Paula Kankaanpää

Online Information System – Russia Aims to Ease the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Market Entry Barrier into Northwestern Russia

Finnish companies have a growing and keen interest in entering the changing and improving Northwestern Russian market. According to the World Bank’s rankings for the ease of doing business, Russia ranked at 92 out of 189. The country was however recognized as one of the 29 countries which had improved their rankings in 2012/13 according to reforms in at least 3 of the 10 measured topics. In addition to being ranked in the 50th percentile in the ease of doing business, the Russian business environment and culture must also be considered when deciding to enter a market sector abroad. In understanding the Russian business culture for example, as defined by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Russia is described as a culture of high power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and pragmatism meaning that the business culture includes the right personal contacts, bureaucratic business processes, and an orientation where the situation, context, and time have meaning for the outcome of the issue at hand. In other words, the culture and businesses thrive on the network of contacts, understanding the processes and systems, as well as on direct personal communication. In addition to the ease of doing business improving and the cultural differences, development projects in specific must go through the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process which has proven to be a market entry barrier into the Northwestern Russian region. It has been found that the EIA process and system in Russia is complex and hard to navigate, even by native developers. The issues of identifying the EIA best practices of the private sector in Northwestern Russia and thus easing the market entry barrier posed by the Russian EIA system and its process for Finnish as well as other international companies looking into entering the Northwestern Russian market are addressed with a toolkit. This toolkit is a free of charge; open, online information service – Russia (ISRussia) designed specifically from the gathered research, feedback, and needs assessment and analysis of Finland’s private sector and thus is specifically designed for the companies.

The Recent Arctic Council Assessments: Influential Tools in Policy-Making in the Council and Beyond?

The scientific assessments of the Arctic Council (AC) have been widely regarded as the most effective products of the AC. Yet, so far comparatively little scholarly attention has been given to this primary area of the Council’s work. This paper examines the most recent assessment work within the Arctic Council. In order to do this, we build on the literature on global environmental assessments to analyze whether this work exhibits design features and is carried out in a way that enhances the potential for AC assessments to be effective. We understand the effectiveness of assessments to influence decision and policy-making in the Arctic Council itself, but we also look beyond its structures. This paper focuses on four case studies: Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA), Arctic Human Development Report-II (ADHR-II), Arctic Resilience Report/Arctic Resilience Assessment (ARR/ARA) and Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic (AACA). Whereas detailed examination of such influence is at this point not possible due to either very short time from their completion (ABA, ADHR-II) or the fact that the projects are still ongoing (ARA, AACA), the analysis of those assessments through the lens of a series of their design features provides us with some guidance in relation to their expected effectiveness in bridging science with decision-making in the AC and beyond. The article finds that whereas different processes exhibit different individual characteristics, all the studied assessments rank from relatively high to very high in terms of how their design may affect their salience, credibility and legitimacy. However, their actual policy influence will depend first and foremost on the political will of those ordering the assessments and wielding decision-making power in the Arctic Council.

Environmental impact assessment: introduction to a policy instrument manifesting sustainable development

It is generally understood that the first national EIA procedure established was the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA 1969, as amended) of the United States in 1969. Thereafter, the EIA procedure first spread to the commonwealth countries of Canada and Australia, and then to Europe and also to some developing countries (Gilpin 1995; Harrop and Nixon 1999). International banks like the World Bank or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) started to make EIA a precondition for any loan they gave (Bastmeijer and Koivurova 2008, part 3). At the moment, practically all states have their EIA systems in place (Yang and Percival 2009). Even the transboundary EIA, an extension of domestic EIA to foreign states and other actors has, in the words of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) become

Observer States’ Commitments to the Arctic Council: The Arctic Policy Documents of the United Kingdom and Germany as Case Study

The Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council in Kiruna, Sweden in May 2013 received unprecedented coverage in the worldwide media. The main reason behind that attention was triggered by the expected decision of the Council to grant observer status to applicants, including China and the European Union. However, not only countries and entities seeking access to the AC proceedings have been increasingly active in their approach towards the region. Also the ‘old’ observer states to the Council got spurred by recent developments and among them the United Kingdom and Germany were the first ones to set out their overall Arctic policies in fall 2013. This article looks at both documents to examine the vision for the Arctic that both countries bring and proposes to read the texts in light of the rules for observers’ participation in the Arctic Council, which were approved in Nuuk in 2011. It continues with setting them against a broader picture of the involvement of outside actors in the Arctic cooperation.