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The Northern Environment and European Union
Research project 1999-2002
Finnish prime minister Paavo Lipponen suggested in fall 1997 the idea of the 'Northern Dimension of the European Union. The Northern imension covers 'the region from Iceland in the West across to Northwestern Russia, or from the Polar Sea in the North to the Southern coast of the Baltic Sea'. Thus not only countries around the Baltic Sea, but also all the other Nordic countries, Great Britain, the United States and Canada are more or less directly involved in the northern region, particularly in circumpolar North. According to the Finnish official view, developing the Northern Dimension includes both the concerns for the state of the northern environment as well as the opportunities that the region offers in regard of rich natural resources.
Studying the role of European Union in the management of northern environmental matters is relevant on several grounds. Through EU memberships and cooperation in the region, the Union will have an impact on the region and its future both in terms of opportunities and problems. The northern region is seen as an area 'rich in resources, containing some of the world's largest reserves of natural gas and oil, resources of strategic importance to the Union'. Northern natural resources and their use are important from an European point of view. On the other hand the fragility of the region is recognised: 'The guiding principles for all economic activities must be sustainable development. Arctic nature is highly vulnerable and has been exposed to serious pollution'. From an European point of view, the North is also one of the last relatively pristine wilderness areas in the Europe.
The concern for the students of international cooperation and organization is: how does international society govern itself? How can international society manage interdependence? The EU politics in environmental matters suggests the possibility of developing new perspectives with ontological, epistemological and methodological questions. Both studying the EU itself poses theoretical challenges as well as analysing the role environmental matters in institutional cooperative arrangements. The problem of managing the human-environment relationship is a multilevel problem: of managing the relationship itself, managing the relations among different levels of actors, challenging the international-domestic lines of thought as well as the means of managing these relations. Governance in the EU is a multilevel phenomenon, including multiple actors at different levels, with interconnected issues and variety of ways of governing these issues and relations. The idea of governance 'beyond the state' does not mean governance above the state nor does it reaffirm the boundary between internal and external politics of the state. The question is how the northern environment is governed by the EU; how the relations between states, EU institutions and other actors evolve through practices of governance ; and how the human-environment relation is constituted in these practices.
A reflective approach to the problem of governance is sensitive to the historical context of governance and cultural differences in intersubjective meanings embedded in different human-environment relationships. First, reflective approaches to governance see international cooperation as a process of a struggle over meanings. Interdependence is understood in terms of intersubjective meanings. 'Imposing a meaning' suggests that EU could also be seen as arenas for conflict and the exercise of power. Second, Practices of cooperation and managing the human-environment relation is the focus in the study of governance. Practices of environmental politics include directives, economic means and other means. The regulatory institutions as well as the underlying orders are comprised of social practices. The increasing magnitude of environmental problems are generating response which put the EU at the centre of the process of reregulation. Also, the kind of political policy intervention which environmental protection requires has not really developed with the EU context. Third, although by no means a federal state, the community has to power to legislate internally as well as to enter into agreements with other countries which are binding on the community as well as in its member states.
The EU has committed itself to advance sustainable development in the fifth environmental program. The overall role of the EU in such a project need to be analysed. Therefore an interesting question is the significance of these efforts internationally. For Lynton Keith Caldwell, international environmental diplomacy in the last couple decades has produced a 'new international order' in the field of international environmental politics in terms of institutions, regimes, treaties, non-binding guidelines and financial mechanisms. The idea of sustainable development has become the corner stone of efforts to create a new international order. Yvonne Rydin asks: 'Can we talk ourselves into sustainability?' She questions whether through talk in different forums - local, regional and international - a new moral order based on ideas such as sustainable development can be created. Northern regions have since the late 1980s emerged as a region of increasing international environmental cooperation surrounding the idea of sustainable development.
WORK PLAN 1999-2002
1999
Presentation of research plan at the PhD seminar at the department of international relations, presenting the research project at the Nordic Environmental Studies Conference in Umeå June 1999, and at the Circumpolar Universities' Cooperation Conference June 1999; literature review and collection of the material on the European Union environmental politics at the European University Institute, Florence in April 15-May 15. Writing two articles on the topic (forthcoming in 2000).
2000
Collection of the research material and literature review; presenting a paper at the International Studies Association Annual Convention (working group on environmental politics in Eastern Europe) in Los Angeles March 2000; presenting a paper at the Ecological Modernisation in Russia in April 2000 in Helsinki organized by the Aleksanteri-instituutti; presenting a paper at VI International Council for Central and East European Studies Conference in Tampere, July 2000. Writing two scientific articles and one popular article. Build-up of the home pages.
2001
Collection of the material including, including interviews; presenting a paper at the Nordic Environmental Studies Conference in Aarhus, Denmark, at the International Arctic Social Sciences Conference in Montreal, Canada and at the British International Studies Association Conference, UK. Writing two scientific articles and one popular article. Organization of and participation in the GLAIR two-day seminar on Global Change in the Arctic and Institutional Responses, spring 2001, Rovaniemi.
2002
Writing the manuscript for the book and publishing two articles on the topic, participating in a couple of international conferences.
Takaisin Globaaliprojektin sivulle