Making Transboundary Risks Governable: Reducing Complexity, Constructing Spatial Identity, and Ascribing Capabilities

Abstract

Environmental problems that cross national borders are attracting increasing public and political attention; regulating them involves coordinating the goals and activities of various governments, which often presupposes simplifying and standardizing complex knowledge, and finding ways to manage uncertainty. This article explores how transboundary environmental problems are dealt with to render complex issues governable. By discussing oil pollution in the Baltic Sea and the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, we elucidate how boundaries are negotiated to make issues governable. Three processes are found to be particularly relevant to how involved actors render complex issues governable: complexity reduction, construction of a spatial identity for an issue, and ascription of capabilities to new or old actor constellations. We conclude that such regulation is always provisional, implying that existing regulation is always open for negotiation and criticism.

New Levels of Climate Adaptation Policy: Analyzing the Institutional Interplay in the Baltic Sea Region

“…This inflexibility can make transnational cooperation problematic if the institutional structure is not compatible with the structure of adaptation in countries that are potential cooperation partners [20]. Such policy compatibility has been explained as crucial when formulating supra-national strategies concerning complex trans-boundary issues, such as climate change adaptation, that demand a certain degree of goal alignment [21][22][23][24].…”

A sociology of environmental representation

“…A variety of studies show how globalization and the increase of transnational politics and governance challenge traditional understandings of the nation-state, democracy and representation (e.g. Beck 2009;Mason 2005;Boström and Garsten 2008;Lidskog, Soneryd, and Uggla 2011). Literature, moreover, identifies the shortcomings of representation in relation to the double loyalties of representatives (Srivastava 2002), the Western preferential right of interpretation (Hannerz 1996), reproduced environmental injustice (Gallardo and Stein 2007;Vos, Sapat, and Thai 2002), legitimacy challenges when specific NGOs claim to represent global civil society (Jordan and van Tuijl 2006;Mateja 2012), and power and self-determination in relation to land use (Schmidt and Peterson 2009).…”

Public at Risk—Public as Risk: Regulating Nature by Managing People

“…However, regulation does not only govern specific objects; it is also deeply involved in their construction. Explicitly or implicitly, regulation creates demarcations and draws boundaries that make objects appear hazardous or harmless, safe or risky, natural or unnatural, important or unimportant, and global, national, or local (Lidskog, Uggla, and Soneryd 2011). In that sense, regulation is performative, not only regulating an already defined reality, but also participating in the very construction of this reality.…”

“…In order to regulate an issue, it is always necessary to identify what actors are best suited to take action and to be in charge of developing and implementing rules (Lidskog, Uggla, and Soneryd 2011). Regulating nature also involves constructing capabilities for action (cf.…”