This essay focuses on analyzing how the currently ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war could possibly become one source of threat to the Arctic indigenous people’s human security, especially in regards on how said war manages to destabilize the Arctic Council (AC) as the region’s main inter-governmental cooperation body. On 24th February, 2022, Russia officially announced its military aggression towards Ukraine (Al Jazeera, 2022), which started a post-Cold War open warfare that has been going on for more than 10 months. This war, not only destabilizing both domestic and foreign affairs of its belligerents, also influences other actors, nation-state or not, around the globe. One of the non-belligerents that certainly gets hit by the impact of this war is the Arctic indigenous people. Ever since the war began, news about the discord and schism inside the Arctic indigenous communities has been popping up (Last, 2022), further exacerbating the security threat caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (Arctic Council, 2020b). This phenomenon thus raised a question: is there a link between the commencement of Russo-Ukrainian war and the human security of Arctic’s indigenous population?
Rethinking Human Security: The Arctic and its Many Insecurities
To answer that question, this essay employs the concept of human security proposed by Gary King and Christopher J.L. Murray in Rethinking Human Security (2001) journal article. In said article, King and Murray argue that the perspective of what constitutes as ‘security’ is currently ongoing a transition from its traditional, nation-state dependent conventional definition; if the definition focuses solely on the integrity of national territory, ‘human security’ focuses more on the fulfillment of human security on the individual level. This focus on individual human security, King and Murray also argue, will also contribute to realize the fulfillment of human security for the whole community (King & Murray, 2001:606). In order to formulate the extents of human security that is intended to be fulfilled, King and Murray provide two indicators (King & Murray, 2001:592-595): 1) Domains of wellbeing, that is, attributes that are deemed vital for human survival, in which King and Murray categorize indicators such as income, health, political freedom, and democracy (King & Murray, 2001:598); 2) Generalized poverty, the threshold of domains of wellbeing’s deprivation for human individuals. Based on such indicators given by the concept, there are a few urgent human security problems that could be observed in the Arctic indigenous people’s daily live, experienced across the Arctic territories in all eight Arctic littoral states.
The first threat to the indigenous Arctic population is mental disorders, specifically those that cause suicidal tendencies. This threat is directly connected to the ‘health’ indicator of domains of well being that King and Murray posits. According to STAT, a US-based health topic-related news website, suicidal tendencies are often observed specifically among the Sami people, with most of them residing in Sweden (Schreiber, 2016): around half of the adult population suffer from anxiety disorder and four time more likely to have suicidal thoughts than their non-indigenous counterparts. The representative of the Inuit people that reside in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia also complained that suicide already becomes a sort of ‘pandemic’ in the Artic indigenous community, even before their life conditions worsen because of COVID-19 (Arctic Council, 2020). Mental health disorders are also identified in the Arctic indigenous populace living in the rest of Arctic littoral states (Rönkä, 2022).
Other than that, the rate of unemployment also becomes a big problem for the Arctic indigenous people, especially since the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the general unemployment rate of the indigenous Arctic populace across the seven littoral states is no more than 2-3% (Turunen, 2019b), there is a staggering exception: in Canada, indigenous Arctic population’s unemployment rate already reached 16.8% per August 2020, 5 percents higher than their non-Arctic counterparts. It is said that such an exorbitant unemployment rate is a by-product of structural barriers applied in Canada’s whole society that make it more difficult for Arctic indigenous people to gain employment (Benning, 2020). Such inequality of employment chance between various Arctic indigenous people groups that live across the territories of eight nation-states really drives home about the urgency of establishing inter-governmental organization in order to keep the Arctic indigenous people’s needs and interests heard and realized; income gain is one of the indicators of domains of wellbeing proposed by King and Murray, after all.
Then, the main problem that possibly has the most widespread damage to the indigenous Arctic population’s overall fulfillment of domains of well-being are environmental and living space problems of Arctic indigenous people, which included but not limited to climate change, various kinds of pollution, and indigenous people-government conflict over natural resources exploration and management. The last kind is especially damaging, especially when considering the possible multi-dimensional damage that inappropriate handling of natural resources could cause in both short and long term. However, that does not mean that the other aforementioned threat is any less important. According to a report from the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring written in 2022, there has been 5 Celsius-degree temperature increase at the span of Russian Arctic coastline since 1998 (Devyatkin, 2022). The climate change is caused by rampant pollution in the Arctic region (Mead, 2022) propagated by irresponsible practices of natural resources extraction (Macalister, 2011). This phenomenon becomes a legit security threat because of its impact on the environment, especially its contribution in raising the sea level (Technical University of Denmark, 2019), a condition that could drown indigenous peoples’ settlements. At the end of the day, the practice causes threat of eviction for Arctic indigenous people, with governments removing them from their traditional living space (Mirovalev, 2022). Thus, this problem affects all components of Arctic indigenous people’s domains of wellbeing.
The Arctic Council and Arctic People’s Human Security
Then, what role the AC plays regarding the problems of human security threats that Arctic indigenous people face? AC is currently the only inter-governmental organization in said region, established by eight Arctic littoral states, built and operates with a set of unique rules and norms that enable it to navigate many issues in Arctic between the involvement of big actors: other than eight Artic littoral states, AC also acknowledges the membership of six non-nation state groups of Arctic indigenous people’s representatives in the AC, giving the local communities a say in the AC’s policies (Arctic Council, 2015). This membership for six representative groups is a fixed attribute of the organization, in which this is done to ensure the fair representation of Arctic indigenous people (Arctic Council, 2015). In practice, these six representational organizations are always involved in the processes of formulation and implementation of the AC’s Arctic policies (Arctic Council, 2021).
For 25 years since its inception in 1996, AC already exercised its duty as an indispensable ‘channel’ for Arctic indigenous people to expand their communities’ capabilities to improve many aspects of their life, in which through this process they also become better at fulfilling their domains of well-being (Arctic Council, 2021). A few of the newer programs that the AC already did are: 1) ‘Local2Global: Circumpolar collaboration for suicide prevention’, a special forum to enable discussions and research regarding suicidal tendencies suffered by people from the community of Arctic indigenous people (Arctic Council, 2020); 2) ‘Arctic Resilience Forum’ as a continuous workshop facility to train the Arctic people’s youth to be future leaders of their respective communities (Arctic Council, 2021:35-37); 3) Cultural preservation through immortalizing the languages of Arctic indigenous tribes (Arctic Council, 2021:38-41); 4) Preservation of Arctic culinary culture in order to create a sustainable economic cycle and living space for Arctic indigenous people, while ensuring a sustainable Arctic ecosystem (Arctic Council, 2021:46-49).
Then, what does the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war have to do with the Arctic Council, more specifically about how it affects its work in ensuring Arctic indigenous people’s human security? As already described above, The AC already put a great deal of effort through its many programs and initiatives to increase awareness and move forward in fulfilling the Arctic indigenous people’s domains of wellbeing. Through elaboration in the previous paragraph of this writing, it is evident that AC is a principal political entity in the mission of enhancing the local populace’s human security, as this regime is the only channel for Artic indigenous people’s representatives to influence the littoral Arctic states’ handling of the region through negotiation chances provided through their status as permanent members of the organization. The existence of said regime as an official representative of the region’s interests becomes even more important for the indigenous people as researchers keep finding profitable natural resource wells hidden beneath Arctic ancestral lands (Rowe, 2022), which might become initiative for various actors to exploit the region. This chance to negotiate is also included in one of the domains of wellbeing indicators, which regrettably still find difficulties to be fulfilled in every single littoral Artic states individually (Arctic Centre, 2022). Because of those reasons, when AC experiences a crisis that could impede its day-to-day operations and endanger the solidarity of its member states to cooperate, the damage would also be felt by the Arctic indigenous people, especially in the matter of their human security.
Arctic Council in a Stalemate: Threats to Human Security
Unfortunately, that very scenario is currently unfolding in the Arctic; not long after Russia announced its decision to launch a military aggression to Ukraine, the United States (US) and its Arctic allies immediately show opposition to such decision: per 3rd of March, 2022, the US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland issued out a joint statement to boycott Russia’s chairmanship of AC and all of its activities in said organization as a ‘payback’ for the Russian aggression to Ukraine (U.S. Department of State, 2022). Moreso, they also issued out an agenda to form a new Arctic regime separate from the AC without Russia in it, but invited the six Arctic indigenous people representative organizations to join (U.S. Department of State, 2022). This could potentially become a substantial threat to the Arctic indigenous people’s human security because of a few reasons.
The first reason is that the AC’s consensus-based mechanism of decision making (Arctic Council, 2015) makes it impossible for Russia as the AC’s current chairman to proceed with either existing or planned future AC programs because of the other seven littoral Arctic states’ boycott. Even though said Arctic states is currently trying to “look for a modality that will enable a limited form of cooperation through AC’s programs” (Global Affairs Canada, 2022), up until now there has not been any Arctic states that tries to resume cooperation in the Arctic with Russia as AC’s chairman. Meanwhile, there has been no initiatives from the Russian side either to start a restoration of good relations with the other AC member states in order to restart the progress of AC’s programs; instead, Russia issued out a threat to the other AC member states regarding the consequences of their action to boycott AC’s activities (The Arctic, 2022). Because of that, up until this day activity in the AC is still stagnant, shown through the AC’s official news that has not been updated since 1st of March 2022 (Arctic Council, 2022).
Second, such stagnation then creates problem, because the US and other six Arctic littoral states’ agenda to build another regime in the Arctic without Russia’s cooperation is simply unrealistic. Even though there are seven out of eight Arctic littoral countries that are on board with this plan, a good relationship with Russia and its help is vital to deal with various complex Arctic issues. Out of all Arctic littoral states, Russia has the largest Arctic territory, both land and sea (Bonikowsky, 2012; Wang & Roto, 2019), second largest Artic indigenous people population after the US (The Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), 2021), and possessing one of the biggest Arctic natural resources reserves in its national territory, especially the infamously lucrative petroleum, coal, and natural gas (Turunen, 2019). Other than that, Russia also one of the countries that already showcases its readiness to explore said region. This commitment is mostly apparent through the staggering amount of ice breaker ship in Russia’s possession which amounts to more than 40 vessels, far surpassing all other Arctic littoral states’ vessels combined even including the US (Pane dan Romaine, 2021). This enables Russia to monopolize the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which is planned as a big new trade route in the North area and prophesized to be the main connector of the Arctic region with the world at large (The Economist, 2018). Based on those advantages that Russia has, it is nigh impossible to imagine a concrete, coherent Arctic cooperation without the Kremlin’s involvement.
Third, the longer the Arctic region’s current vacuum of power continues, then the region’s stability would become more compromised, thus diverting the focus and priority of Arctic actors from the Arctic indigenous people’s human security to the more traditional concern about national security of each Arctic littoral states. This condition then would ‘invite’ outside players and further threatening the region’s stability. One of the most apparent said threat is the possibility of a few opportunistic AC observer states to benefit from AC’s stagnation and its uncertain future. This is due to the observer states’ position as non-littoral Arctic states that are given roles by the AC only to help the permanent members of the regime to conduct their Arctic policies, but not to decide how the policies would be formulated and implemented (Arctic Council, 2015).
The indication of this latent threat getting ever closer to become a reality could be seen from the emergence of Russia’s attempts at cooperation with two AC observer states, China and India, outside of the AC’s institutional frame (Khorrami, 2022; Staalesen, 2022). These two observer states have a national interest that has very close link towards the abundance of natural resources in the Arctic region (Stephen dan Stephen, 2020; Koshy, 2022), and this interest aligns perfectly with Russia’s interest. Some of the recent cooperations that Russia had with those two countries are the construction of floating power unit at Chukotka (one of Russia’s Arctic territories) with China (BRICS, 2022) and cooperation in scientific projects with India (Chowdhury, 2022). Because those cooperations are done outside of the AC’s institutional frame, they would be done in a manner that disregards the components of human security already agreed upon by both Arctic littoral states and Arctic indigenous people’s six representative groups; there has been ongoing cases of pollution rampant in the Arctic ancestral lands (Borshchevskaia et.al., 2022) and threats of eviction from said ancestral lands directed towards its original inhabitants (Mirovalev, 2022) that becomes increasingly out of control since the Russo-Ukrainian war (Borshchevskaia et.al., 2022).
Conclusion
Based on arguments already delivered above, this essay concludes that the longer ongoing AC activity and power vacuum continues due to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the risk of Arctic indigenous people losing their human security gets even higher. This essay comes to this conclusion because AC has an indispensable role as the sole institutional channel of representation for the Arctic indigenous people to fulfill their domains of wellbeing when each Arctic littoral states’ domestic institutions fail to do said role. If the activity vacuum of the AC happens, Arctic indigenous people’s communities will become more vulnerable to not only neglect of, but also active threats to their human security through various actors’ interference in the region to maximize the extraction of Arctic natural resources. This process will consequently degrade their domains of wellbeing potentially passing the generalized poverty threshold, if left without further actions.