The Canary in the Coal Mine Governance and Security Discourses in the EU’s Arctic Policy

Abstract

The Arctic Ocean is experiencing an un-preceded melting caused by climate change, affecting the socio-economic, geopolitical, and environmental context in the Arctic region. The ongoing developments in the Arctic have attracted the attention of a variety of actors and the effects of climate change are adding a new dimension to the relationship between them. Environmental concerns link security and governance in the Arctic and in a very short time, Arctic governance has become a part of the EU’s agenda. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a convergence between traditional national security reasoning and environmental protection and policy development. This thesis employs the Copenhagen’s School theory of securitization and critical discourse analysis to perform a textual analysis of the concepts of environmental security and environmental conflict in the EU’s developing Arctic policy. Depending on who is to be secured, and how environmental change threatens a given actor, environmental change can be considered as a security issue. The purpose of this thesis is to discuss what the consequences for the EU as an external actor in Arctic governance may be when the environment is defined as a security issue. This thesis finds environmental security in the EU Arctic policy documents, but the EU has a soft security approach in terms of specific measures towards geopolitical governance in the region. Though the discourse on governance emphasizes cooperation, a governance gap exists in terms of traditional security. Because security contexts change and the melting Arctic give rise to economic opportunities, there remains a risk for conflict between both Arctic actors and emerging non-Arctic actors over resources, transport routes and the Arctic environment.