Abstract
Established against the ideological spillovers and conceptual remnants of the Cold War, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC) rapidly assumed a utility purpose in the European regionalization process. The dialectics of critical security theories conferred on the BEAC the identity of a regional security organisation, tasked to combat certain threats and thereby maintain the structural stability of the region. Characteristically, climate change became part of the subject-matter of BEAC’s environmental security plan, prompting a totally new approach to global climate change and generating a subtype in climate change discourse called “subjective environmentalism”.
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Notes
- 1.
The United States, Canada, Denmark, and Iceland.
- 2.
Among the combatants, the Soviet Union enjoyed a positive power balance vis-à-vis the neutrals, the dominion which prompted Finland and Sweden to espouse the realpolitik of political artlessness.
- 3.
Writing on microregionalism, Breslin and Hook assert: “Microregionalism refers to those processes of growing regional interconnectedness that occur below the national level, and which cut across national borders. In many cases, the microregionalist project is promoted by non-state actors, such as subnational political authorities” (Breslin & Hook, 2003, p. 8). However, the Norwegian action was only a manifestation of the general Northern sentiment against EU regionalization, which, it was feared, would marginalize the North and lead to plundering the northern resources; the Norwegian policy was not in the slightest egoistic (Engstad, 1994, p. 20).
- 4.
Lack of institutions and unspecified players were the results of idea-vacuum.
- 5.
The paradigm battle between essentialism and social constructionism can be understood as the clash between two approaches. If both approaches are kept in a social perspective, essentialists would create social groups on the basis of qualitative attributes—ethnic, cultural, geographical, or biological. On the other hand, social constructivists would hold that there cannot be a predetermined nature for any beings or objects. Societies are constructed by way of interaction/discourse and self-criticism/self-evaluation. Even the qualitative attributes used or common objectives projected by the essentialist to build society can be a theme of interaction/discourse and can be subjected to evaluation and criticism. My understanding of this paradigm battle has been shaped by various works (see e.g., Marcus, 1971; Burr, 1995). Bo Svensson has described the paradigm battle as between essentialism and another agent, constructivism. According to Svensson, essentialists consider a region as existing in reality, ready to be identified, whereas for constructivists, regions need to be built (Svensson, 1993, pp. 122–127). The clash between essentialism and social constructionism, as related above, can carry Svensson’s arguments forward once essentialism and constructivism are reconciled as mutually helpful paradigms.
- 6.
See the Declaration on Cooperation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region, 11 January 1993 (hereinafter “the Kirkenes Declaration”).
- 7.
The Council comprises representatives of the member governments and the European Commission (EC).
- 8.
The Group of Senior Officials consists of ambassadors of the member states, the EC, and the nine observer states of the BEAC.
- 9.
The Regional Council consists of regional governors and representatives of indigenous peoples, the Regional Committee of officials from the member states and representatives of indigenous peoples.
- 10.
The permanent working groups of the Regional Council are those on culture, education, environment, communication, information technology, youth, and indigenous peoples. Of the seven, the one on indigenous peoples was established in 1995 and the rest at the Regional Council meeting in Murmansk on 14 March 2001, with the exception of the working group on youth which was set up in October 2002 (Monsama, 1995, p. 18).
- 11.
The political motive behind the innovative institutional arrangement was to break the mold of state-oriented integration methods and devise a new method rooted in “regional mobilisation” (Wiberg, 1994, p. 30).
- 12.
See above the section entitled “Barents and its Identity”.
- 13.
This process is/can be understood in the reverse as well, i.e., as a process of spatial/local confinement of global trends. In the contemporary world global changes sprout as grand ideas of social change, which acquire meaning when reduced to a situation, a process named “situationality”. In other words, in the absence of situationality, global vibes are meaningless for individuals and groups. Hence the situation needs to be linked with the global vibes, by ascending to the level at which those vibes occur. Once linked with the situation (which is local) the ideas manifest as action. My interest in situationality was fuelled by Outi Korhonen (Korhonen, 1996).
- 14.
Environmental security in the present context refers to a concept whereby environmental threats are included as a matter of security within critical geopolitics (Dalby, 2002, pp. xix–xxvi).
- 15.
Supporting this contention Bröms wrote: “[B]ecause the BEAR is, in part, an answer to changes arising from the end of the Cold War, it is in a position where it would seem to be better equipped for handling [environmental] problems in the area” (Bröms, 1994, p. 56).
- 16.
In the meeting the BEAC environmental ministers requested the WGE to “[c]ontribute to the climate change co-operation in the Barents region, and to attach special importance to achieving multiple environmental benefits through Joint Implementation Projects …” (BEAC Working Group, 2004, p. 11).
- 17.
All threats identified in the ACIA were consequential for the Barents region as well, e.g., the report revealed that global warming and the resulting complexity in the global climate system can threaten marine fishing stocks, freshwater ecosystems, the bionetwork, indigenous communities, and the economy (ACIA, 2005; Lange, 2003).
- 18.
In this connection, the Seventh Ministerial Meeting of the BEAC, held in Rovaniemi on 18–19 October 2005 was to provide guidelines for the implementation of the recommendations in the ACIA Report (Fact Sheet 3, 2005, p. 2).
- 19.
The intention to have cross-sectoral task allocation was expressed in the Declaration of the Seventh Meeting of Environment Ministers itself: “The Ministers emphasized the importance of dialogue, a better common understanding of the underlying development needs, and the cross-sectoral networking between local and central authorities and also with the private sector, IFIs and NGOs” (original italics).
- 20.
See the discussion in Section 15.5 on how the concept of sustainable development was conveniently altered to bring the policies of the BEAC in conformity with global changes.
- 21.
One example of inter-working-group cooperation is the WGEC’s work related to the protection of indigenous entrepreneurs from the threats of climate change.
- 22.
The term “local” is used to represent every layer below the international and thus includes the national and regional layers.
- 23.
This assertion is based on an assumption that policy connects ideas with action. This assumption is in turn based on the position articulated by Briggle, Frodeman, and Holbrook, who upon considering humanities policy as a “meta-philosophical” action, assert: “[P]hilosophy [is a] dialectical relation between theory and practice” (Briggle, Frodeman, &, Holbrook, 2006). As a support to the assumption I made, see Frodeman (2003).
- 24.
In the absence of a “justifying agent”, a totally new application of an environmental problem might have aroused scepticism in various quarters. Nothing is more acceptable as a justifying agent than a “concept”. Hence, the Extended Security Concept (ESC), which was a popular paradigm at that time, was adopted by the Euro-Arctic states in the region building process and thereby brought their action in conformity with the continuing global process. For support, see section entitled “Barents and Its Identity”. Recently, the security image of climate change has been in vogue at the international level as well (Brown, Hammill, & McLeman, 2007).
- 25.
The driving slogan of climate change governance is that economic development should be pursued in a sustainable manner. Summarizing the climate change regime, The FCCC states its objective as: “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. This level should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner” (DiMento, 2003, p. 135).
- 26.
Barrow perceives an overlap between development and modernization/“postmodern development” which has espoused a holistic approach to every global move towards development. He conjectures: “Whether the approach to development is modern or postmodern in character, it will meet difficulties if it does not make optimum use of environmental opportunities, heed physical and socio-economic limits, and prepare for possible hazards” (Barrow, 2001, pp. 4566–4567).
- 27.
The “concept of threats” is synonymous with the extended security concept.
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Sreejith, S. (2009). Subjective Environmentalism: The Barents Euro-Arctic Council and Its Climate Change Policy. In: Koivurova, T., Keskitalo, E., Bankes, N. (eds) Climate Governance in the Arctic. Environment & Policy, vol 50. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9542-9_15
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