian Arctic,” Working Papers on Arctic Security No. 2 (Toronto: Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, 2012a): 1-27.
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Canadian opinions, which allows for a greater degree of specificity and comparative analysis with respect to how Northerners feel about challenges facing their own region. And while imperfect, it also affords a sense of how in/security is understood at the community level rather than mediated through the views and interests of elite Indigenous leaders and representatives.
The results indicate that Northerners consider the environment to be the most important issue for Arctic security, followed closely by maintenance of Indigenous cultures. When unprompted as to the meaning of security, a plurality of 27% of Northerners (including Indigenous and non- Indigenous respondents) indicated the most pressing Arctic security issue to be “protecting Canada’s borders from international threats.” By contrast, 11% identified Canada’s Arctic sovereignty or the Northwest Passage, 5% protecting the environment against climate change, and 2% protecting natural resources from exploitation.359 When ‘security’ was omitted, however, and respondents were asked to simply list the most pressing Arctic issues, 33% of Northerners listed the environment first, followed by housing and community infrastructure (9%) and the economy, jobs and employment (7%), meaning by a ratio of more than 3:1 Northerners consider the environment to be the most important Arctic issue.360 Moreover, when prompted with a list of various dimensions of security, fully 91% of Northerners considered environmental security to be important to their definition of ‘Arctic security,’ followed by 90% identifying as important social security including basic access to health care, education, housing, and community infrastructure. Economic security, defined as “protecting and growing northern economies, and increasing employment rates in the North,” was important to 78% of Northerners, followed by 66% who felt cultural and language security was important, though this increased to 74% in Nunavut where Inuit form a large majority. Northerners were more likely than Southerners (78% to 71%) to agree that “strengthening Canada’s climate change policies is a critical step in ensuring the security of Arctic residents,” and that “the best way to protect Canada’s interests in the Arctic is to have Canadians living there” (81% to 71%). By contrast, only a slight majority of Northerners (56%) identified national security as being important at all,
359 EKOS, Rethinking the Top of the World: Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey (Toronto: Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, 2011), 13. 360 EKOS 2011, 13.
117 significantly less than Southerners (69%),361 while Northerners were less likely (52% to 60%) to agree that: “Canada should strengthen its military presence in the North in order to protect against international threats.”362
While there are some important similarities between Northern and Southern Canadians, the survey suggests the environment is prioritized more highly by Northerners, who are also less inclined to see national security or sovereignty as important Arctic issues. Northerners are less supportive of the view that increased military activity will contribute to Arctic security, while considering stronger action on climate change to be important for security in the region. Community and cultural issues were consistently ranked as the second most important area after the environment, and the survey authors conclude that Northern respondents “see environmental security and social security as key elements to protecting the Canadian Arctic. National security, while still seen as important, does not seem to be a leading priority.”363 These findings appear supported by the second Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey, highlights of which were released in April 2015. In fact, even fewer Northerners identified strengthening Canada’s military presence as an important part of Canada’s Arctic security in the second survey compared to the first (45% to 52%).364 These findings are also similar to those for Indigenous peoples across the circumpolar region: “On average three out of four [Arctic] indigenous people perceive climate change to be a problem in their communities, and more than 50 per cent mention local contaminated sites, pollution of local lakes and streams and pollution from industrial development as problems in the region.”365 Overall, in so far as Northern Canadians think in terms of Arctic security, it seems clear they do so with respect to the environmental, social, and cultural challenges affecting their communities and ways of life.
361 EKOS 2011, 14-15. 362 EKOS 2011, 23 363 EKOS 2011, 13. 364 EKOS, Rethinking the Top of the World Vol. 2 (Toronto-Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, 2015). Accessed at www.gordonfoundation.ca on June 16, 2015. 365 Birger Poppel, ed, SLiCA: Arctic Living Conditions – Living Conditions and Quality of Life Among Inuit, Saami and Indigenous Peoples of Chukotka and the Kola Peninsula (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2015), 56.
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4.1.2 Inuit Perspectives on Security and Sovereignty
These quantitative findings are supported by qualitative analysis of security claims made by leaders and organizations representing Inuit in Canada. In addition to outlining a conception of Arctic security emphasizing the environment, identity, and autonomy, Inuit leaders articulate the view that the Government of Canada’s policies with respect to the Arctic are detrimental to their interests and contrary to their security. Mary Simon, past president of both the Inuit Circumpolar Council and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and a former federal Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, has repeatedly stated that Canada’s approach to Arctic issues is inconsistent with Inuit values and interests. In 1989, she wrote: “Arctic security includes environmental, economic and cultural, as well as defence, aspects,” but has been subordinated to other understandings of Arctic security “justified by the government on the basis of defence and military considerations … [that] too often serve to promote our insecurity.”366 Simon challenges state-centric and militaristic conceptions of Arctic security, noting that Inuit “subscribe to the concept that security should be understood in a broad sense. Just as health is more than the absence of disease, so, too, security is more than the absence of military conflict.”367 Though Simon identifies several areas as crucial for the future of Inuit – including improved education, political engagement, and shared benefits from resource development – she invokes securitizing language to emphasize the transformative and destabilizing impacts of Arctic climate change: “The urgency surrounding mitigating the impact of climate change grows with the almost daily news of unprecedented developments in our Arctic environment … Arctic ice is melting three times faster than models had earlier predicted – and the earlier predictions were alarming. The Arctic is melting, with dramatic consequences for all of us.”368
Many Inuit views are presented in the edited volume Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty, one of the few accounts to foreground the concept of security in relation to Arctic Indigenous peoples. Published by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, it is a collection of personal and academic essays by established and emerging Inuit leaders, and is a written
366 Simon 1989, 67, 36. Emphasis in original. 367 Simon 2011, 891. 368 Simon 2009, 256.
119 companion to the documentary film, Nilliajut: Inuit Voices on Arctic Security. Both were produced in cooperation with the Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program with the goal “to broaden the current understanding and discourse for consideration in policy development from the community to the international levels,” and offer “a considerable contribution to knowledge that cannot be found elsewhere.”369 The essays discussing security are clear: Inuit understandings of security closely align with a broad definition of human security, namely provision of the essential goods for human life, social and cultural wellbeing, and political inclusion and representation.370 The authors are explicit about the issues most significant to the security of their people. Udloriak Hanson of ITK writes: “What does security mean to Inuit? Security doesn’t come from the comfort that some find in icebreakers, sonar detectors and Arctic military capabilities. Security from our societal perspective comes from access to the basic essentials of life – food, shelter and water.”371 Rosemarie Kuptana, another former president of ITK and pioneering contributor to the Arctic Council, concurs: “Security is more than about arms build-up. Security is about ensuring that Inuit are equal members of the human family and have the economic base to ensure a reasonable life-style as defined by contemporary Canada … Security to Inuit was, and is, having food, clothing and shelter.”372 Several contributors acknowledge the validity, even necessity, of military activity in the Arctic as a component of security, but they are unanimous that it is insufficient for a complete understanding of what Inuit require to be secure in their daily and communal lives. Nancy Karetak-Liddell, former Member of Parliament for Nunavut, describes security for Inuit as “feeling safe on our lands, in our communities, having the ability to freely move around, the ability to practice our own way.”373 Her description thus encompasses the ability for Inuit to practice their culture in Inuit Nunangat as well as a conception of personal security similar to the early Roman conception of securitas as
369 Scot Nickels, “Editor’s Note,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 3. 370 For a more detailed discussion of human security see UNDP 1994 and Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now (New York: United Nations, 2003). 371 Udloriak Hanson, “Foreword,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 2. 372 Rosemarie Kuptana, “The Inuit Sea,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 11-12. 373 Interviewed in Nilliajut 2013.
120 an individual’s mental freedom from care.374
Many contributors to Nilliajut juxtapose Inuit views of security with those of the Canadian state. Several go further, directly implicating the historical and contemporary policies of Canada in the constitution of insecurity for Inuit. Explicitly framed in the context of political domination of Inuit by colonial institutions, the authors focus their critique on Canada’s past actions towards Inuit, its ongoing failure to sufficiently engage them in political decisions that affect their homeland, and the limited efforts to address the threats posed by climate change. Zebedee Nungak condemns “the pattern of behavior of European monarchs and their successor governments … through the centuries to assault and decimate the security and wellbeing of indigenous people, including Inuit.”375 Rosemarie Kuptana clearly connects the actions of the Canadian state and the insecurities facing Inuit, particularly related to food and the cultural dislocation caused by forced permanent settlement:
The settlement of Inuit in hamlets has resulted in many people being unskilled in hunting and the ways of life on the land. This settlement was government policy … [and] resulted in a society which is resettled with some of the amenities of the south but also in a society devoid of the economy which sustained it … The on-going results of this government policy have robbed the Inuit of a viable economy. The government policy of residential schools too worked to this end: it ensured, as best it could, that the traditional ways would not be transferred to a new generation. It can be argued, therefore, that ongoing government policy and actions are working to deprive the Inuit of a basic right to life.376
Terry Audla, former president of ITK, shares these assessments of the insecurities facing Inuit, though he is more circumspect in assigning blame to current federal policies. His analysis links “the insecurities that Inuit face as a result of our living, over three or four generations, in what has been a firestorm of cultural change,” with the challenges of economic modernization still underway in the Arctic, noting that “while some insecurities have abated, new ones have arisen
374 Rothschild 1995. 375 Zebedee Nungak, “The Decimation of Inuit Security,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 14. 376 Kuptana 2013, 12.
121 and some old ones have taken on new forms.”377 But Audla pays particular attention to the role of climate change in eroding the conditions necessary for sustainable conditions of security in the Arctic region. He first situates climate change as “a formidable threat that confronts all of humanity, but with particularly dire challenges to Inuit,” before specifying the environmental hazards already affecting the security of his people:
In the Arctic, our physical security has already been challenged by such things as changes to wildlife patterns, unreliable wind and temperature patterns and associated thawing and freezing cycles, rising sea levels, and shifting building foundations due to permafrost variation. Nature is never stable, and life close to nature always brings its own insecurities, as well as benefits. Climate change at a rate and of an intensity that appears unprecedented, and well outside Inuit cultural memory, creates insecurities of an entirely new nature, generating concerns about the sustainability of large aspects of our inherited and acquired patterns of life … [sic] our very sense of who and what we are as Inuit.378
Others have made similar arguments linking the changing Arctic environment and the fundamental wellbeing of Inuit. In 2005, then Inuit Circumpolar Council President Sheila Watt- Cloutier filed a petition against the United States before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights extensively detailing how climate change is affecting the Arctic ecosystem and Inuit cultural and subsistence practices that rely upon it.379 As a legal document, the argument is laid out in terms that draw most directly from discourses of fundamental justice, international human rights, and the collective rights of Inuit as an indigenous people. But the petition is also replete with statements outlining the implications of climate change in the gravest terms, clearly situating the rapid and unpredictable ecological transformation of the Inuit homeland as an existential challenge to their collective future. In no uncertain terms, Watt-Cloutier asserts: “climate change is threatening the lives, health, culture and livelihoods of the Inuit.”380 Next to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment from which it draws, the petition to the Inter-American
377 Terry Audla, “Inuit and Arctic Security,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 8. 378 Audla 2013, 8. 379 Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Seeking Relief From Violations Resulting From Global Warming Caused by Acts and Omissions of the United States (December 7, 2005). Accessed at http://inuitcircumpolar.com/index.php?ID=316&Lang=En on April 18, 2014). 380 Watt-Cloutier 2005, 7.
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Commission is probably the most comprehensive articulation of the impacts of climate change upon the Arctic ecosystem, and the multi-dimensional ways in which such impacts affect the current and future circumstances of Inuit and other Northerners.
These examples of how Inuit leaders understand security in the Arctic are reinforced by one of the few academic accounts to explicitly link Inuit, security, and climate change in the Arctic. The study by Smith and Parks inquires into the relative prevalence of key terms related to security within the discourse of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC).381 Their conclusions initially seem to contradict the analysis presented here; the authors find neither “security” nor “environmental security” feature prominently in ICC discourse, leading them to conclude “the language of environmental security or security was an inappropriate way to categorize or analyse the case of the Inuit and climate change … Consequently … to use the language of environmental security in the context of the Inuit and climate change is akin to putting words in their mouths.”382 However, I suggest that methodological differences between their study and this dissertation account for this apparent contradiction, and careful consideration of their findings supports the argument that Inuit associate their key security considerations of wellbeing and survival with climate change and its impacts.
Methodologically, Smith and Parks’ emphasis on “security” and “environmental security” as the key words associated with in/security limits their conclusions. Though these terms certainly can act as securitizing moves, they are not necessary; securitization does not require literal variations on the word “security”. Indeed, seven of nine search words employed in their study fall within the basket of terms often used in the construction of a threat-referent relationship.383 Specific terminology matters less for attempts to securitize than the intended meaning; securitizing moves exist when an object is depicted as having its survival or wellbeing endangered by a specified
381 Heather A. Smith and Brittney Parks, “Chapter 11: Climate Change, Environmental Security, and Inuit Peoples,” in Matthew A. Schnurr and Larry A. Swatuk, eds, New Issues in Security #5: Critical Environmental Security: Rethinking the Links Between Natural Resources and Political Violence (Halifax: Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, 2010), 1-18. 382 Smith and Parks 2010, 13. Emphases in original. This study undertook textual analysis of ICC speeches and academic case studies of climate change in the Arctic looking for nine key words: security, environmental security, threat, harm, conflict, vulnerability, fear, rights, and justice. 383 Chapter 3 of this dissertation.
123 hazard. The move does not require specific language to be used for this meaning to be conveyed; language is employed contextually with the goal of increasing the likelihood that a security claim will be recognized by the authoritative audience. As such, Smith and Parks employ a restrictive method for identifying securitizing moves that overly privileges the use of terms derived from the word “security”.
Their study also examines a narrower sample and type of speech act by Inuit political actors. In examining Inuit political discourse, Smith and Parks focus exclusively on speeches made by individuals representing the ICC. But limiting their study to this single source is also unduly restrictive; by contrast, in this section I draw on speeches, articles, official declarations, survey data, parliamentary testimony, and a wider variety of outputs from organizations including the ICC, representing a more comprehensive analysis of Inuit understandings of in/security in the Arctic. While respecting Smith and Parks’ call “to be mindful of who and what we are securitizing and whether or not our scholarship contributes to or disrupts colonial practices,” the analysis in this section does not (re)produce a colonial discourse “akin to putting words in [Inuit] mouths.”384 To the contrary, the analysis in this section is based on claims made by Inuit in which they depict hazards threatening referent objects valued by their own people. This section highlights how Inuit articulate their own understanding of in/security in their Arctic homeland; the securitizing moves are not mine, but those of Inuit and other Indigenous leaders.
Moreover, when one examines Smith and Parks’ findings they support the argument presented here. Using terms such as “threat”, “vulnerability”, and “rights”, the ICC depicts climate change as a major challenge to Inuit collective ways of living precisely because it affects so many other areas of concern, such as culture, language, livelihoods, and Indigenous rights. Seen through the lens of securitization theory, many statements, though not all, constitute securitizing moves that invoke an urgent need to defend a specific referent object from ongoing or impending harm. Examples include statements by Sheila Watt-Cloutier that “human-induced climate change is undermining the ecosystem upon which Inuit depend for their cultural survival … Emission of greenhouse gases from cars and factories threatens our ability far to the North to live as we have always done in harmony with a fragile, vulnerable, and sensitive environment,” and that “the
384 Smith and Parks 2010, 13.
124 changes to our climate and our environment will bring about the end of the Inuit culture.”385 Understanding such statements as pertaining to Arctic in/security involves analyzing them through a securitization theoretical lens that is non-Indigenous, but does not entail changing or distorting the meaning or impacts that Inuit leaders associate with climate change. To the contrary, highlighting Indigenous constructions of in/security that emphasize the importance of social and environmental factors may contribute to processes of decolonization by pushing back against the ongoing, dominant association of in/security with military violence, territorial borders, and the national interests of the sovereign state.
4.1.3 In/Security, Resources, and Climate Change
Environmental change is central to Inuit understandings of security, but this is in tension with the priority many regional actors place on the extraction of Arctic resources. There is contestation over how Arctic Indigenous peoples feel about extractive resource activities in their homeland. Canada identified “development for the people of the North” as the theme of its Arctic Council chairmanship from 2013-2015, and former Environment Minister and Member of Parliament for Nunavut Leona Aglukkaq loudly insisted: “People in the North want development. We want it!”386 However, dozens of Northern organizations, including some representing Indigenous peoples, have signed the “Joint Statement of Indigenous Solidarity for Arctic Protection” calling for a moratorium on Arctic oil drilling.387 On the other hand, leading Inuit groups have rejected this statement as an example of voice-appropriation by Southern-based NGOs that do not speak on their behalf.388 Inuit leaders point instead to the Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles, which reserves the right of Inuit to benefit from the development of
385 Quoted in Smith and Parks 2010, 7, 8. 386 Randy Boswell, “Aglukkaq of the Arctic: Can federal minister set a vision for international council?” Montreal Gazette (May 12, 2013). Accessed at http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/environment/Aglukkaq+Arctic +federal+minister+vision/8373742/story.html on May 31, 2013. 387 Greenpeace International (2013). Statement available at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/ releases/Indigenous-Peoples-put-Arctic-Council-on-alert-on-eve-of-foreign-ministers-meeting (Accessed April 16, 2014). 388 Nunatsiaq News, “Indigenous Statement Calls for Arctic Oil Development Moratorium,” Nunatsiaq Online (May 14, 2013). Accessed at http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674Indigenous_statement_calls_for_ban _on_all_arctic_oil_development/ on May 31, 2013.
125 natural resources on their traditional territories while stipulating that “Inuit and others – through their institutions and international instruments – have a shared responsibility to evaluate the risks and benefits of their actions through the prism of global environmental security.”389 Ambivalence towards natural resource extraction and its relationship to climate change is reflected in several places in the Declaration: “Resource development in Inuit Nunaat must contribute to, and not detract from, global, national and regional efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and should always be seen through the reality of climate change … To minimize the risk to global environmental security, the pace of resource development in the Arctic must be carefully considered.”390 The Declaration further indicates that the highest priority for revenues generated for Inuit by resource development must be “providing security against unplanned or unintended environmental consequences.”391 It also refers to reducing threats to Arctic wildlife, Inuit food security, and maintenance of Inuit culture, all of which are linked to “the scope and depth of climate change and other environmental pressures and challenges facing the Arctic.”392 Environment security is depicted as the context within which decisions about resource extraction should occur, problematizing forms of economic development that will contribute to global climate change.
The prospect of expanded Arctic resource development places Indigenous peoples in the unenviable position of demanding to benefit from extractive activities they do not necessarily support but which may nonetheless occur, as some governments have appeared determined to encourage. Ownership and distribution of natural resource wealth is a central point, with Indigenous leaders insisting “those resources are ours, and they're to be shared based on Inuit values and beliefs on sharing, and in response to the Inuit land claims as well, and that we have a right to those resources, and that this right flows from our right to self-determination under the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other self-government arrangements.”393
389 ICC, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat (Nuuk: Inuit Circumpolar Council, 2011): s. 5.1. Emphasis added. 390 ICC 2011, s. 5.2, s. 5.5. 391 ICC 2011, s. 9.5. 392 ICC 2011, preamble. 393 Violet Ford, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 40-03- 17 (May 13, 2010).
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But while claiming ownership over resources, Inuit worry over the potential impacts of extraction, especially as related to contamination from mining activities and the risk of a spill caused by offshore drilling for oil and gas. Duane Smith, former president of ICC, told Parliament:
The Inuit view in the past has been that, yes, we welcome development, but at a pace that can be managed in such a way that it has minimal effect on the environment and the ecosystem within that area, and at the same time remediating as it proceeds … There is support for it. But people also want development to proceed so that it minimizes the negative impacts on the communities themselves. Development affects the social fabric of the community as well as the cultural practices. There is a concern about all-year shipping and how it might affect the ice conditions that the people rely on for transportation during the winter months to get their nutrition.394
Inuit leaders acknowledge the possible benefits of resource development, but also identify the objects of value threatened by extractive activities or the prospect of an environmental accident. As one elder put it: “The circumpolar North is increasingly opening up very quickly now, and coming with that is offshore oil and gas development. To me, the greatest risk to our security is these companies that operate offshore could do major damage to our marine biology.”395 Though many believe development may be inevitable, many Inuit remain deeply concerned over the potential impacts for their territories and subsistence practices on the land.
The willingness to identify threats posed by natural resource extraction and consumption, particularly fossil fuels, places Inuit in opposition to many of the policy preferences of the federal government. Not only does this reinforce the view of government as contributing to, rather than defending against, insecurity for Indigenous peoples, it links environmental change in the circumpolar region to industrial activities located elsewhere in Canada. As climate change worsens while government encourages extractive industries across Canada, Indigenous leaders have increasingly voiced concerns linking non-Arctic resource development, local ecological damage, and climate change. One example is the ICC petition to the Inter-American Commission, which identifies the United States as the primary agent responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions causing harm to the Arctic ecology and Inuit who depend on it.
394 Duane Smith, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41- 01-69 (March 5, 2013). 395 William Barbour, interviewed in Nilliajut 2013.
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Another is parliamentary testimony by Bill Erasmus, Assembly of First Nations regional chief for the Northwest Territories and National Chief of the Dene Nation, that addressing environmental change in the Arctic requires revising attitudes towards hydrocarbon extraction in the South:
If you want to work on infrastructure and do something about permafrost melting and all the difficulties we see in the north, you have to deal with that reality. It means turning the policies around. It means dealing with the big corporations that are affecting us in northern Alberta … We are downstream from Fort McMurray. And we all know what's happening there, but Canada allows it to happen. You are in a position to do something, and if you don't do something, this is going to continue. We can put money into infrastructure and so on, but if you don't deal with those big companies, if you don't say, ‘Listen you guys, we have to get rid of the emissions, we have to be real with these targets, and we have to quit playing games’, then as people, we're not going to survive very long.396
Chief Erasmus continued his critique, directly refuting the popular conception of environmental change as leading to a commercially accessible Arctic. Having linked environmental insecurity in the Arctic to energy extraction in Alberta, he invoked the contrast between Southern views of the Arctic as an economic frontier to be developed and the Northern sense of the Arctic as a home to be protected: “We need to step back and look at the big picture. We need to ask the people what they want. We have to quit having these big dreams about having pipelines and having ships going through the Northwest Passage and all of these things that don't make sense to people who were brought up in the north and who are not going to leave.” He concluded with one of the core ecological security arguments against hydrocarbon extraction in the context of human-caused environmental change: “To me, it doesn't make sense to be looking for oil if oil is not the future.”397 With that statement, Chief Erasmus underscores the central tension between different accounts of in/security in the Arctic region: what kind of security is possible in the context of transformative climate change, and what kind of security can be achieved while continuing to pursue the very activities causing such change in the first place?
396 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009). 397 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009).
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4.1.4 Security and Self-Determination
Finally, Inuit leaders identify their political autonomy as a self-determining Indigenous people as vital both to their security and to ensuring the agency necessary to provide for their security. In this respect, the central challenge is reconciling the Arctic sovereignty claims of the Canadian settler state with the prior claims of Indigenous peoples over the same territory. The federal government’s Northern Strategy acknowledges the contribution of Indigenous claims to Canada’s, noting “Canada’s Arctic sovereignty is longstanding, well-established and based on historic title, founded in part on the presence of Inuit and other Aboriginal peoples since time immemorial,”398 with similar language repeated in Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy.399 Inuit leaders, in particular, emphasize that if Canada invokes Inuit as part of the basis for its Arctic sovereignty, then it must also respect legal instruments such as the Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic, Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles, and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that afford Inuit rights over their territories, natural resources, and self-determination. Inuit and non-Inuit analysts note that since Canada’s Arctic sovereignty partly draws upon prior Inuit occupation, it raises complicated legal and normative questions if the state continually fails to reflect Inuit political views in the execution of its Arctic policies.400
Many Inuit thus identify Canada’s limited implementation of Inuit land claim agreements – including the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement, Labrador Inuit Land Claim Agreement, and especially the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA) – as affecting their rights and security. Rosemarie Kuptana argues that Canada’s “failure to consult Inuit on all matters affecting Inuit, including sovereignty and security,” is illegal under domestic and international law, and claims that “Inuit are suffering from a want of dialogue even though this dialogue is constitutionally mandated … This manner of governing is not working for Inuit in Canada, particularly on the issue of arctic [sic]
398 Canada, Canada’s Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2009b), 9. 399 Canada, Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy: Exercising Sovereignty and Promoting Canada’s Northern Strategy Abroad (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2010). 400 Fenge 2007/2008; Natalia Loukacheva, “Nunavut and Canadian Arctic Sovereignty,” Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 2 (2009); Simon 2009.
129 sovereignty and security.”401 James Arreak, CEO of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, the Inuit organization mandated to implement the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, also identifies the link between colonialism, the NLCA, and Canadian sovereignty over its Arctic territory: “Notwithstanding the colonialism that marred the historic interaction of Inuit and the Canadian state, Inuit are proud Canadians. For years we have been holding up the Canadian flag over disputed waters of the Northwest Passage. Full and fair implementation of the NLCA must be part of our continuing to do so.”402 As the principal instrument for Inuit self-determination, land claims are seen as crucial for maintaining political autonomy in a manner consistent with protecting Inuit identity. Focus group respondents to the Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey tied security to the capacity to ensure political goals in the future. One respondent explained “security – in a broad way, [means] we want to protect ourselves and our wishes and our goals for the future,” while another emphasized the importance of self-determination because “security in the Arctic, for me that would be like that my culture is still being alive and being able to stay alive.”403 Kirt Ejesiak, a former official with ITK and the Government of Nunavut, also identified the link between autonomy and security by noting that, for Inuit, “the security part comes in when our governments don’t respect our way of life.”404 Inuit leaders thus view land claim agreements as a crucial bulwark for maintaining Inuit autonomy and defending against Southern pressures for social change, economic modernization, and cultural assimilation.
A central point of contention has therefore been the approach of the Conservative Government towards articulating and asserting Canada’s Arctic interests. As discussed Section 4.2, the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlined a vision of Arctic security that emphasizes militarism and natural resource extraction,405 pursuing policies contrary to Inuit understandings of their own security. Mary Simon has repeatedly criticized the Government’s
401 Kuptana 2013, 10-11. 402 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41- 01-73 (March 26, 2013). 403 EKOS 2011, 14. 404 Nilliajut 2013. 405 See Beauchamp and Huebert 2008; Klaus Dodds, “We are a Northern Country: Stephen Harper and the Canadian Arctic,” Polar Record 47, no. 4 (2011): 371-374; and Wilfrid Greaves, “For Whom, From What? Canada’s Arctic Policy and the Narrowing of Human Security,” International Journal 67, no. 1 (2012b): 219-240.
130 approach to the Arctic as an “outdated model” inappropriate for contemporary realities, and dismisses the government maxim that when it comes to its Arctic sovereignty Canada must “use it or lose it”.406 Simon notes the implication that Canada’s Arctic sovereignty is threatened if it is not exercised through military or industrial activities is met by Inuit “with a certain level of irony,” because “Inuit have been living in … and using … [sic] the Arctic for millennia, and we have no intention of ‘losing it’.”407 Similarly, John Amagoalik of Qikiqtani Inuit Association told Parliament that:
We were disappointed with the first two or three times [Prime Minister Harper] was up there [in the Arctic]. He never met with Inuit leaders. He never mentioned the Inuit in his speeches. We were curious as to why that was happening. Then he came out with this line of “use it or lose it”. That to us was very painful. It was a hurtful thing. It was insulting. We do use and occupy the Arctic every day, and we have been doing that for thousands of years. We feel that the Government of Canada has to stop using that line. It doesn't work.408
James Arreak reiterated the point four years later after the government maintained its use it or lose it rhetoric: “Whatever its political appeal, this statement does not accurately reflect or respect the history or demography of the Arctic or relevant Canadian and international laws.”409 As a result of the failure to acknowledge Inuit use and occupancy, Rosemarie Kuptana argues “the current discussion of arctic [sic] sovereignty and security lies in the realm of mythology and the exclusion of Inuit … [and] is not only an immoral and shameful exercise of out-dated and discredited colonialism but also illegal in light of the contemporary developments in law.”410
Many individuals emphasize that, in various respects, the security of Inuit has been negatively affected by subordination to first colonial, later federal, authorities. Zebedee Nungak describes the “decimation of Inuit security” that resulted from the imposition of Southern policies on
406 Simon 2009, 258. 407 Simon 2009, 252. 408 John Amagoalik, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009). 409 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41- 01-73 (March 26, 2013). 410 Kuptana 2013, 11.
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Inuit.411 Key historical episodes in the relationship between Inuit and Canada indicate a pattern of Indigenous peoples’ wellbeing being undermined by the policies pursued by the colonial state. Such episodes are often documented as instances of colonial insensitivity, arrogance, oppression, and attempted assimilation, but they also profoundly affected the individual and collective security of Indigenous people. For Inuit, this includes the mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs by RCMP and provincial police forces in the 1950s and 1960s,412 and the forced relocation of Inuit families from Nunavik to Ellesmere Island in the 1950s to serve as “human flagpoles” in support of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.413 In these instances, the security of Inuit was directly harmed by actions taken by Canada in the assertion of its own claims to Arctic sovereignty. As a result, “the whole of Inuit society suffered the harmful and damaging consequences of the actions, attitudes and mistakes of civil servants, agents and representatives of both the Canadian and Quebec governments.”414 If Inuit view autonomy as integral to their security, then historical and contemporary government policies have undermined security for Inuit and subordinated it to the interests of the Canadian state.
4.1.5 Synthesizing Indigenous Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic
Based on the preceding analysis, there is ample evidence to support the argument that Indigenous peoples understand security in the Arctic as a holistic concept encompassing threats to human beings, the natural environment, and the relationships between them. For Inuit, in particular, security is expressly linked to protecting the Arctic environment from degradation and radical climate change; preserving their identity through the maintenance of Indigenous cultural
411 Nungak 2013,14. 412 Jean-Jacques Croteau, Final Report of the Honourable Jean-Jacques Croteau, Retired Judge of the Superior Court, Regarding the Allegations Concerning the Slaughter of Inuit Sled Dogs in Nunavik (1950−1970) (2010). Accessed November 24, 2014. http://thefanhitch.org/officialreports/Final%20Report.pdf; QIA, Qikiqtani Truth Commission Final Report: Achieving Saimaqatigiingniq (Iqaluit: Qikiqtani Inuit Association, 2010). 413 Frank Tester and Peter Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939−63 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994); Romani Makkik, “The High Arctic Relocations,” Naniiliqpita (Iqaluit: Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, 2009). Accessed at http://www.tunngavik.com/documents/publications/Naniiliqpita%20Fall%202009.pdf on November 25, 2014. 414 Croteau 2010, 137.
132 practices; and asserting and maintaining Inuit autonomy as self-determining political actors within the context of the Canadian settler state. In this respect, Indigenous peoples in northern Canada function as securitizing actors employing the grammar and language of in/security with respect to perceived threats from the compounding effects of rapid cultural change, political disempowerment, and unpredictable ecological transformation.
However, for all three of the referent objects of the environment, identity, and autonomy, human- caused environmental change is the threat that permeates Inuit articulations of Arctic security. For securitization analysis, security issues supersede others in their relative significance because, “if we [the political community] do not tackle this problem, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way).”415 This is an apt summation of the impact of climate change in the Arctic, where Indigenous peoples have linked disparate referent objects of security to fears over climate change precisely because the changing environment worsens longstanding concerns over cultural preservation, community subsistence, and political self-determination. Because it exacerbates existing challenges and causes new hazards, environmental change is the backdrop against which Indigenous peoples articulate other insecurities in the Arctic. While their frequency has increased, such securitizing moves are not entirely new; Indigenous understandings of security as tied to human wellbeing and the negative impacts of government policy on that security have existed at least since Mary Simon first articulated them in the 1980s. While much has changed since that time, security for Indigenous peoples has not, and on their own terms it seems that “Inuit have yet to find true security in Canada.”416
4.2 State Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic
How Indigenous peoples articulate the meaning of in/security contrasts sharply with how the Canadian government understands security in the Arctic. The longstanding goal of Canada’s Arctic policy has been establishing and enforcing its own legal sovereignty over the Arctic.
415 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 416 Nungak 2013, 15.
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Federal preoccupation with Arctic sovereignty historically centred on the fact that not only were Canada’s legal claims initially somewhat weak, the country also lacked significant state capacity to enforce those claims against potential state rivals. Great Britain transferred sovereignty over the Arctic Archipelago to Canada in 1880, but the federal government at the time had little capacity to assert this claim. The region was only modestly explored over the following decades, often-by non-Canadians; by 1900, the extent of the Arctic islands which Canada claimed as its own was still unclear, and the country asserted little control over the territory that now formed its hinterland. Spurred by events such as the purchase of Alaska by the United States from Russia, the Klondike Gold Rush, and the Alaska Boundary Dispute, the young Dominion of Canada developed a Northern policy whose primary goal was to establish sovereignty against potential American expansion. But beyond settling basic questions of juridical sovereignty and legal recognition, Canada had little interest in the North; it remained remote, inaccessible, dangerous, and of little apparent value.417 Governments of the day knew the Arctic was “there and theirs,”418 and that was enough.
Canada’s approach to Arctic sovereignty changed fundamentally during the Second World War, when the region experienced significant militarization. Fear of a Japanese invasion catalyzed the American military to build the Alaska Highway connecting that state to the lower 48 US states through Canadian territory.419 The project opened the western Arctic to expanded settlement and natural resource exploration, but also reignited concerns over the latent American threat to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.420 The United States and Canada had negotiated the Alaska Highway to defend against an external threat, but the mass presence of US military personnel on remote and sparsely populated Canadian soil reflected an ongoing challenge in Canada-US defence relations later characterized as “defence against help.”421 The idea is the United States
417 Coates et al. 2008, 42. 418 Franklyn Griffiths, “Beyond the Arctic Sublime,” in Franklyn Griffiths, ed, Politics of the Northwest Passage (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 266. 419 Martha Cone, The Alaska Highway in World War II: The American Occupation in Canada’s Northwest (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). 420 P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Mathew Farish, “The Cold War on Canadian Soil: Militarizing a Northern Environment,” Journal of Environmental History 12, no. 4 (2007): 920-950. 421 Coates et al. 2008, 64.
134 expects Canada to meet certain expectations in the joint defence of North America, and if America’s strategic needs are unsatisfied it may intervene to assist Canada in securing the northern part of the continent. Given the unequal power relationship between the two countries, such assistance from the United States might inadvertently pose a threat to Canadian sovereignty and territorial control. Thus, the defence policy imperative for Canadian leaders has been doing enough that Canada is defended against the need for unwarranted American assistance.422 The combination of American military might and territorial acquisitiveness had long worried some politicians and segments of the Canadian public, and post-WWII these fears focused on the presence of American soldiers in Canada’s North. Longstanding differences between Canada and the United States pertaining to Arctic interests, boundaries, and the legal principles according to which the region should be governed have placed the Arctic at the forefront of debates around defence against help, not least because periodic efforts by the United States to assert its own interests have been perceived as the gravest challenges to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.
The onset of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR changed the Arctic from a marginal periphery to a strategic buffer zone separating the superpower spheres of influence. Bipolar struggle had a transformative effect on the Canadian North, turning it “first into a military flank, then a military front or even a ‘military theatre’ [of the Cold War].”423 The prevalence of bomber aircraft carrying nuclear weapons, and later nuclear submarines with inter- continental ballistic missiles, all of which would traverse the Arctic Ocean and Canadian North en route towards the rival superpower, placed the Arctic at the literal centre of strategic considerations between the East and West blocs. As a US ally and NATO member, Canada was actively involved in Western military efforts to deter the Soviet Union, which in the late 1950s included construction of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar line across the North. The DEW line, also built in close cooperation with the US military, was a feat of engineering, a key piece of strategic infrastructure, and “an extraordinary intervention that likely did more to alter
422 See Donald Barry and Duane Bratt, “Defence Against Help: Explaining Canada-U.S. Security Relations,” American Review of Canadian Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 63-89; Philippe Lagassé, “Nils Ørvik’s ‘Defence Against Help’: The Descriptive Appeal of a Prescriptive Strategy.” International Journal 65, no. 2 (2010): 463-474. 423 AHDR 2004, 218.
135 the lives of northern inhabitants than any other Cold War initiative.”424 Though obsolete by the late 1960s, the DEW line endures as a symbol of the strategic importance of the Arctic, environmental degradation caused by southern expansion into the North, and the central role that military considerations have played in the establishment, maintenance, and exercise of Canadian sovereignty over its Arctic territory.
Post-WWII, various governments expressed interest in civilian development in the North, notably Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s Northern Vision, but such interest rarely lasted. The extraordinary costs of construction, maintenance, and operation of military and civilian infrastructure in the region proved an effective deterrent to visionary projects or significant new government investment. Conversely, the strategic protection afforded by Canada’s defensive alliances with the United States through NATO and NORAD ensured that its North was militarily secure even without major expenditure by the federal government. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent once said that Canada’s Arctic was, thus, “governed in a fit of absence of mind.”425 As a result, government interest in the North was usually reactive, spurred by domestic or external events that periodically forced Canada to re-examine its Arctic policy.
Most prominent among these external factors were challenges to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty posed by the United States through its repeated authorization of maritime voyages through the Northwest Passage without requesting permission from Canadian authorities.426 The 1969 voyage of the Exxon oil tanker Manhattan, seeking a shorter energy supply route from Alaska to the east coast, precipitated major changes in Canada’s Arctic policy, including passage of the 1970 Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act (AWPPA) that unilaterally expanded Canada’s Arctic territory up to 100 nautical miles from its coastline. When the US Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea undertook a similar voyage in 1985, the result was the 1988 Canada-US Northwest Passage Agreement in which the United States agreed to request Canadian permission before entering the passage in exchange for Canadian assurance that permission would always be
424 Lackenbauer and Farish 2007, 928. 425 Quoted in Coates et al. 2008, 10. 426 For detailed discussions of the Northwest Passage see Griffiths 1987; Charron 2005; and Lajeunesse 2008.
136 granted. In managing the dispute over the Northwest Passage, neither state compromised its legal position but essentially agreed to disagree, a status quo that persists to the present day.
The construction of the Alaska Highway and the DEW line demonstrate that security in the mid- 20th century Canadian Arctic was officially understood in terms of the military defence of Canada, its allies, and their strategic interests. Canada’s Cold War security and defence policy viewed the Arctic as a buffer insulating southern Canada and the continental United States from the threat of nuclear attack. This view paid little mind to the North itself, nor the people living there; the prospect of aircraft or nuclear missiles being shot down over the Arctic was considered simply necessary in the event of superpower conflict. Arctic security thus meant using the Arctic to help secure the North American heartland. This view of security as the military defence of a state’s territory reflects traditional understandings of state-centric national security, as discussed in Chapter 3. By contrast, the Northwest Passage illustrates that Arctic sovereignty has largely meant protecting Canada’s territorial claims against its close friend and ally, the United States. Through issues such as the Alaska Highway, DEW Line, and Northwest Passage, Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty interests became closely linked. In pursuing national security vis-à-vis external enemies, Canada’s Arctic sovereignty risked being undermined by its American ally, since US assistance was necessary to maintain continental defence, and sovereignty was directly challenged when the United States disregarded Canada’s claim to the Northwest Passage. During the Cold War, sovereignty thus became fused with national security discourse because gains with respect to one could compromise Canada’s pursuit of the other.
The strategic significance of the Arctic diminished after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the superpower struggle. During the 1990s, military activity decreased sharply as circumpolar states revised their strategic priorities; drastic reductions occurred in domestic and NATO military activities in the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic as the focus of Arctic policy shifted to the environment.427 While there appeared to be little justification for Arctic military activities, across the region there was growing concern over pollution and environmental
427 For a detailed discussion see Andrew Wylie, Environmental Security and the Canadian Arctic. MA Thesis (Calgary: University of Calgary, 2002).
137 contaminants.428 Military security declined in relevance as Western states normalized relations with their Russian neighbour, and the Arctic region experienced rapid de-securitization as states initiated discussions on a range of issues precluded during the Cold War.429 The environment emerged as a key area for inter-state cooperation, and the establishment in 1991 of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), which led to the formation of the Arctic Council in 1996 with strong Canadian support, signified the emergence of a cooperative regional governance regime involving all eight circumpolar states.430 The normalization of Arctic relations drove resurgent optimism about the future of the Arctic as a “polar Mediterranean”, “global commons”, and essential component of the “common heritage of mankind”.431 Such visions, in turn, called into question the sovereign interests of states surrounding the Arctic Ocean, and tensions between those interests and the region’s growing internationalization. For Canada, the end of the Cold War meant that national security was briefly eclipsed by government emphasis on human security in the region. But it was not long before sovereignty concerns were back on the agenda, and government discourse re-adopted many features that had defined security in the Cold War Canadian Arctic.
4.2.1 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Liberal Years
As an area of foreign policy, the Arctic received relatively little attention during the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin (1993-2006). The 1990s were a dynamic decade for northern Canada, with multiple issues taking centre stage including: cleaning up environmental contamination caused by Cold War military activities, persistent social and community ills, devolution and Aboriginal self-government, and the establishment of Nunavut as
428 David Leonard Downie and Terry Fenge, eds, Northern Lights Against POPs: Combatting Toxic Threats in the Arctic (Mongreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). 429 Åtland 2008. 430 Evan T. Bloom, “Establishment of the Arctic Council,” American Journal of International Law 93, no. 3 (1999): 712-722; English 2013. 431 Such characterizations are not entirely new. Lord Kelvin is supposed to have predicted the emergence of a ‘polar Mediterranean’ as early as 1877. For discussion of the various visions of the Arctic, see Elizabeth Mendenhall, “The Social Construction of the New Arctic,” Paper presented at the 55th Meeting of the International Studies Association. Toronto, ON (April 2014).
138 a new territory within Canadian Confederation. As a result, political emphasis on the North during this decade was primarily domestic, and with the notable exception of the establishment of the Arctic Council, the region was not seen as a foreign policy issue. However, precisely because the Chrétien government pursued a foreign policy agenda centred on human security, the changing Arctic was briefly framed in terms of human and environmental security.432
Published in 2000, The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy is the only major document that directly links the Arctic to the Chrétien government’s foreign policy. It identifies the Arctic as a space of emergent challenges requiring international engagement and cooperation, and frames regional challenges as human and environmental security issues requiring civilian policy intervention and inter-state cooperation. The Northern Dimension identifies four objectives of Canada’s foreign policy in the North: “to enhance the security and prosperity of Canadians, especially northerners and Aboriginal peoples; to assert and ensure the preservation of Canada’s sovereignty in the North; to establish the circumpolar region as a vibrant geopolitical entity integrated into a rules-based international system; and to promote the human security of northerners and the sustainable development of the Arctic.”433 Although recognizing the distinctive nature of Arctic policy, as the title suggests the government viewed the Arctic as another place in which to extend the general tenets of Canada’s foreign policy, rather than one requiring unique policy solutions. This involved bringing the circumpolar Arctic, and Northern Canada in particular, more fully into the international system through: greater investment in Northern economies; better political representation and support for political institutions, particularly the Arctic Council; consultation with Northerners; and international cooperation to manage regional challenges related to transboundary pollutants, sustainable resource management, transportation, and post-Soviet Russia. Canada’s approach to the Arctic was thus similar to its broader foreign policy, and echoed the discourse expressed in other Liberal foreign policy documents.434
432 Lloyd Axworthy, “Canada and Human Security: The Need for Leadership,” International Journal 52, no. 2 (1997): 183-196; Joe Jockel and Joel Sokolsky, “Lloyd Axworthy’s Legacy: Human Security and the Rescue of Canadian Defence Policy,” International Journal 56, no. 1 (2001): 1-18. 433 Canada, The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 2000), 2. 434 Greaves 2012b.
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In so far as The Northern Dimension focuses on in/security it emphasizes the environment, citing how “northerners from across the circumpolar region have begun to press for action to address the serious environmental, economic, social and cultural threats facing their communities.”435 The document states that current challenges “mostly take the shape of transboundary environmental threats – persistent organic pollutants, climate change, and nuclear waste – that are having dangerously increasing impacts on the health and vitality of human beings, northern lands, waters, and animal life.”436 It specifies that “the peoples of the circumpolar region are particularly vulnerable” to environmentally driven human security threats, but environmental change is also mentioned in terms of expected economic opportunities made possible by increasingly navigable Arctic waters, primarily related to trans-Arctic shipping.437 Notably, The Northern Dimension lacks any concern over sovereignty threats or territorial rivalry with other states. Indeed, sovereignty threats are downplayed as anachronistic, replaced with an emphasis on interstate cooperation and issue management.438
While The Northern Dimension frames the Arctic in terms of human security, this was not substantively supported by the Liberal government’s policies. Understanding the Arctic in terms of human and environmental security deviates from the implementation of the human security agenda in Canadian foreign policy around the turn of the millennium. Despite initially conceiving human security broadly as including the requirements for human wellbeing – including factors in the social, economic, environmental, and cultural domains – in practice the ‘Canadian approach’ was narrowly focused on preventing physical violence to civilians in the Global South. Canada thus viewed human security as relevant in genocidal contexts like the Great Lakes region of Africa and the former Yugoslavia, while constructing the Global North, including Canada’s own polar backyard, as spaces characterized by a general lack of insecurity.439 The social and economic problems affecting the North, particularly Indigenous
435 Canada 2000, 4. 436 Canada 2000, 1. 437 Canada 2000, 5. 438 Canada 2000, 5. 439 Axworthy 1997; David Bosold and Wilfried von Bredow, “Human Security: A Radical or Rhetorical Shift in Canada’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal 61, no. 4 (2006): 829-844; and Nik Hynek and David Bosold, “A History and Genealogy of the Freedom-From-Fear Doctrine,” International Journal 64, no. 3 (2009): 735-750.
140 communities, were viewed as domestic issues, and were not considered human security issues in government policy since they fell within a broad conception of human security, not the violence- centric approach employed by Canada.440 Despite its emphasis on environmental security, sustainability, and call for better integration between the foreign and domestic components of Arctic policy, The Northern Dimension lacks discussion of Canada’s policies on natural resource extraction, the recently signed Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or climate adaptation measures for Arctic communities. Liberal foreign policy thus generally excluded the Arctic from consideration through a human security lens, and substantively ignored the challenges facing many Indigenous people across Canada, particularly Aboriginal women.441
Even this limited focus on Arctic human security shifted when Paul Martin succeeded Chrétien as prime minister in December 2003. The catalyst for this shift was Hans Island, an uninhabited 1 km2 rock in the Nares Strait that separates Canada’s Ellesmere Island from Greenland. Though otherwise insignificant, Hans Island straddles the maritime boundary between the two countries, and since 1974 has been the object of quiet disagreement over whether it is under Canadian or Danish sovereignty. It is the only disputed land territory in the entire circumpolar Arctic.442 The issue appeared periodically in the media during the 1980s and 1990s, but in March 2004 it became a major flashpoint in the Arctic sovereignty debate.443 The Conservative opposition questioned the Martin government over reports that Danish naval vessels had stopped at Hans Island in 2002 and 2003. The questions were intended to highlight the small increase in military spending in the recent federal budget, but, drawing on a Globe and Mail article by Arctic expert Rob Huebert,444 generated widespread media attention over the supposed threat to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty. Despite exchanges of diplomatic notes between Canada and Denmark for
440 Greaves 2012b. 441 Deiter and Rude 2005. 442 Michael Byers, Who Owns the Arctic: Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 24. 443 For more detailed discussion see Rob Huebert, “'Return of the Vikings,' The Canadian-Danish dispute over Hans Island: New Challenges for the Control of the Canadian North," in Fikret Berkes, Rob Huebert, Helen Fast, Micheline Manseau and Alan Diduk, eds, Breaking Ice: Renewable Resource and Ocean Management in the Canadian North (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), 337-362. 444 Rob Huebert, “The Return of the Vikings,” The Globe and Mail (December 28, 2002).
141 decades, the Martin government was put on the defensive for having allegedly failed to protect Canada’s Arctic claims. As a result, “Canada responded in 2005 with an inukshuk-raising and flag-planting visit by a small group of Canadian Rangers and other land force personnel, followed by a highly publicized visit by then-Defence Minister Bill Graham.”445 The issue continued to play out in Parliament and the media, leading the government to formally affirm its commitment “to protect the northern portion of our continent and to preserve our sovereignty, including that of the Arctic”446 in its 2005 International Policy Statement, in clear contrast to the de-emphasis on sovereignty disputes in The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy. Occurring in the months before the Liberals were defeated in the 2006 federal election, the Hans Island issue helped reoriented Arctic discourse towards the military assertion of Canada’s sovereignty, laying the groundwork for the renewed focus on sovereignty and security that would occur under the new Conservative government.
4.2.2 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Harper Conservatives
The Conservative government led by Stephen Harper quickly indicated its intention to make the Arctic a signature policy area. Drawing on the Arctic legacy of Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker, the new Government felt the Arctic provided fertile ground on which to distinguish their national vision from their predecessors. The Conservatives perceived the Liberals as having been both weak and ineffectual in asserting Canada’s Arctic interests, and worried about the perceived dilution of Canada’s commitment to asserting sovereignty over its Arctic territory.447 The Arctic was also seen as a policy area the Liberals did not effectively ‘own’, affording the Conservatives an opportunity to develop a distinctive brand of Canadian nationalism centred on support for the Canadian Armed Forces, assertion of Canada’s national
445 P. Whitney Lackenbauer, From Polar Race to Polar Saga (Toronto: Canadian International Council, 2009), 36. 446 Canada, Canada’s International Policy Statement: A Role of Pride and Influence in the World (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 2005), ii. 447 Steven Chase, “Q & A with Harper: No previous government has ‘delivered more in the North’,” The Globe and Mail (January 17, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-north/qa-with-harper-no- previous-government-has-delivered-more-in-the-north/article16387286/?page=5 on October 7, 2014.
142 interests, and economic growth through natural resource extraction.448 Given the recent attention to Hans Island, the timing was opportune for the Conservatives to emphasize Arctic sovereignty and show it being enacted. Sovereignty, and by extension Canada’s identity as an Arctic nation and Canadians’ as a Northern people, were recurring themes in Arctic discourse during the Conservatives’ tenure.
The Conservative government detailed its Arctic policy in three documents outlining Canada’s approach to the circumpolar North. The Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS), Canada’s Northern Strategy, and Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy were released between 2008-2010, and together formed the framework for federal economic, military, political, and environmental policy in the region. The CFDS addresses the Arctic more peripherally than the others, though it identifies several investments in Arctic infrastructure and materiel by the Department of National Defence.449 However, both the Northern Strategy and Arctic Foreign Policy outline the same four priority areas of government action: exercising Arctic sovereignty, promoting social and economic development, protecting the North’s environmental heritage, and improving and devolving Northern governance. The Northern Strategy indicates that all four areas are “equally important and mutually reinforcing,”450 whereas the Arctic Foreign Policy states “the first and most important pillar towards recognizing the potential of Canada’s Arctic is the exercise of our sovereignty over the Far North.”451
But when the record of government expenditure and activity in the North is examined, sovereignty – understood as the military defence of Canadian territory – has clear priority over the other pillars. The list of signature Arctic initiatives promised or undertaken by the government between 2006-2011 largely consists of defence and military expenditures, including: construction of a Canadian Forces Arctic Training Centre at Resolute Bay; a deepwater berthing and fuelling facility at Nanisivik; expansion of the Canadian Rangers; establishment of an Army reserve company in Yellowknife; a new polar icebreaker, the John G. Diefenbaker; a new fleet
448 Dodds 2011. 449 Canada, Canada First Defence Strategy (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 2008). 450 Canada 2009, 2. 451 Canada 2010, 5.
143 of Arctic offshore patrol ships; increased radar and satellite capacity, including unmanned aerial vehicles and both land-based and underwater sensors; and a proposed fleet of up to 60 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.452 The total cost of these expenditures was nearly CAD$9 billion in 2011, not including CAD$45 billion for the F-35s, with costs increasing since due to inflation and the decline in value of the Canadian dollar.453 As the Northern Strategy states: “we are putting more boots on the Arctic tundra, more ships in the icy water and a better eye-in-the-sky.”454 Though “Canada had ceased almost all of its [military] activities in its north at the end of the Cold War,”455 this was reversed under the Conservatives. Since 2007, the Canadian Forces have held multiple annual Arctic exercises, including Operation Nanook consisting of 650-1250 military personnel, as well as smaller operations Nunalivut, Nevus, and Nunakput.456 Attended annually by Prime Minister Harper, Operation Nanook became the hallmark of the Conservatives’ “assertive and dogmatic”457 approach to asserting sovereignty and providing security in the Arctic.
The defence of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty has been the primary aspect of government policy towards the North despite the fact that all three Arctic policy documents explicitly state that no military threats exist. Notwithstanding the government’s sometimes bellicose rhetoric,458 the Arctic Foreign Policy stipulates: “All disagreements are well managed, neither posing defence challenges for Canada nor diminishing Canada’s ability to collaborate and cooperate with its Arctic neighbours.”459 The Northern Strategy goes further, reiterating that “these disagreements are well-managed and pose no sovereignty or defence challenges for Canada,” indicating that disputes have “had no impact on Canada’s ability to work collaboratively and cooperatively with
452 Huebert et al. 2012, 19, 27-28. 453 Jacqueline Medalye and Ryan Foster, “Climate Change and the Capitalist State in the Canadian Arctic: Interrogating Canada’s ‘Northern Strategy’,” Studies in Political Economy 90 (2012): 98. 454 Canada 2009, 9. 455 Huebert et al. 2012, 19. 456 Department of National Defence, “Defend Canada,” (Accessed at http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/operations- how/defend-canada.page? on April 18, 2014). 457 Dodds 2011, 371. 458 Lackenbauer 2010. 459 Canada 2010, 8.
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… [its] Arctic neighbours on issues of real significance and importance.”460 The CFDS only briefly mentions sovereignty challenges in the Arctic: once in the vague context of emerging security challenges as a result of “illegal activity” enabled by climate change, and once in reference to employing military force to secure resources in the North.461 The prospect of Russian aircraft encroaching upon Canadian airspace, a central trope in government efforts to justify purchase of the F-35 jet fighters,462 goes unmentioned except for one oblique reference to needing to replace the existing CF-18s in order to protect the sovereignty of Canadian airspace.463 The commitment of all five coastal Arctic states to resolving disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law was also reiterated in the Ilulissat Declaration following their first meeting in 2008, and is repeated in their respective Arctic policy statements.464 The government also expressed concern over unconventional security issues being driven by the changing environment. Prospective risks such as illegal shipping, smuggling, irregular migration, even terrorism, in increasingly accessible Arctic waters have
460 Canada 2009, 13. 461 Canada 2008, 6-8. 462 The Conservative government vigorously argued the much-debated proposal to purchase 65 new F-35 Lightning II jet fighters was necessary to defend Canada’s Arctic airspace, among other reasons. Soaring cost estimates and questionable operational utility in the Arctic finally forced the Conservatives to put the project under review in 2012. Though dismissed as too expensive and controversial, the F-35 re-emerged as the jet aircraft of choice for the government to replace the aging CF-18s. The range of pricing for the new F-35s is due to disputed price estimates released by the Conservative Government and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Expert opinion in the U.S. places the likely price even higher. Even following the election of the new Liberal Government in October 2015, the F-35s remain in contention to replace the CF-18s. See Michael Byers, “Russian Bombers a Make-Believe Threat,” The Toronto Star (August 30, 2010). Accessed at http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2010/08/30/russian_bombers_a_makebelieve_threat.html on September 8, 2015; Steven Chase, “Ottawa Rebukes Russia for Military Flights in the Arctic,” The Globe and Mail (February 28, 2009). Accessed at http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090227.wrussia0227/BNStory/undefined/STEVEN+CHAS E on September 8, 2015; Meagan Fitzpatrick, “Ottawa’s F-35 jet cost figures way off: U.S. analyst,” CBC News (April 5, 2011). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-s-f-35-jet-cost-figures-way-off-u-s-analyst- 1.1066417 on September 8, 2015; and Daniel Leblanc and Steven Chase, “F-35 remains top military replacement option,” The Globe and Mail (April 17, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/f-35- remains-top-military-replacement-option/article18063309/ on September 8, 2015. 463 Canada 2008, 18. 464 Arctic Ocean Conference, The Ilulissat Declaration (Ilulissat, Greenland: May 28, 2008); Lassi Heininen, “State of the Arctic Strategies and Policies – A Summary,” Arctic Yearbook 2012 (Akureyri: Northern Research Forum, 2012): 2-47.
145 attracted high-level concern and informed training scenarios for some armed forces, though such risks have yet to actually materialize.465
A significant theme of Canada’s Arctic policy under the Conservative government was a renewed emphasis on the antagonistic role of Russia, particularly depicting President Vladimir Putin as expansionary, hostile, and threatening to Canada’s Arctic interests. This narrative dates from August 2007, when a privately funded expedition led by an eccentric Russian parliamentarian and explorer planted a titanium flag on the Arctic Ocean seafloor at the geographic North Pole. While neither state-sanctioned nor legally meaningful, this action precipitated a sharp reaction from the Canadian government, with Foreign Minister Peter Mackay indignantly telling reporters “this isn’t the fifteenth century. You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say ‘we're claiming territory’.”466 Echoing statements from Prime Minister Harper, Mackay went on to say there was “no question over Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic … We’ve established a long time ago that these are Canadian waters and this is Canadian property.”467 This flag planting launched a period of “finger pointing”,468 in which Canada portrayed Russia’s efforts to determine the limit of its extended continental shelf under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as part of a strategy of post-Cold War revanchism. The appearance of conflict has been fuelled by conflicting Canadian, Danish, and Russian claims that the North Pole forms part of their respective continental shelves, and thus each enjoys exclusive rights to its seabed resources, though the symbolic significance of the North Pole is greater than its economic value.469 However, despite Minister Mackay’s statement to the contrary, the North Pole is not Canadian territory, and it will likely be many years before the expert body responsible for adjudicating such disputes under UNCLOS assesses the scientific
465 Byers 2009, 16-18; Meagan Fitzpatrick, “Arctic military exercise targets human-smuggling ‘ecotourists’,” CBC News (August 24, 2012). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/arctic-military-exercise-targets-human- smuggling-ecotourists-1.1166215 on July 6, 2014. 466 Quoted in Dodds 2010, 63. 467 “Canada Must be Vigilant about Arctic: Harper,” The Toronto Star (August 2, 2007). Accessed at http://www.thestar.com/news/2007/08/02/canada_must_be_vigilant_about_arctic_harper_says.html on September 3, 2015. 468 Dodds 2010. 469 Mazo 2014.
146 merits of the competing state claims.470 While there are no Russian claims to actual Canadian territory, increased Russian military activity from its post-Cold War nadir, particularly the resumption of long range strategic bomber flights, have led to instances of public reaction, and over-reaction, by the federal government. Notably, in early 2009 the Canadian government alleged that Russian aircraft had violated Canada’s Arctic airspace during a visit by US President Barack Obama. Shortly after the incident, Prime Minister Harper told reporters:
I have expressed at various times the deep concern our government has with increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe and Russian intrusions into our airspace … We will defend our airspace, we also have obligations of continental defence with the United States. We will fulfil those obligations to defend our continental airspace, and we will defend our sovereignty and we will respond every time the Russians make any kind of intrusion on the sovereignty in Canada’s Arctic.471
Similar incidents have occurred in which the federal government stated that Russian military flights “challenging” or “probing” Canadian airspace were intercepted by Canadian military aircraft.472 But the government’s use of such terms has prompted NORAD to clarify that no Russian aircraft has, in fact, violated North American airspace, and that such flights by the Russian military have occurred dozens of times since they resumed in recent years. Indeed, following an incident in 2010, a NORAD spokesman explicitly noted: “Both Russia and NORAD routinely exercise their capability to operate in the North. These exercises are important to both NORAD and Russia and are not cause for alarm."473 However, government statements on these incidents routinely implied that Russian aircraft were prevented from entering Canadian airspace only by the swift response of the Royal Canadian Air Force,
470 Riddell-Dixon 2008. 471 “Russia Denies Plane Approached Canadian Airspace,” CBC News (February 27, 2009). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russia-denies-plane-approached-canadian-airspace-1.796007 on September 3, 2015. 472 “Russian planes intercepted near N.L.,” CBC News (July 30, 2010). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/russian-planes-intercepted-near-n-l-1.971551 on September 3, 2015; “Canadian fighter jets intercept Russian bombers in Arctic,” CBC News (September 19, 2014). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-fighter-jets-intercept-russian-bombers-in-arctic-1.2772440 on September 3, 2015. 473 “NORAD Downplays Russian Bomber Interception,” CBC News (August 25, 2010). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/norad-downplays-russian-bomber-interception-1.929222 on September 3, 2015.
147 prompting strong criticism from Russia and discreet clarification from NORAD.474 As a result, some Arctic scholars suggest Canada is as belligerent as Russia, if not more so, with respect to its Arctic sovereignty and security discourse.475 Moreover, despite the allegations of Russian aggression, cooperative exercises and other military activities between Russia and the Western Arctic states have continued, including joint exercises with multiple Arctic states and several meetings of all Arctic military chiefs. Although outside the main scope of this dissertation, it is unclear how regional relations will be affected by new tensions related to non-Arctic phenomena, particularly the forcible Russian annexation of Crimea in spring 2014 and its on-going support for armed separatist groups in eastern Ukraine. For Canada, however, such developments have fuelled the discourse of Russia as Arctic antagonist, and Conservative officials explicitly tied strong Canadian support for the post-revolutionary government in Ukraine to heightened aggression by Russian in the circumpolar region.476
In addition to military defence of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, there is a second, less-discussed dimension of the Conservative government’s approach to security in the Arctic. Complementing militarized sovereignty-as-security, it views security as tied to economic growth and natural resource extraction, particularly the development of hydrocarbon resources to establish Canada as an “energy superpower”.477 Not exclusive to the Arctic, this conception links the extraction and export of Canada’s natural resource wealth with the maintenance of domestic economic prosperity and high standard of living: the extraction and sale of hydrocarbons, framed as energy security, is tied to the maintenance of a prosperous national economy, framed as economic security.478 This reflects a “liberal problematic of security” wherein it is the material lifestyle of
474 “Russia hits back at Canada abut bomber flights,” CTV News (February 27, 2009). Accessed at http://www.ctvnews.ca/russia-hits-back-at-canada-about-bomber-flights-1.374461 on September 3, 2015; “Russia Denies Plane Approached Canadian Airspace,” CBC News (February 27, 2009). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russia-denies-plane-approached-canadian-airspace-1.796007 on September 3, 2015. 475 Lackenbauer 2010. 476 “Canadian fighter jets intercept Russian bombers in Arctic,” CBC News (September 19, 2014). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-fighter-jets-intercept-russian-bombers-in-arctic-1.2772440 on September 3, 2015. 477 Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), “Minister Oliver Calls Canada a 21st Century Energy Superpower at Energy Conference,” March 13, 2014. Accessed at https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/media-room/news-release/2014/15695 on April 18, 2014). 478 Greaves 2013.
148 citizens in advanced industrialized societies, and maintenance of their privileged place within the international system, that is the referent object of security.479 In public statements, Prime Minister Harper was explicit in his formulation of the liberal problematic of security as it relates to his government’s economic priorities. For instance, in spring 2013 Harper commented: “There really is … an unprecedented shift of power and wealth away from the Western world … [and] if these trends continue, they will be a real threat to our standards of living. And what we keep telling Canadians … is we can maintain and increase our standard of living and opportunity for our children and grandchildren, but we have to govern ourselves responsibly,” finally asserting that “we’re prepared as government to make the investments and decisions necessary to grab that future.”480 Implicit in this formulation was the claim that failing to support natural resource extraction would hamper Canada’s economic success in an increasingly competitive world, imperilling the quality of life Canadians have come to expect.
To this end, when confronted with social protest related to climate change and the extraction of natural resources, the Conservative Government vilified such actions as illegitimate, criminal, or terrorist, and surveilled many groups and individuals who participated.481 Canada’s first Counter-Terrorism Strategy identifies environmentalists alongside animal rights, anti-capitalist, and white supremacist groups as the likeliest perpetrators of “domestic issue-based extremism”, equating their violent potential to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the politically motivated terror attacks in Oslo in 2011.482 Indigenous groups have also been specifically targeted by Canadian law enforcement for their anti-extractive activism and organizing activities.483 The
479 Michael Dillon, “The State of Emergency of Biopolitical Emergence,” International Political Sociology 1, no. 1 (2007): 7-28; Mark Duffield, Development, Security, and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). 480 Council on Foreign Relations, “A Conversation with Stephen Harper,” (Washington, DC: May 16, 2013). Accessed at http://www.cfr.org/canada/conversation-stephen-harper/p30723 on June 23, 2013. 481 Philippe Le Billon and Angela Carter, “Securing Alberta’s Tar Sands: Resistance and Criminalization on a New Energy Frontier,” in Matthew A. Schnurr and Larry A. Swatuk, eds, Natural Resources and Social Conflict: Towards Critical Environmental Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 170-192; Greaves 2013, 183-184. 482 Public Safety Canada. 2012. Building Resilience Against Terrorism: Canada’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Ottawa: Government of Canada. Accessed at http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rslnc-gnst- trrrsm/index-eng.aspx on September 9, 2015. 483 Crosby and Monaghan 2012; Shiri Pasternak, Sue Collis, and Tia Dafnos, “Criminalization at Tyendinaga: Securing Canada’s Colonial Property Regime through Specific Land Claims,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 28, no. 1 (2013): 65-81; Tina Dafnos, “First Nations in the Crosshairs,” Canadian Dimension 49, no. 2 (2015).
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Conservative Government thus depicted those opposed to natural resource extraction, in the Arctic and elsewhere, as unpatriotic, criminal, dangerous, and threatening to Canada’s national security interests.
The securitization of natural resources is also seen in the extent to which it is partly for the development of natural resources that Canada places such emphasis on defending its Arctic sovereignty.484 As Prime Minister Harper repeatedly stated, in spite of widespread criticism, Canada must “use it or lose it” when it comes to sovereignty over the Arctic. Northern Canada’s resource potential has attracted growing attention from analysts and investors as environmental change renders the region increasingly accessible, and the federal government has strongly supported growth in extractive industries.485 Natural resources are lauded in the Northern Strategy as “the cornerstones of sustained economic activity in the North and the key to building prosperous Aboriginal and Northern communities,” and minerals and oil and gas receive separate full-page maps identifying current extraction sites and suspected deposits.486 Under the Northern Strategy, the government directed hundreds of millions of dollars towards resource extraction through the Geo-Mapping for Energy and Minerals program (GEM), whose aim is “to map the Arctic and identify the potential of energy and mineral resources [thereby] guiding effective private sector investment.”487 Although encompassing the entire North, the majority of GEM’s efforts were on mapping the islands and seabed of the high Arctic Archipelago for offshore hydrocarbons.488 According to some analyses, GEM more than doubled the number of offshore mapping projects between 2007-2010, with hydrocarbons, rather than minerals, being
Accessed at https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/first-nations-in-the-crosshairs on August 19, 2015. 484 Byers 2009; Medalye and Foster 2012. 485 Conference Board of Canada, Mapping the Economic Potential of Canada’s North (Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada, 2010); Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (2010). Accessed at http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gem/index_e.php on February 15, 2011; Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (2014). Accessed at http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/resources/federal- programs/geomapping-energy-minerals/10904 on April 18, 2014. 486 Canada 2009, 15-20. 487 Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (2010). Accessed at http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gem/index_e.php on February 15, 2011. 488 NRCAN 2010.
150 the focus of more than three quarters of its projects.489 Beauchamp and Huebert claim that “Canada’s sovereignty [is] linked to energy development in the Arctic,” citing the importance of a range of unresolved issues, including: the legal status of the Northwest Passage, the disputed maritime boundary with the United States in the Beaufort Sea, the undetermined extent of Canada’s Arctic continental shelf, and aggressive expansionism from a resurgent Russia.490 They argue the growing accessibility of Arctic resources is what has driven government interest in Arctic sovereignty: “It is obvious that issues of Arctic energy and development and Arctic sovereignty are linked … When no one was talking about actually developing Arctic resources, the many sovereignty issues could be and were ignored.”491 According to the Conservative vision, the Arctic’s underdevelopment in terms of resource exploitation was deleterious to Canada’s national interest, so emphasis was placed on promoting industrialization of the Northern economy through revision of the environmental regulatory regime.492 This mirrors controversial changes made to Canada’s national environmental regulations introduced in the 2012 federal budget, and passed into law over significant popular and political opposition.493
Environment Minister and Minister for the Arctic Council Leona Aglukkaq emphasized that the Conservatives’ Arctic vision places economic development, primarily non-renewable resource extraction, as its highest priority. This vision is premised on the acceleration of private sector industrial activity in the region, including a greater role for corporations in Arctic governance, and the need for scientific research conducted by the Arctic Council to enable commercialization
489 Medalye and Foster 2012, 106; Jacqueline Medalye, “Geo-Mapping the Canadian Arctic: The Role and Implications of Non-Arctic Actors in Northern Development.” Unpublished paper presented at the DFAIT Arctic Foreign Policy Graduate Fellowship Symposium, University of Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: March 17, 2011. 490 Beauchamp and Huebert 2008. 491 Beauchamp and Huebert 2008, 342. 492 Leona Aglukkaq, “Northern Vision: Realizing the North’s Economic Potential,” Northern Public Affairs 1, no. 2 (2012): 31-33. 493 Gloria Galloway and Daniel Leblanc, “The tale of 2012’s omnibus budget bill,” The Globe and Mail (June 12, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/the-tale-of-2012s-omnibus-budget- bill/article4249856/ on December 21, 2014; James Munson, “The quick and dirty on the budget bill and environmental assessments,” iPolitics (April 27, 2012). Accessed at http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/04/27/the-quick- and-dirty-on-the-budget-bill-and-environmental-assessments/ on December 21, 2014.
151 of the region.494 During its term as Chair from 2013-2015, Canada initiated a shift away from the Arctic Council’s historical role of studying and protecting the Arctic environment towards enabling resource extraction.495 Aglukkaq was clear that the Council’s scientific work should be made more relevant to private industry, and to the Government’s agenda of Arctic economic development, stating “we talk of … Canada’s North developing, the Arctic region of every country developing. But it’s the private sector that’s actually going to develop those regions, not scientists.”496 The centrepiece of Canada’s chairmanship was the establishment of the new Arctic Economic Council, mandated to promote economic growth and allow major corporate actors a greater role in governing the development of Arctic resources. In Canada’s Northern vision, understanding and preserving the Arctic environment through scientific investigation was thus subordinated to the goal of using science to enable faster and greater access to the region’s resource base. Government policy sees the Arctic as contributing to the economic security of the Canadian state, and views military assertions of Canadian Arctic sovereignty as ensuring the uncontested juridical standing required to promote private sector investor confidence and develop the economic potential of the North’s natural resources.
4.3 Summarizing State Insecurity in the Canadian Arctic
Taken overall, the official Canadian understanding of security in the Arctic is based on two related pillars. The first, inspired by Cold War scripts of the Russian Other and the need to militarily defend Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, sees Canadian claims in the Arctic as challenged by potential rivals. It implies that Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic lands and waters is not settled under international law, and that Canada must use its sovereignty or it may be lost to
494 Aglukkaq 2012, 31-33. 495 Wilfrid Greaves, “When the Ice is Gone: Climate Change, Hydrocarbons, and Security in the Arctic,” OpenCanada.org. (Canadian International Council: December 11, 2013b). Accessed at http://opencanada.org/features/the-think-tank/essays/when-the-ice-is-gone/ on September 3, 2015; Sneh Duggal, “US appears set to differ Arctic Council agenda from Canada,” Embassy (November 6, 2014). Accessed at http://www.embassynews.ca/news/2014/11/05/us-appears-set-to-differ-arctic-council-agenda-from-canada/46341 on December 22, 2014. 496 Randy Boswell, “Aglukkaq of the Arctic: Can federal minister set a vision for international council?” Montreal Gazette (May 12, 2013). Accessed at http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/environment/Aglukkaq+Arctic +federal+minister+vision/8373742/story.html on May 31, 2013.
152 unspecified challengers. Paradoxically, this pillar asserts the need for a strengthened military presence in the North, and increased investment in military resources and capabilities, despite the insistence in all official policy documents that Canada faces no conventional threats in the Arctic, and that all boundary disputes are peaceful and well managed. In fact, both of Canada’s disputed Arctic boundaries – with Denmark over Hans Island and the maritime boundary in the Nares Strait, and the United States over the delimitation of the Beaufort Sea – are with close friends. Canada has no disputed boundaries or substantive Arctic disagreement with Russia, and armed conflict with either Denmark or the United States – both NATO allies and the latter Canada’s largest trading partner, only land neighbour, closest friend, and the world’s foremost military power – is unthinkable. There is thus a contradiction within Canada’s recent Arctic policy: the government strenuously emphasized the absence of traditional military threats to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, and stressed the cooperative relations Canada shares with its neighbours, at the same time that it pursued a policy of militarization on the grounds of asserting and protecting Arctic sovereignty. In the current context, ‘sovereignty’ assumes many of the characteristics previously associated with Arctic ‘security’: an emphasis on military defence of Canadian territorial and maritime claims, investment in military infrastructure as key to defending the North, and depiction of Russia as Canada’s primary Arctic antagonist. Canada’s official understanding of Arctic security thus relies upon a misleading representation of conventional threats to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, when, “in truth, Canada’s claim on Arctic lands and maritime areas are as solid as international law provides. There is no question about Canadian ownership: neither Canadian lands nor our maritime area are in question.”497 Regardless, this prospect has featured prominently in the federal government’s understanding of security in the Arctic.
The second pillar is less visible but equally significant, because it provided part of the impetus for the government’s emphasis on militarization; the view that natural resource extraction in the North is central to Canada’s economic security animated the renewed discourse on Arctic sovereignty-as-security. The extension of the Conservative government’s resource-driven economic agenda into the Arctic motivated claims of unspecified threats to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty. Using public concern over Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, the government justified
497 Coates et al. 2008, 163.
153 the need to do more to assert Canada’s Arctic interests, including greater private sector investment, resource extraction, and military activity. Indeed, this link was explicitly referred to in the Canada First Defence Strategy, which notes: “The military will play an increasingly vital role in demonstrating a visible Canadian presence in this potentially resource-rich region.”498 Thus, when the federal government speaks of Arctic sovereignty, what it refers to is the latent economic potential of its Arctic territory. Under the Conservative vision for the North, the development of Arctic resources was clearly linked with the military assertion of Arctic sovereignty, and received growing emphasis from the beginning of the government’s tenure.499 In this sense, “security is not a pillar or priority in the government documents, but realist constructions of security are deeply embedded in the Arctic discourse as sovereignty claims are used in ways that prop up and reinforce the securitization of the Arctic.”500 Only by assuming that there are rivals or competitors seeking to deprive Canada of its Arctic territory and prospective resource wealth is official Canadian Arctic security discourse comprehensible. Taken together, the Conservative “focus on sovereignty and territorial integrity reinforces militarised understandings of security, with due emphasis given to the role of the military … surveillance and monitoring, resource nationalism and limited co-operation.”501 While it is clear what security in the Arctic means to the Government of Canada, it is equally clear this discourse does not reflect understandings of in/security articulated by Indigenous peoples.
4.4 Conclusion
Two main conclusions can be drawn from this chapter’s assessment of in/security in the Arctic as constructed through the discourses of the Canadian state and Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic. First, these actors possess fundamentally different conceptions of what security means and how it should be pursued. This chapter provides evidence to support for the argument that Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic understand security as primarily concerned with
498 Canada 2008, 8. 499 Dodds 2011, 371. 500 Smith 2010, 934. 501 Dodds 2011, 373.
154 protecting the Arctic ecosystem from pollution and radical climate change; preserving Indigenous identity through the maintenance of language, culture, and traditional practices, most of which are physically and spiritually linked to the land; and asserting the political autonomy of Indigenous peoples as self-determining, inherent and constitutional rights-holding actors whose sovereignty over their territory precedes and underpins the sovereignty of contemporary Canada. Such a conception of security contrasts significantly with the two pillars of Canadian federal Arctic policy: militarized sovereignty and natural resource extraction. For the past decade, as climate change has accelerated and securitizing moves by Indigenous peoples have increased, the Canadian government instead embraced an understanding of Arctic security that emphasizes the legal-juridical claims of Canada and the northward expansion of an extraction-based natural resource economy.
Second, Canada and Arctic Indigenous peoples differ in their understanding of the relationship between in/security and human-caused environmental change. The Government of Canada does not view climate change or its effects as security threats, nor Indigenous peoples or northern communities as referent objects to be protected. Issues pertaining to human or environmental security are almost entirely absent from official Arctic security discourse. At most, government policy demonstrates concern that the increasingly ice-free Arctic will pose sovereignty risks for Canada’s claim to the Northwest Passage, but overwhelmingly emphasizes the economic opportunities afforded by an increasingly accessible Arctic region. The prospective benefits of natural resource development in the North are depicted in positive terms as opportunities to improve the economic security of the Canadian state and local communities. This is the inverse of most Indigenous peoples, who note that while there may be positive benefits associated with the warming climate these are eclipsed by the unpredictable impacts of the changing environment, which “are currently seen to be affecting communities and individuals negatively and in ways that require significant efforts, and in some cases, investments, to respond.”502 While Canada sees climate change as a source of economic opportunity, Indigenous understandings of Arctic security thus see climate change as driving a wide range of challenges to Northern communities, economies, and cultures, including foreclosing their continued ability to exist as Indigenous peoples on their traditional territories. How the exclusion of Indigenous
502 Nickels et al. 2013, 89.
155 understandings of Arctic in/security from official security discourse in Canada operates is discussed in the next chapter.
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Chapter 5 5 Non-Dominance and Securitization in the Canadian Arctic
It is clear that Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state differ significantly in their understanding of in/security in the Arctic. This chapter argues the divergence between Indigenous and government accounts of Arctic in/security is both reflective of and attributable to the non-dominance of Indigenous peoples in Canada. As outlined in Chapter 3, I argue that securitization non-dominance structurally excludes the securitizing moves of non-dominant groups from being accepted by the authoritative audience with the power to transform those moves into a complete or successful securitization. As such, the identities of non-dominant groups intervene to inhibit their success as securitizing actors. I argue Indigenous peoples in northern Canada are securitization non-dominant, resulting in the exclusion of their views from the official Arctic security discourse of the Canadian state. Specifically, this exclusion operates through the mechanisms of silencing insecurity, whereby particular securitizing moves are prevented from being expressed or go systematically ignored, and the subsuming of Indigenous claims of in/security within the preferred security discourse of settler Canada.
While only one form of non-dominance experienced by Indigenous peoples in Canadian society, securitization non-dominance reflects the limitations imposed on certain groups’ abilities to define the conditions of their own in/security and mobilize an effective political response by the state. Securitization non-dominance allows the articulated security interests of many inhabitants of northern Canada, a majority of whom are Indigenous, to go largely unrecognized within the official security policies of settler-colonial political institutions. As discussed in Chapter 3, securitization theory asserts that the likely success or failure of a securitizing move hinges on three “facilitating conditions”: use of the grammar and vocabulary of in/security, the social capital and authority of the securitizing actor, and the features of the object held to be threatening.503 Since established, legitimate representatives of Arctic Indigenous peoples employ the language of in/security to articulate threats posed by an object with a clear material
503 Buzan et al. 1998, 33.
157 basis, there is a seemingly felicitous combination of factors for the issue of environmental change to be successfully constructed as a security threat. The failure of Indigenous efforts to securitize environmental change in the Arctic despite such favourable conditions highlights the limitations on certain groups’ ability to securitize. The existence of such limitations is particularly significant because of the relatively high degree of political agency enjoyed by Indigenous peoples in Canada. While there remain many areas for improvement in Canadian- Indigenous relations, given their constitutional legitimacy as rights-holders over vast swaths of Canada’s North, Arctic Indigenous peoples – particularly Inuit in Nunavut – should be among the most likely cases for Indigenous securitization success. Yet, Inuit and other Indigenous peoples have been unable to have their understandings of in/security accepted within Canada’s official policies, with severe consequences for their ability to effectively address the challenges posed by climate change.
5.1 Non-Dominance in the Canadian Arctic
The limited power, and ensuing non-dominance, of indigenous peoples vis-à-vis settler-colonial states and the majority society are integral to much Indigenous scholarship, and are the operative context for many discussions of Indigenous politics.504 In this respect, Arctic Indigenous peoples share experiences of non-dominance with other Aboriginal peoples across Canada.505 Joyce Green notes that whereas citizenship, constitutionalism, and human rights perform an emancipatory role for most Canadians, “Aboriginal peoples are likely to understand the state as an oppressor that has become economically and politically strong at the direct expense of Aboriginal nations … Canada rests on the foundation of Indigenous immiseration through colonization.”506 Aboriginal non-dominance has been institutionalized in the architecture of the Canadian state, since the capacity of Indigenous groups to pursue their rights and assert their interests against federal and provincial governments is circumscribed by their legal and
504 Maaka and Fleras 2005. 505 The term ‘Aboriginal’ is a Canadian construct referring to the three constitutional recognizing groups of Indigenous people: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. 506 Joyce Green, “Canaries in the Coal Mines of Citizenship: Indian Women in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 34, no. 4 (2001): 716.
158 constitutional status. The Indian Act 1876 and subsequent legislation establish a fiduciary relationship between the federal government and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples that makes so-called “Indians a special class of persons, legal dependents on the crown [sic], [and] children in the eyes of the law.”507 This legislation informed more than a century of overtly racist, exclusionary, and assimilationist practices directed by the Canadian state against Indigenous peoples, characterized most notably by the policy of forcibly separating Indigenous children from their families by sending them to government-supported, church-run residential schools in order to, in an infamous turn of phrase, “kill the Indian in the child.”508 Other examples of structural violence and colonial imposition abound, leading one expert on Canadian- Indigenous relations to summarize: “The past is a historical storehouse of maltreatment, duplicity, arrogance, coercion, and abuses of power by the majority society.”509
Efforts by the Canadian state to mitigate structural conditions of Indigenous non-dominance have proven generally ineffective. For instance, the Constitution Act 1982 stipulates that Indigenous peoples possess a set of unspecified rights vis-à-vis the state, which has been interpreted such that government and Indigenous political efforts have been directed towards land claims and “self-government”. Self-government, however, as a limited interpretation of self-determination, essentially means limited self-administration on recognized “Indian” lands. This applies to a minority of Indigenous peoples in Canada, ignoring Métis, off-reserve, and non-status Indians, and is filtered through patrilineal determination of legal Indian status that was only partly remedied through amending legislation passed in 1985.510 Most peoples of indigenous descent are thus unable to access even the limited opportunities for self-determination provided by the state. The power deficit between Indigenous peoples and the state is a constitutive factor of indigeneity in Canada: “Prior occupation to the settler society and political non-dominance both
507 Sidney L. Harring, White Man’s Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 263. 508 Though often attributed to Duncan Campbell Scott, an official with the Department of Indian Affairs, the provenance of this phrase is now disputed. Scott’s role in the development of the Indian Residential School system is discussed in David B. MacDonald and Graham Hudson, “The Genocide Question and Indian Residential Schools in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 45, no. 2 (2012): 427-449. 509 Alan Cairns, Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001), 118. For details of the history and issues affecting Aboriginal peoples in Canada see Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1996). 510 Green 2001, 723-727.
159 define Aboriginality and underwrite its claim for justice against the imposed socio-political order.”511 As an expression of self-determination, self-government is limited because it struggles to overcome “the very configurations of colonial power that Indigenous peoples’ demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend.”512 Recent developments in the federal-Indigenous relationship have taken the form of “affirmative” changes that offer “cultural and symbolic change”513 rather than substantive rectification of colonially imposed privation and inequality. These include two official apologies to Indigenous peoples on behalf of Canada, one for Indian residential schools and one for the relocation of Inuit families to the High Arctic in the 1950s and 1960s.
These dynamics are particularly potent in the Canadian Arctic, where sparse population, scattered communities, inhospitable climate, and vast distance from the rest of Canada accentuate the challenges facing Indigenous peoples. Though European settlers and their descendants colonized all of Canada, the North was administered as an actual colony of the federal government until quite recently in its history. As recently as the 1980s, “the North … [could] only be understood as a colony … to the extent that major decisions affecting it are made outside it … The North [was] totally dependent constitutionally on Ottawa.”514 Though self- government has become the watchword of federal-territorial relations, “direct rule from Ottawa denie[d] [Northerners] the regional political representation and authority enjoyed by the majority in the south.”515 Relations of dominance have existed on multiple levels; settlers within the territories became akin to a colonial elite, dominating the Indigenous population while themselves feeling dominated by the federal government and Southern Canadian society.516 The situation is even more complicated because, although the Indian Act still provides the legal
511 Green 2001, 720. 512 Glen S. Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6, no. 4 (2007), 439. 513 Quoted in Coulthard 2007, 446. 514 Gurston Dacks, A Choice of Futures (Toronto: Methuen, 1981), 208. 515 Peter Burnet, “Environmental Politics and Inuit Self-Government,” in Franklyn Griffiths, ed, Politics of the Northwest Passage (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 185. 516 Jerald Sabin, “Contested Colonialism: Responsible Government and Political Development in Yukon,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 47, no. 2 (2014): 375-396.
160 framework for most federal-Indigenous relations in Canada, it does not apply to Inuit or to parts of northern Canada where self-government agreements have been implemented.517
By the second decade of the 21st century, the colonial nature of federal-territorial relations had changed significantly. While the creation of Nunavut in 1999 signified a major change in the possibilities for Inuit political agency, since then all three territories have become more autonomous and have received varying devolved powers from Ottawa. But these changes have not altered the basic non-dominance of Indigenous peoples within Canada. In addition to the ongoing impositions of the Indian Act on Canadian Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous non- dominance in the Arctic remains structured by the inferior constitutional status of Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Unlike provincial powers that derive from the constitution, territorial governments have no inherent jurisdiction; their powers are delegated by the federal government. The territories also have unequal degrees of political autonomy, with Yukon and the Northwest Territories signing devolution agreements with Ottawa that permit greater control over land and water use, revenue-sharing from natural resource extraction, and control over territorial laws and policies, while Nunavut has been denied further powers on the basis of its limited administrative capacity.518 While they have the highest per capita representation in Parliament, in absolute terms the territories are the least significant jurisdictions, with only a single seat per territory in each of the House of Commons and Senate. Since the territories have the highest proportion of Indigenous residents of any Canadian jurisdictions, with Nunavut and the Northwest Territories both possessing Indigenous majorities, representation in Parliament of the most indigenous polities in the Canadian federation remains limited.
Social conditions among the territories vary, but for all three they are among the worst in Canada, with Nunavut last in almost every national measure. With its large Inuit majority and political origins as part of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, Nunavut reflects the wide gap
517 Sarah Bonesteel, Canada’s Relationship with Inuit: A History of Policy and Program Development (Ottawa: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 2006). Accessed at https://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016900/1100100016908#chp14 on March 7, 2016. 518 Kirk Cameron and Alastair Campbell, “The Devolution of Natural Resources and Nunavut’s Constitutional Status,” Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 2 (2009): 198-219; Christopher Alcantara, Kirk Cameron and Steven Kennedy, “Assessing Devolution in the Canadian North: A Case Study of the Yukon Territory,” Arctic 65, no. 3 (2012): 328-338.
161 between aspiration and reality that separates Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. Its rate of violent crime is seven times the national average, with a homicide rate nearly ten times higher. The number of reported crimes also doubled in the 12 years following Nunavut's creation in 1999. In 2001, the average life expectancy gap between Inuit and all Canadian men was 15 years, and more than 10 years between Inuit and all Canadian women.519 The suicide rate among Nunavummiut is 13 times the Canadian average, with the rate among Inuit men particularly extreme at 40 times the national male average. Rates of child abuse are 10 times the national average. More than half Nunavut’s population is under 25 years old, but secondary education drop out rates exceed 75 per cent, and unemployment is over 20 per cent. Overall, the Government of Nunavut generates less than 15 per cent of its own revenue; the remainder of its budget comes from Ottawa, amounting to over $40,000 per Nunavummiuq (Nunavut resident) per year.520 While the causes are complex, it is clear that its significant problems and reliance upon federal resources limit the autonomy of the Government of Nunavut vis-à-vis Ottawa. These social indicators are the worst in Canada, but they are only somewhat worse for Inuit than for other Indigenous peoples across the country; relative to the dominant society, “security remains an aspiration for too many First Nations people in Canada.”521
5.2 Securitization Non-Dominance: Silenced Insecurity
Indigenous peoples in Canada continue to experience various forms of non-dominance across the political, economic, and social spheres of daily life, but one specific aspect of that non- dominance relates to their constrained capacity to succeed as securitizing actors. I argue that official security discourse in Canada omits Indigenous views of in/security because Indigenous securitizing moves are excluded from the securitization process. Through the mechanism of silenced insecurity, securitizing moves are either impeded from being made or systematically
519 Statistics Canada, Projections of the Aboriginal Populations, Canada, Provinces and Territories 2001 to 2017 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2005). 520 Nunavut Bureau of Statistics. Accessed at http://www.stats.gov.nu.ca/en/home.aspx on December 24, 2014. 521 Heather Smith, “Diminishing Human Security: The Canadian Case,” in Sandra J. MacLean, David R. Black, and Timothy M. Shaw, eds, A Decade of Human Security: Global Governance and the New Multilateralisms (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 80-81.
162 ignored to prevent them from being heard. There are three ways in which securitizing moves by Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic are silenced: their voices and views are marginalized or omitted; certain groups are excluded through the imposition of settler-colonial territorial definitions on how the Canadian Arctic is defined; and whole issues that are central to Indigenous security claims are omitted or marginalized in state discourse, denying the basis upon which their securitizing moves are made. Since the consistent failure of a group’s securitizing moves renders them securitization non-dominant, these are manifestations of institutional and structural power exercised by the Canadian state over Indigenous peoples. Securitization non- dominance is only one aspect of Indigenous non-dominance in Canada, but it contributes to the reproduction of their broader social non-dominance because it makes it impossible for Indigenous peoples to successfully make security claims pertaining to the political, social, economic, and ecological challenges that they face.
5.2.1 Marginalized Voices
The first of the ways through which Indigenous securitizing moves are silenced is the limited consultation with Arctic Indigenous peoples on the subjects of climate change, sovereignty, and security, and the correspondingly few opportunities to express their views to the authoritative audience for securitization in Canada: Parliament. For instance, since the release of Canada’s Northern Strategy in 2009, four House of Commons committees have held hearings pertaining to either Arctic climate change or Arctic sovereignty and security: the Standing Committee on National Defence, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development; and the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.522 All four heard from Indigenous witnesses, but, with the predictable exception of the Aboriginal Affairs committee, they were a small minority of the total witnesses heard by each. During the periods before and after the release of the Conservative government’s Arctic policy documents – encompassing the 39th and 40th Parliaments lasting from April 2006 to March 2011, and the 1st session of the 41st Parliament lasting until September 2013 – the National Defence committee heard from 8 witnesses
522 Data in this section is drawn from the website of the Parliament of Canada: (http://www.parl.gc.ca).
163 representing Indigenous organizations out of 30; the Foreign Affairs committee 6 of 41; the Environment committee 2 of 17; and the Aboriginal Affairs committee 25 of 33. These witnesses generally represented prominent Northern Indigenous organizations, including those mandated through various land claim agreements and legislation, such as: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI), Makivik Corporation, regional Inuit organizations, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), as well as the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). So, while every committee heard testimony on behalf of Indigenous peoples, these were a small proportion of the total.
Substantively, however, all four committees heard testimony that noted the limited consultation with Indigenous peoples and lack of their views being incorporated into Arctic policy. Despite their presence before these parliamentary committees, numerous witnesses observed that views of Inuit and other Indigenous peoples had not been consulted prior to the release of the Northern Strategy or Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy, and were not reflected in the government’s policies. Examples of these testimonies are instructive. John Merritt, legal counsel for ITK and ICC, expressed scepticism to the National Defence committee about the lack of Inuit consultation in the formulation of the government’s Arctic policy: “ITK has minimal input into the Arctic strategy, and that was a major disappointment … In the absence of the Inuit having a central role in the development of Arctic strategy, it's hard for the Inuit to believe that the strategy will reflect Inuit priorities.”523 James Arreak, CEO of NTI, told the Foreign Affairs committee that his organization “assumed the Government of Canada would, as matter of urgency, work with Inuit. This has not been the case.”524 Joe Tulurialik, representing Kitikmeot Inuit Association, and Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus concurred during their testimonies to the Environment and Sustainability committee that their communities were not meaningfully consulted on Canada’s Arctic policies. Tulurialik noted: “We feel very strongly that we have been left out for a long time. Now it's time for the Aboriginal and Arctic voices to be heard.”525 Chief Erasmus, specifying that he spoke for Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories, went even further.
523 John Merritt, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009). 524 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41- 01-73 (March 26, 2013). 525 Joe Tulurialik, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02- 37 (November 17, 2009).
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He observed that his people had a range of interests to represent to the federal government, but had not been adequately consulted on any of them, despite government claims to the contrary: “We have concerns. In fact, we want to appear before you on other matters, but we certainly haven't been consulted. If [Prime Minister Harper]’s telling Canadians and the world that he has consulted us, then that’s not true … The problem is that the system is not designed to hear our people. It’s not designed to accept the science we have … Many of our people don’t see how the country brings their issues together.”526 Such testimonies are supported by community level academic research; drawing on primary interviews, one researcher noted that “at the community level … residents were not aware of any local consultations or meetings that have been undertaken to discuss sovereignty issues.”527 Overall, Indigenous peoples form a small minority of voices heard with respect to Arctic issues, and their parliamentary testimonies highlight the exclusion of their views in the formulation of government policy due to limited, or non-existent, consultation with Northern communities.
These testimonies also suggest that silencing Indigenous securitizing moves operates through the omission of references to Indigenous peoples themselves, particularly Inuit, within Canadian Arctic policy. Speaking to the Aboriginal Affairs committee, Natan Obed of NTI referred to an August 2006 speech by Prime Minister Harper in Iqaluit in which “not once did he mention Inuit; not once did he mention the strong role that Inuit have played in cementing Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, and the potential role that Inuit can play on a global scale in linking the Canadian Arctic with Canada.”528 In the same speech, the Prime Minister foreshadowed the pillars of militarism and resource extraction that would inform his government’s Arctic strategy by noting that in addition to Iqaluit his Northern itinerary only included stops at the Canadian Forces base at Alert and a new diamond mine in western Nunavut.529 Harper made this speech
526 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009). Emphasis added. 527 Karen Kelley, “Inuit Involvement in the Canadian Arctic Sovereignty Debate: Perspectives from Cape Dorset, Nunavut,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 59. 528 Natan Obed, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 39-01- 14 (September 19, 2006). 529 Stephen Harper, “Securing Canadian Sovereignty in the Arctic,” (Iqaluit: August 12, 2006). Accessed at http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2006/08/12/securing-canadian-sovereignty-arctic on November 11, 2014.
165 on the first of his annual summer visits to the North, but it reflected a rhetorical pattern that would persist throughout subsequent trips and his entire time in office.
As described in Chapter 4, many Inuit leaders have critiqued the inherent omission of their people in the formulation that Canada must “use it or lose it” with respect to its Arctic sovereignty. To rectify this omission, Mary Simon has recommended that “in all its key assertions as to sovereignty and sovereign rights in relation to Arctic lands and waters, the Government of Canada should acknowledge the central importance of Inuit use and occupation of the lands and waters of Inuit Nunangat since time immemorial.”530 Simon represented all Inuit in Canada as president of ITK when she made this recommendation in 2009, but the federal government did not follow her advice, and references to Inuit remained sporadic and selective. Other witnesses noted that while Inuit were overlooked, the government’s Arctic policy depicted other objects as requiring protection. George Eckalook of NTI indirectly referred to the idea of referent objects of security while testifying before the National Defence committee: “They talk about Lancaster Sound and the Northwest Passage. They talk about animals. They want to protect them really good, just like a soft pillow. But they never mention anything about us, the Inuit people. They relocate us … We don’t even know what we’re doing up there, what we’re protecting up there.”531 Indigenous testimonies before Parliament are clear that they do not feel their people had been consulted prior to the implementation of the federal government’s Arctic policy, and that policy does not reflect their interests, values, or occupation of the Arctic region claimed by Canada.
Many witnesses linked the marginalization of Indigenous voices with a broader lack of respect for the inherent and negotiated rights of Indigenous peoples, particularly Inuit, over their Arctic territories. While Indigenous sovereignty was legally extinguished with the signing of federal land claims agreements, many witnesses identified incomplete implementation of such agreements, particularly the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA), with limiting Indigenous peoples’ abilities to effectively pursue their own interests. Many expressed frustration over the official preoccupation with Canada’s Arctic sovereignty in the absence of parallel discussions of
530 Mary Simon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009). 531 George Eckalook, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009).
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Indigenous sovereignty, especially given explicit acknowledgement that Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic is based on the prior sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. For instance, John Amagoalik told the National Defence committee that: “Questions about sovereignty and about development always come back to the implementation of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. In important issues like sovereignty, we hope that the Government of Canada will recognize that implementing the land claims agreement is the best way to assert Canadian sovereignty.”532 Similarly, James Arreak testified that: “In the pursuit of all domestic and international Arctic policies, it’s important that all Canadian political leaders give appropriate attention and weight to the status of Inuit as the aboriginal people of the Canadian Arctic and ensure that Inuit rights and well-being are effectively respected and served.”533 Rosemarie Kuptana emphasizes the limitations imposed on Indigenous voices: “Hush! Quiet! Canadians are not to be critical of the government of Canada,” and alludes to the fiscal tools through which the federal government exercises influence over them: “Threats to funding agreements often impose the silence of the Inuit accentuating the current deep-freeze of today’s political climate.”534 The testimonies and written accounts of Amagoalik, Arreak, Kuptana, and others explicitly link the related sovereign rights of Inuit and Canada, even, occasionally, alluding to the prospect of Inuit revoking the sovereignty over Arctic territory granted by them to the Canadian state.535 Terry Fenge, long- time advisor to Inuit organizations and a negotiator of the NLCA, has written that federal violations “might prompt onlookers to suggest that the Government of Canada has effectively repudiated the [NLCA] agreement perhaps stimulating a debate on the at least theoretical ability and/or advisability of Inuit, in response, to rescind it, and reassert their aboriginal title.”536 Such a prospect is seldom discussed openly, but the implication lurks behind many assertions that Inuit sovereignty in the Arctic underpins Canada’s, and thus the federal government cannot
532 John Amagoalik, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009). 533 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41- 01-73 (March 26, 2013). 534 Kuptana 2013, 11. 535 Kirt Ejesiak, “An Arctic Inuit Union: A Case of the Inuit of Canada, Greenland, the United States and Russia,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 66-71. 536 Terry Fenge, “Asserting Inuit Sovereignty in the Arctic: Inuit and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 51. See also Fenge 2007/2008.
167 continue to deny the political claims made by Inuit pertaining to their traditional territories.
More often, Inuit leaders emphasize the patriotism of their people and the desire of Inuit to simply have their land claim agreements implemented and their rights respected by the federal government. Speaking to the Aboriginal Affairs committee, Natan Obed asserted: “Inuit are Canadians. We embrace Canada. Look at Nunavut; it’s a public government that’s run through a land claims agreement. [But] for Canada to then not talk about the importance of investing in its people in an area it wants to ensure it has jurisdiction over doesn’t make much sense to us.”537 Responding to a question from a member of the National Defence committee, Chester Reimer of ICC acknowledged the importance of federal respect for Inuit self-determination but dismissed the prospect of territorial secession: “You asked whether further strengthening of self- determination for Inuit or other indigenous peoples assists Canadian sovereignty. Absolutely. A lot of Canadian sovereignty claims are based on land use and occupancy by Inuit, so it’s logical that self-determination for Inuit – who are not advocating a declaration of independence – is a declaration of working together. That means the rights have to be respected.”538 Mary Simon also views the exclusion of Inuit from Arctic policymaking as an issue of rights and respect: “Consistency in acknowledging Inuit use and occupation isn’t just a matter of effective advocacy before an international audience; it is also a matter of fundamental respect owed to Inuit … Coherent Government of Canada policy-making for the Arctic must be built around the idea of a core partnership relationship with Inuit.” Later in her testimony, however, Simon implicitly refers to the contingent nature of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty vis-à-vis Inuit: “The Government of Canada cannot expect the world to give full respect to arguments built on Inuit use and occupation of Arctic lands and waters when Inuit continue to lag so far behind other Canadians in relation to such things as minimum education, health, and housing standards … Sovereignty will not be enhanced if it ignores or understates the basic material needs of the permanent residents of the Arctic.”539 These testimonies suggest a tension underlying the divergent priorities of the federal government and Indigenous peoples in northern Canada: that the
537 Natan Obed, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 39-01- 14 (September 19, 2006). 538 Chester Reimer, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-18 (May 11, 2009). 539 Mary Simon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009).
168 sovereignty of the Canadian settler-state is built upon the legal and normative justification of Indigenous peoples who are excluded from federal policymaking and have their interests passively ignored or undermined by government policy.
While most witnesses emphasize cooperation and conciliation with Canada, many insist that Indigenous peoples are de facto veto holders on the basis of their inherent rights as prior occupants of Canada’s Arctic territory. Chief Bill Erasmus engaged in a lengthy and heated exchange with parliamentarians during which he stated:
You can't make decisions in Ottawa without speaking to people like me, and especially to people who are on the land every day. They have to have the opportunity to include their knowledge, especially the opportunity to voice their opinions where we are still landowners. We have never given up our jurisdiction over our area up here. And Canada acts as if the land belongs to it. That’s a big problem … But our concern goes beyond consultation. Because we are at the table talking about the issue of who in fact owns the land, we believe our consent is necessary. So it goes beyond consultation.540
Overall, a recurring theme in Indigenous testimony to Parliament is that federal policy fails to acknowledge their longstanding occupation of the Arctic, or respect their rights to sovereignty over it and self-determination within it.
5.2.2 Boundaries and Definitions
The second way in which Indigenous securitizing moves are silenced is through the imposition of settler-colonial definitions of what the Arctic is and who lives there. The federal government’s imposition of arbitrary divisions over which territory it considers to be Arctic significantly curtails the capacity of some Indigenous peoples to articulate their interests within the framework of Canada’s Arctic policy. The effects of this colonial demarcation are twofold: it reproduces political and policy distinctions between the territorial Arctic and the provincial Arctic regions, most notably in Quebec; and it divides and differentiates Inuit into different groups, despite their insistence that they are a single people. In a basic sense, ‘the Arctic’ is entirely a colonial construction, since it is only in reference to southern metropoles and centres of
540 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009).
169 population, government, and capital that a single Arctic exists, and the division of circumpolar territory into exclusive national regions is an entirely colonial process. Kirt Ejesiak is blunt in his assessment that “the international borders that separate the Inuit were imposed by the conquerors without any input from [Inuit].”541 Leanne Broadhead similarly observes the colonial nature of the Arctic, including the widespread substitution of English place names: “The concept of the Canadian Arctic is a colonial construction, about which Canadians are neither taught nor curious. A cursory look at a map of the region demonstrates the colonial nature of the state’s sovereignty claims … The names covering the area are thoroughly English … the Queen Elizabeth Islands, the Victoria and Albert Mountains, or … the British Empire Range at the tip of Ellesmere Island.”542 The ongoing reproduction of a federally defined and colonial Canadian Arctic highlights the current disposition of the Canadian state towards ignoring the taxonomic preferences of Indigenous peoples who actually live in the North, and the continual structural power colonialism exercises over Indigenous epistemologies, identities, and lands.
There are various inconsistencies in how the Government of Canada defines its Arctic region, or “Canada’s North”. A map published in the Northern Strategy identifies the North as coterminous with the three federal territories, although seven communities located outside the territories in the northern regions of three different provinces are also included in the “populated places” listed in the Strategy.543 A second map identifying “modern treaties in the North” includes provincial areas covered by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement, and Labrador Inuit Land Claim Agreement alongside land claim areas in the three territories. Despite these anomalies, however, it is quite clear the federal government defines the North in terms of the three territories. The emphasis throughout Government of Canada documents is firmly on the territories; maps of the Arctic or “the North” routinely highlight only the territories; the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency (CanNor), established as part of the Northern Strategy, makes no mention of the provincial North, and its website begins a section titled “About the North” with reference to “Canada’s
541 Ejesiak 2013, 68. 542 Broadhead 2010, 922. 543 Canada 2009, 7.
170 three territories.”544 The government’s list of achievements under the Northern Strategy highlights a range of federal-territorial programs and agreements, and omits any mention of policy achievements or programming funds located outside the territories.545 Canada effectively defines its Arctic as restricted to the three federal territories; the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of seven provinces are excluded.
One effect of this definition is to separate the territorial from the provincial Arctic regions, which artificially divides the territories and their inhabitants from their neighbours in ecologically and socially similar circumstances often located only short distances away. Fundamentally, conflation of the territories and the Arctic is derived from the production of social meaning for the area located north of 60 degrees latitude (which forms the southern boundary between the territories and the western provinces); and to the preference of the federal government for not having to negotiate with provincial governments over areas within their jurisdiction located north of 60 (in Quebec), or in the sub-Arctic latitudes between 55 and 59 degrees (all provinces except for the Maritimes). According to Ken Coates and Greg Poelzer: “The oddity of a massive federal presence in the territorial North and minimal on-the-ground activities just a few miles to the south is one of the most surprising and little discussed realities of Canadian political life.”546 The separation of the territories from the provincial North is a determining feature of the Canadian Arctic, because these areas are solely distinguishable on this socially constructed basis: there is no other meaningful distinction between the spaces located immediately above or below 60 degrees latitude besides their continued political differentiation.
The inclusion of the territories and exclusion of the provincial North in the Northern Strategy has significant ramifications for the allocation of federal programming funds and the inclusion of various groups in partnership and consultation with the federal government. In its achievements under the Northern Strategy, the federal government lists significant sums spent on social and economic development: $2.9 billion “to fund programs and services such as hospitals, schools,
544 CanNor, “About the North,” Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. Accessed at http://www.cannor.gc.ca/eng/1368816431440/1368816444319 on November 18, 2014. 545 Canada, Achievements Under Canada’s Northern Strategy, 2007-2011 (Ottawa: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 2011). Accessed at http://www.northernstrategy.gc.ca/cns/au-eng.pdf on November 18, 2014. 546 Ken Coates and Greg Poelzer, “The Next Northern Challenge: The Reality of the Provincial North,” MLI Commentary (Ottawa: MacDonald-Laurier Institute, April 2014)
171 infrastructure and social services”; $80.4 million “to help strengthen and diversify the Northern economy and to create business and job opportunities for people living in Northern communities”; $23 million for Aboriginal businesses and entrepreneurs; $60 million for the Nutrition North program to subsidize the high cost of foods in Northern communities; and over $450 million in infrastructure spending on housing, harbours, power generation, highways, and communities.547 With the exception of Nutrition North, these funds were exclusively allocated for the territories; residents of the provincial North, a majority of whom are Indigenous, were excluded from accessing them.
If areas comprising the provincial North were included in federal Arctic policy, it would significantly increase the number of political actors affected by, and thus legitimately able to speak to, Arctic policy. As Coates and Poelzer note, “the vast sub-Arctic expanse [of the provincial North] has close to 1.5 million residents, holds enormous resource potential in oil and gas, forestry, mining, and hydro-electric development, is home to dozens of culturally-distinct First Nations, Métis, and Inuit groups, and is facing enormous pressures for change.”548 Among other possible reasons for its exclusion, including very real constitutional limitations on the federal government’s ability to make policy in areas of provincial jurisdiction, the inclusion of the provincial North in Canadian Arctic policymaking would greatly increase the number of actors able to make political claims, including security claims, against the federal government. The current policy framework and its delineation of the Arctic thus excludes millions of people, including many Indigenous peoples, from being considered within, or able to contribute to, Canadian Arctic policy.
This division of the Arctic also differentiates among Inuit on the basis of colonial geography, despite the insistence of Inuit leaders that they are a single unified people. There are four recognized Inuit land claim areas in Canada: the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador. Of these, the former two are territorial and thus included in the federal definition of the Arctic, while the latter two are excluded. In parliamentary testimony, witnesses decried this division of Inuit
547 Canada 2011, 3-6. 548 Coates and Poelzer 2014, 2.
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Nunangat and exclusion of Inuit located within the provincial North from Canada’s Arctic policy. Most of these included explicit requests, or references to past requests, for the Government of Canada to reconsider its discrimination against some Inuit for living within provinces. Michael Gordon, an executive with Makivik Corporation that administers the land claim agreement in Nunavik on behalf of Inuit, told the National Defence committee:
We are not second-class Inuit. Nunavik’s exclusion from the Northern Strategy is based on artificial boundaries, not geographical or social ones. We are Inuit, just like our cousins in Nunavut, and we want the Canadian government to recognize this simple reality … We request that the Canadian government clearly acknowledge that the Northern Strategy applies to Nunavik to the same extent as to other regions in Canada’s Arctic … Make it a Northern Strategy for the northern population and the geography – the people and the land. Don’t exclude us just because we happen to be in the province of Quebec.549
John Merritt emphasized past efforts by Inuit organizations to encourage government to alter its definition of the Arctic, telling the same committee that “ITK has said before this committee, and publicly in other places, that it believes the federal government’s current Northern Strategy should be a genuine Arctic strategy that includes all four Inuit regions, including Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador and Nunavik.”550 Mary Simon also emphasized the unity of the Inuit people, and noted that she had attempted to communicate Inuit concerns directly to the prime minister and the minister then responsible for the Northern Strategy, but was ignored:
When the Strategy was announced, we did write to the Prime Minister and to Minister [Chuck] Strahl about the need to be comprehensive in terms of encompassing all Inuit regions. Whether or not we live below the 55th parallel or the 60th parallel, we face the same living conditions as people face above the 60th parallel, so it’s necessary for us to work together as Inuit … We have asked the Prime Minister, and when I met with him Iqaluit I also raised that issue with him. We haven’t had a response as to whether Nunavik and Nunatsiavut are going to be included.551
549 Michael Gordon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-38 (November 5, 2009). 550 John Merritt, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009). 551 Mary Simon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009).
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Chester Reimer noted that such domestic political decisions also have repercussions for organizations representing Inuit internationally, since it denies some Inuit legitimacy because of their perceived lack of domestic political standing: “The Inuit Circumpolar Council is not in agreement with defining the north in that way. It creates problems at the Arctic Council. It creates problems domestically when the Inuit of Nunavik are left out. They live on tundra. They live on areas that are very much Arctic, and they’re left out of research, of politics, of everything.”552 Nor were such calls limited to Inuit. In 2010, three years after the government introduced the Northern Strategy, Grand Chief Ron Evans of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs told the Aboriginal Affairs committee: “It causes us some concern that the announcement … reinforces the Government of Canada’s commitment to the Northern Strategy, which is focused on the Arctic. We urge this committee and this government to involve the remote and isolated communities of Manitoba in further design and implementation of this new program.”553 His recommendation, like those of the other witnesses, was not heeded. Despite the clear, repeated, and insistent objections of the peoples in question, the federal government has maintained its policy of defining the Arctic along territorial-provincial boundaries, such that some Indigenous peoples are effectively excluded. In effect, the very way in which Canada has defined its Arctic according to settler-colonial boundaries operates as a mechanism to silence Indigenous voices.
5.2.3 Foundational Issues
The third way in which security claims made by Indigenous peoples are silenced is through the power of the federal government to set the terms of public debate by acknowledging, or not, particular issues as valid or worthy of official consideration. The federal government has silenced Indigenous securitizing moves by ignoring the two central issues that shape Indigenous articulations of their own insecurity: climate change and settler-colonialism. Without actually denying it as a scientific fact, climate change was largely ignored by federal policymakers and members of government, including Prime Minister Harper. While the Conservative government
552 Chester Reimer, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-18 (May 11, 2009). 553 Ron Evans, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 40-03- 32 (November 1, 2010).
174 never made climate change a significant priority, its absence in the context of Arctic policy- making is particularly noticeable given the transformative nature of environmental change in the region. Accordingly, Harper received widespread criticism in 2014 for failing to mention climate change a single time over the course of six days spent on his annual Arctic tour.554 As Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson noted, “the surreal disjunction between ubiquitous evidence and prime ministerial silence has never been more apparent than during this particular visit, which coincided with news of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s draft report ahead of the next international conference on climate change.”555
This omission followed closely on repeated examples of the government curtailing discussion of climate change in the context of the Arctic. Only weeks earlier, documents obtained by the media through access to information revealed the Canadian Ice Service had been denied permission to even hold press briefings on the diminished state of sea ice in the far North. The request was denied by the ministerial services section of Environment Canada, whose minister, Leona Aglukkaq, was also responsible for the Arctic.556 In December 2013, Aglukkaq also overruled advice from her senior civil servants that she mention in a public statement that the government “takes climate change seriously, and recognizes the scientific findings that conclude that human activities are mostly responsible for this change.”557 Instead, the minister made comments criticizing her government’s predecessors and incorrectly stated that the Conservative government had successfully reduced Canada’s level of GHG emissions. And despite frequent claims to support Arctic science, in its 2012 budget the government cancelled funding for the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), a world-leading climate
554 Michael Den Tandt, “Harper cements northern legacy despite glaring policy omissions,” Postmedia News (August 26, 2014). Accessed at http://www.canada.com/technology/Tandt+Harper+cements+northern+legacy+ despite+glaring+policy+omissions/10151115/story.html on November 18, 2014. 555 Jeffrey Simpson, “The PM can’t see the climate for the slush,” The Globe and Mail (August 30, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail. com/globe-debate/the-pm-cant-see-the-climate-for-the- slush/article20259976/#dashboard/follows/ on November 18, 2014. 556 Margaret Munro, “Federal government puts polar briefings on ice,” Postmedia News (August 18, 2014). Accessed at http://www.canada.com/news/Federal+government+puts+polar+briefings/10128511/story.html on November 18, 2014. 557 Mike De Souza, “Stephen Harper’s government edited message about taking climate change seriously,” Postmedia News (December 30, 2013). Accessed at http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/stephen-harpers- government-edited-message-about-taking-climate-change-seriously on November 18, 2014.
175 research facility located on Ellesmere Island, forcing it to cease operations before having partial funding temporarily restored.558 Together, these actions emphasize Heather Smith’s conclusion that Canada is simply “choosing not to see” the reality of climate change in the Arctic, its impacts on Arctic residents, or what such changes augur for the health and stability of the global climate system.559
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Harper also explicitly denied the enduring relevance of Canada’s colonial legacy towards Indigenous peoples. At the 2009 G20 leaders summit in Pittsburgh, in response to a question about Canada’s declining status in an increasingly diffuse international system, Harper replied he remained confident because Canada has “no history of colonialism. So we have all the things that many admire about the great powers, but none of the things that threaten or bother them about the great powers.” He then characterized Canada as a bicultural, immigrant-based society since “we are also a country, obviously beginning with our two major cultures, but also a country formed by people from all over the world.”560 His comments elicited a torrent of criticism, particularly from Indigenous leaders who decried the total omission of prior occupation of modern Canada by Indigenous peoples or the contemporary relevance of that history for federal-Aboriginal relations. Then-AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo responded:
The effects of colonialism remain today. It is the attitude that fuelled residential schools, the colonial Indian Act that displaces traditional forms of First Nations governance; the theft of Indian lands and forced relocations of First Nations communities; the criminalization and suppression of First Nations languages and cultural practices, the chronic under-funding of First Nations communities and programs; and the denial of Treaty and Aboriginal rights, even though they are recognized in Canada’s Constitution.561
558 Ivan Semeniuk, “How Canada’s Arctic lab keeps a watchful eye on climate change,” The Globe and Mail (January 21, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-north/how-canadas-arctic-lab- keeps-a-watchful-eye-on-climate-change/article16423612/?page=all#dashboard/follows/ on November 18, 2014. 559 Smith 2010. 560 Quoted in Aaron Wherry, “What he was talking about when he talked about colonialism,” Maclean’s (October 1, 2009). Accessed at http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-he-was-talking-about-when-he-talked-about- colonialism/ on November 24, 2014. 561 AFN, “AFN National Chief Responds to Prime Minister’s Statements on Colonialism,” (October 1, 2009). Accessed at http://64.26.129.156/article.asp?id=4609 on November 24, 2014.
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Atleo’s statement highlights the fact that, in effect, the issues Indigenous peoples in Canada identify as being of greatest importance, including those often characterized as affecting the security of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, are linked to Canada’s colonial past and ongoing colonial practices. Consequently, the prime minister’s statement that Canada lacks a colonial history amounts to a “particularly remarkable form of erasure.”562 Indeed, only the year before Harper had offered a formal apology on behalf of the Government of Canada for its past policy of separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to attend residential schools. That apology, applauded as an essential step towards reconciliation while also critiqued for being insufficient, also failed to mention colonialism, or that Indian residential schools were but one facet of a broader system of Indigenous non-dominance within the settler-colonial Canadian state. Thus, critics charge that “the state’s previous attempts to address the legacy of the residential schools system … have not been accompanied by and/or have not brought about substantive change in either the lives of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples or in the relationship between Indigenous and Metis peoples and the Canadian people and state.”563 As a result, the ongoing material circumstances of Indigenous peoples in Canada are separated from the current and historical colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Like climate change, the federal government denies colonialism as legitimate terrain on which to articulate grievances against Canada or the dominant Canadian society, which impedes securitizing moves that identify climate change or colonialism as sources of insecurity for Indigenous peoples, and perpetuates the subordinate power relations that contribute to the material hazards confronting Indigenous peoples.
5.3 Subsumed Insecurity
In addition to, and sometimes as a result of, the silencing of their securitizing moves, Indigenous understandings of security in the Arctic are subsumed within the official discourse of Arctic security supported by the Canadian state. As described in Chapter 3, subsumed insecurity entails
562 Jennifer Henderson and Pauline Wakeham, “Colonial Reckoning, National Reconciliation? Aboriginal Peoples and the Culture of Redress in Canada,” ESC: English Studies in Canada 35, no. 1 (2009), 1. 563 Matthew Dorrell, “From Reconciliation to Reconciling: Reading What “We Now Recognize” in the Government of Canada’s 2008 Residential Schools Apology,” ESC: English Studies in Canada 35, no. 1 (2009), 29.
177 incorporating a given referent object within a broader referent object with which it is linked, but distinct. In so doing, the initial referent object is “not clearly delineated” such that the original security claim is swallowed up within the successful securitization.564 I argue that Indigenous peoples’ security claims have been subsumed within the government discourse of Arctic sovereignty-as-security, despite the differences between how they understand their security compared to settler-colonial Canada. Indeed, having their security subsumed within that of the Canadian state worsens security for Northern Indigenous peoples because current state policy contributes to the very phenomena Indigenous peoples identify as endangering them. Leanne Broadhead reflects this tension in her discussion of “Canadian sovereignty versus northern security,” which highlights how the contradiction between “viewing security solely in terms of military control and sovereign borders … is destined to exacerbate the effects of climate change and dramatically worsen an already precarious situation, thereby increasing the level of insecurity of the inhabitants of the area and beyond.”565 Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic are encompassed within federal claims that the government is acting on behalf and in the best interests of Northerners, even though, as described above and in Chapter 4, their specific claims are obscured, ignored, denied, or delegitimized by the state.
The subsuming of Indigenous in/security within sovereignty-as-security Canadian discourse is evident in the gap between Indigenous and governmental understandings of security in the Arctic, described above and in Chapter 4, and in the problematic relationship between Indigenous and colonial sovereignties over territory in northern Canada, described below. Various episodes between Arctic peoples and Canada during the 20th century can also be interpreted as part of a pattern of subordinating the security interests of Indigenous peoples to the sovereignty requirements of the colonial state. Many such episodes are documented, including Inuit perceptions of the mass slaughter of sled dogs by RCMP and provincial police in the 1950s and 1960s, and the forced relocation of Inuit families from northern Quebec to Ellesmere Island in the 1950s. In the former case, estimates suggest that, over two decades, government agents
564 Hansen 2000, 297-299. 565 Broadhead 2010, 914.
178 killed as many as 20,000 dogs across the North.566 Though the decision was driven by a confluence of government policies nominally defending policy objectives related to agriculture, public health, and public order, an inquiry concluded the motivations for “these operations were likely to prevent Inuit from practicing their traditional activities.”567 The slaughter had a devastating effect on many communities, and was undertaken without meaningful consultation with Inuit or consideration of their rights, and without regard for the symbolic, cultural, or subsistence implications of killing animals essential for land-based livelihoods, hunting, companionship, and spirituality.568
While there have been numerous instances involving the forced relocation of Indigenous peoples in Canada,569 the High Arctic relocations refers to 21 Inuit families who between 1953-1955 were relocated from northern Quebec to hitherto uninhabited islands in the Arctic Archipelago, establishing the first permanent civilian settlements in the High Arctic at the present-day communities of Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay.570 Officials involved in the decision maintain the government desired to help the families re-establish viable subsistence lifestyles, and that they consented to the move.571 For decades, the federal government insisted that public services, including health care, could be provided more readily in the new locations than the communities the families had left, and opportunities for hunting and subsistence would be better in their new locations.572 A federal investigation in the late 1980s “absolved the government of any wrongdoing,” and “argued that … Inuit had been relocated for humanitarian purposes and had
566 CBC News, “Inuit dog killings no conspiracy: report,” (October 20, 2010). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/inuit-dog-killings-no-conspiracy-report-1.971888 on November 24, 2014. 567 Croteau 2010, 121. 568 QIA, Qikiqtani Truth Commission Final Report: Achieving Saimaqatigiingniq (Iqaluit: Qikiqtani Inuit Association, 2010); Qikiqtani Truth Commission, “Inuit Sled Dogs in the Baffin Region, 1950 to 1975.” Accessed at http://www.qtcommission.com/actions/GetPage.php?pageId=39 on November 24, 2014. 569 See Canada, “Relocation of Aboriginal Communities,” Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Volume I, Part II, Chapter 11 (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1996). Accessed at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071211055119/http://www.ainc- inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sg34_e.html#107 on March 9, 2016. 570 Makkik 2009, 8. 571 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 103; David Damas, Arctic Migrants/Arctic Villagers: The Transformation of Inuit Settlement in the Central Arctic (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 54. 572 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 102-103.
179 volunteered to move.”573 A second investigation also “concluded that the relocation had been carried out with humane intentions based on the government’s desire to help Inuit remain self- sufficient by hunting and trapping.”574 In 1992, then-Minister of Indian Affairs Tom Siddon told the House of Commons the decision “appears to have been solely related to improving the harsh social and economic conditions facing the Inuit at Inukjuak [Nunavik] at that time.”575
However, relocatees and their descendants insist the RCMP employed coercive recruitment practices and deceived families into believing the federal government would provide adequate supplies for their survival and welfare, and that they would be able to hunt and sustain themselves in their new homes.576 But upon arrival to an area 2000 kilometres north that bore few similarities to the one they had left, “the promised equipment and resources were nowhere to be found.”577 Because their traditional skills and knowledge were unsuited to their new environment, people were unprepared to subsist. The daughter of one of the original relocatees recalled: “According to the RCMP, we were going to a place similar to [home], where there was an abundance of plants and all kinds of wildlife and animals. We were relocated to a place where there was none of that. Not a thing, just bare rock.”578 Unsurprisingly, “the first years in the High Arctic were a desperate time for Inuit … and it took many more years for Inuit to learn how to live in the High Arctic without a daily struggle for survival.”579 The federal government’s insistence that it was motivated by the wellbeing of the Inuit families also appears dubious at best; Tester and Kulchyski note the government’s “preposterous” claims that health services could be provided more easily in the High Arctic than in existing communities and that hunting above the Arctic Circle was superior to northern Quebec “generated considerable
573 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 102. 574 Tester and Kulchyski 1994 103. 575 Quoted in Tester and Kulchyski 1994 102. 576 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP], The High Arctic Relocation: A Report on the 1953-55 Relocation (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1994), 7. 577 Makkik 2009, 10. 578 Lizzie Amagoalik, “The Hardships We Endured,” Naniiliqpita (Iqaluit: Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, 2009), 35. Accessed at http://www.tunngavik.com/documents/publications/Naniiliqpita%20Fall%202009.pdf on November 25, 2014. 579 Makkik 2009, 10.
180 controversy, fuelling the idea that … the real reasons for the relocation were indeed sinister.”580
The official justification for why Canada relocated Inuit to the High Arctic also contradicts most historical research on the subject.581 According to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the government’s motive was to establish a permanent human presence in order to reinforce Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claims.582 Historian Shelagh Grant argues that “concern for sovereignty was the primary motive in determining when and where resettlement should occur,”583 and several other studies also indicate that sovereignty, rather than Inuit wellbeing, was the driving force behind the relocations.584 A report for the Canadian Human Rights Commission notes the federal government regarded the two High Arctic colonies as contributing to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty,585 and in its 2010 apology for the “hardship, suffering, and loss” suffered by relocatees and their descendants, the Government of Canada’s acknowledged that “these communities [Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay] have contributed to a strong Canadian presence in the High Arctic.”586 On balance, it appears that Inuit were relocated to the High Arctic in order to demonstrate the presence of the Canadian state and act as “human flagpoles” substantiating Canadian claims.587 Notably, the discrepancy between government accounts and those of independent researchers is largely attributable to the absence of Inuit voices in
580 Tester and Kulchyski 1994 115. 581 Coates et al. 2008, 63-79. 582 Dussault and Erasmus 1994, 162. 583 Shelagh Grant, “A Case of Compounded Error: The Inuit Resettlement Project, 1953, and the Government Response, 1990,” Northern Perspectives 19, no. 1 (Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1991), 3-29. 584 Keith Lowther, “An Exercise in Sovereignty: The Canadian Government and the Relocation of Inuit to the High Arctic in 1953,” in W. Peter Adams and Peter G. Johnson, eds, Student Research in Canada’s North, Proceedings of the National Student Conference on Northern Studies (Ottawa: Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies, 1986), 517-522; Alan R. Marcus, “Out in the Cold: Canada’s Experimental Inuit Relocation to Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay,” Polar Record 27, no. 163 (1991): 285-296. 585 Daniel Soberman, Report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission on the Complaints of the Inuit People Relocated from Inukjuak and Pond Inlet, to Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay in 1953 and 1955 (Ottawa: Canadian Human Rights Commission, 1991). 586 John Duncan, “Apology for the Inuit High Arctic Relocation,” (Ottawa: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 2010). Accessed at https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016115/1100100016116 on November 27, 2014. 587 The term ‘human flagpoles’ is widely employed in reference to the High Arctic relocation, though its origins are unclear.
181 government investigations.588 In this case, silencing Indigenous perspectives enabled the subsuming of Inuit perspectives on the High Arctic relocations within that of the Canadian state.
The relocation of Inuit may indeed have bolstered Canada’s sovereignty claims by establishing a permanent civilian population in the High Arctic. But whatever the relevance to Canadian sovereignty, the High Arctic relocations illustrate the prioritization of Canadian Arctic sovereignty over the security of Arctic inhabitants. The sovereignty of Canada over its Arctic territories was placed above concern for the human security, survival, and wellbeing of the Inuit people whose presence was used to support those very sovereignty claims. It seems reasonable to conclude that the interests of the Inuit people as related to their physical survival, culture, identity, and rights – namely the very factors identified in subsequent speech acts as those factors central to Inuit conceptions of security in the Arctic – were not considered by government actors in the face of the state’s interest in asserting its legal authority over remote Arctic territory.
The High Arctic relocations may be the earliest modern example of Canadian Arctic sovereignty subsuming Inuit security, but it is not the only one. Given that Inuit leaders and organizations link autonomy and self-determination to their security as Indigenous people, this subsumption is also inherent in the subordination of Inuit sovereignty over their Arctic territory to that of the Canadian state. Following the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decision recognizing Aboriginal rights in the 1973 Calder case, the Crown initiated a process of negotiating comprehensive land claim agreements with Aboriginal peoples, the first of which, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, was signed in 1975 with Cree and Inuit in northern Quebec. Since 1979, when the Federal Court overturned a lower court ruling and affirmed Inuit title over part of their traditional territory in the Northwest Territories, Canada has increasingly acknowledged Inuit as rights-holders and landowners over much of the territory that now comprises northern Canada.589 Moreover, since Secretary of State for External Affairs Joe Clark declared to the House of Commons in 1985 that “Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic is indivisible … embraces land, sea and ice … [and] from time immemorial Canada’s Inuit people
588 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 103. 589 David W. Elliott, “Baker Lake and the Concept of Aboriginal Title,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 18, no. 4 (1980): 653-663; Alastair Campbell, “Sovereignty and Citizenship: Inuit and Canada, 1670-2012,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 35-42.
182 have used and occupied the ice as they have used and occupied the land … Full sovereignty is vital to Canada’s security. It is vital to the Inuit people. And it is vital to Canada’s national identity,”590 Canada has premised its Arctic sovereignty in part on the prior sovereignty of Inuit. Inuit title over Inuit Nunangat is legally and constitutionally enshrined in the Constitution Act 1982 [s. 35 (1), (3)], Inuvialuit Final Agreement (1985), James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (1975), Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement (2005), Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement (2006), and Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (1993). Together, these “modern treaties have reshaped the political landscape in the Arctic … [and] marked the first time that an Aboriginal people was able to restructure the basic political configuration of the country.”591
Certainly, Inuit stress their unceded sovereignty over their traditional territories. Land claim agreements and Inuit’s own political documents clearly articulate the view that their status as a self-determining Indigenous people with legal title and inherent rights must be respected by their respective states. For instance, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic observes:
Old ideas of sovereignty are breaking down as different governance models [evolve]. Sovereignties overlap and are frequently divided in federations within creative ways to recognize the right of peoples. For Inuit living within the states of Russia, Canada, the USA and Denmark/Greenland, issues of sovereignty and sovereign rights must be examined and assessed in the context of our long history of struggle to gain recognition and respect as an Arctic indigenous people having the right to exercise self-determination over [their] lives, territories, cultures and languages.592
Scholars have also looked to the example of Inuit as charting new and innovative approaches to overlapping sovereignty and multi-level governance, particularly with respect to Indigenous peoples and contested sovereignties within settler-colonial states.593 And the pursuit and enactment of five comprehensive land claim agreements resulting in regional governments in four separate Inuit territories across northern Canada illustrate the determination of Inuit to realize political autonomy within the context of the Canadian federation.
590 House of Commons, Debates (September 10, 1985): 6462-6464. 591 Campbell 2013, 39. 592 ICC 2009, s.2(1). 593 Abele and Rodon 2007; Loukacheva 2007; Wilson 2007; Shadian 2010, 2014.
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If Inuit view self-determination as integral to their security, namely their survival as an Indigenous people, the failure of the Government of Canada to live up to its commitments under these land claim agreements further demonstrates how Inuit security claims are subsumed within the interests of the Canadian state. As detailed above, Inuit leaders assert the federal government has violated Inuit political autonomy and failed to act in accordance with their inherent and constitutional rights, particularly with respect to the inadequate implementation of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. In December 2006, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated filed a lawsuit against the Government of Canada that identified 16 contractual and additional fiduciary breaches relating to the alleged failure to implement the NLCA. In 2012, “the Nunavut Court of Justice issued summary judgement in favour of NTI vis-à-vis the federal government’s refusal for many years to implement the general monitoring provisions of the agreement … [and] characterized as ‘indifferent’ the Government of Canada’s attitude to implementation of this provision of the agreement.”594 The case was settled in May 2015 when the federal government agreed to pay $255 million in compensation for the breaches of the NLCA, but the charge of indifference by Canada reflects the fact that it has been content to utilize prior use and occupancy of the Arctic region by Inuit and other Indigenous peoples to support its sovereignty, but has been unwilling to substantiate Indigenous sovereignty by respecting and enacting their specific political claims.
Indeed, some analysts have increasingly wondered why successive federal governments have chosen not to explicitly marshal Inuit sovereignty to support the assertion of Canadian sovereignty with respect to the Northwest Passage.595 One answer is because doing so is impossible without also enacting the explicit claims of Arctic Indigenous peoples with respect to climate change and the conditions necessary to provide security for inhabitants of the Canadian North. Currently, such claims are subsumed within the construction of Arctic sovereignty-as- security preferred by the Canadian state; to fully acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty would empower the securitizing moves of Inuit and other peoples that directly challenge the settler- colonial construction of securitization currently enacted by Canada in its Arctic territory.
594 Fenge 2013, 51. 595 Fenge 2007/2008, 2013; Michael Mifflin, “Canada’s Arctic Sovereignty and Nunavut’s Place in the Federation,” Policy Options (Montreal: IRPP, July-August 2008); Byers 2009.
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5.4 Conclusion
To the extent that the federal government has not accepted Indigenous articulations of in/security in the Arctic, it suggests there exist important limitations upon the extent of the political emancipation that has occurred for Indigenous peoples in contemporary Canada. Self- determination for Indigenous peoples may extend, at most, only to the point where their political preferences directly challenge the core interests of the federal government, and may omit the capacity to successfully act as securitizing actors articulating existential threats to the sovereign. In light of the material hazards posed by climate change, and the other threats to their survival identified by Arctic Indigenous peoples, the constraints imposed by the federal-Indigenous relationship and the implications of Indigenous non-dominance for the ability to catalyze state action to address climate change raise serious concerns about the future security of Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants of Arctic Canada.
Moreover, the exclusion of Indigenous views suggests that the official conception of in/security reflected in Canada’s Arctic policy framework remain fundamentally colonial. The views of Indigenous peoples are clearly, repeatedly, and forcefully expressed in various fora, by authoritative and legitimate political actors, and invoke the highest possible stakes: the survival and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in the face of serious material hazards. These claims, often made using the language and grammar of in/security, appear to be consistently rejected by the Canadian state in favour of a conception of Arctic in/security challenged by Indigenous peoples because it both undermines their rights and interests, and appears certain to worsen the very hazards they are facing. Thus, reproducing a longstanding pattern of Indigenous security interests being silenced or subsumed to the interests of the settler-colonial state, it is the very actions and goals of Canada that are identified as threats to the survival and interests of Indigenous peoples, such that the greatest threat to the security of Indigenous peoples originates from or is exacerbated by their own government. This is the very essence of settler-colonialism, and it lies at the heart of contemporary security policy in the Canadian Arctic.
The slaughter of Inuit sled dogs and the High Arctic relocation demonstrate the tendency of the federal government to subsume arguments over Indigenous peoples’ wellbeing within policy decisions inimical to that wellbeing undertaken for the interests of the settler-colonial state. While these episodes are taken from Canada’s colonial history, they foreshadow a pattern that
185 persists to the present day. In contemporary Canadian Arctic policy, the security interests of Inuit and other Arctic Indigenous peoples are still subsumed within the sovereignty interests of the Canadian state. The evidence lies in how Indigenous peoples have articulated their understanding of security in the Arctic, and the absence of those views within Canada’s official policies. Canada employs security language in articulating its interests and priorities in the Arctic, particularly the securitization of sovereignty over its Arctic territories and the resources located there. Inuit also employ security language, emphasizing in particular concern over the protection and survival of the Arctic ecosystem, including flora and fauna, in the context of human-caused environmental changes; Indigenous rights, self-determination, and political autonomy; and the preservation of Indigenous culture, language, and traditional practices. But these claims by Inuit receive little purchase within official discourse; indeed, the Canadian state tends to prioritize expansion of the very practices Indigenous people identify as threatening them in the first place.
Unlike previous eras, however, the implications of Indigenous peoples’ understandings of security being subsumed to that of the Canadian state extend far beyond northern Canada. Whereas once events that occurred in the Canadian Arctic had little impact on southern societies or distant places in the world, today the context of global environmental change and the geological Anthropocene is such that decisions pertaining to what constitutes in/security in the Arctic have global repercussions. As discussed in Chapter 1, recent interest in the Arctic has been driven in large part by estimates of the region’s massive undeveloped resource potential, particularly offshore oil and gas, the extraction of which also features prominently in the Arctic security policies of Canada and other circumpolar states. Whether those estimated resources are actually extracted and burned, and to a lesser extent the growth in the Arctic of other fossil-fuel intensive and locally damaging industries such as mining and transnational shipping, have significant negative implications for the Arctic and global ecosystems. Conversely, adoption and implementation of a conception of Arctic in/security that prioritized the maintenance of healthy northern communities and ecosystems, and the cultural and subsistence systems that support their indigenous inhabitants, in particular, would require radically different policies to be taken. Such policies would protect the human security of Northerners, but, by extension, also that of disparate peoples and ultimately the global biosphere by not contributing to human civilization’s ongoing reliance on fossil fuels. Thus, the exclusion of Indigenous understandings of in/security
186 from official Arctic security discourses are of broader significance than simply to the Arctic, and raise substantial normative questions that are explored further in Chapter 8.
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Chapter 6 6 Understanding In/Security in Northern Norway
Norway has a long history as an Arctic state, but, as with Inuit in northern Canada, for the indigenous Sámi that history is even older. As with Canada, discourse around the Norwegian Arctic has also become more securitized as new phenomena, such as environmental change, interact with longstanding state interests and national security concerns. There are similarities between how Norway and Canada have constructed their Arctic security interests: both emphasize territorial sovereignty and effective control over their distant and sparsely populated northern regions; both have been fundamentally shaped by proximity to a far more powerful neighbour; and both identify the extraction of northern resources as key to their national interests and central to their economic security. There are also differences, notably the Norwegian emphasis on desecuritizing relations with Russia and maintaining stability in the Euro-Arctic region following the Soviet collapse and subsequent weakening of civil order in northwestern Russia. How in/security has been constructed in these two national contexts reflects their divergent histories and distinct patterns of political and social development, and provides indications of the facilitating conditions for securitization to succeed.
This chapter examines Norwegian state understandings of in/security in the context of the “High North”. Given that Norway has experienced historical relationships of political domination by both Denmark and Sweden, Scandinavian colonialism informs how the meaning of security has been constructed in northern Norway. While Scandinavian colonialism provides the context for how Sámi living in the High North understand security, which is discussed in Chapter 7, Sámi were also integral to the historical construction of national security in northern Norway. The first section of this chapter provides an overview of Scandinavian and Norwegian colonialism as they relate to the traditional Sámi homeland of Sápmi, which includes the area typically understood as the High North with the exception of the Svalbard archipelago. This section outlines the importance of colonialism to the establishment of the modern Norwegian state, including the role of Sámi in Scandinavian state formation. The second section describes the widening and deepening of Norway’s foreign and security policy following the end of the Cold War, culminating in a new High North initiative in 2006. The third section identifies the meaning of Arctic security for the Norwegian state, which in both its contemporary and
188 historical forms is based on two core pillars: geographic proximity to Russia, with associated concerns over potential Russian aggression, and securing sovereign territoriality in order to facilitate natural resource extraction. Paradoxically, while Norway emphasized desecuritizing European-Russian relations as central for its Arctic security interests following the Cold War, under the new High North Initiative the Arctic has become heavily securitized within Norwegian national security discourse. Consequently, today both Russia and hydrocarbon energy resources are routinely constructed as core national security concerns for Norway, and have led to a renewed securitization of the High North.
6.1 Scandinavian Colonialism
The focus of this chapter is Norway and Sámi living in Norway, but it is impossible to examine Sámi-Norwegian relations in a strictly Norwegian context.596 The social and political histories of the Nordic states and the transnational nature of the Sámi people problematize such a tidy distinction.597 For example, the contemporary political geography of northern Europe obscures the fact that political entities with the same names as those in existence today exercised sovereignty over significantly different geographic spaces.598 Modern Norway is itself a product of colonial systems of power and political authority, having existed for centuries with limited autonomy and independence from its larger and more powerful Scandinavian neighbours. Until the early 16th century, Norway was part of the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Sweden, before becoming the junior partner in Denmark-Norway, a polity governed as a personal union with a single sovereign under Danish hegemony. The inland border separating Norway and Sweden was only settled in 1751 following centuries of conflict. Though it had existed as a political entity since medieval times, from 1524-1814 Norway was essentially administered as a Danish province. In 1814, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden as punishment for its
596 The term ‘Sámi’ is sometimes spelled as ‘Saami’ depending on whether the writer is influenced by Norwegian or Swedish usage, but both refer to the same ethno-linguistic group originating in the Sápmi region of northern Scandinavia. 597 ‘Scandinavia’ refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, whereas ‘Nordic’ refers to the Scandinavian states in addition to Iceland and Finland. 598 Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2006), 18.
189 wartime support of Napoleonic France. Norway briefly declared independence, but was unable to sustain its claim against the Swedish Crown, which was keen to expand its territory due to the seizure of Finland by imperial Russia in 1809, which deprived Sweden of one third of its area and ended its aspirations to Great Power status. Sweden invaded, and established another dual monarchy in which Norway enjoyed significant autonomy but was ultimately subordinate to royal authority in Stockholm. The loss of Finland to Russia also had significant implications for future inter-state relations, because it created Finnish-speaking minorities on all sides of the newly established Swedish-Norwegian-Russian borders.599 The settlement of the Norwegian- Russian boundary in 1826 was the final move in establishing the modern political divisions of Fennoscandia, though Norway only became a fully sovereign and independent state in 1905 after more than 500 years under Danish or Swedish rule. By that time, the Sámi homeland of Sápmi – which covers much of the Fennoscandian interior – was colonized and divided, and Sámi were living across the borders of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Thus, Norway inherited Danish and Swedish legacies of colonial expansion in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Sápmi, in addition to its own legacy of Norse-Viking conquest and colonization around the North Sea and North Atlantic.
6.1.1 Stuck in the Middle: Sámi and the Modern State
Since the consolidation of the Scandinavian kingdoms into their current modern forms, Sámi have been implicated in questions of sovereign authority fundamental to these states’ national interests. Acquisition of Sámi lands was seen as essential to establish the prosperity and defensibility of Denmark-Norway and Sweden, respectively, while control over Sámi themselves was a crucial marker of status and territorial control. The most obvious way in which such control could be demonstrated was through taxation and the collection of duties. Indeed, taxation of Sámi became an important indicator of which among Denmark-Norway, Sweden, or Russia-Finland exercised sovereign authority over the Scandinavian interior, and by extension jurisdiction north to the Arctic coast. Some Sámi villages were taxed two or three times a year
599 Roald Berg, “Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 1814: A Geopolitical and Contemporary Perspective,” Scandinavian Journal of History 39, no. 3 (2014): 265-286.
190 by different states, and “the question of where Saamis should pay tax was a point of argument throughout the seventeenth century since Swedes, Norwegians, and Russians all considered taxation as proof of sovereignty over the area.”600 Sámi were forced to pay a significant portion of their goods in taxes, often in the form of furs, but also derived certain benefits, since “taxation policies and claims of sovereignty did not entail a denial of Saami land possession. On the contrary, taxes and strategic needs ensured that Saami possession of land was both accepted as a fact and relied upon in legal interpretation” of which state controlled what area along the disputed boundary.601 Aware of their unique situation as permanent inhabitants of the contested borderlands, Sámi used their position to extract concessions from Swedish and Danish- Norwegian authorities, effectively playing one against the other.
Sámi sometimes proved pivotal to state claims over territory and their associated natural resource wealth. For instance, the discovery of silver deposits at Nasafjäll in 1634 – in the disputed border region between Norway and Sweden – resulted in prolonged dispute between the two countries. Having elicited Sámi support for its claim that the mine was located in its territory, Sweden began to extract ore despite the disputed border. But the mine remained contested, and was burned to the ground by Norwegian soldiers in 1659. The political economy of resource extraction, particularly mining, had major impacts on Sámi, whose subsistence economies and property rights were disrupted when they and their reindeer were indentured to provide labour for the mines. Many Sámi resisted these infringements on their livelihoods, including threatening to revoke their support for Sweden’s sovereignty over the area. As “the conflict between the Saamis and the mine operators grew,” and Sweden’s position vis-à-vis Norway grew increasingly weak, the governor “suggested that it caused such a crisis situation in the lappmarks [northern counties] that the Saamis must be left alone or they would entirely abandon the country, with grave consequences for the defence of the border.”602 Thus, from early in the modern period of Scandinavian politics control over natural resources in the High North, state security, and the wellbeing and distinctiveness of Sámi have been closely linked.
600 Fur 2006, 52. 601 Fur 2006, 53. 602 Fur 2006, 62
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Figure 6: Map of Sápmi
Source: Nordiska Museet603
As shown in Figure 6, Sápmi is located in the more remote northern part of Scandinavia and transects the boundaries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, and Sámi were liminal to these states as each was being consolidated. Until the early 20th century, in fact, Sámi moved with relative freedom across the region’s borders to trade and graze their reindeer herds, and Sámi were critical for effective control over the region prior to widespread settlement by Scandinavians in the late 1700s. While taxes extracted from Sápmi were substantial, more important by far was the contribution that control over Sámi made to states’ claims of territorial sovereignty. As early as the 17th century, Scandinavian rulers feared Sámi could pose a threat if they offered their loyalty to rival neighbours. In the 1670s, for instance, the Swedish governor of Västerbotten province “expressed great concern that the mountain Saamis would desert to Norway. He saw it as a security risk, since the Saamis could divulge military secrets to
603 Accessed at http://www.nordiskamuseet.se/en/utstallningar/sapmi on March 8, 2016.
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Denmark-Norway.”604 Especially prior to the settlement of the Norwegian-Swedish border, Sámi could also threaten to relocate and throw their support for the delineation of territorial boundaries to each state’s rival if concessions on issues such as taxation were not granted.
Nor was this an idle threat; historical documents record whole villages packing up and moving across the border area to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the neighbouring kingdom. Historian Gunlög Fur notes “the effectiveness of this threat grew out of disputes over sovereignty between Sweden, Denmark-Norway, and Russia. Until 1751, the entire region called Finnmarken in reality belonged to no nation and remained contested grounds. All three powers made opposing demands on the area and used the taxation of the Saamis as grounds for claiming sovereignty.”605 The permanent settlement of the border between Denmark-Norway and Sweden in 1751 was thus a pivotal moment in Scandinavian political history and for Sámi as a people, because it established an enduring division of territory into sovereign spaces and removed the most powerful political tool at the disposal of the Sámi. With the border established, Norway and Sweden could assert control over Sámi along national lines with little fear of Sámi undermining the national interest. Consequently, “after the border settlement in 1751, Saamis began to experience an erosion of their rights” as jurisdiction over land shifted to local authorities and the Scandinavian states felt less need to maintain support of Sámi communities in the border areas.606
This diminution of Sámi rights occurred in spite of the inclusion of the so-called Lapp Codicil into the 1751 Danish-Norwegian-Swedish border treaty, which specifically carved out provisions for continued cross-border land use for Sámi reindeer herding activities. The Lapp Codicil was included due to a recognition that, “as a result of the boundary, Saami on both the Swedish and Norwegian sides risked losing time-honoured historic grazing rights in the countries where they were not regarded as citizens.”607 The Codicil thus allowed for cross-border grazing in line with
604 Fur 2006, 57. 605 Fur 2006, 56. 606 Fur 2006, 53. 607 Else Grete Broderstad, “Cross-Border Reindeer Husbandry: Between Ancient Usage Rights and State Sovereignty,” in Nigel Bankes and Timo Koivurova, eds, The Proposed Nordic Saami Convention: National and International Dimensions of Indigenous Property Rights (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2013): 156-157.
193 established custom, and an option for nomadic Sámi in the border regions to select whether they preferred citizenship of Denmark-Norway or Sweden. Criteria for citizenship were also partly determined by which sovereign Sámi had previously paid taxes, which, in turn, was often negotiated between Sámi villages and government officials seeking their support for a favourable determination of the border question. By the late 19th century, however,
it was not universally accepted that culturally and ethnically foreign groups, such as the Sámi, should be allowed to cross international borders and utilize natural resources in neighbouring territories … The indigenous Sámi were neither Norwegian nor Swedish by culture or by identity … thus the Sámi were caught between Swedish and Norwegian cultural and economic penetration into [Sápmi] and the western coast during the nation- building process.608
Sámi were essential to the initial establishment of sovereign power in the Scandinavian interior, but were subjected to that power following the establishment of permanent boundaries and state- consolidation.
In addition to taxation, Sámi religious affiliation was also implicated in the national interests of the states in which they lived. While they traditionally engaged in shamanistic spiritual practices, religious conflicts in Europe caused Sámi conversion to become a growing priority for their Scandinavian rulers. In the mid-18th century, for instance, “the government was appalled to hear reports that Saami shamanistic rites were still being conducted, which it saw as a threat to national stability. According to the orthodox, Lutheran theory of governing, unity in religion was the necessary prerequisite to a functional social order.”609 Sweden and Denmark-Norway outlawed traditional practices such as use of drums and other spiritual artefacts, and launched religious and educational programs for Sámi youth intended to reduce the perceived pagan danger within their midst. Though partly motivated over concern for saving Sámi souls, religious conversion also closely aligned with the national interest, as Christian sects associated with competing European states sought to bring Sámi into their respective faiths. By the 19th century, Sámi were at the centre of a highly political struggle over religious conversion between
608 Roald Berg, “From ‘Spitsbergen’ to ‘Svalbard’. The Norwegianization in Norway and the ‘Norwegian Sea’, 1820-1925,” Acta Borealia 30, no. 2 (2013): 158. 609 Daniel Lindmark, “Colonial Encounter in Early Modern Sápmi,” in Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, eds, Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer- Verlag, 2013), 133-134.
194 the Lutheran Scandinavian states and the Orthodox Russian empire. Religious affiliation was regarded as an important symbol of status and sovereign authority due to the roles of the Swedish-Norwegian and Russian monarchs as heads of their respective state churches, and was also closely linked to control over territory. For instance, the Russian effort in the 1870s and 1880s to promote Sámi conversion by constructing Orthodox religious institutions in the border region “was considered as part of the strategy to secure the Russian Arctic Sea coast.”610 In asserting sovereign authority over Sápmi, states laid claim not only to Sámis’ lands and worldly goods through taxation, but also the political benefits of their spiritual affiliation.
Significantly, Sámi were only seen as threatening for their potential ability to affect the territorial ambitions of different states, not due to any direct violence they might inflict. There is a longstanding perception, often crossing into stereotype, of the non-violent and non-martial Sámi nature, which diffused concern among the Scandinavian rulers “who did not fear Saami hostility. Saamis were not an alien group as they had accepted status as royal subjects. There is no evidence that the Saamis ever organized forceful resistance against [state] encroachment.”611 The virtual absence of armed resistance to Scandinavian colonization is a defining feature of the incorporation of Sápmi into the Scandinavian kingdoms, and illustrates how Sámi were important for securing state’s external national security without posing an internal security threat themselves. The sole exception on the Norwegian side of the border was the Kautokeino uprising of 1852, in which a small group of Sámi killed a merchant and local sheriff before burning down the merchant’s house and kidnapping a priest and members of his family and household. These acts resulted in conflict between Sámi and non-Sámi residents of the area, leading to the combat deaths of two rebels and the subsequent sentencing of five to execution.612 Although a significant event in Sámi-Norwegian history, the Kautokeino uprising occurred late in the colonization of Sápmi and is anomalous as the only instance in which lives were lost in conflict between Sámi and the Norwegian authorities. Its immediate causes were also rooted in specific community grievances, such as the emergence of the Læstadian charismatic religious
610 Magnus Rodell, “Fortifications in the Wilderness: The Making of Swedish-Russian Borderlands around 1900,” Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2009), 75. 611 Fur 2006, 65. 612 Adriana M. Dancus, “Ghosts Haunting the Norwegian House: Racialization in Norway and The Kautokeino Rebellion,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 55, no. 1 (2014): 121-139.
195 sect and local objections against the Norwegian State Church and the state-run alcohol monopoly.613 The Kautokeino uprising was not rooted in Sámi opposition to Norwegian colonization of Sápmi, per se. As such, it reflects that colonization occurred largely without direct physical violence between Sámi and the Scandinavian states.
This section illustrates that Sámi were important for the consolidation of the modern Scandinavian states, principally because they afforded control over the fertile territory of the north-central plateau of the Scandinavian Peninsula. More broadly, it suggests the importance of understanding colonial relations of power and dominance to the formation of modern Norway and its neighbours, the construction of their national interests, and the constitution of the Sámi people. That Sápmi was brought under the sovereign power of Scandinavian kingdoms through colonization is clear: “The purpose of ‘colonisation’ was twofold: to get access and exploit the natural resources of Sápmi and to establish visible presence by populating an area, to which several different nations still laid claim.”614 Despite Sámi objections, Swedes and Norwegians established permanent settlements across Sápmi, including in areas used by Sámi for grazing and herding activities. What followed was a lengthy process of state building designed to render Sápmi legible to the sovereign gaze: land was measured, surveyed, and mapped; divided into provinces, parishes and tax lands; the landscape cultivated and domesticated; and Sámi subjected to civilizing efforts through the spread of Lutheran conversion and education “aimed at reforming the minds and bodies of the students and creating obedient subjects.”615 Confronted with an influx of Scandinavian settlers and the imposition of policies determined in far off capitals without consideration of their views or interests, “to Saami people it looked suspiciously like an invasion.”616 While colonization of Sápmi was more gradual, and in many ways more gentle, than European colonialism elsewhere around the globe, the Scandinavian states still “asserted power over the lands that they had taken by expansion, usurping Saami sovereignty.
613 Ivar Bjorklund, “The Anatomy of a Millenarian Movement,” Acta Borealia 9, no. 2 (1992): 37-46; Henry Minde, “Constructing ‘Læstadianism’: A Case for Sámi Survival?” Acta Borealia 15, no. 1 (1998): 5-25. 614 Lindmark 2013, 131. 615 Lindmark 2013, 133. 616 Fur 2006, 40.
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Their ultimate purpose was to displace and deny independence to the Saami people.”617 The colonization of Sápmi influenced the political and demographic shape of northern Europe, since it led to the expansion of the Scandinavian states and brought vast new areas under the power of modern, centralized, Christian European sovereigns.
Scandinavian colonialism also shaped the very determination of who was and is considered Sámi. The 17th century Swedish governor of Västerbotten province, Johan Graan, articulated the “parallel theory” which argued that forest Sámi could be integrated with the peasantry as subsistence farmers, while mountain Sámi and their reindeer herds should be afforded greater privileges and lighter taxation in order to maintain their loyalty in the border regions. Graan thus helped establish two important trends in Sámi identity: “First, he linked the Saami to the reindeer so that the two, human and animal, became virtually indistinguishable. Second, he argued that persons were defined by their subsistence activities and not by ethnic markers.”618 Sámi identity became tightly linked with particular “lappmark trades” – namely fishing, hunting, and reindeer herding, meaning that “Saami was not, from an administrative point of view, an ethnic or racial concept, but a technical term for the practitioner of certain trades.”619 The result was simultaneously the enshrinement of certain Sámi collective rights, such as rights to land use for reindeer herding, and the genesis of a view that unless they engage in such practices, individuals are not truly Sámi and thus unentitled to collective rights or political consideration.
Although Graan was Swedish, his views exerted influence in neighbouring countries, as well. To be sure, in the 19th and 20th centuries Sweden and Norway pursued distinct policies towards their Sámi populations, with Sweden’s “Lapps shall remain Lapps” policy segregating Sámi from the other Swedes while Norway’s policy of “Norwegianization” sought to assimilate them into the dominant society.620 However, these differences only reinforce the influence that state
617 John Wunder, “Indigenous Homelands and Contested Treaties: Comparisons of Aborigines, Saamis, Native Americans, First Nations, and Euro-Nation State Diplomatic Negotiations since 1300,” in Patricia Grimshaw and Russell McGregor, eds, Collisions of Cultures and Identities: Settlers and Indigenous Peoples (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2007), 32. 618 Fur 2006, 58. 619 Fur 2006, 59. 620 Henry Minde, “Assimilation of the Sámi – Implementation and Consequences,” Gáldu Čála: Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights 3 (2005): 1-33.
197 policy had on constituting Sámi people. Sweden’s Sámi population retained many cultural practices, but experienced significant marginalization within society. On the other hand, Norwegianization resulted in the near elimination of Sámi language use in Norway by the late 20th century, which is particularly important because use of Sámi language at home is one of the critical determinants for eligibility to vote in elections for the Sámi Parliament in Norway.621 The echoes of parallel theory, particularly the intimate connection between Sámi and reindeer herding, persist in both positive and negative ways, ranging from: stereotypes and prejudices based on essentialist conceptions of Sámi as herders and nomads; exclusive rights for Sámi to herd reindeer; enshrinement of the traditional Sámi siida – a family-based reindeer herding social unit – within the 2007 Norwegian Reindeer Herding Act; and the conception of what it means to be Sámi, both to themselves and to the dominant populations within their societies.622 The power of the Scandinavian kingdoms over Sámi was structural, institutional, and productive of significant aspects of Sámi identity, and remains relevant to this day. It has also contributed to how security is understood in northern Norway – discussed below – and understood by Sámi themselves – discussed in Chapter 7.
6.2 Changing In/Security in the Norwegian High North
Like other Arctic regions, the Norwegian High North is a socially constructed space imbued with a powerful national narrative and contested social and geographic boundaries. Norwegians identify as a northern people, making the High North an important link in the chain connecting them to their national myth as a hardy, peripheral, Viking-descended society. Once the modern Scandinavian states were established, the northern areas became a frontier for exploration and profit making rather than a theatre for conflict. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
621 Anne Julie Semb, “Sámi Self-Determination in the Making?” Nations and Nationalism 11, no. 4 (2005): 531- 549. 622 Odd Terje Brantenberg, “The Alta-Kautokeino Conflict, Saami Reindeer Herding and Ethnopolitics,” in Jens Brøsted, Jens Dahl, Andrew Gray, Hans Christian Gulløv, Georg Henriksen, Jørgen Brøchner Jørgensen, and Inge Kleivan, eds, Native Power: The Quest for Autonomy and Nationhood of Indigenous Peoples (Bergen-Oslo- Stavanger-Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget AS, 1985), 33; Mikkel Nils Sara, “Siida and Traditional Sámi Reindeer Herding Knowledge,” The Northern Review 30 (2009): 153-178; International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, “Sámi – Norway”. Accessed at http://reindeerherding.org/herders/sami-norway/ on November 11, 2015.
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Figure 7: Map of Norway and surrounding areas
Source: The Independent623
Norwegian Arctic explorers such as Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen received international acclaim and were treated as international celebrities. Both men were prominent supporters of Norwegian independence, and their Arctic voyages provided sources of national pride and
623 Accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/norway-s-wild-wonders-in-winter-from-northern-lights- and-dog-sledging-to-ice-beds-and-blissful-a6769356.html on March 8, 2016.
199 inspiration for many Norwegians. In many ways, the Arctic as a source of national pride persists today. As shown in Figure 7, geographically and geopolitically, Norway’s long Arctic coast and adjacent seabed are defining national features; while a small country by land area, if marine territory is included Norway is the 15th largest country in the world and the largest in Europe. Moreover, its extensive coast makes it a key player in circumpolar politics pertaining to issues such as maritime boundary delimitation, offshore resource extraction, and search and rescue. During the Cold War, northern Norway was one of only two places a NATO ally shared a land border with the Soviet Union, and its proximity to Russia, particularly in the Barents Sea, makes Norway the most important interlocutor between Russia and the other Arctic states.
Despite Norway’s long Arctic history, the term “High North” was first used as a way of referring to Norway’s Arctic territory only in 1973. It entered common usage in the 1980s as the English equivalent for nordområdene, or “the northern areas”, and was adopted for Norwegian government use around the turn of the millennium.624 It has since become widely employed as “the political significance of the High North has risen to heights unheard of since the Cold War.”625 Indeed, the High North is widely regarded as the single most important area of Norwegian foreign policy, and is routinely identified as a core national interest with widespread implications for other policy realms. Precisely what the High North encompasses, though, is somewhat less clear. Its scope was first defined in specific terms in Norway’s 2006 High North Strategy: “In geographical terms, it covers the sea and land, including islands and archipelagos, stretching northwards from the southern boundary of Nordland County in Norway and eastwards from the Greenland Sea to the Barents Sea and the Pechora Sea. In political terms, it includes the administrative entities in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia that are part of the Barents Co-operation.” The Strategy goes on to state that, “Norway’s High North policy overlaps with the Nordic co-operation, our relations with the US and Canada through the Arctic Council, and our relations with the EU.”626 While encompassing broad geographic and conceptual space, the
624 Odd Gunnar Skagestad, The ‘High North’: An Elastic Concept in Norwegian Arctic Policy (Lysaker: Fridtjof Nansen Institute, 2010). 625 Leif C. Jensen, “Seduced and Surrounded by Security: A Post-Structuralist Take on Norwegian High North Securitizing Discourses,” Cooperation and Conflict 48, no. 1 (2012): 81. 626 Norway 2006a, 13.
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High North and its related foreign policy domains were clearly defined. But this specific definition shifted in 2009, when the same government announced that its policy
does not give a precise definition of what it reads into the expression ‘the High North’, nor whether it limits the High North to Norwegian territory. Substantial Norwegian interests are likely to be affected by developments wherever they take place in the circumpolar and Arctic region … Norway’s strategic High North policy exists in a certain geo-political environment … [and] wider international cooperation in the High North and circumpolar areas, and with Russia in particular, should prove beneficial for our part of the country as well.627
As a result of this shift, analysts suggest “the very precise geographical definition in the 2006 document has disappeared in favour of a vaguer and more open-ended understanding of the High North.”628 Such an understanding allows Norway greater flexibility on Arctic issues that it perceives as relevant to its national interests, including many that have been characterized as threatening to Norway’s national security. By defining the High North as including but not exclusive to Norwegian territory, Norway has also reserved the prerogative to address issues beyond its borders within the framework of its High North Strategy, exemplifying the centrality of the northern areas to Norway’s foreign policy goals and national security interests.
The remainder of this section examines the contemporary and recent historical meanings of Arctic security for the Norwegian state, focusing particularly on the post-Cold War redefinition of security in the High North and the new High North Initiative launched in the mid-2000s. It suggests that despite the changes that have occurred in global and European politics over recent decades, two issues remain the core pillars of Norway’s official understanding of security in the Arctic: the enduring significance of Russia, and the extraction of Arctic resources, particularly offshore hydrocarbons. To support this argument, this section draws on secondary analysis of English-language scholarship on Norwegian foreign and security policy. In particular, it is indebted to foreign policy and discourse analyses of original government documents and Norwegian-language media conducted by Johan Eriksson,629 Leif Jensen,630 Leif Jensen and Pål
627 Norway 2009, translated in Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 442. 628 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 442. 629 Eriksson 1995. 630 Jensen 2012.
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Skedsmo,631 and Leif Jensen and Geir Hønneland.632 These and other sources support the argument that security is the central conceptual frame for Norwegian state policy in the Arctic region, and that Norwegian Arctic security interests have been constructed around the risk of Russian instability and/or invasion, and the control and extraction of petroleum resources as a cornerstone of the Norwegian economy and the maintenance of Norway’s welfare state.
6.2.1 A Post-Cold War Region
The end of the Cold War and decline in overt hostilities between the superpowers opened space for a radical reconfiguration of security politics in northern Europe. Before the late 1980s, interstate relations in the European Arctic were shaped, and limited, by the balance of power between the East and West blocs. Wary of their geographic location between the Soviet Union and Western Europe, and mindful of the destruction caused by Nazi occupation and Soviet liberation during the Second World War, Norway, Sweden, and Finland pursued inter-related foreign and security policies designed to maintain the “Nordic balance”. The objective was to preserve the strategic balance between East and West and prevent northern Europe from becoming the site of superpower conflict; thus, Norway (along with Denmark and Iceland) joined NATO, Sweden remained neutral, and Finland was allied with the Soviet Union.633 Norway – as the only European NATO member to share a land border with the Soviet Union proper – was thus directly affected by the international shift that allowed for greater openness between Russia and its Nordic neighbours. In fact, reduced tensions in the Euro-Arctic region were an integral catalyst for broader rapprochement between East and West, and helped facilitate the end of the Cold War and normalization of European security relations.634
The pivotal moment was a speech given by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at Murmansk in October 1987. Framed as part of perestroika, the Murmansk speech contained
631 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010. 632 Leif C. Jensen and Geir Hønneland, “Framing the High North: Public Discourses in Norway after 2000,” Acta Borealia 8, no. 1 (2011): 37-54. 633 Arne Olav Brundtland, “The Nordic Balance: Past and Present,” Cooperation and Conflict 1, no. 4 (1965): 30-63. 634 Åtland 2008.
202 eight separate policy initiatives designed to reduce military tensions in the Arctic and foster greater East-West trust and cooperation. Gorbachev shocked observers by announcing: “The Soviet Union is in favour of a radical lowering of the level of military confrontation in the region. Let the North of the globe, the Arctic, become a zone of peace. Let the North Pole be a pole of peace. We suggest that all interested states start talks on the limitation and scaling down of military activity in the North as a whole, in both Eastern and Western hemispheres.”635 While several of its proposals were never enacted, notably denuclearization, nonetheless the Murmansk speech “is a key discursive point of reference and stands as an epochal event in Norway’s understanding of the High North.”636 By helping to desecuritize the Arctic as an arena of Cold War competition, the speech opened space for the emergence of a cooperative regime based on peaceful negotiations over interstate disputes and the principles of international law.637 Its proposals for greater scientific and environmental cooperation, and for the political inclusion of Indigenous peoples, directly contributed to the establishment of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region and the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), the precursor to the Arctic Council. Gorbachev’s call for the Arctic to become a “zone of peace” augured a powerful animating vision for the institutional structures of the post-Cold War Arctic, in which all circumpolar states routinely and emphatically iterate their commitment to a rule-governed regional order.
In spite of improved macro-security conditions wrought by the collapse of the Soviet Union, post-Cold War Norwegian foreign policy remained focused on post-Soviet Russia. While Norway had felt threatened by Russia’s strength throughout the 19th and 20th centuries,638 in the immediate post-Soviet period it perceived its security to be threatened by Russian state weakness. Throughout the early 1990s, “the general tendency [was] to emphasize environmental hazards, ethnic conflicts and economic disparities as jeopardizing Norwegian security, while military threats [were] downplayed,”639 but Norwegian officials also explicitly articulated new
635 Quoted in Åtland 2008, 290. 636 Jensen 2012, 88. 637 Åtland 2008. 638 Jens Petter Nielsen, “The Russia of the Tsar and North Norway: ‘The Russian Danger’ Revisited,” Acta Borealia 19, no. 1 (2002): 75-94. 639 Eriksson 1995, 266.
203 threats associated with disorder on the Russian side of the border. Then-Foreign Minister Johan Jørgen Holst made clear that “new security policy challenges” had emerged along the eastern edge of Europe, namely a zone of unstable post-Soviet states, including Russia, that posed economic, ecological, and political challenges to the rest of the continent.640 Citing Holst, Jensen asserts that:
One of the mainstays of Norwegian policy on the High North – one which has remained consistent and stable since the Cold War – sought to ensure stability in northerly areas of crucial importance to Norway. Enabling de-securitization by means of de-militarization was, and still is, an explicit discursive component of Norway’s security policy. Much- stated reasons why Norway and Russia work together in the Barents region are precisely to offset military tensions, to counter the threats to the environment and to narrow the gap in living standards between the people living on the Norwegian and Russian sides of the region’s borders.641
The Soviet collapse posed new threats in the Euro-Arctic region, which remained “a core concern in Norwegian security and welfare. The Norwegian government has repeatedly stressed that, although the political climate has become much warmer, ‘the factors of insecurity have not completed faded away’ … These security problems almost exclusively have to do with what is going on in Russia, in Moscow and particularly in the northwestern parts of the country.”642 The government was clear that cessation of superpower hostilities did not entail a commensurate improvement in security threats for Norway and other European states proximate to the former Soviet Union. In fact, Norwegian policymakers lamented the lack of stability and predictability associated with the new security threats in the post-Soviet period compared to the Cold War.
Thus, in the early 1990s, as remains the case, “Norwegian action and foreign policy interests in the European Arctic depend[ed] on relations at several levels with Russia.”643 According to Eriksson, Norway’s three priorities for the Euro-Arctic region were: normalization, stabilization,
640 Quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 641 Jensen 2012, 81. 642 Eriksson 1995, 266; quoting UDI no. 9, 1994, 25. 643 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 440.
204 and regionalization.644 While regionalization pertained to the establishment of more effective Russo-European political institutions, “‘normalization’ concerns a qualitative change in relations and perceptions, [and] ‘stabilization’ is more about dealing with the actual problems that directly or indirectly threaten survival in the area. These threats include environmental pollution, the military factor, the unstable political system and the huge social and economic problems [in Russia].”645 Despite the greater military threat posed to Norway during the Cold War, it was fairly predictable, leading Norwegian leaders to perceive the unpredictability of Russian political developments in the early 1990s as more dangerous. Eriksson concludes that “it is, of course, the internal Russian political development that is to be predicted, or at least in the northern part of the country … [since] the [Norwegian] government considers the growing permeability of state borders and the spill-over potential of environmental, criminal and social problems to be a major challenge to Norwegian security.”646 Deep political engagement with Russia was seen as a requirement for establishing security in the High North.
At the same time, officials were clear that Russia should principally be engaged through multilateral contexts, as Norway’s relative size made bilateral negotiations unlikely to successfully accomplish Norwegian priorities.647 Multilateral engagement was considered crucial, but was stymied by the limited number of intergovernmental institutions in the Arctic of which Russia was a member. Although there already existed bilateral institutions such as the Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission and the Joint Norwegian-Russian Commission on Environmental Protection, no institution had a broader political mandate or included neighbouring states in the Barents or European Arctic regions. Achieving the Norwegian priorities of stabilization and normalization clearly required active efforts in the third priority of regionalization. In response, then-Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg organized a new forum for regional cooperation. The Barents Euro-Arctic Region comprised Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, their relevant sub-state levels of government, and representatives of the region’s
644 Eriksson’s analysis is of Norwegian policymakers’ discourse, based on government speeches, official documents, and interviews: “The main source is the foreign ministry’s newsletter UD Informasjon (UDI), which renders speeches, statements, and press releases,” Eriksson 1995, 266. 645 Eriksson 1995, 275. 646 Eriksson 1995, 276. 647 UDI no. 39, 1993, 9; UDI no. 2, 1994, 16; cited in Eriksson 1995, 279.
205 indigenous peoples, principally Sámi. Established in January 1993 through the Kirkenes Declaration, the Barents framework established two-tier governance with both intergovernmental (inter-state) and interregional (inter-substate) levels of decision-making, demonstrating principles of regionalization and subsidiarity consistent with the broader European integration project.
While its activities were primarily economic, security was a prime motive in driving Norwegian interest in Barents regional cooperation. The lack of institutions had posed significant challenges for Norwegian officials concerned over potential spillover effects from Russia, such that “even before the Barents scheme was initialized, the Norwegian government allocated some NOK20 or 30 million to emergency aid for Northwestern Russia.”648 Thus, for the Norwegian government, “the basic aim [was] to promote stability and thereby strengthen security by means of broad cooperation in a large number of fields.”649 Though the Barents Regional Council consists of 12 specialized committees, Eriksson observes:
Security per se does not have a special committee. However, in view of the broad Norwegian definition of security, the issue-areas of the Barents scheme support the conclusion that security is treated as a dimension [of multiple policy areas]. In addition, a brief look at the issue-areas reveals that security in the Barents framework concerns such areas that traditionally are seen as ‘low’ politics, rather than ‘high’ politics of military security and national sovereignty.650
While significant, the Barents framework was only one institution through which Norway approached post-Cold War security problems in the European Arctic; others included NATO, which shifted its focus to facilitate cooperation with Russia, principally through its Partnership for Peace programme.
Evident in Norway’s post-Cold War approach to security is its leading role in embracing a widened conception of in/security in its foreign policy. As for many other states, the 1990s was a decade of significant transition in Norwegian security and defence policy as the dramatic changes in East-West relations precipitated new global developments such as the proliferation of
648 Eriksson 1995, 277. 649 UDI no. 4, 1994, 24; cited in Eriksson 1995, 275. 650 Eriksson 1995, 271.
206 ethno-nationalist conflicts, resurgence of UN peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention, and unconventional security issues related to the “dark side” of globalization, such as terrorism and organized criminal networks trafficking illegal drugs, arms, and people.651 These new threats necessitated an “extended security concept” that encompassed new policy and institutional responses beyond established military instruments.652 According to then-prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, “the new dangers require that we act according to a wider agenda than NATO has offered so far – one that included economic and environmental aspects of stability and cooperation.”653 Her foreign minister, Bjørn Tore Godal, expanded on the theme: “The traditional concept of European security, defined in terms of East-West confrontation and with eminence given to its military dimension, has lost much of its validity and relevance with the end of the Cold War.”654 In 1998, Norway joined with Canada to form the Human Security Network, an intergovernmental group committed to promoting the human security agenda of civilian protection from sudden and chronic threats to their rights, safety, and lives.655 Norwegian foreign policy embraced a worldview whereby the security of Norway and Norwegians was no longer solely threatened by the prospect of military attack by Russia, but was endangered by various hazards located across different analytical sectors of security.
Norway embraced a widened conception of security, but also a deepened one examining referent objects above and below the level of the sovereign state. Government officials and policy statements all indicate that not only was Norway’s national security increasingly tied to regional security of the European Union and other groupings of European states, but that within Norway there existed distinct security interests and threats at the sub-state, inter-regional, and community levels, particularly in the High North.656 The Barents initiative was expressly framed around expanding and democratizing foreign and security policymaking to include a wider number of
651 Ramesh Thakur and Jorge Heine, eds, The Dark Side of Globalization (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2011). 652 UDI no. 5, 1994, 30; UDI no. 30, 1994, 17; quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 653 UDI no 39, 1993, 9; quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 654 UDI no. 4, 1994, 19; quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 655 UNDP, Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security (New York: United Nations Development Program, 1994), 23. 656 Eriksson 1995, 267.
207 sub-state actors. According to former Foreign Minister Holst, post-Cold War “foreign policy is no longer simply a question of relations between states. It is also a question of interactions between societies. It is also a question about managing common problems. Therefore it is natural that foreign policy becomes more democratically rooted, that it reflects wider commitment and a wider distribution of responsibility.”657 The shift in Norwegian policy particularly emphasized security at the community level, recognizing the distinctiveness of security concerns in northern Norway vis-à-vis the south and the greater proximity to the new threats emerging from inside Russia. Within the new regional context, “the official idea of the Barents organization is that local and regional actors should have operative roles, while the central governments are responsible for the setting-up of general frameworks and allocation of financial resources.”658 Thus, for instance, it was county-level governments in Troms and Finnmark that administered most of the Norwegian government’s NOK30 million in emergency aid to northwestern Russia, as they were on the front line of the emerging challenges. But the focus on community level in/security also opened room to identify policies and priorities emanating from Oslo as threatening to the particular interests and concerns of those living in the High North. According to one analyst at the time, “stability in the Arctic, even in the security policy sense, is also dependent on how the local population experiences its relationship to the central authorities and, moreover, to the outside world.”659 Scholars and officials were aware that post-Cold War security in the Arctic would be less affected by state-to-state interactions than by localized and regional threats, and forces and agents originating outside the Arctic.
The degree of security deepening in Norwegian security policy should not, however, be overstated. The Norwegian government continued to exercise significant control over its sub- state representatives within the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, raising doubts over how much autonomy its northern counties actually had and what extent they contributed to the formation of Norwegian foreign policy. Though lauded by some local officials, others were less enthused about the expansion of the central government’s understanding of security into new areas that potentially encroached on what had previously been local areas of authority. For instance,
657 Quoted in Eriksson 1995, 270. 658 Eriksson 1995, 268. 659 Hannevold 1994, 234.
208 though welcomed by some Sámi leaders, others claimed that by reducing Sámi to just one more set of actors in a complex and multi-level political region, the Barents integration project reflected “the final step in the colonization of Sápmi.”660 Official statements maintained a strong reservation for the importance of the national role within the new security policy architecture, and “the central government is clearly perceived as the one where ultimate, supreme power is located.”661 Thus, there are contradictory tendencies in the Norwegian approach to post-Cold War security: the state widened the actors involved in security, but the effect of constructing new and diverse issues as security-relevant had the reverse effect of bringing them under the ambit of the central government. This risk appears in the close link between Norway’s three High North foreign policy priorities; according to Eriksson, “the empirical material is not always straightforward, but it is clear enough for conclusions to be drawn that behind ‘normalization’, ‘stabilization’, and ‘regionalization’, one finds the imperative goal of security … Security is not the only objective, but seemingly the most basic one.”662 The expansion of security into new political areas had the effect of centralizing power within the state while impeding normal political engagement around certain issues.
6.2.2 A New High North Initiative
Despite these changes, until the late 1990s Norwegian national security policy remained oriented around defending against conventional military attack from the east. A 1998 defence policy Green Paper maintained that “over the long term the danger of invasion cannot be ruled out … The government therefore seeks to maintain a capacity to repel invasions over a limited time in one region of the country at a time.”663 However, by the turn of the millennium diminished Russian power, the eastward expansion of NATO, and the emergence of new security issues had largely assuaged this concern. The new security situation, particularly the primacy of
660 Quoted in Eriksson 1995, 270. 661 Eriksson 1995, 268. 662 Eriksson 1995, 273. 663 Ministry of Defence, Guidelines for the Armed Forces and Development in the Years Ahead 1999-2002 (Oslo, 1998). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 85.
209 unconventional threats emanating from Russia, was articulated by Eldbjørg Løwer in the defence minister’s annual address to the Oslo Military Society:
The effective defence of Norway [is] still … of crucial importance, but it needs to be adapted to a radically changed international situation. In the 1990s, Norway, we said, no longer faced a military threat, but developments in security policy are informed by uncertainty. The general direction of security policy today is unpredictable, but it could be just as ‘dangerous’ as the confrontations between superpowers during the Cold War. Russia’s constrained economic and social situation has gone, however, hand in hand with other dangers and risk to security in the North. The destruction of the environment, social misery, [and] organized criminality are prevalent on the Russian side of the border; they could destroy the social fabric and destabilize Norway’s immediate neighbourhood.664
As with other states that widened their foreign and security policies during the 1990s, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 abruptly disrupted Norwegian national security discourse. The post-9/11 context affected perceptions of threats from non-state violent actors, while strengthening the trend away from seeing Russia as the principal threat. Moreover, the attacks occurred at a unique moment in Norwegian politics, with parliamentary elections having taken place only the day before. New defence minister Kristin Krohn Devold explained the significance in her 2002 Oslo Military Society address:
The ripple effects of the terrorist attack have spread around the globe. The USA is leading the world in a new war against terrorism, in which Norway is also participating … We went to the ballot on September 10 to elect a new parliament. A few hours later, the political agenda changed beyond recognition … September 11 presents us with numerous challenges on how we configure and use our Armed Forces … In the present security situation today, there is little cause for Norway to see Russia as a likely threat … Continued stable development in our neighbour and increased readiness to work together [with Russia] after September 11 will benefit Norway’s security interests.665
664 Ministry of Defence, “Our Defence in an International Perspective,” Defence Minister’s Annual Speech (Oslo Military Society: January 10, 2000). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 85-86. 665 Ministry of Defence, “The Government’s Defence Policy Challenges and Priorities,” Defence Minister’s Annual Speech (Oslo Military Society, January 7 2002). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 86.
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Despite the impact of the 9/11 attacks on security discourses around the globe, for Norway the immediate policy effects were limited. Having already widened its understanding of security, the response to the emerging Global War on Terror was a renewed centralization of foreign policy decision-making in the central government compared to the diffusion of actors during the 1990s. Jensen suggests that Norwegian participation in the Global War on Terror, particularly its involvement in Afghanistan through Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, resulted in a top-down, state-centric conception of in/security concerned with a diversity of possible threats.666 Put another way, Norway’s approach to in/security was wide but not deep, focused on both conventional and unconventional threats but retaining the state and its core interests as the referent object of security policy. Combined with the Barents initiative, these policy shifts “can be read as the beginning of the end of the hegemonic discourse on the threat of invasion in Norwegian security thinking and as the lowly beginnings of the expansion of the security concept in the Norwegian High North debate.”667
The importance of the High North continued to grow despite the new focus on global terrorism, and the most pressing security concerns in Norway post-9/11 resembled those pre-9/11: disorder and spillover effects from northwestern Russia. In fact, the prevailing Arctic security concern was substantively the same to that which Norwegian authorities had struggled with for years: nuclear waste in northwest Russia and the Barents Sea. The disastrous accidental sinking of the Russian nuclear-powered submarine Kursk in 2000 highlighted the challenges of managing nuclear issues in post-Soviet Russia, especially since the vessel was only recovered with the assistance of the Norwegian military. Norwegian officials had been concerned for years over insufficiently demobilized and secured deposits of nuclear waste in and around Murmansk, a message reiterated by Foreign Minister Jan Petersen in his 2004 address to the Storting (Norway’s Parliament):
There exists in our immediate vicinity nuclear energy along with a great number of demobilized nuclear submarines, large stocks of spent reactor fuel and radioactive waste in sold and liquid form. There are hundreds of lighthouses along the coast of the Kola Peninsula run by inadequately secured and highly radioactive sources. We are
666 Jensen 2012, 87. 667 Jensen 2012, 86.
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confronted by a threat to the environment and security; it is obviously in our interests therefore to help solve the problems.668
In spite of the major shift in the global security landscape, regional issues in the Barents continued to be the single greatest source of concern for Norwegian officials, and was the foreign policy focus of both progressive and conservative governments after 2001.
In March 2003, the Conservative-led government established an expert commission to examine Norwegian High North policy. Its report, the White Paper Mot nord! (Northwards!), was the first in a series of documents outlining a comprehensive set of regional policies. The same government later produced a Green Paper, Muligheter og utfordringer i nord (Possibilities and Challenges in the North), which further expanded northern foreign policy. In autumn 2005, the Conservatives were defeated by the so-called Red-Green coalition led by the Labour Party’s Jens Stoltenberg, but the centrality of the High North endured. The three-party Soria-Moria Declaration, which laid out the new coalition’s governing priorities, further elevated the importance of the High North and reinforced the interrelated nature of northern policy issues:
The Government regards the Northern Areas as Norway’s most important strategic target area in the years to come. The Northern Areas have gone from being a security policy department area to being an energy policy power centre and an area that faces great environmental policy challenges … The handling of Norwegian economic interests, environmental interests and security policy interests in the North are to be given high priority and are to be seen as being closely linked.669
In addition to indicating the government’s intentions to expand the offshore petroleum sector in the Barents region, combat climate change, and further deepen cooperation with Russia, the Soria-Moria Declaration signalled the intention to create a holistic strategy for the northern areas, which was released in 2006 as the Norwegian Government Strategy for the High North (Regjeringens nordområdestrategi), hereafter High North Strategy. This was followed in 2009 by an interim report, New Building Blocks in the North, laying out the next steps in Norwegian
668 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Foreign Minister Jan Petersen’s Report to the Storting,” (January 27, 2004). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 87. 669 Norway, The Soria-Moria Declaration on International Policy (Oslo: Office of the Prime Minister, 2006b). Available at https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/the-soria-moria-declaration-on-internati/id438515/.
212 northern policy. Together, this high-level attention indicates “the European Arctic is at the head of the Norwegian political agenda in a way that has not been since the days of the Cold War.”670
According to the High North Strategy, the overarching goal for Norway’s Arctic policy is to “create sustainable growth and development in the High North.”671 This is similar to how Norway’s Arctic objectives were expressed by the previous government three years earlier, suggesting significant continuity in the official formulation of High North policy.672 Several studies find that policy interest in the High North was driven by the direct involvement of officials at the highest levels of government, notably former foreign minister and current Labour Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre, widely regarded as the chief architect of the High North Initiative.673 High North policy is also exceedingly diverse in its focus and comprehensive in its vision of the inter-relationship between different policy areas: “The Norwegian approach ranges across issues as diverse as safeguarding the livelihoods, traditions, and cultures of indigenous peoples in the High North, promoting people-to-people cooperation, and developing policy on future petroleum activities in the Barents Sea.”674 But despite extensive discursive mobilization around these themes, there have been limited material impacts of these new initiatives on the ground. The Norwegian government has retained many of the same High North priorities that have existed since the early 1990s, if not earlier.675 What is different, however, is the routine framing of formerly political issues as related to security, in general, and Arctic security, in particular: “It was in 2004 that, according to the textual evidence, official Norwegian security thinking on the High North underwent a substantial change, with ‘security talk’ becoming a normalized and necessary ingredient of the High North discourse.”676 Thus, while northern Norway has many issues not traditionally relevant to national or regional security, these have become increasingly securitized, such that “in the public High North discourse since 2005, it has
670 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 439. 671 Norway 2006a, 7. 672 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 442-443. 673 Jensen and Hønneland 2011, 44; Jensen 2012, 88-89. 674 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 444. 675 Jensen and Hønneland 2011, 44. 676 Jensen 2012, 88.
213 become increasingly difficult to be heard unless the word ‘security’ is uttered in the course of one’s reasoning and argumentation.”677 Northern Norway has become one of the most securitized regions in the circumpolar region, with security operating as a powerful discourse that elevates Arctic issues within the hierarchy of political importance while simultaneously legitimizing state intervention in those areas because they are discursively linked to the highest national interest.
6.3 Identifying Norway’s Arctic Security Priorities
Two core themes underpin both current and historical state understandings of security in the Norwegian High North: Russia and natural resources. Although recently reiterated as part of the new High North initiative, both issues have been intimately connected to dominant constructions of the Norwegian national interest for centuries, since before it achieved independence. In this respect, the central objectives of Norway’s Arctic policy appear constant: keeping the Russians out of its northern territory while extracting natural resources from that territory, with both goals depicted as vital to the continued survival and prosperity of the Norwegian state. Ironically, Norway shares key Arctic policy features with Russia, including “four nodal points that the Norwegian and Russian foreign policy discourses on the European Arctic evolve around[:] … energy, security, the economy and the environment.”678 All four nodes are closely interconnected in High North discourse such that not only is the area perceived as essential for Norway’s national wellbeing and national security, these areas of public policy have been securitized within broader Norwegian political discourse.
6.3.1 Fearing the Bear
Undoubtedly, the most persistent security issue in northern Norway is its proximity to Russia. The Russo-Norwegian security relationship continues to evolve, and, though improved from its
677 Jensen 2012, 92. 678 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 447.
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Cold War nadir, has deteriorated significantly as a result of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for armed separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine. Subsequently, Russia, NATO, and the EU have increased military activities in northern Europe, and all five Nordic states have announced unprecedented military cooperation, as well as expanding cooperation with the neighbouring Baltic states.679 Norway’s military establishment has quickly reinvigorated much of the High North defence apparatus that became moribund in the post-Cold War period due to the desecuritization of relations with Russia.680 Norwegian officials have been quick to dismiss prospects of invasion but emphasize caution about Russia’s actions and scepticism of its intentions. The new situation has been described as a return to the “new old normal” by the general in command of Norway’s military headquarters – itself located in the city of Bodø in the High North – and the current defence minister, Ine Eriksen Soreide, has stated that “Russia has created uncertainty about its intentions, so there is, of course, unpredictability.”681 Though they fall outside the core period under consideration in this dissertation, these developments indicate the persistent centrality of Russia to Norwegian conceptions of security, both nationally and in the High North. Though how Russia has been understood to threaten Norway’s security interests has varied over time, it has never ceased being the foremost issue for Norwegian officials.
Indeed, the concept of Russian unpredictability has recent precursors in Norwegian security discourse. Two core objectives of Norwegian High North policy in the 1990s – stabilization and normalization – have focused on managing security issues associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russian polity. Stabilization meant promoting predictable change given rapid and dramatic instability across the unravelling Soviet empire, while normalization fostered the idea of desecuritizing relations between post-Soviet Russia and the Scandinavian states, particularly Norway as a member of NATO. Since improved relations with Russia clearly served Norway’s national security interests, normalization meant restoring the non-conflictual, relationship of commercial and political interaction across the Russo-
679 Tore Andre Kjetland Fjeldsbø, “The Nordic Countries Extends Military Cooperation,” Nora Region Trends (April 13, 2014). Accessed at http://www.noraregiontrends.org/news/news-single/article/the-nordic-countries- extends-military-cooperation/87/ on June 4, 2015. 680 Andrew Higgins, “Norway Reverts to Cold War Mode as Russian Air Patrols Spike,” The New York Times (April 1, 2015). Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/world/europe/a-newly-assertive-russia-jolts-norways- air-defenses-into-action.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0 on June 4, 2015. 681 Quoted in Higgins 2015.
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Norwegian borders. So, for instance, “as part of the preparations for the Barents initiative, Norwegian historians were assigned to write reports on the common history of the Euro-Arctic area, with specific emphasis on the pre-Soviet Norwegian-Russian Pomor trade. The explicit motive was to legitimize the Barents Region as a reincarnation of pre-Soviet, or even pre-state, relations.”682 In the early 1990s, “Norway want[ed] to see the 70 years of Euro-Arctic division as a ‘historical parenthesis’,”683 a sentiment echoed a decade later when Foreign Minister Støre also depicted the Cold War as an aberration interrupting Norway’s “normal” relations with its Russian neighbour: “It used to be the case that security policy and strategic military balance pushed every other approach to the side. But historically we ought perhaps to think of the Cold War as a parenthesis, for the Iron Curtain in the North stands in contrast to commercial and social relations down the centuries.”684 Confronted with changing political contexts globally and within Russia, Norwegian leaders sought to reshape the bilateral relationship in a cooperative fashion, which they suggested better reflected the peaceful interactions of an earlier time.
However, Norwegian efforts to recreate peaceful relations with Russia invoked an idealized history that downplayed the enduring role of Russia as the Other endangering the interests and sovereignty of the Scandinavian states. Far from the Cold War being an “historical parenthesis”, the Russo-Scandinavian border has long been a site of deep tension and mistrust between, on the one hand, Norway and Sweden associated with the liberal European order, and, on the other, Russian-centred polities representing an Orthodox, Asiatic, and autocratic tradition. This divide reaches back at least to the early 19th century, when the loss of Finland by Sweden to Russia divided Finnish speakers on all sides of the borders. This created permanent Finnish-speaking minorities within Sweden and Norway who were marginalized in part over fears they would serve as a fifth column for Russia imperial expansion: “The Finnish minority and the expansionist aspirations of the Russian empire were seen as different sides of the same coin.”685 These concerns were fuelled by Russian media, which alleged concern over the treatment of the
682 Eriksson 1995, 273. 683 Eriksson 1995, 274. 684 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “An Ocean of Possibilities – A Responsible Policy for the High North,” Speech by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2005). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 89. 685 Rodell 2009, 72-73.
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Finnish minority: “Russian press headlines like ‘Oppressed Finns in Norway’ were recurrent,” and were viewed by some Norwegians as laying justifications for potential Russian aggression.686 Through the 19th century, depictions of Russia as expansionary and militarily aggressive were ubiquitous in Scandinavian discourse, and “the Russian will to expand westwards was considered a self-evident, almost natural, process.”687 This belief had important political consequences, including motivating Norway to accept the suzerainty of its more powerful Scandinavian neighbours. For instance, Sweden used fear of “the Russian danger” to convince Norway to accept forcible union as part of Sweden-Norway following the latter’s brief independence in 1814.688 Sweden-Norway also joined an alliance with Britain and France against Russia during the Crimean War, though it took no part in the hostilities and maintained neutral relations with the Russian Empire. As a result of this complex history, “Norwegian attitudes towards Russia were to a large extent formed in a Norwegian-Russian-Swedish triangle.”689
Fear of Russia resulted in significant emphasis being placed on defensibility against invasion. Following Sweden-Norway’s union in 1814, Swedish authorities decommissioned and demolished many border fortifications between the two countries that had defended Norway against Swedish attack and supported Danish-Norwegian assaults on Sweden over the preceding centuries. As a result, from the 1820s onwards the Swedish-Russian border, along with the shorter Norwegian-Russian border further north, effectively formed the common boundary separating a new Scandinavian “pluralistic security community” from their common Russian foe.690 Over the course of the 19th century, military infrastructure increased as “the borderlands between Sweden-Norway and Finland-Russia were ascribed meaning and reinforced as strategically important.”691 Northern industrial and commercial hubs were felt to be particularly
686 Rodell 2009, 78-79. 687 Rodell 2009, 72. 688 Nielsen 2002, 77. 689 Nielsen 2002, 77. 690 Roald Berg “The Nineteenth Century Norwegian-Swedish Border: Imagined Community or Pluralistic Security System?” Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2009), 94. 691 Rodell 2009, 70.
217 vulnerable; the construction of a railway linking the rich iron mines of northern Sweden with the Norwegian port at Narvik necessitated a secret Norwegian-Swedish agreement for its joint defence in case of Russian attack, despite the feelings of Norwegian nationalism prevalent at the time.692 Eventually, fear of Russian aggression led to the construction of an enormous fortification resembling “a Nordic inland Gibraltar” at the village of Boden, 1100 km north of Stockholm.693 Among the most expensive military undertakings in Scandinavian history, the fortress at Boden indicates the degree of popular and political concern over potential Russian militarism, and would become an enduring symbol of Scandinavian military capability and political independence. The decision to construct fortifications at Boden was taken in 1900, when Norway and Sweden were still joined in a political union; it was thus designed to protect both countries from Russian aggression. Although it entered service in 1907, after Norway had achieved independence, the fortress remained a hub for Cold War military activity against the Soviet Union, and only closed in 1988 as the Cold War was drawing to a close.694
The Scandinavians perceived the Russian threat as targeting the natural resources of their northern provinces, and the fortress at Boden was explicitly justified in terms of defending Sweden-Norway’s control over northern mineral wealth. An anonymous observer at the time, writing in one of many pamphlets pressuring authorities to invest in border defence, claimed “a fortified and unconquered Boden … [would be] the key to the inexhaustible ore fields of Gellivara and Luosavaera [in northern Scandinavia].”695 Fear that Russia coveted Scandinavia’s resources reflects the deep social and economic disparities on either side of the border. Though Russia was larger and more powerful, northern Scandinavian was far more prosperous. By the late 1800s, there were still only 700 inhabitants of Murmansk, the largest Russian town on the Kola Peninsula, whereas Norwegian Finnmark had four major towns with over 10,000 residents, and supported “trade, magazines, doctors, clergy, mobility, post offices, telegraphs and steam ships,” compared to the description at the time of the “lawless” Russian north as “one vast desert.” The result is that “the two sides of the northernmost parts of the Kola peninsula
692 Berg 2009, 97. 693 Rodell 2009, 70. 694 Rodell 2009, 84. 695 Quoted in Rodell 2009, 81.
218 represent two radically different forms of societies. Sweden-Norway represented civilisation; Finland-Russia manifested the opposite.”696 Thus, for at least two hundred years the defence of northern Norway (and Sweden) against the threat of Russian aggression has been understood as vital not only to territorial integrity and sovereignty, but to the prosperity of the Norwegian national economic interest, as well. Indeed, the pursuit and subsequent defence of natural resource wealth is an historical constant, and has been at the core of the national interests and security considerations of Norwegian rulers.
6.3.2 Northern Riches and the Welfare State
It is therefore unsurprising that natural resources are the second core theme in the official Norwegian understanding of security in the High North. Forestry, fisheries, and mineral wealth motivated early Scandinavian settlement in Sápmi, and defence of those resources catalyzed intra-Scandinavian conflict, before leading to cooperation to counter potential Russian claims. More recently, Norwegian policymakers have shifted their focus to another resource perceived as fundamental to both the High North and the broader national interest: petroleum. Since its inception in the 1970s, the Norwegian energy industry has relied on heavy support from government for the development of offshore hydrocarbon deposits. The state provided the bulk of funding for the initial development of offshore oil and gas in the North Sea, making it for a time the single largest site for oil investment and extraction in the world.697 As North Sea production has declined, Norwegian leaders have looked further north as High North energy extraction has become an increasingly attractive option for sustaining Norway’s economic prosperity. Given the greater geopolitical dimension of the High North compared to southern Norwegian waters, energy has shifted from being primarily a domestic and economic issue to one firmly framed as part of foreign and security policy. As stated in the High North Strategy: “The guidelines on Norwegian oil and gas policy are well established. At the same time, Norway must be capable of understanding and dealing with the more central position of energy-
696 Rodell 2009, 76. 697 Berit Kristoffersen and Stephen Young, “Geographies of Security and Statehood in Norway’s ‘Battle of the North’,” Geoforum 41, no. 4 (2010): 579.
219 related questions in the exercise of our foreign and security policy.”698 The challenges for Norway are not related to the regulation or management of the extractive process, per se, but rather to the context within which petroleum development in the High North is being pursued.
Over the past decade, offshore petroleum reserves in the High North have been framed principally in terms of the energy and economic security of the Norwegian state, and to a lesser extent that of Europe: “The official Norwegian discourse clearly rides on an energy plot, and on the perceptions of the European Arctic as a future petroleum province of regional and even global significance.”699 This has been driven by obvious enthusiasm among Norwegian officials; a major Norwegian financial newspaper reported “foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre talks so incessantly about oil and the High North, he wouldn’t look amiss in a boiler suit and hard hat.”700 According to former defence minister Anne–Grete Strøm-Erichsen, “energy supplies and energy security have become security policy, which explains why increasing international interest in the High North as an emerging energy region should come as no surprise.”701 A former minister for petroleum and energy, Ola Borten Moe, was referred to as “Oil-Ola” due to his support for energy development.702 In foreign and defence policy documents of all kinds, securing and developing northern energy reserves is identified as the core objective of the High North initiative and as integral to Norway’s national interest. Reporting to the Storting in 2007, the Ministry of Defence noted: “In the space of a very short time, energy security has become a leading policy issue. The need to ensure long-term, stable energy supplies is of vital concern to many countries. Norway’s position as a major and reliable exporter of power increases the international importance of Norway and contiguous areas. The Government will engage in a long-term policy to ensure internationally stable energy supplies and safe transport routes.”703 The policy document guiding post-Cold War and post-9/11
698 Norway 2006, 10. 699 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 448. 700 Quoted in Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 443. 701 Anne–Grete Strøm-Erichsen, Nordlys, 26 September 2007. Quoted in Jensen 2012, 90. 702 Berit Kristoffersen and Brigt Dale, “Post-Petroleum Security in Lofoten: How Identity Matters,” Arctic Review on Law and Politics 5, no. 2 (2014): 204. 703 Ministry of Defence, Proposition to the Storting no. 1 2007-2008 2007 (Oslo: 2007). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 93.
220 military restructuring is also explicit that “our strategic position is enhanced by the natural resources we manage. Oil and gas on the Norwegian continental shelf are of major strategic importance to other states.”704 Minister Støre often discussed the link between energy and security in the High North, including the importance of peaceful cooperation for resource development and its primacy over other policy areas:
Today, it is the energy question that is pressing all other issues to one side, altering the perspectives – not only those of Norway and our Russian neighbours, but of anyone with an interest in energy production, supply security and climate and environmental challenges … Energy is changing how the concept of geopolitics is understood. An industrial country which is unable to secure for itself a steady supply of energy will face considerable problems … If the development of a predictable framework around energy development fails, this region will lose its main assets, stability, transparency and peaceful progress.705
Norwegian officials saw energy extraction as intimately connected to the new security situation, supplanting the earlier focus on defence against Russian invasion. A broader approach to national security is identified as necessary because of both the growing importance of energy resources and possible threats to the energy sector. Such threats include interruption of supply and possible inter-state competition over resource deposits, which is coded reference to Russian challenges in the Barents region. Moreover, ensuring energy extraction is identified as the new context within which Norwegian security interests in the High North are to be assessed:
Norway’s security situation is characterized by a broader and more complex risk assessment, in which a comprehensive existential threat has been supplanted by uncertainty and unpredictability about the security challenges we could face. This also applies to potential security challenges in Norway’s immediate vicinity, where the strategic importance of the High North and resource management over immense stretches of sea provided central parameters for Norwegian security and defence policy.706
704 Ministry of Defence, Restructuring the Armed Forces, 2002-2005 (Oslo, 2001). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 86. 705 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “An Ocean of Possibilities – A Responsible Policy for the High North,” Speech by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2005). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 89. 706 Ministry of Defence, “Continuing the Modernisation of the Armed Forces,” Proposition to the Storting no. 42 2003-2004 (Oslo: 2004). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 87-88; emphasis added.
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Among industrialized economies, the context for linking energy, particularly hydrocarbons, and security is usually concern over supply and declining global production.707 In Norway, however, as with other petroleum producing states, energy security is often employed as a proxy for the contributions of petroleum extraction to the broader economy. Policymakers’ focus on expanding extraction in the Barents region is driven by concern that “oil production in Norway peaked in 2001 and has since declined by around 30%,” with the rate of decline exceeding earlier estimates by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and the International Energy Agency.708 The economic challenge of addressing declining petroleum production is stark; as of 2010, there were “about a thousand producing oil and gas wells [in Norwegian waters]. With an anticipated production decrease of about 20%, about 200 new producing wells will have to be drilled each year in order to maintain a relatively stable production level, a target that even the Petroleum Directorate admits is ‘not very realistic’.”709 Expanding drilling in the less developed Barents region is seen as the only viable way to maintain production levels, and thus perpetuate the energy economy, which is particularly important given the unique configuration of energy revenues and social democratic society in Norway.
From the outset, there have been strong ties between Norwegian oil production and maintenance of the welfare state. This is enshrined in the “10 Oil Commandments’” passed by the Storting in 1971, which paved the way for the establishment of Statoil as a state-owned oil company by unanimous parliamentary vote in 1972. The public nature of the Norwegian energy sector has led to a powerful government- and industry-propagated narrative that “‘what is good for the oil industry is good for Norway’ … This link has frequently been endorsed by government officials, who have pointed to the importance of oil and revenues in establishing one of the most comprehensive welfare systems in the world.”710 For instance, in 2007 the state’s net rents from the petroleum industry comprised approximately 31% of total government revenues, and are “seen as an indispensable part of the government’s national pension fund.”711 The so-called
707 See Benjamin Sovacool, ed, The Routledge Handbook of Energy Security (London: Routledge, 2011). 708 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580. 709 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580 710 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 208. 711 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580
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“Norwegian petroleum fairy tale” has become a widely used metaphor for the supposedly virtuous relationship between oil rents, welfare provision, and inter-generational justice.
However, the national consensus around the benefits of petroleum extraction has become increasingly strained over proposed expansion into more remote and ecologically sensitive regions, particularly those with local economies based on vulnerable renewable resources. The most prominent of these regions, Lofoten-Vesterålen-Senja (LoVeSe), has an estimated 3 billion barrels of recoverable oil located offshore but has existed under a petroleum moratorium since 2001.712 One study of local attitudes towards petroleum development in LoVeSe found that despite similar levels of support as other Norwegians, and a recent increase in support for the proposition that opening up new areas for oil and gas development in the North is a “prerequisite for the maintenance of the welfare state in the future,” opposition to drilling in LoVeSe remains significant, and is credited with stopping government plans to commence drilling.713 The authors suggest that debates over oil and gas threaten many Norwegians’ identity by calling into question the environmental cost of Norwegian national prosperity and challenging the sustainability of the welfare state. However, ongoing government efforts to secure support for offshore extraction have made LoVeSe the front line in the battle over expanded petroleum extraction and a key focal point in articulations of energy security in the High North.
Driven by such challenges to the dominant national interest, the extent to which Norway prioritizes petroleum development is evident in collusion between government and industry to maximize public support for expanded hydrocarbon extraction. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the establishment of Konkraft, a high level forum “with the objective of developing joint strategies between industry and state representatives to make the Norwegian shelf more globally ‘competitive’. For the industry that means accessing ‘prospective acreage’, primarily the unexplored hydrocarbon deposits in the Barents Sea and the [LoVeSe] region in particular.”714 Konkraft facilitates quarterly closed-door meetings between politicians and industry chaired by the Minister of Petroleum and Energy, and has served as the venue through
712 For discussion of the arguments behind the moratorium see Arve Misund and Erik Olsen, “Lofoten-Vesterålen: For Cod and Cod Fisheries, but not for Oil?” ICES Journal of Marine Science 70, no. 4 (2013): 722–725. 713 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 204-208. 714 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580.
223 which state officials provide information on government policy and upcoming decisions. A 2008 documentary on the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation revealed that the senior Konkraft bureaucrat working in the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy “had secret meetings to advise [industry] on how to run an effective lobby campaign. For example, he advised them to improve their environmental image and concentrate on influencing mayors in northern Norway and politicians in Parliament.”715 Komkraft illustrates the access enjoyed by industry to the highest levels of the Norwegian state. Given their shared interest in expanding fossil fuel extraction while maintaining a pro-environmental image, “the state is not circumscribed by transnational oil companies but is enrolled as an active participant in efforts to make new hydrocarbon fields accessible.”716 The state has expended considerable effort to encourage and sustain public support for the energy sector, particularly expanded operations in the High North, even as various actors have challenged the sustainability of the “petroleum fairy tale”.
Undeterred, the Norwegian government has attempted to naturalize the prospect of offshore drilling in the High North, including LoVeSe. At least four tactics of “strategic advancement” have been deployed as a means of increasing the area open to offshore drilling while minimizing or deflecting criticism of the local and global environmental impacts of the Norwegian energy industry.717 These tactics include, first, opening new offshore areas incrementally, starting with the least ecologically sensitive but reserving the possibility for later expansion into areas that are currently protected. Maps produced by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate have gradually included new areas within the Barents petroleum region that were previously omitted or considered as environmentally protected areas.718 Second, support for petroleum development in the Barents was encouraged by emphasizing natural gas deposits rather than oil, notably the Snow White (Snøhvit) liquefied natural gas (LNG) project near Hammerfest that was the first of
715 NRK Brennpunkt. “Spillet om oljen [Game about oil],” Documentary (March 22nd, 2008). Available at www.nrk.no/brennpunkt. 716 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 581. 717 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 212-213. 718 Norwegian Petroleum Directorate 2014. Maps available at http://www.npd.no/en/Maps/Fact-maps/.
224 its kind above the Arctic Circle. Described as “the future of the European energy supply,”719 the Snow White project had been touted as a cleaner, next generation form of hydrocarbon extraction that would lower tailpipe emissions and capture and store carbon at the point of extraction. But the project has been plagued by problems since production began in 2006, with numerous challenges related to both gas extraction and higher than expected carbon emissions causing many to question its viability as a model for the Norwegian energy sector.720 Third, in light of the Snow White project, government emphasized onshore economic benefits in related sectors, particularly economic ripple effects of future LNG projects. Following the high cost and poor environmental outcomes associated with Snow White, however, several LNG and related carbon and capture projects were subsequently cancelled. Fourth, government emphasized the role and growth of future technologies in making it possible to extract petroleum from ecologically sensitive areas. Taken together, this strategy, “while acknowledging the vulnerability and uniqueness of the areas in question, has the important aim of excluding the possibility of not drilling at all, as it is sought ontologically placed [sic] within the realm of petro-politics – and not, for instance, environmental politics or a more general framework of multiple resource management.”721 As discussed in Chapter 3, exclusion is a central function of securitization; the successful construction of a political issue as a security issue has the effect of removing it from the realm of normal political debate and reserving a particular role for government in the pursuit of those goals considered to be so important they affect the security of the state as a whole. Thus, the framing of the High North in terms of “energy security” restricts the policy possibilities available in that region. Debate is restricted to circumscribed topics such as where to drill or how quickly, while debate over whether to drill is rendered unavailable.
What the Norwegian government and petroleum industry are combatting through these efforts is fairly clear. Despite the ongoing narrative power of the petroleum fairy tale, “a series of WWF [World Wide Fund for Nature] reports, and other forms of local activism, are rescripting the
719 Alexnder Jung, “Snow White’s Liquid Gold: Gas from Norway Could Reduce Dependency on Russia,” Die Spiegel International (January 3, 2007). Accessed at http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/snow-white-s- liquid-gold-gas-from-norway-could-reduce-dependency-on-russia-a-448574.html on November 10, 2015. 720 “Norway’s Energy Part 1: Rough Waters Ahead for Statoilhydro,” Aftenposten (March 3, 2008 [October 12, 2011]). Accessed at http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/06032008--NORWAYS-ENERGY- PART-I-ROUGH-WATERS-AHEAD-FOR-STATOILHYDRO-5105902.html on November 10, 2015. 721 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 212. Emphases in original.
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Norwegian Arctic as an ‘ecoregion’ that is sustained by a complex network of human and non- human relations and requires new trans-institutional and transnational forms of collaboration.”722 Thus, in addition to geopolitical and military challenges from Russia, political opposition to Arctic petroleum development from NGOs, civil society groups, and local communities is also framed as a security issue. In particular, direct action or activist campaigns that threaten production are constructed as dangerous within the framework of energy security. The Ministry of Defence makes clear that threats to the petroleum sector also threaten the national economy, and fall within the purview of security policy: “The sustainability of the petroleum sector is more fragile than ever, and the impact of even minor interruptions will affect not only the economy but security as well.”723 The very use of the term “sustainability” in the context of hydrocarbon extraction represents an instance of “discourse co-optation”, a mechanism through which a particular discursive meaning is undermined by a counter-discourse that serves to re-establish the hegemony that the original meaning had sought to alter.724 In this case, “sustainability”, as a term that originally entered widespread use to denote the need to preserve a natural environment able to meet present and future human needs, has been coopted and redeployed to promote policy objectives that will result in negative environmental effects for future generations.725
Thus, security in the Norwegian Arctic is explicitly tied to control over hydrocarbon resources and their extraction. Energy is the cornerstone of all recent Norwegian Arctic policies, such that “the High North has been revitalized by a discourse on the prospects that the Barents Sea could become a new, strategically important petroleum province.”726 This signals an important departure from post-Cold War Norwegian security policy, which emphasized de-securitizing the High North in order to normalize relations with Russia. In his study of High North security discourses, Jensen finds that “data from the 1990s indicate a persistent effort by participants in official discourses to de-securitize and de-politicize energy and petroleum policy, thereby
722 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 583. 723 Ministry of Defence, “A Defence for the Protection of Norway’s Security, Interests and Values,” Proposition to the Storting no. 48 2007-2008 (Oslo: 2008). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 90. 724 Leif C. Jensen, “Norwegian Petroleum Extraction in Arctic Waters to Save the Environment: Introducing ‘Discourse Co-optation” as a new analytical term,” Critical Discourse Studies 9, no. 1 (2012): 29-38. 725 See the discussion of human-caused environmental change and security in Chapters 1 and 3. 726 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 443.
226 maintaining a clear line of separation between it and security and foreign policy.”727 Driven by global energy demand and increasingly contentious politics over global energy resources and perceived scarcity of supply, this approach was gradually abandoned post-2000: “As concerns for energy as a strategic and scarce resource grew, the High North once again became a subject of high politics. This flew in the face of the stated objectives of Norway’s post-Cold War security and foreign policy.”728 The construction of the High North as a key region for Norwegian security has become prevalent within official security discourse, and informs all aspects of state policy towards the region. Moreover, the intimate connection between energy and economic security means that the wellbeing of all Norwegians is implicated in the continued extraction of northern hydrocarbons, in spite of the ambiguous situation on the ground with respect to local attitudes towards expanded petroleum production. Thus, “quite contrary to established political conventions in Norway, energy becomes part of a politicized, even securitized, discourse.”729 Ironically, the emphasis on energy highlights a major commonality with respect to Arctic security between Norway and Russia. Both countries “regard the European Arctic’s most important feature to be its prospects as a resource province, with more or less emphasis on security.”730 Energy is seen to be so important to the economy that it warrants securitization and elevation to the apex of policy priority, and challenges to hydrocarbon extraction become synonymous with challenges to the national interest and national wellbeing.
6.4 Conclusion
This chapter argues that successive governments of Norway have held an understanding of security in the High North that consistently identifies the centrality of Russia and natural resource extraction, particularly petroleum, to Norwegian Arctic security interests. Though this conception of security in the Norwegian Arctic is longstanding, in fact predating modern Norway as an independent state, under its new High North Initiative Norway has undertaken a significant
727 Jensen 2012, 81. 728 Jensen 2012, 81. 729 Jensen 2012, 94. 730 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 448.
227 re-securitization of the region since 2005. This series of policies mark a shift away from the key post-Cold War objective of de-securitizing the Arctic region and normalizing cooperative relations with Russia towards a conception of Norwegian security that views Russian aggression as potentially threatening and energy extraction as vital to Norwegian prosperity. Rather than a Cold War aberration, securitization of the High North contra Russia has returned after a brief hiatus, as “the machinery of power seems to have re-naturalized security discourses, forcing us to ‘speak security’ to gain entry to the High North discourses … ‘Security’ seems crucial as a ‘password’ which needs to be uttered to ‘gain access’ to the central discourses on the High North.”731 By contrast, as discussed in Chapter 4, the Canadian state may articulate a similar meaning of security within its Arctic policies, but security has not been elevated as a requisite discourse through which to discuss Canadian Arctic issues.
This conception of security in the High North stretches back to the formation of the modern Scandinavian states. Though driven in large part by Russia, it is also a story that centrally involves the Sámi people living in their transnational homeland of Sápmi. Sámi were integral in establishing conditions of sovereign control and national security in the disputed border regions prior to the consolidation of the separate Scandinavian kingdoms, and their labour was vital for early efforts to extract natural resources for export south. At the time, Sámi were clearly a subject people who were used instrumentally by the state in the pursuit of its national interests, often to the detriment of Sámi themselves. Today, the national wellbeing promised through Norwegian securitization of natural resource extraction is presumed to include both ethnic Norwegians and Norwegian Sámi without distinction. However, as with other indigenous peoples, Sámi leaders and institutions often assert a distinct set of interests from the dominant society, including with respect to security. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 7, Sámi do not necessarily share the official Norwegian understanding of security in the High North, or view it as consistent with their own security priorities. Rather, security discourse in Norway, as in Canada, often appears to be set in the South in accordance with Southern interests and values, excluding those who actually inhabit the northern regions.
731 Jensen 2012, 91-94.
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Chapter 7 7 Explaining In/Security in Norwegian Sápmi
This chapter examines the meaning of security for Sámi in northern Norway. As with Inuit in Canada, Sámi articulate a distinct and conflictual understanding of in/security, and its relationship to environmental change, to that employed by the Norwegian state. However, while there are similarities between the understandings of Arctic security identified by Sámi and Inuit political actors, unlike Inuit, Sámi in Norway have not generally sought to securitize their most pressing priorities. Though Sámi political actors express concern over various hazards to their traditional land use and livelihoods, culture, and political autonomy, these issues are usually not described using securitizing language, and are rarely characterized as existential issues for Sámi survival. By and large, these issues remain situated within normal politics, with little of the existential connotation invoked by security language.
The first section outlines the contemporary status of Sámi within Norwegian society, including the emergence of Sámi as organized political actors. The second section examines Sámi understandings of Arctic security, and suggests their security can be identified as: maintenance of ecological viability for traditional land-use, preservation and revitalization of Sámi culture and language, and maintenance of Sámi political autonomy as a self-determining indigenous people within the context of the unitary Norwegian state. However, while it is possible to define what security means for Sámi in Norway, Sámi leaders and institutions have not acted as securitizing actors employing security language to elevate their priority issues within Norwegian politics. The third section offers three reasons why Sámi have not sought to securitize their political concerns: the relatively weaker impacts of human-caused climate change in the Scandinavian Arctic; the high degree of Sámi social inclusion within Norwegian society; and the enduring influence of a threatening Russia to the construction of in/security within Norwegian discourse.
7.1 Sámi in Norway
Historically, Sámi were a largely pastoralist and agrarian people inhabiting rural areas and small communities across the region of Sápmi, comprising territory in modern Norway, Sweden,
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Finland, and a small number on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. As described in Chapter 6, the traditional Sámi territory of Sápmi was slowly colonized and incorporated into the Scandinavian states from the 16th century onwards. Today, Sámi number around 100,000 people across all three states, and are the only indigenous people officially recognized by European political institutions. Approximately half of all Sámi are Norwegian, and of a total Norwegian Sámi population of some 50,000 “less than 10% of the Saami are directly involved in reindeer herding; most are farmers, labourers, or civil servants. Saami practicing fishing and farming combinations along the coast have mostly abandoned the Saami language and are practically indiscernible from their Norwegian neighbours.”732 Despite this, Sámi across Fennoscandia elect separate political institutions – called the Sámi parliaments – whose functions vary, but which operate as a mix of representative indigenous institutions, quasi-government agencies responsible for Sámi affairs, and government lobby groups.733
Today, most Sámi in Norway have migrated from villages to larger cities, with the largest Sámi community now residing in Oslo. These major demographic and cultural shifts in the Sámi population are largely attributable to the state policy of “Norwegianization” during the 19th and 20th centuries. In general, this policy was intended to distinguish Norway from the Swedish and Danish political and cultural influences exerted over preceding centuries. In the context of the High North, however, Norwegianization had a specific meaning: the coercive assimilation of Sámi, Finnish-speaking minorities, and isolated rural communities into the dominant Norwegian nation.734 In this respect, Norwegianization refers to “state efforts to protect the Norwegian ‘tribe’ in a part of the realm dominated by aboriginal Sámi, immigrants from adjacent Finland (called ‘Kvens’), and Norwegian fishermen and smallholders … It was a policy encompassing a variety of harsh measures aimed at forcing the inhabitants of the multi-ethnic north … to reject their cultural identity and perceive themselves as Norwegians.”735 The degree of assimilatory
732 Sidsel Saugestad, “Regional and Indigenous Identities in the High North: Enacting Social Boundaries,” Polar Record 48, no. 246 (2012): 233. 733 Eva Josefsen, “The Saami and the National Parliaments: Channels for Political Influence,” Promoting Inclusive Parliaments: The Representation of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Parliament (New York: United Nations Development Program, 2010). 734 Minde 2005. 735 Berg 2013, 157.
230 policies varied across the Scandinavian states: Sweden “pursued a segregation policy vis-à-vis the Reindeer Saami and an assimilation policy vis-à-vis the other Saami, while Norway stuck to the assimilation policy for all Saami.”736 This means that in spite of its relatively larger Sámi population, Norway experienced a less visible Sámi presence over the 20th century due to its greater emphasis on assimilation and persecution of Sámi cultural practices.
This situation began to shift in the 1970s, with the growth of social movements calling for greater recognition of Sámi cultural identity and indigenous rights, as well as regional identity movements for non-Sámi in the High North.737 Reflecting similar trends between colonized peoples and their colonizers elsewhere in the world, Sámi began to articulate claims as distinctive collective rights-holders based on prior occupation of their traditional territories,.738 Though initially rejected by many Norwegians, Sámi slowly gained legal recognition and succeeded in affecting significant political changes, though not without conflict with the Norwegian state. The central issue between Sámi and Norway has remained fairly constant: decision making over land use in the traditional reindeer herding areas of Sápmi. In effect, the question over several centuries has been who has authority over how communal grazing lands and other rural areas should be used, and what is the appropriate balance between economic benefits for the country as a whole versus costs principally borne by Sámi and others living in the High North.
The most famous dispute occurred over the government’s decision to construct a hydroelectric dam on the Alta River, which threatened to destroy a nearby Sámi community and flood large areas of reindeer herding land. From 1979-1982, an alliance of Sámi and environmental activists campaigned against the proposal, including mass civil disobedience at the dam construction site, a hunger strike outside the Storting, Norway’s parliament, and the occupation of the prime minister’s office by 14 Sámi women.
736 Josefsen 2010, 6. 737 Saugestad 2012. 738 Henry Minde, “Sámi Land Rights in Norway: A Test Case for Indigenous Peoples,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 8, no. 2 (2001): 107-125.
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In these protests, which went on for several weeks, the environmental movement and the indigenous population of Norway, the Sámi, with additional support from the academic community and local fishermen, tried to stop the building of a major hydropower plant project that would have taken land from the Sámi community. The Sámi took their case all the way to the Norwegian Supreme Court and, although they ultimately lost, this struggle still represents the biggest conflict over land and energy resources in Norwegian history. One of the most significant results of these protests was an increased awareness of and political support for Sámi rights in Norway … The general political attitude was that the conflict had come at a very high political cost that must be avoided in the future.739
The Alta controversy signified the emergence of Sámi as modern political actors in Norway, but also brought Sámi into Norwegian security discourse in news ways. In evaluating the merits of the proposed hydroelectric dam, the Norwegian government eventually assessed two questions pertaining to the core security question of survival: whether the impacts of the dam threatened the survival of reindeer herding in that part of Finnmark, and whether Sámi culture was threatened by eroding the practice of reindeer herding.740 The government, supported by a subsequent ruling of the Supreme Court, determined the answer to both questions was no. Prime Minister Odvar Nordli released a statement that sought to reframe the question of Sámi interests in terms of a liberal problematic of security highlighting the importance of modern economic development for Sámi survival:
In the debate over the Alta case, too much importance has been placed on the effects of the pastoral [reindeer herding] sector. Approximately 10 per cent of the Saami in Finnmark are depending on reindeer herding, whereas the remaining 90 per cent are depending on other sources of livelihood in the county. The cultural basis of this population can be threatened in earnest if we cannot manage to secure development and progress in Finnmark.741
In addition to this reframing of Sámi collective security interests, the Alta conflict was notable because of the depiction of protestors as threatening public order and the interests of the
739 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 579. 740 Brantenberg 1985. 741 Quoted in Brantenberg 1985, 38-39.
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Norwegian state. On October 12, 1979 more than 200 anti-dam protesters were arrested in Oslo when police cleared the encampment that had been established in front of the Storting, while, nearly 2000 kilometres north, protestors continued to block access to the dam construction site.742 Tensions remained high over the following days as rumours circulated that police planned to clear the blockade, as well, but on October 15 the government announced it was temporarily halting the project and the police stood down. However, later investigation found the Norwegian Defence Command had issued an operational directive on October 9 instructing the Armed Forces to provide 200 soldiers and logistical support including “16 trucks, two military buses, eight jeeps, military police, ambulances and two helicopters” for a 500-man police operation to clear the blockade.743 The operation was scheduled for October 17, and was only cancelled at the direction of Prime Minister Nordli over concerns for the potential fallout, and questions about the legal basis for dam construction without sufficient consultation with Sámi herders. Police action continued, however, and over the winter of 1980-81 more than 600 officers from across the country were deployed to Alta in the largest peacetime mobilisation in Norwegian history, representing 10 per cent of the total number of police in Norway.744 More than 2000 people subsequently demonstrated against the police presence in Alta, double the number who actually participated in blockading the construction site. Government and Sámi sources later reported that in 1980-81 individuals from the Irish Republican Army and the far left Norwegian Workers Communist Party (AKP) also offered assistance to the Sámi organizations leading the protests, including conspiring to bomb power generation utilities across Norway.745 While protest leaders rejected this offer, the Alta conflict indicates a renewed construction of Sámi as potentially threatening the Norwegian state, and interfering in the Norwegian national interest. To a certain extent, as with the earlier period of Scandinavian state formation,
742 William Lawrence, “Saami and Norwegians protest construction of Alta Dam, Norway, 1979-1981,” Global Nonviolent Action Database. Accessed at http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/saami-and-norwegians-protest- construction-alta-dam-norway-1979-1981 on September 30, 2015. 743 Aftenposten, “Ville bruke soldater i Alta-aksjon [Would use soldiers in Alta action],” (October 19, 2011). Accessed at http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Ville-bruke-soldater-i-Alta-aksjon-6393917.html on September 30, 2015. Translated using Google. 744 Svein S. Andersen and Atle Midttun, “Conflict and Local Mobilization: The Alta Hydropower Project,” Acta Sociologica 28, no. 4 (1985): 319. 745 Nordlys, “AKP ville hjelpe samene med sabotasje [AKP would help Sámi with sabotage],” (August 9, 2003). Accessed at http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/akp-ville-hjelpe-samene-med-sabotasje/s/1-79-722508 on September 30, 2015. Translated using Google.
233 maintaining Sámi support and preventing further defections was also viewed as important for maintaining national unity and re-establishing the status quo ante.
In the wake of the Alta controversy, Sámi became a potent force in Norwegian and Scandinavian politics. Though small in number, Sámi engaged in multiple processes of politicization in northern Norway and across northern Europe, seeking state recognition of their collective rights, establishment of distinct representative institutions, and Sámi representation within regional and European institutions. In 1989, Norway signed the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, also known as ILO Convention 169, and in 1990 became the first state in the world to ratify it. Sámi were included in negotiations over the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), one of the key political openings for post-Cold War rapprochement between Russia and the West, and in 1996 the transnational Saami Council became one of the original Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council. The establishment of separate Sámi parliaments in Norway, Sweden, and Finland between the late 1980s and mid- 1990s served as acknowledgement of both legitimate Sámi demands for separate institutions and of the de facto separation of the Sámi people into distinct national constituencies.746 At the highest levels, the Norwegian government has recognized the historical rights of Sámi over Sápmi, both through its signing of ILO Convention 169 and in the government’s 2001 White Paper on Sámi Policy, which explicitly states that “the Kingdom of Norway is based on the territory of two peoples.”747 Sámi demands to exercise greater autonomy and self-determination have resulted in new institutional arrangements, particularly following the promulgation of the Finnmark Act in 2005, which significantly altered the administration of public lands in northern Norway and further enshrined certain collective land rights.748
746 Else Grete Broderstad, “The Promises and Challenges of Indigenous Self-Determination: The Sami Case,” International Journal 66, no. 4 (2011): 893-907; Rauna Kuokkanen, “Self-Determination and Indigenous Women – ‘Whose Voice Is it We Hear in the Sámi Parliament?’.” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 18, no. 1 (2011): 39-62. 747 Translated in Saugestad 2012, 234. 748 Broderstad 2011. For a critical perspective on the limitations of the Finnmark Act for the promotion of Sámi rights see Øyvind Ravna, “The Fulfilment of Norway’s International Legal Obligations to the Sámi – Assessed by the Protection of Rights to Lands, Waters and Natural Resources,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 21, no. 3 (2014): 325-327.
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It is worth noting that compared to some indigenous peoples Sámi have generally pursued their political claims against the Norwegian state in a collaborative, rather than confrontational, manner. Indeed, some Sámi view “adaptability” and “accommodation” as their defining qualities, and as largely responsible for the perpetuation of Sámi culture in the face of Scandinavian colonialism.749 Scholars have proposed the long history of non-violent colonial interaction and the more recent influence of the Norwegian welfare state as explanatory factors for why Sámi have embraced political tactics of diplomacy and negotiation.750 However, others have been critical of the Sámi approach to politics, suggesting that reluctance to confront the state has compromised their goals of autonomy and self-determination, and resulted in Sámi institutions that mirror those of their Nordic colonizers.751 The creation of the Sámi Parliaments as consultative, rather than truly self-governing entities, is seen as emblematic of the high degree of deference in Sámi-Nordic relations. One study of Sámi women leaders found that some believed “Sámi today are afraid of autonomy and of talking about ‘governing our own territory and nation like other nations’ … The hundred years of assimilation policies had given rise to today’s fears about autonomy.”752 From this perspective, comparatively weaker rights over traditional lands and their use, lack of authority over natural resources, and emphasis on cultural rather than political autonomy are results of a Sámi political disposition that is collaborative to the point of conformism, or even complacency.753
The development of Sámi politicization across state borders raises various questions in post-Cold War northern Europe. Among these is the complicated issue of how security should be understood and pursued in the context of de-securitized relations between the European Arctic states and Russia, and the growth of sub- and transnational identities with distinct interests and
749 Quoted in Rauna Kuokkanen, “Indigenous Peoples on Two Continents: Self-Determination Processes in Saami and First Nation Societies,” European Review of Native American Studies 20, no. 2 (2006): 4. 750 S.E. Olsson and D. Lewis, “Welfare Rules and Indigenous Rights: The Sámi People and the Nordic Welfare States,” in J. Dixon and R.P. Scheurell, eds, Social Welfare with Indigenous Peoples (Routledge: new York, 1995), 141-187. 751 Kuokkanen 2006, 4. 752 Kuokkanen 2011, 46. 753 Peter Jull, “Through a Glass Darkly: Scandinavian Sámi Policy in Foreign Perspective,” in Odd Terje Brantenberg, Janne Hansen, and Henry Minde, eds, Becoming Visible: Indigenous Politics and Self-Government (Tromsø: Centre for Sámi Studies, University of Tromsø, 1995).
235 political representation at the local, national, regional, and international levels. In the early 1990s, some analysts specifically predicted that the political changes occurring in Scandinavia might manifest in the articulation of distinct security interests. In a detailed study of post-Cold War security in the Barents region, Johan Eriksson predicted “regionalization and transnationalization may lead to a situation where non-state units claim security interests of their own.”754 The growing awareness of specific Arctic issues such as environmental change, contamination of the food system, degradation of traditional herding lands, and the assertion of indigenous languages and cultures as threatened by the assimilatory pressures and policies from their southern metropoles informed Eriksson’s view that, in the post-Cold War era Indigenous peoples, including Sámi, “definitely have their own specific security problems.”755 In the 1990s, the articulation of distinct indigenous understandings of in/security would contrast with the shift in how the Norwegian state viewed its security interests in a transforming Arctic.
7.2 Sámi Understandings of In/Security
The construction of Arctic security within Norwegian official policy in terms of Russia and natural resources, as described in Chapter 6, has certain parallels to the construction of Arctic security within Canadian government policy. Likewise, on the surface it appears Sámi in northern Norway share similar understandings of the meaning of security to Inuit in northern Canada. In examining how Sámi in Norway have articulated the meaning of Arctic security, I conducted an analysis of primary texts similar to the one pertaining to Inuit described in Chapter 4. I examined 46 documents published between 2001-2011, including an exhaustive search of relevant online English-language documents available from the Saami Council and the Gáldu Research Center for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Kautokeino, Norway. 20 (43%) of these documents contained securitizing moves, as shown in Appendix 2. Of the securitizing moves, 65% identified the environment, generally, and 45% climate change, specifically, as threatening, suggesting the central importance to Sámi of maintaining local and regional
754 Johan Eriksson, “Security in the Barents Region: Interpretations and Implications of the Norwegian Barents Initiative,” Cooperation and Conflict 30, no. 3 (1995): 278. 755 Eriksson 1995, 271-272.
236 environments. 100% of securitizing moves that identified climate change as a threat identified traditional livelihoods, particularly reindeer herding, as a primary referent object. 85% of the securitizing moves identified culture as a referent object, and 20% identified autonomy or self- determination. Considering the integral link between reindeer herding and Sámi culture, there was significant overlap between culture and traditional livelihoods as referent objects, with threats to the former generally considered to endanger the latter.
These securitizing moves specify various threats perceived as endangering Sámi traditional territories, cultural practices, and subsistence livelihoods. When climate change was specified, threats included: the private sector, the national government, assimilation, and climate change itself. When the environment more generally was specified, threats included private sector activities, the host country, and assimilation. Securitizing moves were often very specific; for instance, a majority of examples that indicated the private sector as a threat cited specific industrial developments and named relevant corporations. Thus, Sámi organizations draw explicit links between the pro-development policies of the national government and private sector encroachment and cultural assimilation, particularly as a result of mining and other extractive industries that many Sámi recognize as threatening to their collective wellbeing. Other Sámi securitizing moves outside this sample also invoke the collective and existential nature of the threats in question. For instance, Anders Oskal, director of the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, describes “climate change as an incredible challenge we all face as a civilization.”756 Speaking before the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Aili Keskitalo, President of the Sámediggi, the Sámi Parliament of Norway, stated: “The degradation of the environment in Inuit and Saami traditional territories caused by e.g. pollution, non-sustainable natural resource extraction and climate change constitute a great threat to their traditional lifestyles and culture.”757 Overall, the pattern seems quite clear: Sámi in Norway situate the natural environment, and its integral role in maintaining traditional cultural practices, at the heart of what security means in their Arctic homeland.
756 Anders Oskal, “ICR Director Address to Arctic Frontiers,” (January 17, 2015). Accessed at http://reindeerherding.org/tag/anders-oskal/ on June 11, 2015. 757 Aili Keskitalo, “Address before the Sixth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,” (May 14, 2006). Accessed at http://www.galdu.org/web/index.php?artihkkal=356&giella1=nor on March 19, 2014.
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The preceding analysis has several methodological limitations. Foremost among these is linguistic; unsurprisingly, Sámi organizations in Norway publish most of their documentation in Norwegian or one of three recognized Sámi languages, complicating the search for securitizing moves. While many notable documents or policy statements are also published in English translations, the total sample of texts and speech acts available in English is much smaller than for the comparable study of Inuit discussed in Chapter 4. Moreover, those written in English tend to be directed at international audiences, and thus may differ in their chosen discourse from the types of speech acts directed by Sámi organizations at the Norwegian government or other regional actors. This also raises the issue of representation, since those organizations that do publish in English tend to be those representing Sámi as a single unified people, rather than Sámi within Norway alone. For instance, the Saami Council, representing Sámi in all three Fennoscandian states and Russia, publishes most of its documents in English, whereas the Sámediggi does not. Thus, the above analysis is not limited to Sámi in Norway, but captures securitizing moves being made on behalf of Sámi across national boundaries. Moreover, these moves are directed at international audiences such as the Arctic Council and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, rather than specifically at the Norwegian government. It is thus impossible to interpret them as securitizing moves made on behalf of Sámi in Norway to the Norwegian government in a specific effort to affect Norwegian public policy. Since the question of the audience is central to securitization theory, which audience particular securitizing moves are made to will have significant effects on securitizing policy outcomes. An authoritative audience is not expected to respond to securitizing moves that are not made to it, and directing securitizing moves at multiple audiences weakens the imperative for one actor to respond.
Moreover, the choice of which language and discourse to employ is a contextual one, and the choices made when communicating Sámi issues internationally may well differ from those made for domestic political consumption. The fact that securitizing moves are made in English by organizations representing people whose primary language is not English also raises the debate over whether securitization theory travels effectively beyond English-speaking political communities.758 In this case, translation of meaning is further complicated because of the vagaries of Norwegian language itself, and differing views over what certain terms mean. Jensen
758 Wilkinson 2007; Stritzel 2011.
238 notes the importance and limitations of language for Norwegian security discourse, but claims “there is no natural way in Norwegian to distinguish between what in English is ‘security’ (in the classic sense) and ‘safety’ (in the sense of search and rescue, etc.) … English, then, has two words whose customary connotations are ‘hard’ (military) and ‘soft’ (civilian) respectively.”759 This point is directly contradicted by interviews conducted for this dissertation; in fact, some sources claimed the opposite. Whereas in English “security” has no fixed meaning or inherent link to armed force or military violence – evidenced by the evolution of the concept over time – Norwegian has specific words that capture the hard/military and soft/civil components of security separately: sikkerhet and trygghet.760 Thus Norwegian policies distinguish between security issues (sikkerhet) requiring state action and/or military involvement, and issues related to civilian safety and wellbeing (trygghet), often enacted by non-state actors. Consequently, it is more linguistically challenging for non-military issues to be securitized in Norway, since these cannot employ the high political vocabulary necessary to initiate securitization. As one interview respondent noted: “It’s probably down to discourse, isn’t it? I don’t think that in the Sámi language, or in the Scandinavian language, the word ‘security’ is related to English. It’s closer to the word ‘safety’.”761 If Sámi priorities are principally linked to trygghet, not sikkerhet, then they are less likely to be constructed as “security” issues in Norwegian government policy, especially when translated from the Norwegian language into English.
These methodological challenges caution against reading too deeply into the findings that Sámi political actors have attempted to securitize the central issues of environmental change and Indigenous culture and autonomy, but they do not invalidate them. Instead, they suggest that textual analysis of Sámi publications should be complemented by qualitative research into the views of Sámi leaders and political representatives with respect to the meaning of security in the High North. Accordingly, for this dissertation I conducted 12 semi-structured English language interviews with individual leaders representing prominent Sámi institutions: the Sámediggi, the Sámi Reindeer Herders’ Association of Norway, and the Saami Council. I also conducted participant observation of Sámi politicians, activists, academics, and community members,
759 Jensen 2012, 92. 760 Personal correspondence with Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv (June 13, 2013). 761 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015.
239 including reindeer herders, during five months of fieldwork in northern Norway, including visits to five communities in Sápmi located in the Norwegian county of Norland and the Swedish county of Norrbotten. These findings provide the first English-language account of Sámi understandings of in/security in the Norwegian Arctic.
The interviews suggest a high degree of consensus in terms of the issues considered most important by Sámi leaders and institutions. Virtually all respondents identified conflicts over land use, particularly the preservation of contiguous grazing areas for reindeer herding, and preservation of Sámi language and culture as the most important issues. Within the category of land use conflicts, three specific issues were frequently mentioned: development of new mines and associated infrastructure, the siting of windmill farms, and a small but growing concern over the possible onshore impacts of oil and gas development. Of these, mining is clearly the issue of the moment. Spurred by the rapid growth of mining activities across the border in northern Sweden – which have galvanized Sámi and local resistance and drawn comparisons to the Alta dispute in the 1980s762 – and passage of a new Mineral Act in 2009, Sámi are increasingly concerned over the prospect of a “mineral extraction wave” occurring in northern Norway, as well.763 To Sven-Roald Nystø, former president of the Sámediggi: “Minerals, that's a huge issue. The mineral deposits you find in the middle parts of the Sami areas. The reindeer herders already complain that they are losing too much of their grazing land to infrastructure development in our areas.”764 Some respondents identified the long-term health and viability of communities as being threatened by mining activities even if they experienced short-term benefits. One representative of the Saami Council sees that resource projects “bring little back to the local community … After the mining has ended, the local communities are left with nothing … The non-renewable resources have been stolen, and the viable natural resources that we had before have been destroyed. And the things that we need to maintain our way of living are gone.”765 Another official with the Saami Council concurs, suggesting that mining threatens to
762 Stuart Hughes, “The reindeer herders battling an iron ore mine in Sweden,” BBC News (July 30, 2014). Accessed at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28547314 on June 6, 2015. 763 Interview with Christina Henriksen, June 20, 2014. 764 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014. 765 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014.
240 undermine the traditional herding basis of Sámi economies. He sees the greatest challenge confronting Sámi to be “by far industrialization of traditional territory. It’s been a while, but the pressure from infrastructure and industry and so on has become so much that reindeer herding cannot sustain much more. We need to be able to stop these kinds of projects. They will soon start to pose a threat to the whole reindeer herding culture and livelihood.”766 Many respondents commented that while mining activities have occurred in the region for centuries, and Sámi are not opposed to such projects on principle, they are sceptical of allowing new mines to proceed if they risk compromising the continued viability of the reindeer herding industry.
The concern over protecting grazing areas, rather than objections to mining, per se, is illustrated by the fact that many respondents also noted the negative effects of ‘green’ development projects on traditional activities. In particular, they referred to the negative consequences that construction of windmill farms can have for reindeer grazing areas. Runar Myrnes Balto, political advisor to the President of the Sámediggi, sees the interest of large corporate actors behind mine projects and renewable energy farms as being equally problematic for the prospect of continued herding: “Big industries [are] coming in and grabbing land, infrastructure coming in. Green energy. Windmills are becoming a big problem for reindeer herders. Green energy in the sense of windmills are taking a lot of land which was traditionally for the reindeer. So that is one of the key threats that we are facing.”767 An official with the Saami Council expressed a similar view: “From a reindeer herding perspective, what matters is if it damages or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s green. It’s all about how it impacts on your livelihoods, and the herd is really the only thing that matters when reindeer herders take a stand. The one thing is that a windmill park would be a lesser infringement.”768 Aili Keskitalo has described the growth of windmill farms in Sápmi as a form of “‘green’ colonization, colonization in the name of the climate,” that perpetuates historical patterns of decisions over the High North being made in the south, in the interests of those in the south.769 Many Sámi appear equally reluctant to concede
766 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 767 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 768 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 769 Quoted in Susan Moran, “Renewables v. Reindeer,” Flux (February 4, 2015). Accessed at https://www.beaconreader.com/flux/renewables-v-reindeer on June 6, 2015.
241 traditional grazing areas to renewable energy production as they are to extractive industrial activities.
Finally, several respondents voiced concern over the potential impacts of future petroleum development in the High North for herding and other traditional uses of land and marine areas. To date, petroleum development has been a relatively minor issue in the High North due to the concentration of extraction in southern Norway. That drilling has occurred offshore also means the oil and gas sector has been less susceptible to legal challenges through the framework of Sámi collective rights. Torvald Falch, senior advisor to the Sámediggi, explained that oil and gas has only recently been addressed by Sámi political institutions:
Partly [why] the Sami Parliament has not been so active when it comes to oil and gas is that it’s offshore and it has not been so far north until recently … It’s not in direct conflict with land rights … When it comes to international law, you have more solid situation when it comes to rights of onshore than offshore. So we don’t have the tools in the same way, to come to a good negotiated position offshore … The question is, of course, when it comes to environmental questions, if you have a blow out, of course, that’s highly problematic, and the climate change.770
His colleague, Jan-Petter Gintal, also a senior advisor, was quick to add that “we know they are searching for new projects, and there may be many politicians who want it to come to shore, to have pipelines and other oil and gas industries on the land. So that's a challenge for the future for us.”771 Sven-Roald Nystø agrees: “Among Sámi in Norway, oil and gas has had minor effects regarding the material basis for Sami industries. It is still a southern industry, but is now moving northward, yes. Those issues are climbing on the Sámi agenda as well.”772 The prospect of expanding petroleum operations in the Barents region, or more contested areas such as Lofoten-Vesterålen-Senja, has raised local concerns and caused some Sámi to worry about the possible repercussions of an oil spill for the coastal fishing sector, upon which many small communities still rely. Christina Henriksen, a member of the Sámediggi, insists that “significant measures to prevent oil spills and disasters at sea” are essential for providing security in the High
770 Interview with Torvald Falch June 17, 2014. 771 Interview with Jan-Petter Gintal June 17, 2014 772 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014.
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North.773 As with mining activities in Sápmi, the objections are not principled, but framed in terms of mitigating negative impacts on nearby communities and ensuring that industries and subsistence activities such as fishing and reindeer grazing remain as unaffected as possible.
The other central political issue identified by almost all respondents was the preservation and revitalization of Sámi language, and by extension culture. As discussed in Chapter 6, until the 20th century Sami culture and religious distinctiveness were perceived as threatening to the centralized rule of the Scandinavian kingdoms. Consequently, as with Indian residential schools in North America, Sámi children were sent to government, church, and privately run schools to be acculturated into the dominant Norwegian society. While the educational experience of Sámi children was less brutal than comparable Indigenous experiences in North America,774 the assimilatory goals of the system were similar, with the stated goal to “make the Sámi as Norwegian as possible.”775 State mandated education resulted in severe impacts on cultural and linguistic continuity and the capacity to maintain indigenous ways of life, particularly when coupled with the other aspects of the government’s policy of ‘Norwegianization’: “Placed in a colonial context, the schools not only attempted to obliterate the religion and culture of the colonised, but also strove to implant those components of colonial culture which were considered appropriate for the colonised.”776 Through Norwegianization, by the second half of the 20th century Sámi language use was nearly erased, and to this day scholars argue that “in Norway, there is a quite clear language hierarchy,” with Norwegian at the top followed by the various Sámi languages in descending order of value according to their degree of usage.777
Consequently, one of the major priorities of Sámi political institutions has been the revitalization of Sámi languages and the maintenance of viable linguistic and cultural communities for Sámi across Norway. Indeed, language has become one of the most important markers of Sámi
773 Interview with Christina Henriksen June 20, 2015. 774 Rauna Kuokkanen, “‘Survivance’ in Sámi and First Nations Boarding School Narratives,” American Indian Quarterly 27, no. 3-4 (2003): 706-708. 775 Jon Todal, “Minorities with a Minority: Language and the School in the Sámi Areas of Norway,” Language, Culture and Curriculum 11, no. 3 (1998): 354-366. 776 Lindmark 2013, 136. 777 Anna-Ritter Lindgren, “What is Language Emancipation? Norwegian and Other Nordic Experiences,” Sociolinguistic Studies 7, no. 1-2 (2013): 21.
243 political success and meaningful self-determination: “We don’t have a country, so language becomes one of the most important things for our culture.”778 The rights to use and receive public services in Sámi have been “the other question the Sámi Parliament also has [paid] high attention to … Sami language and the rights to use the language, and to get more Sámis to use the language more … that is again very much connected to education.”779 Approximately half of all Sámi people speak one of the Sámi languages, though the proportion varies by country, but none are monolingual Sámi speakers.780 Because Norway’s policy of Norwegianization was the least hospitable of all the Scandinavian states for the maintenance of Sámi and other minority languages, only a small minority remain fluent in any of the Sámi languages, and its revitalization remains a contested subject within Norwegian society, which worked hard to establish the Norwegian language as a recognized language distinct from its Danish antecedent.781 Although rights to Sámi language use have been legislated, implementation and access remain challenging. As described by Runar Myrnes Balto:
It’s well protected in the law framework. A Sámi has the right to learn the Sámi language, and to use it when you meet government officials, when you go to health care, when you contact the government in any way … But the biggest challenge is [still] concerning language. The statistics are really grim. There are fewer and fewer people, there are fewer students studying Sámi language in school … There are few Sámis, and we live in a number of different places. In a few places, at least where we are in the majority, the language classes are really good. Children get every class in Sámi. But if you look outside those areas … There are so many places where Sámi live and there are only one or two families, and people really struggle … There is a huge gap between the rights that are given through the law and the actual implementation of that in the school system.782
Balto also indicated the challenges that limited Sámi language prevalence poses for the maintenance of Sámi identity, including stigma around speaking Sámi in urban areas. Sven- Roald Nystø made a similar observation, noting “it is perhaps an emotional challenge to use a
778 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014. 779 Interview with Torvald Falch June 17, 2014. 780 Sari Pietikäinen Leena Huss, Sirkka Laihiala-Kankainen, Ulla Aikio-Puoskari, and Pia Lane, “Regulating Multilingualism in the North Calotte: The Case of Kven, Meänkieli and Sámi Languages,” Acta Borealia 27, no. 1 (2010): 1-23. 781 Lindgren 2013. 782 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015.
244 language which we are not supposed to be using. It is a matter of identity. Can we be good Sámi without knowing the language?”783 Overall, many respondents noted the complicated relationship between Sámi language and cultural identity, and the challenges posed by promoting language revitalization without excluding the majority of Sámi who do not speak it from feeling included within Sámi society.
Based on these interviews, it is possible to conclude that Sámi leaders and organizations in Norway articulate a conception of security similar to that expressed by Inuit organizations in northern Canada. When asked to describe what security means to them, or the types of threats Sámi face, respondents clearly identified threats and referent objects related to the maintenance of the natural environment and the practice of subsistence activities, Indigenous culture and identity, and autonomy and self-determination within the context of the Norwegian state. On one level, this understanding is consistent with the basic elements of human security, since “what can possibly be more important than clean water, fresh air, and clean food?”784 As a result of industrialization in Sápmi, many respondents identified these basic necessities as being threatened for many Sámi and northern communities. For Runar Myrnes Balto, the “first thing that comes to mind is the livelihood perspective, in the sense of traditional ways of living: reindeer herding, fishing, agriculture, as well, which are traditional Sami livelihoods, that's how we’ve had our incomes. Those I would say are under threat. That is the first threat I would identify.”785 A senior official with the Saami Council responded: “I would say that if you talk security with most Sami, they would talk about environmental risks, and then also personal security … Reindeer herding is the most dangerous occupation in Sweden, high level of death. Accidents that have to do with vehicles, four wheelers that turn over, go though the ice. Also drowning, people go through the ice. Also fires in these huts.”786 The same respondent later expanded on the relationship between security for Sámi and the pursuit of legal rights and decision-making through Sámi political institutions, particularly with respect to conflicts over land use:
783 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø April 6, 2014. 784 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014. 785 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 786 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b.
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If you are successful with your legal claims, [and] gain control of your lands and resources that way, that gives you security. Security of your possessions, not security against external things, natural catastrophe, and so on. That would allow you to stop mining projects and so on in areas where you don’t find it suitable to pursue mining. Where the damage to traditional livelihoods or environmental risk is too high and so on … Basically, [to] get control of the territories, and over your own society.787
Christina Henriksen, member of the Sámediggi, emphasized that “security also means we should be part of the decision making, so we don’t just get to clean up the garbage” of other governments’ decisions.788 One respondent identified the interaction between their unique cultural position, symbolic and economic connection to land, and numerical minority as distinguishing Sámi security interests from those of non-Sámi Norwegians:
When we are a smaller population you might experience more security issues. Because you are being a smaller population, you might be ignored. Shortage of culturally relevant health services. That impacts a Sami more than a Norwegian. Lack of access to culturally relevant, culturally appropriate heath care. Same with education. In that sense we might have more issues that can be addressed as security. We might be more vulnerable in a way. We might be more exposed to insecurity.789
Some also placed the threats facing Sámi, particularly with respect to resource extraction and environmental degradation, within a broader circumpolar and global context. A representative of the Saami Council stated: “[We] have to think about the way we live in the world today … It’s the way we’re living that is the cause of the problem … If we don’t reconsider how we use minerals, resources, if we don’t recycle, and cut back, we will put the whole Arctic in danger.”790 His statement linked demand for Arctic resources with patterns of global consumption that are driving environmental change and manifesting insecurity for communities located near the sites of extraction or vulnerable to climate disruption.
These statements indicate that, when asked, many Sámi leaders hold an understanding of in/security consistent with a widened, human security conception of threats and referent objects.
787 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 788 Interview with Christina Henriksen June 20, 2015. 789 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015a. 790 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014.
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However, what was also made clear through these interviews is that Sámi leaders and institutions in Norway are not securitizing actors in so far as they do not seek to construct their political priorities as security issues within Norwegian government discourse or state policy. Security is not the preferred framework within which Sámi issues are presented or generally discussed, and is a discourse that many respondents viewed with scepticism. “The term is rarely used,” was one response,791 while another was concerned that if it were employed as a lens for Sámi issues “security might have a negative connotation.”792 The linguistic context was also raised, with respondents noting that the types of issues widely understood as related to human security were not described using security-centric terminology in either Sámi or Norwegian, and contrasted this with the case of Inuit: “I think that the use of the word ‘security’, and why we don’t use it within the Sami discourse, is because the word has connotations to more ‘hard security’. It’s not relevant to the issues we are so concerned about. So we have other words to describe the feeling that the Inuit may be talking about.”793 But some respondents were also careful to note the salience of issues underlying human security concerns, particularly with respect to transnational environmental hazards outside of the political control of Sámi or their institutions:
Of course it’s relevant it’s just rarely used in the vocabulary. In the ‘80s, with the Chernobyl breakdown at the power plant, that had enormous impacts on reindeer herding, particularly in Sweden. That made large areas of pastureland unusable. You could use the pasture, but then you could not eat the meat. Of course we are concerned about minimizing environmental security and impacts on environment. It’s just not spoken that much about.794
Others noted the possible downsides of securitization as a strategy for advancing Sámi priorities. Sven-Roald Nystø observed that securitization of the Russo-Norwegian border during the Cold War had impeded Sámi land rights and resulted in a restrictive discourse in which the state took security and defence decisions without significant consideration of Sámi interests, “so Sámi deliberately avoided the language of security in order to keep open their options or possibilities
791 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 792 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015a. 793 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 794 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b.
247 for resolving their struggle for political good will.”795 He suggests a similar dynamic has been reproduced by the renewed securitization of the region through the High North Initiative, with exclusionary implications for Sámi involvement in state policy:
We are talking [about] environmental security, society security, energy security, and so on and so on. And that in itself puts much more light on the high political issues in the Arctic and excludes a lot of stakeholders in the discussion on how to put forward civility in the Arctic debate. I think we have taken a couple of steps back in the desecuritization on the Arctic, and where it ends I’m not quite sure, but one of the losers in that process are, of course, indigenous peoples.796
7.3 Explaining Sámi Non-Securitization
Given the relative similarities between Inuit and Sámi as Arctic Indigenous peoples residing within the northern territories of two comparable circumpolar states, the reluctance of Sámi representatives to attempt to securitize their political priorities is surprising, especially given the frequent invocation of in/security by Inuit leaders and organizations in Canada. Based on my research, I suggest three factors influence the non-securitization of Arctic issues by Sámi in the Norwegian High North: ecological difference, and the different collective experiences of climate change that result; the greater degree of social inclusion of Sámi within Norwegian society, including full enjoyment of the benefits of the welfare state; and the proximity of Norway to Russia, which results in a more robust military security discourse focused on national defence, restricting the space for alternative, non-state security discourses.
7.3.1 Ecological Difference
The labelling of both the Canadian North and the Norwegian High North as belonging to ‘the Arctic’ is deceptive because these regions have distinct ecologies and very different climatic conditions. This variation means they are experiencing distinct effects of human-caused climate change. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which provided the first definitive account of
795 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014. 796 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014.
248 climate change occurring in the circumpolar region, clearly identified the milder effects occurring and predicted to occur in northern Europe compared with much of the Canadian Arctic. For instance, mean annual temperatures in Scandinavia have risen by about 1 degree Celsius since the 1950s, and average winter temperatures by about 2 degrees. Notably, “surface air temperatures over the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans have remained very cold in winter, limiting the warming in coastal areas,”797 which is where most settlements in northern Norway are located. By contrast, mean annual temperatures in the central and eastern Canadian Arctic have increased by 1-2 degrees Celsius over the same period, with average winter temperatures increasing by as much as 3-5 degrees.798 This variation is also reflected in the more recent findings of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which illustrates the dramatically greater trend towards warmer seasonal temperatures in most of the North American Arctic compared to Fennoscandia.799 In sum, the Canadian North has experienced more than twice the warming of the Norwegian High North, particularly during winter, with particularly significant effects on seasonal sea ice coverage, flora and fauna, permafrost thawing, and weather predictability compared to Scandinavia.
As a result of the relatively fewer and less significant ecological changes they have directly experienced, Sámi leaders and organizations do not usually include climate change among their highest political priorities. On the one hand, all interview respondents agreed that climate change in Sápmi was visible and adversely affecting a range of Sámi interests, most notably with respect to reindeer herding. Jan-Petter Gintal, senior advisor to the Sámediggi, insisted that “[climate change is] very relevant. As [with] other indigenous people, mainly Sámis live in the traditional way, with reindeer herding and fishing, harvesting wild berries, stuff like that. So they can feel the climate change. So I think they are very aware and we see the weather change, so people are talking a lot about that. And especially the latest year we have seen many changes here in the north.”800 Randi Skum, advisor to the Reindeer Herders Association of Norway and a former member of the Sámediggi, described specific challenges the changing climate is having
797 ACIA 2004, 112. 798 ACIA 2004, 113. 799 Larsen et al. 2014, 1579. 800 Interview with Jan-Petter Gintal June 17, 2014
249 on the reindeer industry: “Now the rivers are open very early. Some rivers they don't have ice at all. So its one effect is the traditional way of moving reindeers. Many have to move by cars now. You also see the changing in the type of vegetation and you see the forests actually moving higher and higher up in the mountains. And that also in a way changes the vegetation that the reindeers are dependent on.”801 Other respondents also mentioned the increased cost of feeding reindeer unable to graze due to changes such as seasonal icing of pastureland, as well as non-reindeer related impacts such as altered fish stocks and decline in other marine animals. Overall, climate change was not viewed as an urgent priority for Sámi institutions, but rather an emerging challenge requiring management and adaptation, but not approaching the level of crisis or insecurity.
In this respect, many respondents noted that while changes are visible, adaptation needs have been mild and manageable. Sven-Roald Nystø observed:
We are not living in the Arctic, we are living in the sub-Arctic. Changes in ice and snow are not as visible as in the High Arctic. You don’t see any erosion here. Climate change is less visible here in terms of physical damage. What we see are changes to some extent. Mackerel are coming further north. Some changes in the distribution of the cod stocks. We can see the tree line is going up. We can see more severe weather, of course, but is that a huge problem? Isn’t that a question of clothing, of adaptation?802
Representatives of the Sámediggi and Saami Council noted that climate change might actually lead to benefits for reindeer herding, as milder winters and longer growing seasons result in easier access to grazing pasture and less adverse environmental conditions. Nystø observed that unpredictability of ice and snow conditions was nothing new for herders: “Most visible for the Sami is snow and ice conditions for the reindeer herders. That’s a bigger issue. But that’s so unpredictable, and has always been unpredictable. That’s a permanent situation.”803 As a political strategy, therefore, Sámi institutions are reiterating their emphasis on land use and protection of contiguous grazing areas rather than, for example, greenhouse gas mitigation, since
801 Interview with Randi Skum June 19, 2014. 802 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014 803 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014.
250 bodies like the Sámi-led International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry consider “protection of grazing land will be the most important adaptive strategy for reindeer herders under climate change.”804 In the hierarchy of Sámi concerns, climate change ranks behind other threats to traditional land use; Runar Balto, for instance, observed that compared to mining, climate change is “just as serious, but it isn’t [taken as seriously]. Perhaps it should be.”805
The relative lack of importance afforded to climate change is exacerbated by Sámi knowledge of their relatively fortunate position compared to other Arctic Indigenous peoples. Several explicitly contrasted Sámi experiences with those of Inuit, sympathizing with the greater environmental challenges confronting the latter. A Saami Council official sees “the situation is very different even though we share a lot of similarities as Arctic Indigenous peoples, [Inuit] being much more dependent on ice, marine resources than we are. Much more exposed to natural catastrophes than we are. Diseases, so on, that accumulate in fish and marine mammals, that they are exposed to.”806 Randi Skum sees the Canadian Arctic as a cautionary tale for Sámi, underscoring the view of climate change as more of a future concern: “I think we see what's happening in [the] North of Canada. We have seen on television that the ice is melting, especially affect[ing] the indigenous there. I think also here in Norway it will be first the indigenous here that actually will notice this changes mostly.”807 The perception that climate change is more acute elsewhere, coupled with the relatively modest experiences of environmental change in the High North to date, underline that ecological differences between the Canadian and Norwegian Arctic regions partly account for the different efforts between Sámi and Inuit to securitize environmental change.
804 Anonymous interview January 20, 2015. 805 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 806 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 807 Interview with Randi Skum June 19, 2014.
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7.3.2 Social Inclusion
A second factor that helps explain why Sámi leaders have not sought to securitize their highest priority issues is the high degree of inclusion of Sámi within Norwegian society. In fact, Sámi in all three Fennoscandian states enjoy likely the highest qualities of life of any indigenous people in the world. In the words of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “Sámi people in the Nordic countries do not have to deal with many of the socio- economic concerns that commonly face indigenous peoples throughout the world, such as serious health concerns, extreme poverty or hunger.”808 Norway has ranked either first or second on the UN Human Development Index every year since 2001, making it the overall best country in the world in which to live in the 21st century. However, unlike Canada where high rankings on the Human Development Index have never translated into comparably high qualities of life for Indigenous people, Sámi were fully incorporated into the Norwegian welfare state in the post-WWII period: “Most relevant here is the idea of equality which has been a core value in Nordic societies since the 1930s. This has been attributed to the strong position of social democratic parties, but [it] is better to attribute it to the development of a welfare state with a safety net preventing any members of society from falling to destitution and misery.”809 Significantly, this incorporation was of Sámi as individuals rather than as a distinct minority group,810 resulting in high qualities of life for individuals and Sámi families without significant gains for Sámi collective rights until decades later. In fact, “Saami culture and identity [were] not only seen as irrelevant, but as a handicap to the obtainment of equality and the full benefits of the Welfare State.”811 Thus, though they have struggled for recognition as a distinct people, Sámi in Norway enjoy the full benefits of liberal, individualistic citizenship of one of the most prosperous and progressive social democracies in the world, and are fully incorporated into Norwegian society. More controversially, Sámi might be described as highly assimilated, since
808 James Anaya, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Situation of the Sámi People in the Sápmi Region of Norway, Sweden and Finland. UN document A/HR/18/35/Add.2 (New York: United Nations General Assembly, 2011), 3. 809 Mai Palmberg, “The Nordic Colonial Mind,” in Suvi Keskinen, Salla Tuori, Sari Irni, and Diani Mulinari, eds, Complying with Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 35. 810 Olsson and Lewis 1995. 811 Brantenberg 1985, 26.
252 in most cases they are “practically indiscernible from their Norwegian neighbours.”812 Sámi in Norway are not segregated from the rest of society along geographic, socio-economic, or epidemiological lines,813 which is also why Sámi have often struggled to assert themselves as a distinct people with distinct collective values, traditions, and need for institutions from other Norwegians.814 Indeed, to some, “claims to Saami exclusiveness and legal rights ran contrary to what many had come to regard as a fact and a value: that they participated in Norwegian society on equal terms with other Norwegians.”815
Egalitarian inclusion into Norwegian society was not always the case; for centuries, Sámi experienced colonization and disempowerment by successive Scandinavian states that viewed them as inferior and incapable, if also somewhat indispensable in the northern border region. The historical relationship between Sámi and their respective states was fundamentally colonial. This is a contentious way to characterize the history of Sámi-Scandinavian relations, but the argument for viewing Sámi as having been colonized, albeit more slowly and less violently than Indigenous peoples in the Americas, coheres with the tenets of indigeneity discussed in Chapter 2. In terms of prior occupation, archaeological evidence shows settlement in Sápmi since at least the end of the last ice age:
Whether these sites are evidence of Saami ethnogenesis is a matter of debate, but it seems safe to say that there was a distinct Saami ethnic population from at least the Scandinavian Viking Age (AD 800-1000) … It is also clear that these groups of mobile hunters and gatherers had long been in contact with more agrarian proto-Norse cultures. Contacts and some interaction between these groups evolved seamlessly over the centuries, thus making it impossible to speak of a first date of encounter.816
Sámi and non-Sámi traded and intermixed for centuries, but from the 16th century onward these interactions gave way to a system of increasingly overt control of Sámi lands and lives by southern peoples of Norse and Germanic origins. These Europeans established and enforced a
812 Saugestad 2012, 233. 813 Per Sjølander, “What is Known About the Health and Living Conditions of the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Scandinavia, the Sámi?” Global Health Action 4 (2011): 1-11. 814 Kuokkanen 2011. 815 Brantenberg 1985, 36. 816 Fur 2006, 41.
253 social hierarchy in which they enjoyed cultural superiority and political dominance over Sámi, and in which Sámi were no longer allowed to make decisions affecting the direction of their collective society or, in many cases, the course of their individual lives.817 This relationship strongly resembled those between indigenous peoples and colonizing powers elsewhere in the world, resulting in the legal designation of Sámi as the only officially recognized Indigenous people in Europe.
Formal and informal discrimination against Sámi, particularly through state policies of Norwegianization, ultimately fuelled social and political resistance among Sámi communities and ignited a resurgence of Sámi cultural identity and political institutionalization. Following the Alta protests in the early 1980s, Norway enacted significant legislative measures to address Sámi political concerns, protect their human rights, and establish representative institutions. Motivated partly by Norwegian concern over its international human rights image, this resulted in a flurry of activity encompassing passage of a new Sámi Act in 1987, an amendment to the Norwegian Constitution in 1988, ratification of ILO Convention 169 in 1990, and eventually passage of the Finnmark Act in 2005. Cumulatively, this legislation established the Sámi Parliament of Norway, recognized the linguistic and cultural rights of Sámi citizens, affirmed Norway’s bi-national ethnic character, committed it to best practices towards Indigenous peoples under international law, and created the first domestic structure in Norway approximating a land claim agreement over part of the traditional Sámi territory.818 Though not without critics,819 the results are generally regarded as a major political success for Sámi and non-Sámi alike: “In Norway, the national parliament and government over the last thirty years have supported, developed and strengthened Sámi rights on a wide range of issues. The establishment of the Sámi Parliament has given the national authorities a collaborative partner which functions on behalf of the Sámi people and has a legitimacy based on elections.”820 Several decades of
817 Fur 2006, 38. 818 Minde 2001; Carsten Smith, “The Development of Sámi Rights in Norway from 1980-2007,” in Günter Minnerup and Pia Solberg, eds, First World, First Nations: Internal Colonialism and Indigenous Self-Determination in Northern Europe and Australia (Thornhill: Sussex Academic Press, 2011): 22-30. 819 Kuokkanen 2011, 51-52; Ravna 2014. 820 Eva Josefsen, “The Norwegian Sámi Parliament and Sámi Political Empowerment,” in Günter Minnerup and Pia Solberg, eds, First World, First Nations: Internal Colonialism and Indigenous Self-Determination in Northern Europe and Australia (Thornhill: Sussex Academic Press, 2011), 41.
254 innovative and cooperative policymaking between Sámi and Norwegian political institutions have thus resulted in a situation where Sámi are both incorporated into Norwegian society and represented through distinct institutions reflecting their specific concerns and interests.
This high degree of integration, and its impacts on the willingness to securitize, was also reflected in the interviews. According to Else Grete Broderstad, a prominent Sámi academic, whether or not a group sees their concerns as security issues “has to do with experiences of politics, what kind of experiences you have with the political system. We don't need to use the concept [of security]. For good or bad, and mostly here for good, we are integrated into the society. Education, health, infrastructure: we are the same [as other Norwegians].”821 Multiple respondents echoed the view that Sámi were highly incorporated into Norwegian society, and therefore have no need to articulate security interests separate from those of other Norwegians. Torvald Falch and Jan-Petter Gintal observed that Norwegians have a high degree of trust in the state and so do Sámi, and that Sámi benefit from same security as other Norwegians. Although most Sámi view themselves as distinct, “you have a Sámi public which is also very much connected to the Norwegian public. So it’s not a clear division between the Sámi public sphere and the Norwegian public sphere. It has never been actually, in that way.”822 Sven-Roald Nystø also linked Sámi inclusion directly to attitudes towards climate change, attributing the greater willingness and capacity of Sámi to adapt to the changing environment to the previous adaptations they have undertaken to become part of Norwegian society: “The Sami societies have changed. They have modernized. They are to a huge extent an integral part of the mainstream economy. All the adaptations to that are very much in place. We have faced the urbanization process for a long time. We have adapted to that as well. The challenges that will follow climate change, they have started on a different basis among the Sámi.”823 If efforts to securitize social and cultural issues by minority groups is often premised upon the gap that exists between those groups and the dominant society, then the high degree of social and political recognition and integration of Sámi in Norway can reasonably be expected to decrease the perceived need among Sámi to depict their distinct security as being threatened.
821 Personal communication with Else Grete Broderstad June 16, 2014. 822 Interview with Torvald Falch June 17, 2014. 823 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014.
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7.3.3 Geography
The third factor which I argue explains why Sámi have not sought to securitize their political priorities is geography, particularly the influence close proximity to Russia has exerted on Norwegian national security discourse. Norwegian security discourse, including in the High North where the two countries share borders both on land and at sea, remains structured around concern for security threats emanating from Russia, including in extremis the threat of military conflict. As discussed in Chapter 6, the perceived threat posed by Russia is an enduring feature of Norwegian security discourse, only complemented more recently by a similarly securitized discourse around Arctic resource extraction. Recent studies have examined various dimensions of the role of Russia in Norwegian security policy, including the shared border, the Svalbard Archipelago, Norway membership in NATO, Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, and energy extraction in the Barents Sea.824 But the two remain linked, because it is at least partly due to fears over Russian aggression and the implications for northern petroleum extraction that drives Norwegian concerns, and has driven the re-securitization of the High North by Norwegian policymakers over the past decade. As Leif Jensen writes:
To gain entry to and credibility in the discourse, one must now ‘speak security’ across an ever-widening array of thematic contexts. The politicization of energy has acted as a door opener, letting ‘security’ in to colonize the discourses once again. The increasing concern for security, especially after 9/11, at the individual and aggregate level in the West, resonates widely in Norwegian High North discourses. This collective sense of vulnerability has instigated a renaissance for realism and state-centrism. Indeed, on Norway’s part, there is no more obvious place for prolonging a sense of paranoia and general insecurity than in relation to the High North, where Norway’s national identity as a tiny, vulnerable land and the image of massive Russia (‘the Russian bear’) as ‘the radical other’ are clear and easily resuscitated in the ‘collective Norwegian mind’.825
824 Kristian Åtland and Torbjørn Pedersen, “The Svalbard Archipelago in Russian Security Policy: Overcoming the Legacy of Fear – or Reproducing It?” European Security 17, no. 2-3 (2008): 227-251; Kristian Åtland and Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, “When Security Speech Acts Misfire: Russia and the Elektron Incident,” Security Dialogue 40, no. 3 (2009): 333-354; Torbjørn Pedersen, “Norway’s Rule on Svalbard: Tightening the Grip on the Arctic Islands,” Polar Record 45, no. 233 (2009): 147-152; Jensen 2012. 825 Jensen 2012, 94.
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The existence of a powerful, enduring, state-centric security discourse in Norway limits the conceptual and policy space available to articulate alternative, non-state conceptions of in/security. Due, in part, to the connotations of the Norwegian word sikkerhet, security-language is still widely viewed as a privileged discourse that is the appropriate purview of the central government. Fear of the Russians, or of being seen to interfere with the state’s ability to effectively defend the nation against the Russians, restricts the willingness of Sámi actors to employ security language in making their political claims. This also relates to the inclusion of Sámi within Norwegian society, as some interview respondents noted that Sámi, too, were protected by the Norwegian state against Russian aggression. Part of the Cold War legacy thus appears to be the defence of Sámi populations in northern Norway against the Soviet threat.826 Jensen emphasizes that: “We must bear in mind that everything that smacks of ‘security’ acquires a very particular status in Norwegian discourses on the High North. Discourses are wrapped in history, and here in the north, close to Russia, discursive fragments from the Cold War continue to ring like echoes from the past.”827 Sven-Roald Nystø sees opportunities to securitize Sámi issues as limited by proximity to Russia and the high political issues that accompany it: “It’s state-centric. When you say the word ‘security’ then the governments say ‘whoa, hold your horses, this is our business,’ because security in the older days was military security. But now we are widening the definitions and taking into account human security and everything like that, and what media is hyping us, well of course, we have a border to Russia. We are situated where we are, we have all this continental shelf issues, and so on and so on.”828 Given the enduring challenges associated with their Russian neighbour, other types of securitizing moves are able to gain less traction within the Norwegian public sphere.
This is especially the case because the Norwegian state itself has widened the scope of security threats contained within its official security discourse, as also discussed in Chapter 6. The High North has become increasingly securitized since 2005, but the ambit of security has been widened within state policy to accommodate an increasing variety of policy issues. As described
826 Interview with Torvald Falch and Jan-Petter Gintal June 17, 2014; interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014. 827 Jensen 2012, 90. 828 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø April 16, 2014.
257 by a former minister of defence: “Current challenges in the North are qualitatively different, but not necessarily less demanding than those facing us during the Cold War. Today’s challenges are related to resource management, unresolved jurisdictional questions and the environment, all of which affect societal security. We cannot, however, disregard situations likely to entail challenges also in respect of state security.”829 Rather than attempt to define new issues as security, and thus invite the state to take the lead role in their resolution, Sámi actors have employed strategies of politicization and legalization rather than securitization, because “in so far as increasing numbers of questions issues dealing with the High North acquire a security flavour in the expanded sense of the term, the discursive consequences would appear to be the sublimation of other issues.”830 Thus, Sámi have generally chosen not to speak security rather than compete with the discursive position of Russia and energy as the preeminent security issues in the High North. This may also reflect the tendency of Sámi political institutions to collaborate with the Norwegian state, rather than resort to confrontation or directly challenge state policies.
7.4 Conclusion
Two conclusions can be drawn from this chapter’s analysis of the meaning of in/security in the Norwegian High North. First, the understanding of in/security held by the Norwegian government, described in Chapter 6, is not wholly shared by leaders and institutions representing the Sámi minority whose traditional homeland encompasses most of the land area included in the Norwegian High North. Instead, Sámi political actors identify a conception of Arctic in/security that highlights two central issues: land use conflicts affecting contiguous grazing areas for reindeer herding, and the preservation of Sámi language and culture. Within the category of land use conflicts, interviewees identified three distinct threats perceived to threaten the continued viability of the reindeer herding industry and Sámi cultural practices: expansion of mining activities, construction of windmill farms in grazing areas, and prospective coastal and onshore impacts of expanded offshore petroleum extraction activities. Climate change is not generally
829 Minister of Defence, “A Defence for the Protection of Norway’s Security, Interests and Values,” Proposition to the Storting no. 48 2007-2008 (Oslo: 2008). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 91. 830 Jensen 2012, 95.
258 regarded as a security issue, and when it is this is primarily due to its effects on reindeer herding and subsistence food sources such as fish stocks. Overall, it is possible to state that Sámi seem to share a similar, though not identical, conception of in/security with Inuit in northern Canada, in so far as threats and referent objects can be broadly categorized in terms of the natural environment, indigenous identity and cultural practices, and political autonomy and self- government. For Sámi, the last of these three is seen as essential for protecting the former two, though Sámi success in establishing representative institutions for exercising self-determination in Norway means that most do not see Sámi political rights as being threatened.
The second conclusion is that in spite of sharing a similar conception with Inuit as to the meaning of security in their respective Arctic homelands, Sámi are not securitizing actors within the context of Norwegian domestic politics. As such, they do not seek to have their political priorities elevated to the apex of political priority through the invocation of security language and the construction of existential threat-referent object relationships. Whereas Inuit in Canada have articulated their priorities as security issues in an effort to disrupt official Canadian Arctic security discourse, Sámi appear to have refrained from framing their issues as security issues precisely to avoid having their priorities subordinated to the security concerns of the Norwegian state. I have proposed three factors to explain the decision not to securitize on the part of Norwegian Sámi. First, the relatively modest environmental changes that have occurred in Sápmi reduce the material hazards facing Sámi, decreasing the existential implications of climate change and thus the motivation to securitize. Second, Sámi are full beneficiaries of Norwegian society, enjoying all the benefits of citizenship of the world’s only social democratic petro-state. As such, they do not experience the same poverty, privation, and lower qualities of life vis-à-vis the majority population as most indigenous peoples, further reducing the material basis upon which Sámi could base specific security claims and be motivated to pursue discrete security interests against the Norwegian state. Finally, the continued discursive power of Russia within Norwegian Arctic security policy is such that it is difficult for other security issues to gain significant traction. Unlike Canada, whose geography is such that there has never been a realistic fear of invasion by the Soviets/Russians, Norwegians have been concerned for centuries over the possibility of aggression from their far more powerful neighbour. The continued concern over relations with Russia contributes to a robust, state-centric national security
259 discourse in Norway that is less susceptible to alternative securitizing moves. Even if they so chose, Sámi might have difficulty making political claims on the discursive terrain of security.
Fortunately for them, the absence of immediate threats to their survival or wellbeing, and given that they, too, benefit from defence against Russia and extraction of Arctic petroleum resources, Sámi have little reason to advance security claims different from those articulated by the Norwegian state. Moreover, given their high degree of assimilation, it is possible that even if they attempted securitization Sámi security claims might not be terribly different from those of other Norwegians. The different experiences of environmental change between Canada and Norway, in particular, suggest that Sámi would not seek to securitize environmental change. Though many Sámi possess a strong indigenous identity, the analysis in Chapters 4, 5, and 7 demonstrate there is no monolithic indigenous conception of in/security. Since their material context is similar to that of other Norwegians, and they face no particularly grave threats to their survival, it is possible that Sámi securitizing moves would not be radically different, even if their policy preferences with respect to land use differ from those of the national government.
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Chapter 8 8 Conclusion
This dissertation has examined the meaning of in/security in the Arctic regions of Canada and Norway from the perspectives of each state’s national government and their Indigenous peoples, particularly Inuit and Sámi, respectively. In particular, it has examined how human-caused environmental changes are incorporated into the understanding of Arctic in/security held by these different actors, and the roles that actors’ identities and their material contexts have on the process of securitization. The findings demonstrate the variations that exist across differing conceptions of Arctic in/security, both between states and Indigenous people and between different Indigenous peoples. Overall, while there is no consensus on the meaning of security in the circumpolar region, certain commonalities exist. Human-caused environmental changes have catalyzed a widespread reassessment of in/security since the turn of the 21st century, with new threats and referent objects identified by various securitizing actors. Environmental change has unquestionably caused the emergence of new security issues, and is now a ubiquitous feature of Arctic foreign and security policies. However, states and Indigenous peoples differ significantly on what they identify as the principal security implications of environmental change, in some cases depicting contradictory and mutually exclusive understandings of the nature of Arctic security threats. Six central conclusions can be extracted from this dissertation: three empirical findings, and three theoretical implications of those findings.
8.1 Indigenous Understandings of Arctic In/Security
The first finding of this dissertation is that Inuit and Sámi have specific conceptions of what in/security means in the Arctic, and of the relationship between in/security and environmental change. Organizations and individual leaders representing Inuit and Sámi, respectively, identify valued referent objects they fear are threatened; often, these threats arise from global or local environmental changes, or the ways in which environmental change exacerbates or multiplies existing challenges and security issues for Indigenous peoples. The emphasis in this dissertation is on security claims made by leaders and organizations on behalf of Indigenous peoples, but there is reason to believe these understandings of in/security are held among non-elite
261 community members, as well. Though imperfect, survey data from the first and second Arctic Security Public Opinion Surveys and the Survey of Living Conditions in the Circumpolar Arctic support the priority afforded to environmental issues, and the identification of environmental change as the most pressing Arctic issues because it affects so many others.
There are, however, distinctions between Inuit and Sámi understandings of Arctic in/security. As laid out in Chapter 4, for Inuit in Canada articulations of in/security are structured around three referent objects: protecting the Arctic environment – including animal populations, specific ecosystems, and human-nature relationships – from degradation and radical climate change; preserving Inuit identity through the maintenance of cultural and subsistence practices; and asserting and maintaining Inuit autonomy as self-determining political actors within the context of the Canadian settler state. All three of these referent objects are identified as threatened by human-caused environmental change, and deep concern over the multifaceted impacts of Arctic climate change permeates Inuit articulations of in/security. Many Inuit see climate change as compounding the negative effects of colonization, sedentarization, and modernization imposed on their people by Canada in the latter half of the 20th century. As with previous episodes of antagonistic relations between Inuit and the federal government, the policies and preferences of the Canadian state are often explicitly identified as threatening the wellbeing and survival of Inuit. This is particularly the case with respect to federal inaction on mitigating climate change and strong support for Northern resource extraction, both of which many Inuit see as threatening their ability to maintain their established ways of life, and as being imposed on them in a manner that compromises the integrity of Inuit political autonomy and rights to self-determination. Overall, Inuit representatives are clear and explicit in identifying an understanding of Arctic in/security that strongly echoes the discourse of human security, which situates the wellbeing of people and human communities as the referent object of security analysis and the normative object to be protected.
This Inuit understanding of Arctic security differs in important ways from that of Sámi in Norway. As discussed in Chapter 7, Sámi political actors identify a conception of Arctic in/security that highlights the protection of two central referent objects: contiguous grazing areas for reindeer herding, and Sámi language and culture. Grazing areas are seen to be threatened by land use conflicts between Sámi and non-Sámi actors, particularly corporations, with three distinct hazards identified as threatening the continued viability of the reindeer herding industry
262 and reindeer-based Sámi cultural practices: expansion of mining activities in Sápmi, construction of windmill farms in grazing areas, and coastal and onshore impacts of expanded offshore petroleum extraction. Environmental change contributes to these threats in various ways, such as impacting reindeer herding, subsistence food sources, and fish stocks, but in general climate change itself is not regarded as a significant security issue. Preservation and revitalization of Sámi languages, meanwhile, is seen as key to the maintenance of a distinct Sámi identity within the Norwegian state, and is a reflection of the rights of Sámi to self-determination under international law. Overall, Sámi in Norway share a similar conception of in/security with Inuit in Canada, in that threats and referent objects can be broadly categorized in terms of the natural environment, indigenous identity and cultural practices, and autonomy. For Sámi, however, the emphasis is on cultural autonomy within the context of Norwegian society, whereas Inuit emphasize political autonomy within the context of the Canadian state. Regardless, both Inuit and Sámi continue the “quest for an institutional context of non-domination,” wherein they are able to exist as self-determining Indigenous peoples within settler-colonial polities.831 However, the most significant difference lies in the relative emphasis placed on the threats associated with environmental change. Whereas climate change is foundational to the Inuit meaning of in/security in their Arctic homeland, it is secondary or absent from the ways Sámi construct their security interests.
Thus, despite the similarities between Arctic Indigenous peoples in Canada and Norway, there is reason to doubt the existence of an inherently ‘indigenous’ understanding of security. Even within specific Indigenous peoples, important differences over the meaning of security may exist. Both Inuit and Sámi are transnational, cross-boundary peoples divided among themselves by the colonial imposition of territorial boundaries between sovereign states. While they did not consent to the colonization and polyfurcation of their traditional territories, it appears likely that colonialism has resulted in significant differences between Indigenous peoples separated by national boundaries. For example, among Inuit there is reason to believe Greenlanders and Nunavummiut might view security differently. Inuit in Canada have frequently opposed natural resource extraction projects, particularly offshore hydrocarbon development, as threatening local
831 Iris Marion Young, Global Challenges: War, Self-Determination and Responsibility for Justice (Malden: Polity, 2007), 50.
263 communities and ecosystems and contributing to global warming, and while Greenlanders remain highly divided, the Inuit-led Government of Greenland has embraced resource extraction as the means to achieve greater political autonomy from Denmark.832 Inupik – Inuit in Alaska – have also been supportive of oil development in Prudhoe Bay and the North Slope Borough, with revenues from extraction and related economic activities being a vital part of Indigenous economies since the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971.833 Similarly, Sámi in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia likely understand security differently given the influence of distinct policies and political structures within their respective countries, and the geopolitical realities that accompanied membership in the East or West blocs during the Cold War. Such variation among Indigenous peoples’ understandings of their interests, and the relationship between those interests and natural resource extraction, cautions against characterizing a particular essentialized Indigenous understanding of in/security. Though similarities may exist, Arctic Indigenous peoples exhibit variation in their political preferences and identification of their political interests on the basis of their specific material and political contexts. Such variation prevents any singular definition of what in/security means to Indigenous peoples, even if many Indigenous accounts of in/security foreground threats to certain common values and shared referent objects.
8.2 State Understandings of Arctic In/Security
The second finding is that understandings of Arctic in/security held by Inuit and Sámi differ from, and are omitted, from those articulated by their national governments. As outlined in Chapter 4, Canada’s official understanding of Arctic in/security – as reflected in the key Arctic foreign and security policy documents released under the previous Conservative government – is based on two linked pillars. The first pillar asserts the need for increased military defence of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty in the face of potential challenges. It implies that sovereignty over Arctic lands and waters remains unsettled under international law and threatened by geopolitical rivals, thus Canada requires a strengthened Northern military presence and increased investment
832 Frank Sejersen, Rethinking Greenland and the Arctic in an Era of Climate Change (London: Routledge, 2015). 833 Shadian 2014.
264 in military resources and capabilities. In particular, the Conservative government frequently depicted a resurgent Russia as an expansionary power and Canada’s primary Arctic antagonist. The second pillar is linked to the first because it explains part of the motivation for Canada’s increased militarization of Arctic sovereignty, namely that extraction of Arctic resources is important for the economic security of the Canadian state. Although extraction of many resources, particularly hydrocarbons, experienced only modest increases between 2001-2011, the idea of Northern resources as important to the broader economic security of Canadians, in general, and Northerners, in particular, has been a significant component of Canada’s recent Arctic policy. In one sense, Canada tends to discuss security indirectly; sovereignty remains the central element of Canada’s official Arctic discourse. However, the recent discourse of Arctic sovereignty has been premised on realist understandings of security and the nation-state. Thus, Canadian Arctic policy may best be understood as sovereignty-as-security, whereby Canada’s national security interests are served through the militarized assertion of sovereignty claims seen as enabling the extraction of Arctic resources, which in turn further demonstrates that Canada is exercising that sovereignty.
This official discourse of Canadian Arctic security indicates relative continuity with historical patterns of government policy towards the Arctic, but marks a departure from the human security foreign policy agenda that characterized Canada’s global involvement in the 1990s and early 2000s. Canada was a leader in the post-Cold War widening of security, and championed a holistic conception of regional security that prioritized protection of the Arctic ecosystem, health and wellbeing of Northerners, cultural integrity of Arctic Indigenous peoples, and mitigating the impacts of human-caused climate change. Though never fully implemented by the Liberal governments of the day, these goals are fundamentally incompatible with the Conservative vision of the Canadian North as a storehouse of hydrocarbon and mineral resources waiting to be exploited. Indeed, the vision of the Arctic as a resource province necessitates environmental damage as the cost of economic progress. Canada’s approach to Arctic security is thus inimical to understanding the threats associated with environmental change because doing so would implicate the Conservatives’ own natural resource and economic development policies as a key source of insecurity. Ultimately, rather than build upon Canada’s human security legacy, recent federal policy has ignored the threats posed by climate change in pursuit of the economic benefits that it may afford.
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The analysis of in this dissertation Canadian Arctic policy between 2001-2011 straddles both Liberal and Conservative governments, but is particularly informed by the recent Conservative Government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper (2006-2015). In October 2015, however, the Conservatives were defeated in the federal election by the Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau. During the campaign and since taking office, the Trudeau Liberals have articulated a distinct vision of federal-Indigenous relations from their predecessors, including an emphasis on “renewing[ing] the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples … [and] do[ing] more to make sure that the voices of Indigenous Peoples are heard in Ottawa.”834 The Arctic did not feature prominently in the Liberals’ campaign rhetoric and has not as yet been a significant feature of their time in government, but some indications of potential future developments have already appeared. With respect to the intersection of Indigenous politics and natural resources, the Liberal focus appears to be on winning ‘social license’ for continued extractive projects. This extends beyond the Arctic, but, like their Conservative predecessors, the Liberals emphasize the “tremendous economic potential” of Canada’s North,835 and the need to make the region attractive for workers and investment by achieving “a balance between development and protecting the environment.”836 The Liberals have adopted a very different tone on climate change – including use of securitizing language by describing it as “an immediate and significant threat to our communities and our economy”837 – but have had difficulty identifying a pathway towards national GHG emissions reductions and gaining buy-in from other orders of government.838 And the Liberal government has announced that, despite pledging to scrap the proposed purchase of new F-35 fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force, the F-35 will still
834 Liberal Party of Canada, “A New Nation-to-Nation Process”. Accessed at https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/a- new-nation-to-nation-process/ on March 10, 2016. 835 Liberal Party of Canada, “Canada’s North”. Accessed at https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/canadas-north/ on March 10, 2016. 836 Thomas Rohner, “Nunavut’s federal candidates: Hunter Tootoo,” Nunatsiaq Online (September 30, 2015). Accessed at http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674nunavuts_federal_candidates_hunter_tootoo/ on March 10, 2016. 837 Liberal Party of Canada, “Climate Change”. Accessed at https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/climate-change/ on March 10, 2016. 838 “Trudeau, premiers agree to climate plan framework, but no specifics on carbon pricing,” CBC News (March 3, 2016). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/first-ministers-premiers-trudeau-1.3474380 on March 10, 2016.
266 be considered as a replacement for the aging CF-18s.839 The early evidence makes it difficult to tell to what extent the new government will differ from the Conservatives with respect to the key pillars of militarism and resource extraction in an Arctic region experiencing dramatic climate change. The exclusion or absence of Indigenous views on Arctic in/security may be specific to the Conservative era, or may prove to be a continuing feature of Canadian security policy. Given the rapid pace of change within global politics and the global climate, and the intensely competing domestic pressures on the federal government to balance the interests of different economic sectors and political constituencies, only time will tell.
Canada’s sovereignty-as-security discourse echoes several key themes of Norwegian Arctic security policy. As examined in Chapter 6, Norway’s official understanding of in/security in its High North region is also structured around two pillars: Russia and natural resources. Although these issues have been reiterated as part of Norway’s new High North Initiative, they reflect the dominant construction of the Norwegian national interest in the Arctic for at least the last two centuries. In this respect, defending its territory from Russian aggression while extracting natural resources are routinely and consistently depicted as vital to the survival and prosperity of the Norwegian state. Historically, this conception of in/security in the High North also incorporated Sámi, because their support was integral in establishing sovereignty in the disputed Scandinavian border regions prior to modern state consolidation, while their labour was exploited to facilitate natural resource extraction. In the present day, the ongoing construction of Russia as a national security issue and natural resources, particularly offshore petroleum extraction, as key to national economic security and the maintenance of the welfare state has resulted in the High North being a heavily securitized subject within Norwegian policy discourse. The Arctic regions of Canada and Norway have each been constructed as security- relevant in their respective national contexts. However, whereas northern Canada has been only narrowly understood as related to security, namely through the discourse of sovereignty-as- security, many issues in the Norwegian High North have been securitized within state policy, with security operating as a powerful keyword for numerous regional policy domains.
839 Murray Brewster, “Sajjan refuses to rule out F-35 from fighter jet replacement competition,” CBC News (December 21, 2015). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sajjan-refuses-to-rule-out-f-35-from-fighter-jet- replacement-competition-1.3375507 on March 10, 2016.
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Implicit in how Canada and Norway have constructed their official understandings of Arctic in/security is that the views of Indigenous peoples are not reflected. Whereas Inuit and Sámi views of in/security emphasize threat-referent object relationships pertaining to the environment, indigenous identity, and political and cultural autonomy, Canada and Norway identify Arctic in/security premised on territorial defence, natural resource extraction, and the economic interests of their core southern regions. Indigenous peoples feature very little in the Arctic security policies of either state, and in so far as they do their own stated security priorities are absent. This suggests that state understandings of Arctic in/security remain fundamentally colonial, and represent the assertion of southern Canadian and Norwegian priorities and interests over those of the Indigenous peoples who inhabit the northern regions of both countries. They also fail to fully account for the facts that Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claims rest in large part on the prior sovereignty of Inuit, and that Sámi were integral in supporting early Norwegian claims over the High North. Thus, dominant Arctic security discourses in both countries perpetuate the historical relations of Indigenous subordination to southern-based governments, which also serves to undermine the Inuit and Sámi priorities of autonomy and self-determination. Not only do Canada and Norway’s Arctic security policies fail to reflect the security interests of their Indigenous peoples, they further compromise those very interests and validate Inuit and Sámi concerns over government imposition on their peoples.
8.3 Indigenous Securitization and Non-Securitization
The third empirical finding of this dissertation is that, despite the similarities between Inuit and Sámi and Canadian and Norwegian understandings of Arctic in/security, respectively, there are differing explanations for why Indigenous understandings are not reflected in the Arctic security policies of either circumpolar state. Inuit in Canada and Sámi in Norway do not equally employ securitization as a strategy to mobilize political action on their highest priority issues, thus two distinct sets of factors explain the failure or absence of Indigenous securitization within the Canadian and Norwegian Arctic regions. As Chapter 5 explains, dominant Arctic security discourse in Canada omits Indigenous views of in/security because securitizing moves made by Inuit and other Indigenous actors are excluded from the official securitization process. This exclusion operates through the mechanism of silenced insecurity, whereby securitizing moves
268 are either impeded from being made or systematically ignored to prevent them from being heard. The silencing of securitizing moves by Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic occurs in three specific ways. First, their voices and views are marginalized or omitted from the considerations of state actors who comprise the authoritative audience for securitization, principally the Parliament of Canada. Second, ‘the Arctic’ is defined in such a way that certain Indigenous peoples are excluded from the region, resulting in the delegitimation of their views on Arctic issues through the imposition of settler-colonial territorial definitions. Third, the central issues for Indigenous peoples’ understandings of Arctic in/security are omitted or diminished in state discourse, denying recognition of the material basis for certain security claims to be made. Thus, while Inuit and other Indigenous peoples in Northern Canada have attempted to have their security claims heard by political actors representing the sovereign power to mobilize an exceptional political response, their securitizing moves have failed to transform into complete or successful securitizations, and have instead been subsumed within the Arctic security claims of the Canadian state.
The explanation for why Sámi views are not represented in state Arctic security policies in Norway is very different, however. Unlike Indigenous peoples in northern Canada, Sámi have not generally functioned as securitizing actors articulating their concerns in terms of threat- referent relationships and existential threats. Sámi political actors express concern over various hazards to their traditional land use, livelihoods, culture, and autonomy, but these issues are usually not described using securitizing language, nor characterized as existential issues threatening Sámi survival. By and large, these issues are treated as normal political issues, with little of the urgency invoked by speaking in/security. Thus, particularly given the prevalence of security language for Inuit in Canada, the question in the case of Sámi shifts from “why have their securitizing moves failed?” to “why have they not made securitizing moves in the first place?”. Chapter 7 proposes three reasons for why Sámi have not sought to securitize their political concerns: the relatively weaker impacts of human-caused climate change in the Scandinavian Arctic; the high degree of Sámi inclusion within Norwegian society; and the strong influence of a threatening Russian neighbour on Norwegian national security discourse. Whereas a high degree of difference between Inuit and non-indigenous Canadians and a relatively diffuse conception of national security in Canada make securitization a possibility for
269 political action, these three factors combine to make security uninviting terrain for Sámi to pursue their political interests vis-à-vis non-indigenous Norwegian society.
The different explanations for the absence of Indigenous views from Arctic security highlight the contributions of the revised approach to securitization theorized in Chapter 3. In/security means something similar to Inuit and Sámi, but the former have sought to securitize while the latter have not. Despite the seemingly favourable conditions for securitization success, Inuit have failed in their efforts at securitization due to the interaction between their identity as the basis for their security claims and the identity of the authoritative audience that must accept those claims. The prior context of the colonial relationship between Inuit and the Canadian state is such that Inuit implicate Canada in the production of their insecurity. To accept Inuit claims would therefore require Canada to accept its own historical and contemporary complicity in adversely affecting the prospects for Inuit survival and wellbeing, and undermine its own legitimacy to determine the meaning of in/security in Northern Canada. The relational identities of Inuit and the federal government thus mediate the success of securitizing moves made by the former against the latter, because power to determine in/security is still held by the latter over the former. By contrast, Sámi in Norway have chosen not to pursue securitization as the principal strategy to advance their political priorities. The reasons for this appear to be their comfortable material circumstances and relative lack of differentiation from the non-indigenous majority. Included in this is the lesser gravity of environmental change in the High North, and the fact that Sámi do not experience it very differently than their non-indigenous Norwegian counterparts. In this respect, while identity may contribute to the likely failure of certain securitizing moves, the social context within which security claims are made and the material nature of prospective threats inform the inclination towards, and possible viability of, securitization as a strategy for political action. These findings have significant implications for securitization theory.
8.4 Indigenous Peoples and Securitization Non-Dominance
There are three distinct theoretical implications of the preceding empirical findings. The first of these is whether securitization actually affords a viable strategy for Indigenous peoples to pursue state action on their highest priority policy issues. As discussed above, whether Indigenous political actors choose to pursue securitization varies according to contextual factors. However,
270 the experience of Inuit in Canada suggests that even when Indigenous actors do attempt to securitize they may be unable to do so. If Inuit views are structurally excluded from state Arctic security discourse in Canada, a result is they are rendered securitization non-dominant. This is distinct from observing that Inuit and other peoples inhabiting the Arctic may experience unique or specific security threats to their collective survival or wellbeing, such as those related to climate change or indigenous identities. Rather, securitization non-dominance suggests a group is unable to engage in the intersubjective process through which security threats are socially constructed, and thus their views are structurally excluded from state security discourse.
Inuit securitization non-dominance is not an a priori condition, but can be deduced from the consistent failure of their securitizing moves. Chapters 4 and 5 detail the securitizing moves that Inuit have made to articulate environmental change, the effects of colonization and modernization, and various policies of the Government of Canada as threats to their collective security and wellbeing. Since these securitizing moves are not reflected in Canada’s Arctic policies, it is possible to say that Inuit failed at their effort to securitize their priority issues. For any societal group, securitization non-dominance suggests representatives of the state do not consider their views worthy of full consideration, nor their stated interests sufficient to enjoy protection afforded by the state. For indigenous peoples, however, whose states have historically understood them as explicitly unworthy of full consideration as political subjects, it is a further manifestation of the structural power exercised by settler-colonial institutions.
It is worth reiterating why the failure of Inuit efforts at securitization is puzzling. Inuit organizations and leaders enjoy what should be a felicitous combination of factors for their priority issues to be successfully securitized: they employ the grammar and vocabulary of in/security; they have high social capital as organized, legitimate representatives of their people, who are inherent and constitutional rights-holders over much of northern Canada; and there is a significant material basis to the security issues they are articulating, particularly environmental change. Thus, Inuit would seem to rank highly in terms of the three “facilitating conditions” that structure the likely success or failure of a securitizing move.840 While securitization is a structured field in which not all actors may participate equally, it is not clear that leading Inuit
840 Buzan et al, 33.
271 organizations should have their views excluded. That this has nonetheless occurred suggests that something else has intervened in the securitization process. While it is possible that the nature of a given issue is not favourable to securitization, Chapter 3 discusses numerous examples of the successful construction of environmental change as a security threat in other political and geographic contexts. Securitizing environmental change is often difficult, but it has succeeded, suggesting the answer to why Inuit securitizing moves have failed does not lie solely in the nature of the threat they are seeking to construct.
Figure 8: Revised Securitization Process
Instead, I propose that the role of identity is more complex than typically recognized in securitization theory. While some identities may offer privileged access to securitization and serve to facilitate acceptance of a given actor’s security claims, identity can also be an inhibiting condition that impedes securitization success. The case of Inuit securitizing actors in Northern Canada suggests that Indigenous identity, as the basis for articulating the distinct interests of Indigenous peoples, may limit the ability of indigenous securitizing moves to be accepted by the sovereign power of the settler state. As such, Indigenous peoples may find themselves to be non- dominant securitizing actors who are structurally unable to have their issues accepted as security threats as a result of their historical relationships and contemporary positions within settler states, and because their security issues inherently position that very sovereign as contributing to the conditions of their insecurity. Since Indigenous peoples are subject to particular forms of governmentality and state intervention, including greater means through which Indigenous
272 security claims can be silenced, securitization processes involving Indigenous peoples have at least three potential outcomes, instead of the binary possibilities of failure or success. As explained in Chapter 3, demonstrated in Chapter 5, and re-illustrated in Figure 8 below, Indigenous peoples’ securitizing moves: 1) may be silenced, and thus never reach the authoritative audience that must adjudicate them; 2) may be subsumed within a broader but distinct securitizing move, thus nominally succeeding while substantively failing to advance the original security claim; or 3) may simply fail on their own terms if rejected by the audience.
The prospect of certain identities operating as an inhibiting condition for securitization raises numerous theoretical questions: Which identities constitute particular groups as non-dominant? Under what, if any, circumstances can non-dominant securitizing moves succeed, particularly if the threats they articulate derive from the interests of the dominant group? A related question is who is the authoritative audience of securitization, and does it always matter? Identities are relational, and securitization non-dominance is determined by the prior relationship between the securitizing actor and the audience. If the audience of securitization shifts – as, say, through a change of government or in public opinion – then a standard account would indicate the conditions for securitization may shift, as well. As discussed in Chapter 3, however, securitization has been challenged for its underlying democratic bias, whereby the operation of securitization presupposes that certain values exist, notably free speech and expression, thus security claims made under favourable facilitating conditions are expected to succeed. Such an account of the relative openness of securitization stands in considerable tension with one of the basic of precepts of Indigenous politics: that Indigenous peoples, by definition, “remain occupied peoples who have been dispossessed and disempowered in their own homelands.”841 Under such imbalanced power relations, and where the security of the non-dominant group is, to some extent, necessarily compromised by the interests of the majority, can the settler sovereign ever accept the security claims of Indigenous peoples? Is the securitization non-dominance of Indigenous peoples thus a fixed condition, because the sovereign cannot accept security claims made against itself or those that question the legitimacy of its authority?
841 Alfred and Corntassel, 598.
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Full answers to these questions are beyond the scope of this dissertation, but they have important implications for related areas of research. If Indigenous peoples are structurally impeded from successfully making security claims within their respective domestic polities, then it suggests a significant limitation on the political agency of Indigenous peoples within settler states. In particular, if securitization can be a useful mechanism for mobilizing political action against potentially existential material hazards, then the findings of this dissertation call into question whether self-determination – as currently realized within the context of settler societies such as Canada and northern Norway – includes the capacity to effectively respond to the most challenging issues facing Indigenous people. Though Indigenous governments and other representative organizations provide a potential alternative audience for securitizing moves, they possess neither the material resources nor the constitutional and legal authority to enact sufficient changes to effectively respond to the security issues identified by in Inuit in Chapter 4 and Sámi in Chapter 7. The ability to securitize is linked to power, and the preponderance of power within settler societies does not reside with Indigenous people. Consequently, the inability to successfully securitize has serious implications for the protection of Indigenous peoples against the security threats they identify. In effect, they may be rendered doubly insecure, both confronted with specific types of security threats and systematically unable to generate an appropriate state response in order to protect themselves against them.
8.5 Security, States, and Radical Environmental Change
It is thus important that Indigenous peoples have been principal advocates linking Arctic security with the threats posed by environmental change. Perhaps counter-intuitively, articulation of climate change as a security issue by Indigenous peoples may contribute to why it has not been successfully securitized within the Arctic security policies of circumpolar states such as Canada and Norway. However, radical environmental change may pose a more fundamental challenge to securitization theory, and its basic logic of in/security. With respect to securitization, whether or not Indigenous peoples or other non-dominant groups have the power to securitize may be moot given the nature of the threats associated with human-caused environmental change. Even if the preceding section were incorrect – i.e. Indigenous peoples were not securitization non- dominant, and therefore stood a reasonable chance of having their security claims accepted by
274 states – it might not make any significant difference in their ability to defend themselves against the threats in question. As outlined in Chapter 1, human-caused environmental change is already causing an irrevocable transformation of the Arctic, with more significant and increasingly dire predictions released on a regular basis. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report warns that “the rapid rate at which climate is changing in the Polar Regions will impact natural and social systems and may exceed the rate at which some of their components can successfully adapt.”842 The pace of environmental changes continues to exceed predictions of climate models, and particularly worrying is the likelihood that positive feedbacks generated by the warmer climate – such as release of methane from Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost, reduced albedo from loss of sea ice, or collapse of the Greenland or Antarctic ice-sheets – may significantly exacerbate climate change.843 Recent findings indicate the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has begun to disintegrate in earnest, and is now beyond human capabilities to prevent.844 This is expected to cause an increase in global sea level of 1.2-3.6 metres over the next two centuries, in addition to predicted sea level rise related to other drivers of environmental change. The melting of the Antarctic ice-sheet indicates that certain major environmental changes are now certain to occur irrespective of future human efforts to mitigate their climate impact. Climate adaptation will now be necessary around the world, while mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming are aimed at preventing future or runaway climate change. As such, it is not clear what effects successful securitization of environmental change would have in mobilizing an extraordinary political response to climate changes that can no longer be avoided.
Put another way, even if Inuit and other Indigenous peoples were successful in having their securitizing moves accepted by Canada or other circumpolar states, what exceptional measures could be mobilized to effectively respond to the threats posed by human-caused environmental change? Climate change in the Arctic can be slowed but not reversed, but that would only result from global efforts to address climate change, and cannot be achieved through the actions of any
842 IPCC 2014, 3. 843 IPCC 2013, 16; Lenton 2012. 844 Jonathan Bamber, Riccardo Riva, Bert Vermeersen, and Anne LeBrocq, “Reassessment of the Potential Sea- Level Rise from a Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” Science 324, no. 901 (2009): 901-903; Ian Joughin, Benjamin Smith, Brooke Medley, “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica,” Science 344, no. 6185: 735-738.
275 state alone. In this respect, effectively mitigating threats posed by Arctic climate change is merely an extension of responding to global climate change. Unsurprisingly, therefore, climate change has been referred to as a “macro-securitization” because rather than forming a discrete security issue that can be defended against, it is the context that shapes and orders the articulation and assessment of numerous other security issues.845 For instance, a 2010 study of the failure of Canadian policymakers to recognize climate change as a security threat offers seven recommendations for action.846 While laudable and appropriate given the increasing threats posed by environmental change, these recommendations focus on climate adaptation rather than mitigation. The authors lament the lack of interest by the Conservative government, and its predecessors, in seriously responding to the multi-scale security impacts of climate change, and encourage Canadian institutions, including law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to catch up with respect to planning for climate related hazards. They encourage Canadian leaders to “engage internationally”, but otherwise offer little discussion of how Canada might itself address the causes of climate change rather than simply defend against its effects. Present throughout their analysis is the unspoken fact that there is little Canada can do on its own other than respond defensively to the hazards posed by environmental change.
Securitization’s emphasis on the legitimation of exceptional measures raises one peculiar possibility with respect to effectively responding to global environmental change. In the context of threats to the global biosphere, one possibility of how states might respond is through geo- engineering, or deliberate human interference in the climate system in order to mitigate the unintended consequences of human GHG emissions. Geo-engineering involves artificially forcing climatic or ecological systems into new equilibria through technological interventions, proposals for which range from high technology to rudimentary science.847 Specific interventions proposed for the Arctic include seeding the stratosphere with sulphur particles to increase reflectivity of solar radiation and pumping and spraying water in order to reform sea
845 Buzan and Wæver 2009. 846 Purdy and Smythe 2010. 847 David Keith, A Case for Climate Engineering (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013).
276 ice.848 To date, most states have been reticent to accept geo-engineering as a valid or appropriate response to climate change, but research on the subject has nonetheless persisted for decades. As such, geo-engineering offers an example of just the kind of extraordinary policy response that might be legitimated through successful securitization of climate change. However, therein lies the problem: states are not the only authoritative audience for securitizing moves that possesses the power to respond to climate change through the deployment of geo-engineering techniques. Indeed, there have been substantial concerns over the prospect that some geo-engineering measures are sufficiently inexpensive and simple to implement that non-state actors might be able to employ them without state support or authorization.849
An instructive example of geo-engineering was the depositing between July-August 2012 of 120 tonnes of iron ore in international waters off the west coast of Canada.850 The experiment caused a 35,000 km2 plankton bloom 200 nautical miles west of Haida Gwaii, an exercise in “ocean fertilization” that appears to contravene the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution, and Canadian law.851 The experimenters – operating through a company called the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC), which is co-owned by the Haida First Nation community of Old Massett and a controversial geo- engineering entrepreneur and amateur scientist named Russ George – claim this plankton will absorb atmospheric carbon while encouraging spawning by local salmon populations.852 They
848 Paul J. Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma,” Climatic Change 77, no. 3-4 (2006): 211-220; Ken Caldeira and Lowell Wood, “Global and Arctic Climate Engineering: Numerical Model Studies,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 366, no. 1882 (2008): 4039-4056. 849 Adam Corner, “Profitable climate fixes are too tempting for rogue geoengineers to resist,” The Guardian (October 19, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/19/climate-fix-geoengineering on November 1, 2015. 850 Holly J. Buck, “Village Science Meets Global Discourse: The Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation’s Ocean Iron Fertilization Experiment,” Geoengineering Our Climate Working Paper and Opinion Article Series. Accessed at https://geoengineeringourclimate.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/buck-2014-village-science-meets-global- discourse-click-for-download.pdf on November 1, 2015. 851 Martin Lukacs, “World’s biggest geoengineering experiment ‘violates’ UN rules,” The Guardian (October 15, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering on November 1, 2015; Zoe McKnight, “Why was iron dumping a surprise?” Vancouver Sun (September 3, 2013). Accessed at http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/iron+dumping+surprise/8865130/story.html?__lsa=1097- 99cb on November 1, 2015. 852 Zoe McKnight, “B.C. company at centre of iron dumping scandal stands by its convictions,” Vancouver Sun (September 4, 2013). Accessed at
277 also claim to have been operating in the interest and with the authorization of the Haida Nation.853 In 2013 and 2014, western North America experienced some of its largest salmon runs ever; the number of salmon caught in the northeastern Pacific the year after the ocean fertilizing experiment more than quadrupled to 226 million fish. Supporters argue these data and other remote observations in the area where the ore was deposited indicate the project was a success, should provide a model for collaborative community-based scientific research, and that micro geo-engineering projects can be fruitfully deployed to mitigate climate change and produce local ecological benefits.854 Meanwhile, though some scientists have voiced their support, numerous international organizations and environmental groups have decried the actions of HSRC, and as of 2014 an Environment Canada investigation appeared likely to result in criminal charges, though it does not appear that any were ever laid.855
This experiment in geo-engineering speaks directly to the complexities of Indigenous politics and sources of legitimacy for responding to threats associated with environmental change. The project was approved and funded by the village of Old Massett after a vote by fewer than 200 of the community’s 700 members, in which 57 voted against. Some community members expressed their strong opposition before and after the actual experiment,856 with one elder lamenting the experimenters invocation of Indigenous legitimacy to defend their actions: “[HSRC] is always telling the world that ‘Haida people’ support them. It’s the Old Massett
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/company+centre+iron+dumping+scandal+stands+convictions/8860731/s tory.html?__lsa=1097-99cb on November 1, 2015. 853 Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation. Accessed at http://www.haidasalmonrestoration.com/ on November 1, 2015. 854 Robert Zubrin, “The Pacific’s salmon are back – Thank human ingenuity,” National Review (April 22, 2014). Accessed at http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376258/pacifics-salmon-are-back-thank-human-ingenuity- robert-zubrin on November 1, 2015. 855 Dene Moore, “Ocean fertilization experiment loses in B.C. court; charges now likely,” The Globe and Mail (February 3, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ocean-fertilization- experiment-loses-in-bc-court-charges-now-likely/article16672031/ on November 1, 2015; McKnight, “B.C. company at centre of iron dumping scandal stands by its convictions”. 856 Zoe McKnight and Gordon Hoekstra, “Some in Old Masset had concerns over iron-dumping scheme,” Vancouver Sun (October 22, 2012). Accessed at http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/some+masset+concerns+over+iron+dumping+scheme/7429860/story.ht ml?__lsa=1097-99cb on November 1, 2015.
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Village Council that goes along with it … [but] it isn’t the ‘Haida people’ they’re representing.”857 Dissenting community members also observe that ocean fertilization was only the most recent in a series of local environment-related “get rich quick schemes”. While the project proceeded without the permission of the self-governing Council of the Haida Nation, of which Old Massett is a part, it is alleged to have occurred with the knowledge of various agencies of the Government of Canada.858 Thus the question of authority to authorize responses to environmental change is inextricably intertwined with questions of Indigenous representation and governance within settler societies. Does one small community possess the authority to legitimize human interventions in response to climate change and local environmental hazards, especially when those interventions may affect many more people from outside the community? Should such a community be bound by the authority of the larger, albeit still numerically small, Indigenous nation to which it belongs? What is the role of settler governing authorities in restricting or permitting the agency of Indigenous actors to respond to environmental threats? Are settler institutions, such as Environment Canada or the criminal justice system, appropriately able to restrict the decision making or activities of Indigenous communities with respect to such environmental threats upon, and to, their unceded territories? Geo-engineering is an issue with potentially global applications and implications, and cases such as this demonstrate the challenges associated with authorizing its use as an extraordinary policy response to the hazards of environmental change.
Ultimately, interrogating the relationship between in/security and radical environmental change raises the question of whether the logic that underpins securitization is best equipped to guide policy action and public consciousness on climate change. The theory’s emphasis on successful securitization as the legitimation of exceptional policy measures may cause it to misunderstand the nature of environmental in/security in the Anthropocene, in which threats are existential but neither sudden nor exceptional. To the contrary, scholars have observed that central challenges with respect to mobilizing an effective response to climate change are the facts that: it has been occurring gradually over decades, its effects are rapid in geological terms but relatively slow-
857 Quoted in McKnight, “Why was iron dumping a surprise?”. 858 Martin Lukacs, “Canadian government ‘knew of plans to dump iron into the Pacific’,” The Guardian (October 17, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/17/canada-geoengineering- pacific?intcmp=122 on November 1, 2015.
279 moving in human ones, and no single policy can adequately defend human beings or the global biosphere from its effects.859 Moreover, if scholars and activists are correct in their assessment that climate change arises from the normal, indeed ‘successful’, functioning of an industrialized, globalized, capitalist economy, and therefore effectively responding to climate change truly “changes everything”, then neither does environmental in/security appear to be exceptional.860 To the contrary, it is caused by the operation of the global normal, is now the everyday context within which people and communities must make their collective decisions over how to live and how to prioritize their respective security issues. In such a context, it is perhaps unsurprising that even when securitizing environmental change has been discursively successful, it has not always succeeded at generating an adequate policy response. Environmental security scholars increasingly struggle with the fact that
the dynamics of linking security and climate change illustrate significant ambiguities over which audience/s are addressed and what emergency measures follow representations of threat … These challenges are oriented around complex questions raised by environmental change regarding what constitutes the referent object of security (states, people, future generations, the biosphere or other living beings?), and what actions might constitute legitimate security provision.861
It is notable, therefore, that statements and actions by Indigenous peoples identifying climate change as a threat also routinely identify the need to reform capitalist economies and limit the behaviour of corporate actors whose business models currently rely upon the extraction, transportation, and consumption of fossil fuels.862 Many Indigenous peoples have sought to disrupt dominant narratives employed by national governments, regional organizations, and the IPCC by foregrounding the connection between climate change and exploitation of their lands and resources. This connection is what has enabled Indigenous peoples to link new insecurities associated with environmental change with pre-existing threats associated with colonialism and
859 Hulme 2009. 860 Barnett 2001; Saurin 2001; Dalby 2002, 2009; Foster, Bellamy and Clark 2010; Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015). 861 McDonald 2012, 582. 862 Smith 2007; Smith and Parks 2010; Chapters 5 and 7 of this dissertation.
280 modernization: both stem from the same source, namely the expansion of capitalist economies into their territories through the forced implementation of policies by settler governments. Thus, “without question, the Indigenous peoples’ statements concur that climate change is a serious problem. They clearly articulate that we are in crisis. But the crisis they identify is one embedded in a completely dysfunctional economic order. The threat is not some abstract, long term environmental change. The threat is in the commodification of nature, and the production and consumption patterns of industrialized states.”863 By emphasizing that environmental insecurity is linked to the globalization of a fossil fuel-based economy, and that climate change poses particular threats to their lands, communities, and ways of life, Indigenous peoples further align their stated security interests against the dominant economic interests of the majority, non- Indigenous society. This underscores the unequal distribution of power between Indigenous peoples and settler governments, while calling into question the underlying logic that views security threats as phenomena that can necessarily be named, defined, and defended against.
Human civilization is usually the ultimate referent object of environmental security claims, yet it is also the very structures of our current civilization that is causing global environmental change. If the nature of a referent object is productive of the threats that endanger its own survival, it is unclear how it can be defended without compromising the very object it seeks to defend. Since Indigenous peoples have generally been positioned outside of the dominant society – and have been historically oppressed and victimized in the name of ‘civilization’ – their security is simultaneously linked to and separate from that of broader, non-indigenous societal referent object. It is an irony that environmental changes increasingly affecting all of society threatened many Indigenous peoples first, yet their security claims have been ignored. Now that climate change is unavoidable, and all people increasingly experience its impacts, it is unclear whether in/security can provide a conceptual guide for understanding what to do about it. No state can combat climate change alone, or effectively respond to environmental change as the source of danger for its citizens. Nor can settler states now accept indigenous securitizing moves without accepting their own construction within those moves as the source of insecurity for Indigenous peoples and everyone else as a result of being the major GHG emitters historically responsible for climate change, and for having taken so long to take seriously the challenges it poses.
863 Smith 2007, 208.
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Understanding climate change as a security threat thus risks undermining the self-conception of states in the Global North as sites of security for their citizens, and as leaders of a liberal international order premised on cooperation, interdependence, and absolute gains. And even if they were prepared to accept such a challenge to their ontological security864 – their very sense of self as idealized sovereign spaces – they would still lack the capabilities to effectively deal with environmental change, simultaneously making the acceptance futile and undermining the logic that successful securitizing moves require an appropriate defence-response.
8.6 Critical Environmental Security in the Arctic
Perhaps in/security is not the right concept through which to frame our understanding of the dangers associated with human-caused environmental change, or through which to mobilize effective political action on climate change. Alternatively, if in/security is a social construct established through the intersubjective agreement of social actors, perhaps it is possible to redefine it in a way that better reflects the nature of current environmental challenges in the Arctic and elsewhere. Dominant current understandings of security in the Arctic are not only insufficiently focused on addressing the challenges of environmental change, but seem committed to actually worsening that change. The sixth and final conclusion of this dissertation, and its third theoretical implication, is thus that security, environmental change, and the Arctic must be critically reconceived in order to reflect the magnitude of global environmental changes, and adequately provide meaningful conditions of security for people and states in the circumpolar region. While this could be described as a call for greater environmental security in the Arctic, I argue that, to be meaningful, it must be a critical understanding of environmental security that engages with ecological sustainability more deeply than the conventional inclusion of environmental issues into security policy or analysis. Moreover, given the security claims made by Arctic Indigenous peoples, it can be understood as an indigenized understanding of Arctic security that not only reflects the security priorities of the region’s original inhabitants,
864 Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 3 (2006): 341-370.
282 but also recognizes the benefits of their understandings of security for all people within and beyond the circumpolar region.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the term “environmental security” has been commonly used since the 1970s, though initially research shied away from interrogating the sources of environmental problems in favour of examining the costs and consequences of environmental damage. Gradually, transnational issues such as nuclear irradiation; chemical use in industry, agriculture, and warfare; resource scarcity; and human-caused environmental changes influenced alternative conceptions of security mobilized in opposition to Cold War discourses of superpower conflict.865 But even after the environment emerged as a legitimate sector of security analysis, many scholars employed state-centric conceptions of environmental security that precluded threats to non-state referent objects and obscured the role of states, corporations, and individuals in constituting environmental hazards.866 Environmentally induced violence remained the focus of most environmental security scholarship, limiting its analytical and normative potential.867 In this way, conventional accounts of environmental security disciplined the radicalism inherent in incorporating the environment into security analysis.
This de-radicalization of environmental security resembles the generalized disciplining of environmentalism within global politics. In his comprehensive account of Green political theory, Andrew Dobson differentiates “environmentalism” from “ecologism” as distinct dispositions towards the human-nature relationship. Whereas environmentalism connotes “a managerial approach to the environment within the context of present political and economic practices,”868 “ecologism holds that a sustainable and fulfilling existence presupposes radical changes in our relationship with the non-human natural world, and in our mode of social and political life.”869 Environmentalism, so defined, dominates current discourses of global environmental problems, advocating ‘greener’ modes of production and consumption without questioning the underlying
865 Buzan and Hansen 2009: 128. 866 Barnett 2001; Greaves 2014. 867 e.g. Homer-Dixon 1991, 1994, 1999. 868 Dobson 2007, 26. 869 Dobson 2007, 3.
283 ecological sustainability of such practices. Indeed, mainstream environmental policies generally favour “technological fixes” precisely because these do not disrupt the technologies, systems, or behaviours that cause environmental problems in the first place.870 By contrast, ecologism begins from the premise that humanity is embedded within natural systems, and what must be sustained is the viability of Earth as a “safe operating space for humanity.”871 Thus, ecologism views a globalized “hydrocarbon society” based on the extraction and consumption of non- renewable fossil fuels as incompatible with ecological sustainability.872
Environmentalism and ecologism demonstrate the distinction between “problem-solving” and “critical” forms of social theory. According to Robert Cox, problem-solving theory “takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organized, as the given framework for action.”873 Such theories are commonplace and often useful: they can resolve discrete problems such that the social, political, and economic structures within which they occur remain intact. Problem-solving theories are unproblematic so long as benefits generated by existing structures outweigh their negative impacts. By contrast, critical theory rejects the limitation of problem-solving theories to existing configurations of material and ideational power. To Cox, critical theory
is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came about. Critical theory, unlike problem-solving theory, does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing. It is directed towards an appraisal of the very framework for action, or problematic, which problem-solving theory accepts as its parameters.874
Environmentalism reflects a problem-solving approach to humanity’s impacts on the rest of the natural world. Precisely because it attempts to solve environmental problems within existing political and economic structures, mainstream “green politics presents no sort of a challenge at all to the twenty-first century consensus over the desirability of affluent, technological, service
870 Greaves 2013. 871 Rockström et al. 2009. 872 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003). 873 Cox 1981, 128. 874 Cox 1981, 129.
284 societies … Its dominant guise [is] an environmentalism that seeks a cleaner service economy sustained by cleaner technology and producing cleaner conspicuous consumption.”875 By contrast, ecologism seeks to realign relations between humanity and the complex ecological network in which it exists, upon which it subsists, and which it is disrupting. Ecologism thus reflects the application of critical theory to the structures and practices of human civilization that are undermining the ecological basis for our continued survival and prosperity.
Following Cox and Dobson, critical environmental security can be deduced by applying critical theory to the area of security and the environment. Unlike problem-solving approaches to environmental security that seek to mitigate environmentally driven threats to states and their interests, critical environmental security prioritizes the maintenance of a stable natural environment conducive to human flourishing. Under the former, environmental factors catalyze inter-group conflict or the environment itself is perceived as threatening state or human security. In the latter, the environment is a series of systems and sub-systems upon which human life depends, and whose functioning in a manner consistent with human survival is being undermined by humanity’s own on-going activities. In this account, three features characterize critical environmental security: it rejects the a priori link between security and violence; recognizes human and non-human objects of security analysis above and below sovereign states; and acknowledges how security is mediated by environmental factors originating within, as well as beyond, national boundaries. Indeed, the current sources of global environmental insecurity emanate from the very structures that govern most human activity. Global industrialized capitalism, with its reliance on carbon fuel, and the neoliberal economic order, which privatizes wealth while collectivizing environmental costs, are thus central to critical environmental security: “It is the broader social and ecological degradation wrought by modernity which is the overriding context for any discussion of security.”876 Critical environmental security thus recognizes that the very ways in which humanity has organized its civilization are what is causing the global ecological crisis threatening people across the world.
875 Dobson 2007, 5-7. 876 Barnett 2001, 65.
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What might a critical perspective examine differently than a mainstream problem-solving approach to environmental security in the Arctic? A starting point might be to observe how the division of security into distinct areas of analysis – such as the Copenhagen School’s distinction between the military, political, economic, societal, and environmental sectors of security 877 – marginalizes the impacts of non-environmental threats on ecological systems, while obscuring the ways environmental factors contribute to the emergence of other types of threats. While sectors may help categorize security issues, threats in one sector can endanger referent objects and generate new threats in other sectors, as might the very responses states and other actors take to defend themselves. A critical approach suggests environmental security must embrace the ecological maxim that ‘everything is connected to everything else’, and move beyond sectoral taxonomies and secure/insecure binaries to understand the role that choices made by states and people play in rendering themselves in/secure.
Thinking critically about environmental security in the Arctic also entails exploring prospective policy options that may contribute to environmental sustainability even if they challenge existing institutions. This involves imagining, and working towards, distinct futures for the Arctic and its people based on emerging and possible configurations of factors in the social, political, and ecological realms, and directing analytical attention “towards the question of how humans, groups and communities navigate in and create life-worlds of socially informed choices and possibilities.”878 By definition, the process of imagining alternative futures inclines towards questioning existing structures, and envisioning how they might change or be changed.
As laid out in this dissertation, such alternative possibilities for Arctic security are imagined in some of the securitizing moves made by Indigenous peoples. By their nature, security claims pertaining to objects such as communities, the natural environment, culture and identity, political and cultural autonomy, and the integrity of human-nature systems and relationships call into question the traditional association of security with the sovereign territorial state. Indigenous peoples are quite clearly critical in their attitudes towards security and the environment by virtue of their willingness to question existing configurations of institutional and social power
877 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998. 878 Sejersen 2015, 192.
286 responsible for creating the threats to which they are responding, particularly in so far as those systems reproduce historical patterns of colonial domination. Inuit challenge Canada’s authority to impose decisions over Arctic lands and resources upon their people, and to make such decisions without their free, prior and informed consent. Sámi question the right of the Norwegian government to make decisions adversely affecting traditional land use and reindeer grazing in violation of customary, statutory, and international law, or to infringe on the use of Sámi languages. The relative importance of these security claims is largely derived from the fact that Indigenous peoples have already achieved significant success in re-imagining the Arctic as a political space. The contemporary Arctic is characterized by a cooperative governance regime that includes – through the efforts of Indigenous leaders, organizations, and activists – Indigenous peoples as permanent participants in regional institutions such as the Arctic Council, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, and Northern Forum. It is also experiencing the emergence of new, transnational, and indigenized forms of sovereignty and political organization, including possibilities for post-colonial political communities that better reflect Indigenous priorities and dispositions towards culture, resources, and environmental sustainability.879 Such post-colonial institutions, in turn, might help protect the referent objects identified by Indigenous peoples and, conceivably, serve as an alternative audience for future securitizing moves. Alternative futures thus include asking how institutions like the Arctic Council might evolve to be responsible for protecting the regional environment and helping provide security for Arctic inhabitants.880
The adoption of Inuit and Sámi understandings of Arctic security would not only benefit Indigenous peoples, however. Many people stand to benefit from decolonizing and indigenizing the meaning of Arctic in/security, in so far as the security claims of Indigenous peoples identify the importance of maintaining human-nature systems on which all Arctic inhabitants depend, and which act as vital indicators of the health of the global ecology. Critically reimagining environmental security in the Arctic thus invites questioning whether state policies that prioritize militarism and non-renewable resource extraction can actually sustain the regional ecology, provide for the survival of Arctic communities, and support the wellbeing of Arctic
879 Wilson 2007; Ejesiak 2013; Shadian 2014. 880 Page Wilson, “Society, Steward or Security Actor? Three Visions of the Arctic Council,” Cooperation and Conflict: 1-20. Published online July 9, 2015.
287 inhabitants.881 In their place, we might imagine an Arctic in which extractive activities most responsible for damaging the Arctic ecology through climate change and local contamination are replaced with economic activities that support the priorities and traditions of Arctic inhabitants themselves. Inherent in such a vision is a commitment to decarbonization of the global economy as the only long-term solution to climate change capable of maintaining the viability of Earth’s biosphere as a “safe operating space for humanity”.882
This shift will not be simple or painless for Arctic communities themselves, which are highly dependent on fossil fuels for electricity production, local and extra-Arctic transportation, and to support the import of essential consumer products including food. But the choice amounts to whether Arctic peoples and communities are more secure being at the extreme vulnerable end of global production and shipping chains that rely on hydrocarbons, the burning of which directly contributes to destabilizing Arctic ecologies, or would experience greater security by becoming more resilient and autonomous through a transition away from hydrocarbon energy. Such visions reflect more critical and environmentally sustainable conceptions of security in and for the Arctic region, and demonstrate attempts “to open up the study of environmental security by thinking critically about existing approaches, and beginning to think alternative possibilities.”883
Elsewhere, I have argued that dominant conceptions of Arctic security are pathological – as derived from the Greek pathos, for suffering – in that they deviate from a healthy, efficient, or sustainable condition. The security policies of Arctic states suffer from three distinct pathologies: (re)militarization in the absence of a military threat; constrained inclusion of Indigenous peoples in regional governance; and hydrocarbon extraction in the context of the Anthropocene.884 Of these, however, the third has the gravest implications for local, regional, and global in/security. At the core of this security pathology is the fact that human-caused climate change is enabling access to offshore Arctic hydrocarbon resources will exacerbate and accelerate climate change. Arctic states have broadly disregarded concerns over regional
881 Broadhead 2010; Smith 2010; Greaves 2012b; Nickels 2013; Harrington and Lecavalier 2014; Sejersen 2015. 882 Rockström et al. 2009. 883 Barnett 2001, 156. 884 Chater and Greaves 2014.
288 environmental insecurity and focused their national policies on the economic benefits to be gained by exploiting Arctic resources.885 By pursuing hydrocarbon resource extraction, Arctic states are committing themselves to an apocalyptic development strategy that will further destabilize the Arctic environment and exacerbate the pace and severity of global climate change. In contrast, a critical approach to environmental security would heed the scientific assessment “that all Arctic [energy] resources should be classified as unburnable,” and must remain unexploited if the planet is to avoid global temperature increase of more than 2° C.886 Indeed, a critical perspective might question the 2-degree target set by states under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.887 Already, the effects of climate change pose extraordinary challenges worldwide, yet the current international regime dedicated to ‘solving’ the problem accepts and enables twice as much global warming as occurred over the 20th century. In so far as they presuppose a degree of warming that will entirely reorganize the ecologies and societies of the circumpolar region, multilateral climate negotiations have little to offer future prospects for sustainable conditions of Arctic environmental security.
By pursuing policies that will contribute to climate change, circumpolar governments contribute to present and future insecurity for their citizens and everyone else. Despite calls for and claims of sustainable development, there is no official acknowledgement of the incompatibility of hydrocarbon extraction, transportation, and consumption with the maintenance of a stable Arctic environment. The roadmap to an Arctic resource boom is thus, in actual fact, a path towards global ecological breakdown. The extraction and consumption of hydrocarbon resources will further exacerbate climate change, which will expand access to such resources while undermining the capacity of vulnerable ecosystems in the Arctic and elsewhere to sustain established modes of human life. The pursuit of Arctic hydrocarbons, like the continuation of other industrial and consumer processes driving climate change, represents a pathological approach to security rooted in the tension between catastrophic climate change and perpetuation of the activities that are causing that change to occur. It is inherently unsustainable, and ceteris
885 Smith 2010; Backus 2012; Greaves 2012b; Huebert and others 2012; Morozov 2012. 886 Christopher McGlade, and Paul Ekins, “The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Fuels Unused When Limiting Global Warming to 2° C,” Nature 517, no. 7533 (2015): 187-190. 887 Christopher Shaw, “Choosing a Dangerous Limit for Climate Change: Public Representations of the Decision Making Process,” Global Environmental Change 23, no. 2 (2013): 563-571.
289 paribus cannot be reconciled with a critical conception of environmental security. Though this paradox is not unique to the Arctic – indeed, it is a global phenomenon inherent to “hydrocarbon civilization” – it is most pressing in the Arctic because few other places are simultaneously sites of fossil fuel extraction and potential extraction and on the front line of such rapid environmental transformation. The romantic myth of the Arctic as sublime wilderness untouched by human activity throws into violent relief the twin realities of hydrocarbon extraction and the rapid, dramatic, and potentially uncontrollable impacts of human-caused environmental change.
8.7 Seeking Security in the Anthropocene
Environmental changes in the Arctic are driving complex physical and social processes that place circumpolar states and peoples on the front line of global environmental insecurity. In these ways, climate change in the Arctic is a powerful manifestation of the global ecological moment at which humanity stands, and reflects many of the challenges of addressing the link between security and the environment in the Anthropocene. The collective magnitude of humanity’s impacts on the global biosphere have resulted in a new geological era that threatens to undermine the conditions of security that sustain all manner of referent objects, be they states, other human communities, or non-human referent objects. Effectively responding to these hazards requires a critical approach to environmental in/security. Likewise, adopting a critical theoretical perspective allows the production of insecurity in the Arctic to be linked to activities, processes, and systems located outside the region and around the world. The Arctic may be distinct due to the confluence of its distinct ecological, social, and political characteristics, but it is not a region isolated from the rest of the globe. Environmental change poses significant challenges for the circumpolar region, but the Arctic’s crucial role in regulating global climate systems implicates it in the maintenance of ecological security at the global level. Mitigating environmentally damaging human activities in and on the Arctic is essential for global environmental in/security, because the Arctic is the harbinger of ecological instability that will affect people, states, and regions around the world.
The need for a critical approach to environmental security is all the more necessary because it stands in radical contrast with the dominant manner in which in/security in the Arctic has actually been constructed by circumpolar states. As discussed in this dissertation, states such as
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Canada and Norway have articulated and enacted conceptions of Arctic security that link the military defence of sovereign territory with the extraction of non-renewable resources. These states have embraced the economic opportunities afforded by climate change as benefiting their national security interests, rather than viewing the environmental hazards caused by climate change as threatening the ecological and social conditions in the Arctic that underpin their national security interests. Ironically, the very practices mobilized by circumpolar states under the framework of Arctic security will only contribute to environmental change at the global, regional, and local levels.
Moreover, how Canada and Norway have constructed their Arctic security interests in the context of climate change differs significantly, if it does not outright contradict, how the Indigenous peoples inhabiting their northern regions understand the security implications of the changing environment. Inuit in Canada and Sámi in Norway both identify the maintenance of natural environments conducive to their cultural and subsistence activities, and the Indigenous identities that rely upon them, as among their highest security priorities. Inuit have loudly and repeatedly identified that the environmental changes already occurring in the Arctic threaten their ways of life, culture, and identity, and constitute an infringement of their rights by states and other actors located far from the Arctic. While Sámi have not identified environmental changes as threatening their security to a comparable degree, the relatively mild environmental change experienced to date by Scandinavia versus northern Canada may indicate that it is only a matter of time. As climate change and ecological degradation increasingly affect the abilities of Sámi to herd reindeer, fish offshore, and otherwise sustain themselves in Sápmi, they, too, may choose to employ the discourse of security as a means of articulating their deteriorating conditions and the threats confronting their communal interests. This may be especially likely if governments in Canada and Norway continue to adopt policies opposed by Inuit and Sámi, who have identified the role that autonomous Indigenous institutions have to play in helping them preserve and protect their ecologies, communities, and interests within the context of settler states that have historically imposed their will over Indigenous minorities.
Environmental insecurities are inherent to our contemporary civilization that relies upon an economic system powered by fossil fuels. These insecurities are increasingly evident, and draw greater attention from scholars and policymakers with each passing year, and with each failed attempt to negotiate a new global climate governance framework. They pose profound
291 normative and policymaking questions around the world, but most especially in those countries that bear historical responsibility for climate change, and which today are leading the charge for the development of new and more dangerous forms of hydrocarbon energy, including in the Arctic. Thus, I argue critical environmental security is vital because it links state and human security issues in a changing Arctic environment with the broader global systems driving this transformation. Collectively, we must acknowledge the environmental security dilemma we face in the Arctic and around the world. One way to start would be to heed the security claims being made by Indigenous peoples, and move towards a post-colonial Arctic politics that sustains human communities and the natural systems on which they depend. Sustainable conditions of security – in the Arctic and everywhere else – depend on it.
Appendices
APPENDIX 1 – Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Securitizing Moves 2001-2011 Actor/ Document Enviro Food Cultural Other Year Document Title Organization Type Security Security Security Security “A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration 1 2011 ICC Declaration X on Sovereignty in the Arctic” “Inuit Deeply Concerned About Canada’s Press 2 2011 ICC X Decision to Release Withdraw from Kyoto” Newsletter 3 2011 AAC Spring/Summer Newsletter X X X 2011 “Nuuk 4 2010 ICC Declaration X Declaration 2010” “Inuit Call on Global Leaders at CoP16: Help Us Sustain our Press 5 2010 ICC X X Homeland – Take Release Immediate Action on Climate Change” “General Assembly of Inuit from Russia, USA, Canada and Greenland in Nuuk, Greenland to Address Issues Press 6 2010 ICC of Critical X Release Importance to the Future of the Circumpolar Arctic, and the place of the Arctic in the wider world” “Inuit Call on Global Leaders: Press 7 2009 ICC Act Now on X X Release Climate Change in the Arctic” “A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource 8 2009 ICC Declaration X X X Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat”
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“Canadian Arctic 9 2008 GCI Summit Doc X X X Presentation” “Statistics Canada Report Confirms Media 10 2008 ITK Inuit Children X X Release Lack from Food and Shelter” “Integrated Arctic 11 2008 ITK Publication X X Strategy” “Arctic Peoples: Culture, 12 2008 GCI Document X X Resilience, and Caribou Proposal” Newsletter Spring 13 2006 AAC Newsletter X 2006 “Utqiagvik 14 2006 ICC Declaration X Declaration 2006” “Connectivity: The Arctic-The Planet” Remarks by Sheila Watt- 15 2005 ICC Cloutier, Chair of Speech X X the ICC, at the Award Ceremony for the 2005 Sophie Prize “Unikkaaqatigiit: Putting the Human Face on 16 2005 ITK Publication X X X Climate Change – Perspectives from Inuit in Canada” “Inuit Call on Canada to Act on Media 17 2004 ITK International X Release Climate Change Report” “Inuit Call on Canada to Act on International Climate Change Report: Canada Press 18 2004 ICC/ITK X X Lacks National Release Position as Arctic Melts – Inuit Way of Life Jeopardized” “Arctic Climate Impact Journal, 19 2004 ICC Assessment – No. 18 Jan- X X Inuit in Global June Issues” “Renewal of the Northern Press 20 2003 ICC X X Contaminants Release Program”
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“Climate Change in the Arctic: Human Rights of Press 21 2003 ICC X X Inuit Release Interconnected with the World” “Speaking to the Journal, 22 2003 ICC World About No. 17 X X X Climate Change” July-Dec “Contaminants in the Arctic: the Inuit Circumpolar Conference Urges Foreign Affairs Ministers from the Eight Arctic States to Accept Press 23 2002 ICC X X the Release Implementation the Recommendations of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme” “Inuit Applaud Canada’s Leadership and Press 24 2001 ICC the Global Effort X X X Release to Eliminate Toxic Substances” “Climate Change 25 --- AAC and Human Website X Rights”
AAC – Arctic Athabaskan Council
GCI – Gwich’in Council International
ICC – Inuit Circumpolar Council
ITK – Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Total Documents Analyzed: N1= (190 ICC) + (24 AAC) + (29 GCI) + (295 ITK) = 538
With Securitizing Moves: N2 = 25
NB: All documents were accessed online from the websites of ITK, the national Inuit organization in Canada, and the three Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council representing Canadian Indigenous peoples (AAC, GCI, and ICC), and were identified using textual search terms ‘security’ and ‘threat’.
APPENDIX 2 – Sámi Securitizing Moves, 2001-2011 Actor/ Document Document Title Publication Referent Object Threat Organization Type Statement from Mining Saami November 25, Reindeer herding developments by 1 Communities at Saami Council Statement 2011 grounds Scandinavian Scandinavian Resources Resources AGM Mining Saami Council Saami January 12, Reindeer herding developments by 2 Letter to Council; Letter 2011 grounds Beowulf Mining Beowulf Mining Mattias Åhrén plc Statement By Assimilation, Finnish Saami loss of cultural Parliament On Saami culture, integrity, and The Realization Saami society, lack of 3 Of Saami Parliament of Statement April 25, 2010 livelihoods, and autonomy/funds People’s Right Finland language. necessary to To Self- prevent such determination In problems Finland Indigenous Children’s Indigenous Assimilation, Education as languages loss of mother John B. Linguistic worldwide, tongue and by 4 Henriskon Journal April 23, 2010 Genocide and a including but not extension (editor) Crime Against limited to the indigenous Humanity? A Saami language identity Global View Disappearance of reindeer Scandinavia's Lars Anders herding grounds Indigenous Baer, former due to climate Saami Way of President of Saami culture and change, cultural 5 Report 2009 Life Threatened the Saami livelihoods exposure by Thawing Parliament of brought by Tundra Sweden industrialization of Saami territory Anthropogenic Arctic The Sami climate change environment, Parliament’s caused by Saami February 19, specifically the 6 Living Report natural resource Parliament 2009 Saami culture and Environment exploitation and livelihoods that Program landscape depend on it fragmentation Cultural misappropriation Saami cultural by the private Saami Council integrity vis-a-vis The Rovaniemi October 31, sector; private at the 19th Declaration traditional 7 Declaration 2008 sector Saami subsistence competition and Conference livelihoods and self development of image indigenous territory; climate
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change Arctic Indigenous Caucus: Nordic Olav Mathis Saami and States Must Eira, vice Loss of language indigenous cultural 8 Ratify the president of Statement April 25, 2008 and cultural integrity and Saami the Saami assimilation language Convention Council without further delay Analysis of The Indigenous peoples Assimilation, Henry Minde, UN Declaration worldwide, loss of cultural Asbjørn Eide, 9 on the Rights of Journal April 24, 2008 including but not integrity, and Matias Indigenous limited to the marginalization, Åhrén Peoples Saami people dispossession Saami Companies and Council; Saami rights and Mining Swedish State National Joint Press February 21, livelihoods vis-a- developments by 10 Both Breach Swedish Release 2008 vis reindeer Blackstone Saami Rights Saami herding grounds Ventures Inc. Association Closed borders, Saami autonomy, Journal of assimilation, right to land, Indigenous loss of language, 11 Mattias Åhrén Journal 2007 language, culture, Human Rights industrialization and No. 3 and land trade/livelihoods exploitation, Climate change: Olav Mathis higher tree line, Climate Eira, vice unsafe ice, Witness: Olav September 17, 12 president of Article Reindeer herding unseasonal rains, Mathis Eira, 2007 the Saami change in Norway Council wildlife, extreme weather Address by Aili Environmental Keskitalo at the Saami culture and degradation, Permanent traditional climate change, 13 Forum on Aili Keskitalo Speech May 14, 2007 livelihoods vis-a- industrialization, Indigenous vis environmental resource Issues integrity exploitation Sixth Session The Workshop Report From the was organized Arctic Regional by the regional Workshop On Saami culture and indigenous Climate change, Indigenous traditional parliaments March 27, resource 14 Peoples’ Report livelihoods vis-a- and 2007 exploitation, and Territories, vis environmental organizations, marginalization Lands And integrity in cooperation Natural with the Resources Nordic States. Restrictions Some Legal The livelihoods imposed on the Considerations and culture of Elisabeth Journal Saami by the 15 Concerning May 9, 2006 coastal Saami vis- Einarsbøl Article Norwegian Saami Rights in a-vis their rights to government, Saltwater fish privatization of
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fisheries and fishing rights Corporate developments on Arctic Oil and Saami land rights, Saami territory, Gas – environment, environmental Rune S. Journal January 7, 16 Corporate language, culture, degradation, Fjelheim Article 2006 Social and climate change, Responsibility trade/livelihoods industrialization, resource exploitation Corporate Oil and gas developments on operations in Saami territory, Indigenous Saami land rights, environmental peoples lands John B. Journal January 7, environment, 17 degradation, and territories in Henriskon Article 2006 culture, and climate change, the Arctic: A trade/livelihoods industrialization, Human rights resource perspective exploitation Saami autonomy, Saami Council The right to land, at the 18th October 9, Marginalization 18 Honningsvåg Declaration environment, Saami 2004 by host countries Declaration culture, and Conference trade/livelihoods Arctic Saami Council environment, The Warmer at the 18th October 9, specifically the Anthropogenic 19 Resolution Arctic Saami 2004 Saami culture and climate change Conference livelihoods that depend on it Protection of Rights of Lars Anders Holders of Intellectual Baer, former Traditional property rights Assimilation and President of 20 Knowledge, Article 2002 concerning Saami loss of cultural the Saami Indigenous culture, heritage, integrity. Parliament of Peoples and and folklore Sweden Local Communities
Total Documents: N1 = 46
With Securitizing Moves: N2 = 20
NB: Documents were drawn using textual search terms ‘security’ and ‘threat’ from an exhaustive search of the online documents available from the Saami Council and the Gáldu Research Center for the Rights of Indigenous People.