Energy in The Arctic: Complexity and Thinking in A Social Dynamical System
Energy in The Arctic: Complexity and Thinking in A Social Dynamical System

Author(s): Anna Soer
Subject(s): Energy and Environmental Studies, Environmental and Energy policy
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Energy; Arctic; Complexity; Thinking; Social Dynamical System;
Summary/Abstract: Over 99% of energy production and consumption in the Arctic comes from fossil fuels. This dependence on fossil fuels triggers a wide range of security and health concerns. Firstly, the dependence of fossil fuels within households has been shown to cause detrimental health effects from respiratory illnesses to cancers – especially targeting women and children. These health concerns bleed into other structural issues from the lack of secure and sound housing to the difficult access to healthcare for remote and urban Arctic communities, especially so in Arctic Canada. Secondly, concerns surrounding the dependence on fossil fuels pose complex and compound risks from environmental security risks to national security risks linking politics with economics with human security. The concept of human security has gained momentum in recent decades – becoming central to global development agendas propelled by international organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) – and has framed and complexified the notion of security to become more holistic. In this perspective of holism, complexity itself deserves a center stage in this chapter on energy-based issues in the Arctic. Complexity, in between order and chaos, defines the difficult task ahead of drafting a resilient and sustainable future for the region. Similarly, thinking in systems – to quote the title of Donella H. Meadows’work (2008) – entails the understanding of the ‘what’: defining these issues goes beyond listing elements but flows into an understanding of the “interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. [...] A system is more than the sum of its parts”. These two preliminary definitions of ‘complexity’and ‘system’open a whole world of questions for the topic at hand and relate the Arctic back to the global sphere.

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