Environment, Geopolitics and Environmental Geopolitics in the Arctic: Is There a Logic of Conflict Among Institutions of Cooperation?

With the natural transformation of the Arctic geophysical landscape as a result of melting sea ice cover, the Arctic region has become increasingly accessible for human and political activity. In recent decades, growing international focus on Arctic relations manifested itself in the intensified conflictual dynamics in the relations between major regional stakeholders. A competition that develops between Arctic states defies the global political dynamics due to the absence of direct military confrontation and large-scale military presence in the High North. However, institutional and regime building, coupled with the unique geographic and political setting, did not immediately lead to peaceful and cooperative relations in the post-Cold War era. The emergence of new security issues in the face of climate change moved the competition beyond the limits of hard power, thereby rendering geopolitical and geo-economic approaches insufficient to explain interstate relations in the New Arctic. This is why environmental geopolitics as a relatively new theoretical strand has been applied to describe the new logic of conflict in the Arctic, which exceeds traditional hard-power considerations and places the emphasis on the environmental discourse and new climate-related threats.