The potential to foster governance learning in the Baltic Sea Region: Network governance of the European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region

Abstract

The Baltic Sea ecosystem is displaying symptoms of extreme stress from multiple sources. These complex and "wicked" problems require cooperation by actors for multidisciplinary pooling of knowledge to completely understand the problem and adaptively learn in order to develop appropriate policy strategies. Inherent in the design of the European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) is the promise to foster cooperation by key BSR network governance actors, connecting them to develop joint policy arrangements needed for governing the challenges of the Baltic Sea. The EUSBSR is the key knowledge broker in the region and has the capacity to augment BSR network governance of the Baltic Sea. Despite the importance of knowledge transmission and policy learning to the EUSBSR, there has been no formal study of it in the literature. This paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to the literature by evaluating the latent potential of the EUSBSR to foster policy learning across BSR governance networks. It does this through document analysis focussing on the interaction platforms of the EUSBSR that interconnects BSR governance networks across policy sectors.

Opportunities for sustainable economic development in coastal territories of the Baltic Sea Region in the context of digital transformation

“…9 Coastal, island and outermost regions, 2020, Eurostsat, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/ eurostat/web/coastalislandoutermostregions/background (accessed 24.01.20). 10 Regions of Russia. Social and economic indicators 2019, 2019, Stat.…”

“…It is the first EU macro-region with its own strategy [7; 8; 9]. Researchers note that the impetus for its development came from the realization of the fact that the ecosystem of the Baltic Sea is un der considerable stress, which can be removed only through concerted efforts at the interstate and supraterritorial levels [10]. Special attention is paid to the issues of sustainable development, often viewed together with the blue econo my -the use of marine resources aimed to ensure economic growth, improve the living and working conditions of the population, as well as the state of the ocean ecosystem 1 [see.…”

“…These are three coastal subjects of the Russian Federation (St. Petersburg, Leningrad region, Kalinin grad region) and 21 EU territories. The EU defines coastal regions as units of the NUTS 3 level, whereas this paper considers units of the NUTS 2 level and in some cases NUTS 1 (whole countries), since it is this level that is formally comparable to the Russian Baltic regions -the Kaliningrad region, Leningrad region and St. Petersburg with the population of 1,002.2, 1,847.9 and 5,383.9 thousand people, respectively 10 .…”

Institutional Change and the Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach: A Case Study of HELCOM and the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP)

“…Changes in governance were needed to enable closer cooperation and integration of policy sectors and different actors to facilitate the ecosystem approach. This was a welcome change from the traditional hierarchical relational underpinnings of most of the Baltic Sea governance networks [8]. The responsibility for the implementation of the BSAP lies at the member state level.…”

The Baltic Sea and global environmental change

“…Marko Joas, Henrik Ringbom and Nina Tynkkynen The Baltic Sea provides a prime example of a multilevel and network-type system of environmental governance (Grönholm, 2020;Tynkkynen, 2013;VanDeveer, 2011;Haas, 1990). The Baltic can also be used as a time machine to study the consequences and mitigation of the effects of future global environmental changes because the region has already experienced many changes that are yet to be experienced in other sea areas (Reusch et al, 2018).…”