Northern Warning Lights: Ambiguities of Environmental Security in Finland and Sweden
1
Global Security Programme, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 00101 Helsinki, Finland
2
BIOS Research Unit, 00170 Helsinki, Finland
3
Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme & Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(8), 2228; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082228
Received: 10 March 2019 / Revised: 30 March 2019 / Accepted: 2 April 2019 / Published: 13 April 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enhancing Security, Sustainability and Resilience in Energy, Food and Water)
As the literature on environmental security has evolved and widened, knowledge of the full range of potential consequences of environmental change for different societies remains scattered. This article contributes to a more comprehensive approach to the implications of environmental change by providing a three-level framework of the security impacts. In particular, it will address gaps in knowledge by pointing out the relevance of geopolitical and structural factors behind environmental security impacts. The article will focus on the cases of two countries, Finland and Sweden—both seen as stable, high-income democracies that are well equipped to adapt to climate risks. Yet even under these conditions, preparedness to threat-prevention will not follow without a recognition of the full range of risks, including ones that are linked to socio-economic and geopolitical factors. On the basis of the Finnish and Swedish cases, the article proposes an analytical framework of three categories of environmental security impacts: local, geopolitical and structural.
View Full-Text
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Hakala, E.; Lähde, V.; Majava, A.; Toivanen, T.; Vadén, T.; Järvensivu, P.; Eronen, J.T. Northern Warning Lights: Ambiguities of Environmental Security in Finland and Sweden. Sustainability 2019, 11, 2228. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082228
AMA Style
Hakala E, Lähde V, Majava A, Toivanen T, Vadén T, Järvensivu P, Eronen JT. Northern Warning Lights: Ambiguities of Environmental Security in Finland and Sweden. Sustainability. 2019; 11(8):2228. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082228
Chicago/Turabian StyleHakala, Emma, Ville Lähde, Antti Majava, Tero Toivanen, Tere Vadén, Paavo Järvensivu, and Jussi T. Eronen 2019. "Northern Warning Lights: Ambiguities of Environmental Security in Finland and Sweden" Sustainability 11, no. 8: 2228. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082228
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
