Description
How is security conceptualized in the face of climate change? In my contribution, which draws on conceptual considerations of my PhD project, I suggest locating security meanings within sovereignty iterations. Using the Canadian Arctic as a “laboratory”, the research will examine to what extent (with shifting ecological conditions) states are asserting renewed (territorial) control over these spaces by employing non-traditional means of securitization.
Concretely, the project will look to "territorialization" processes in the US and Canadian Arctic, by zooming into three conceptual arenas, which all display a form of sovereignty (re)iteration in response to an “Artic opening”; First, (1) Renewable energy infrastructures as means of territorialization. By including renewable energy into national security strategies, based on arguments of effective occupation of a perceived terra nullius, the U.S. and Canada position their environmental commitments within a competitive geopolitical narrative, akin to traditional energy exploitation strategies. The second arena is that of (2) Military territorialization. Here, the focus will lie on the Canadian Rangers, whose patrolling activities enact a form of effective occupation that combines state security with Indigenous and local involvement, illustrating a complex interaction between national and local, as well as civil and military sovereignties and security paradigms. As such, the Rangers embody a unique blend of local knowledge, environmental expertise, and state authority. A third conceptual arena labeled (3) Legal Territorialization takes a legal geography approach to continental shelf disputes in the Arctic.
Overall, it is asked: are we dealing with an “old wine in new bottles” situation? To find answers, the research will explore the extent to which new modes of “doing security” may camouflage what they are re-enforcing: traditional security frameworks (unfit for ecological realities), yielding the question whether responses to a climate changed Artic (and world) are managing security meanings rather than providing security.
