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Making a model: the 1974 Nordic Environmental Protection Convention

Profile picture of Melina Antonia BunsMelina Antonia Buns, visiting postdoc in international and environmental history at the division, has published a new open access article in the Scandinavian Journal of History (published online on 05 May 2022). The title of the article is “Making a model: the 1974 Nordic Environmental Protection Convention and Nordic attempts to form environmental law” and adds to the current discourse of environmental governance, for example embodied by the recent Stockholm +50 UN-Conference on the human environment, which took place in Sweden’s capital in June.

Abstract:

This article investigates the 1974 Nordic Environmental Protection Convention. It shows that the ulterior motives for such a convention were Nordic ambitions to regulate and reduce transboundary pollution originating outside of the Nordic region. Emphasizing the inter-organizational dynamics between institutionalized Nordic cooperation and international organizations, it examines how the Nordics drew on developments within international organizations and how they pursued their agenda of shaping international environmental law within the OECD. Ultimately, the article argues that the Nordic countries tried to create a model convention to be exported to and implemented at the international level with the aim of reducing transboundary pollution and establishing transnational responsibilities and accountabilities. By setting out this argument and shedding light on the first legally binding international convention to address transboundary pollution with procedural principles, the article breaks new ground on the history of Nordic environmental cooperation as well as on the development of international environmental law.

If you are interested in Nordic environmental governance, check it out!

The metaphor of ocean “health” is problematic

Susanna Lidström (researcher at KTH), Tirza Meyer (postdoc at KTH) and former division’s PhD-colleague Jesse Peterson (now postdoc at Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet) have published an exciting opinion piece about our approach towards the ocean in the context of climate change and increased pollution. The authors argue that the health metaphor would be problematic in regard to describing the state of oceans.

In the following you can read their introduction. If you are interested in working through the original article, visit Frontiers in Marine Science – Global Change and the Future Ocean from 15 February 2022 by clicking on the link!

Fische, Meer, Graffiti, Streetart, Mauer, Wandkunst

Introduction of the article:

The state of the ocean is increasingly described in terms of ocean “health.” The Implementation Plan for the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development describes the aim of the decade as achieving “a sustainable and healthy ocean” and refers to the ocean’s “health” throughout, including references to an overall “decline in ocean health” [Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), 2020], p. i, 6. Likewise, Sustainable Development Goal no. 14 aims “to achieve healthy and productive oceans” and “to improve ocean health” [United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), 2015, p. 23, 24]. In addition, scientific studies from all disciplines routinely use the same metaphor, including statements such as “the many benefits that society receives from a healthy ocean” (Duarte et al., 2020, p. 39), “the health of marine ecosystems” (Hagood, 2013, p. 75), and the “importance of ocean health” (Borja et al., 2020, p. 1).

However, we argue that the health metaphor (Suter, 1993; Jamieson, 1995) continues to be imprecise, ambiguous, and problematic. We suggest that the idea of ocean “health” misrepresents the Earth’s history of ever-changing and adapting ecosystems through time, wrongly suggests that ocean health is an apolitical and objective state and obscures how conditions in the ocean are irreversibly intertwined with human activities.

Sonne, Strand, Müll, Plastik, Natur, Meer, Ozean