c

 

    

 


 

The Baltic Sea region contains states at very different levels of economic, administrative and
political development in general area surrounding the Baltic Sea. It is a microcosm for wider a
Europe as a place where west and east come together and also considered as an ideal test case
to investigate the compatibility of economic and environmental concerns. Prior before the
advent of governance, the traditional concept of policy making has been a top-down system,
from the international level down to the local. And from this view, states were described
powerful, overbearing and autonomous.

With the recent phenomenon and conceptualization of governance, the central position of
nation states is being questioned thereby sees nation state as political authority which could
function on the basis of actors and agents having a hand in distribution and implementing of
tasks. These are some of the issues that stipulate baseline from government to governance

The longstanding traditional pattern of government is changing and greater efforts is been
channeled towards governance and certain issues within the arena of government are
empirically reviewed constantly. The issues within the arena of government deals with
movement of political power occurring within the sphere of transnational level,sub-
national,local level, civic organization, and people network and actors.

For example, the environmental concerns and sustainable development require interactions
among social, cultural, economic, and environmental instruments. Therefore creating the need
for elements within the societal, local, national and regional and global in order to have a
good policy instrument aimed at ameliorating the problems is required.

The governance issues are simply the coordination and fusion of public and private interests
while still maintaining the hierarchical relations defining its constitutional roles and functions

In conclusion, this issue has resulted to multilevel governance and policy process in the Baltic
Sea region within different actors that are present in the arena.

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The historicity of political system can be dated as far back as 1905; the commission for nature
conservancy association in Denmark was established. Similarly, the Finnish nature protection
was founded in 1938, for the protection of nature and environment .This association or
commission was established for political and administrative decision-making processes on
conservation of nature and environment. The administrative arm of environment was
politicize depending on states

Political system differ in state in terms of transparency and ability to meet challenges
Organization with different context and various political climate and strategy are on different
spectrum of political scale of environmental concern ,meanwhile the political system within
the Baltic region are centered on Green parties, Right and left wing movement.

The Green parties are social political structure and well established actors which confront the
dilemma of attempting to represent alternative, decentralized policies as opposed to the
traditional movements of states. The Green party politics is based on the principles of Green
politics. These principles include environmentalism, reliance on grassroots democracy,
nonviolence, and social justice, including those related to the rights of indigenous peoples.

The parties are considered as an instrument for strengthens and interwoven in the dilemma of
environmental issues. Their practicality and strategy was demonstrated in forming green
group as an extension of the parties in the European parliament and have been strengthened
through the establishment of European federation of Green Parties ,which ran a joint Green
electoral campaign for the European parliamentary elections in 2004.This movements were
political instruments of transformation .for example, in 1990s , Latvian society of nature and
monument protection had representative in the parliament and two representatives in
government .the movement spurred the development of environmental NGOs for wide
interest centered on public environmental concern. This cause change of attitude of
individuals, organizations and how acts of governance were initiated as process in dealing
with environmental issues

The institutionalization of green parties proved to influence the decisions on local level and
national level thereby influencing the political system and nature of environmental
governance of the Baltic region.

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Prior before independence of the batic states, the Soviet Union ruled the states and controlled
the legal, economic and environmental system and structure and as a result they had a
common environmental concern treading the same pattern of environmental problems. Some
of the problem was inadequate waste water treatment, poor waste management and outdated
production technology, hereby causing severe pollution of soil, air, river and groundwater and
along with this issues, inefficient use of natural resources and unsafe keep of nuclear elements
were paramount.

But immediately after independence at the beginning of 1990s, these environmental problems
came to prominence and other factors prompt the states to set up the administrative tools and
policy required to reverse the pendulum of change swinging towards


 


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In 1990, the Latvia environmental protection committee was legally approved and was
assigned the responsibility for execution of environmental protection and use of natural
resources. And has eight environmental regional boards responsible for implementing
environmental protections on regional and local levels while the committee itself is
subordinate to the parliament.

Shortly after 3year, that is precisely 1993, a new ministry of environmental protection and
regional development was established based on the former committee and was assigned the
responsibility for taking care of new issues relating to land use and regional development such
as housing and municipal services. In 2003, a new ministry named ministry of regional
development and local government was constituted and later renamed ministry of the
environment.

The trend shows the development of establishing environmental ministry and its subordinates
with the pattern of constitution in order to carry out implementation of the needed
environmental requirements. Though the literature did not state broadly how the process was
done but it gives insight on development of this ministry over time showing that as the need
arises for change in the state of environmental concern, response is required to effectively
manage the impact of environmental consequences as result of its degradation

j
  
 

Immediately after independence, the law on environmental protection was approved in

1991.one of the first policy document provided by Latvia state environmental ministry in
1992 at united nation conference in Rio de Janiero described environmental situation and
problems, policy and legislation, the institutional framework, goals and targets for
environmental protection. Shortly afterward, it was followed by the national environmental
policy plan(NEPP) prepared and approved in 1995.the policy plan was set out for coming
decades and it addresses environmental policy goals,pricinple,and resources, mechanisms
needed for implementing policies.

This policy plan had other plans and programmes that were more specific in addressing
environmental situations and problem such as National Baltic Sea Protection, which
constituted other sub-programme for different sectors of environmental protection such as the
1996 national programme of hazardous waste management, the 1997 water supply and
wastewater treatment in small and medium sized towns and the 1997 national municipal solid
waste management. All these policy documents were prepared to addresses different
environmental stress in order to protect it. For example, the policy plan document on solid
waste was meant to reduce the negative impact of illegal dumping and dumpsites and to
increase recycling.

In addition, Latvia has been part of countries that ratified and signed international legislation
and convention such as the HELCOM and UNEC .And being an EU member, they followed
the transposition of EU environmental legislation as agreed by all the member countries.
Œ

 
 
 
 
 

 

Spatial planning is an important tool used as an environmental policy tool to steer the location
of activities. But EU involvement has been minimal because spatial plans are traditionally
prepared separately without creating a link between environmental programmes. With the
implementation of a tool such as spatial planning, it creates a system of identification of environmental
objectives at an early stage in setting out the mechanism, principle and resources needed to administer
the various environmental situations. And also tends to make available approach that is ecologically
based in seeking solution to environmental question.

Land-use planning prompts the need to adjust different environmental activities in order to maintain a
balance in government arena when preparing policy or programme that entails mechanism and
measures in achieving the set targets and goals of environmental governance.

Finally, Spatial planning framework is vital for all institutionalization of environmental programme
and policy .And Environmental Impact Assessment can be interwoven or interlinked with the planning
system to ascertain all subject from government to governance perspective.

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As a concept, local governance is used to imply a change from traditional top-down and
representative government towards bottom-up and participatory structure while helping the
governments in developing a framework for coordination of different social system in
reaching an acceptable solution to sustainable challenges.

It challenges the longstanding pattern of government in terms of legal and administrative

context thereby allowing the introduction of new tools that are often voluntary and based on
common understanding of the problem and finding a common solution. This paradigm shift
from the traditional government in environmental policy making strengthened with
participatory, information, and economic instrument in meeting sustainability challenges from
local to global context.

With the institutionalization and practice of local governance, new dimensions that create
awareness that sustainability challenges are viewed from different sectors thereby requiring a
new mode of approach and actors in tackling environmental issues resulting to sectoral
sustainability setting among different stakeholders, government and civil society.

Though the scope at the local level is becoming wider with much constraints due to the fact
that several different local-level actors, who are often different to the actors with access to the
normal local policy-making process are actively involved and has become a practice .But the
result, has created a multilevel governance system allowing several actors and policy network
in providing new political structure for implementing environmental and sustainability tools
and policies.


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Yes ,the introduction of Local Agenda 21 is been successful considering that it was an
additional tool for governments to achieve their political and non political goals in tacking
environmental issues from local and global perspective compared to the traditional tools that
was autonomous and overbearing.

Local agenda 21(LA21) is a voluntary tool introduced after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.it a
policy tool with the aim of activitating existing structures and creating new institution in
order to meet sustainability challenges from local and global environments, as well as local
social and economic condition.

Though it is a non binding plan for sustainable development but based on multilevel
governance creating a structure for political and non political actors to implementing changes
in the arena of government.

The La21 activity and process is been undertaken by different countries based on the local
condition. The medium of network which it has created for local level authorities therefore
imply a change from the traditional to new structure of collaboration and cooperation for
policy-making in implementing and using the necessary; tool, resource and mechanism for all
environmental aspects thereby allowing several different actor to be involved in the process.
Project with ecological approach are ongoing and adapted on local context with back up of
national government authorities. Also it has encourage and strengthen the decentralization of
environmental administration and policy from global to local and aided in the
institutionalization of governance on local context in tackling sustainability issues

For example, the Latvian government has put in place regional environmental boards
responsible for sustainable development policies which give support to the local authorities to
meeting challenges on basic and specific local-social and environmental condition of
towns, cities or municipalities. From the cities and towns, several actors and local authorities
are involved in the LA21 sustainability process and have managed to finalize few action
plans, while some are still ongoing.

Considering the active process at local level in sustainability, a lot of LA21 practices have
been initiated and many cities or municipalities are responding i.e. the adoption of physical
development plan at local level by polish authority, though it is minor when compared to the
numbers of cities in Poland. While in Iceland, about 50 local authorities out of a total of 124
are already involved in a nationally coordinated effort on LA21. The number of active LA21
process among Baltic group is high compared to other EU countries

Comparing other countries with Baltic States using analysis of LASALA data. With this
comparison using figure, it shows various respondent and local participant and government
back up at regional level and the scale at which they are implementing the LA21 process
.

è

70
60
50

40

30 mean

20 sample size

10
0
western southern nordic baltic other CEE
europe europe countries countries countries

Data source: Governing a Common Sea by Detlef Jahn and Kristine Kern
Chart by Greatresponse

Comparing all the data representing the scope and content of ongoing LA21 process in Baltic
area with others. It shows that mean value of the Baltic was highest and it gives a vivid
conclusion that the process in Baltic States had more content in terms of scope, quantity and
quality in comparison to others and as a result was successful from European perspective


 

      

 


 

The Baltic is basically an internal sea of the European Union (EU).the field of environmental
policy is made of a highly heterogeneous set of specific problems. Considering differentiation
of policy instruments and ways of implementation and nature of the problems in different
states of the Baltic, it is cumbersome to have environmental policy that is cross boundary.

The key challenge with regard to unification of policy is the multiplicity of spatial and
temporal scales of environmental problem within the region. The spatial context of this
problem differs and the sentivity from different actors are not same and in addition the
problem change shape with time. Addressing these issues has been a problem inspite of
technology development and innovation

Data collection and integratability and interoperability is another impending challenge that
seems to be a constraint in resolving and tackling environmental problem at regional scale.
Therefore the need to identify critical dimensions and variations among specific problems and
eco-social factors pertaining to human and nature is become a challenge in unifying policies
among Baltic state

Relevance of environmental problems and assessing its severity in concrete context also
differs greatly inspite of similarity of criteria used in assessing problems and potential
solution in region

In conclusion, the institutional arrangement, administrative regulation, political

constituencies, governance issues, social-cultural settings differs and the implication of policy
on local actors whose livelihood is at stake are not on the same scale in the Baltic region
thereby leading to hiccups . These are challenges affecting the unification of environmental
policy in Baltic Sea Region.

 
: Governing a Common Sea - Environmental Policies in the Baltic Sea Region /
edited by Ed. Marko Joas,( Aurthor ) Detlef Jahn and Kristine Kern(Aurthor)




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Baltic Ports Organization

Baltic and International maritime council
Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference
Union of the Baltic Cities
Conference of peripheral maritime regions of Europe ±Baltic Sea commission
Baltic operational oceanographic system
Coalition Clean Baltic
Baltic nest institute