Before Climate Change, ‘Nuclear Safety’ Was There:A Retrospective Study and Lessons-Learned of Changing Security Premises in the Arctic

• Main Author: Heininen, Lassi
• Other Authors: Exner-Pirot, Heather
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Palgrave Pivot 2019
• Subjects: Environment; Security; Security premises; POLLUTION; Nuclear safety; Environmental awakening; Climate change; /dk/atira/pure/person/fieldofscience2010/5/17/2; International political science; /dk/atira/pure/person/fieldofscience2010/1/17/2; Environmental sciences; Arctic
• Online Access: https://research.ulapland.fi/fi/publications/11ab96de-c3e5-4669-a0ac-213b01b53a13; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20230-9

This chapter is about the environment as a special feature of Arctic geopolitics and security. The focus is on (long-range) pollution, as the first trigger of global changes in the Arctic, and ‘environmental awakening’ as a consequent reaction. This is also a retrospective study on ‘nuclear safety’ in the European Arctic, as a part of ‘environmental awakening’ and environmental politics in the North, and how it caused a shift in security premises of the Arctic states. Discourses of critical security studies - the risk society theory and ecological security - are applied to broaden our understanding of narrow traditional – national, competitive, military – security towards comprehensive one, as well as to analyze and illustrate changes in both Arctic security nexus and Arctic geopolitics.