The latest Foundations of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic until 2035, signed by President Putin on 5 March 2020, put in central focus national security, to which most activities of ‘mastering the Arctic’ are subjected. Human wellbeing in the Arctic, according to this legal document, seems to be grounded in expanding military security, extractive industry and infrastructure, and scientific exploration. Environmental protection and knowledge have been subsumed entirely under paragraphs about preventing climate change’s unpredictable impacts on economic development and infrastructure.
The impact of military security on local societies and the natural environment in the Post-Soviet Arctic has received little attention. This is surprising in the context of the growing number of studies about the environmental and social impacts of industrialization, the impact of climate change on Russian Arctic security, and on human security in the region. In this presentation, I will address the topic through the perspective of indigenous reindeer herders in the Kola Peninsula, who describe their experiences and observations of the effects that the growing military sector in Russia has on their subsistence economy, on reindeer and the natural environment that they inhabit. A special focus of the study is on the combined effect that militarization and climate change in the Arctic have on the environment, and on indigenous sustainable nature use practices and ecological knowledge.