The role of environmental issues in the adoption processes of European Union macro-regional strategies

•Bridges different academic perspectives on macro-regional strategies by using the notion of ‘functions’.•Shows that the driving forces of macro-regional cooperation are not primarily environmental.•Describes the limited capacity of macro-regional initiatives to generate governance setups needed to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science & policy 2019-07, Vol.97, p.58-66
Main Authors: Gløersen, Erik, Balsiger, Jörg, Cugusi, Battistina, Debarbieux, Bernard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adriatic-ionian region
Baltic Sea region
Danube region
Ecosystem approach
Environmental governance
Functional areas
Integrated marine policy
Macro-regional strategies
Neofunctionalism
Transnational cooperation
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Summary:•Bridges different academic perspectives on macro-regional strategies by using the notion of ‘functions’.•Shows that the driving forces of macro-regional cooperation are not primarily environmental.•Describes the limited capacity of macro-regional initiatives to generate governance setups needed to address major identified challenges.•Identifies the ‘ontological indeterminacy’ of transnational environmental regions as an additional limiting factor European macro-regional strategies (MRS) are established around physical features such as seas, mountain ranges and river basins. They focus on a new type of policy-making area (the ‘macro-regions’) while seeking to design and implement innovative governance approaches. They are therefore considered innovative both in their geographical focus (in the context of EU policies) and in their approach to policy design, adoption and implementation. The present article argues that the analysis of this development can usefully be informed by different theories referring to the notion of ‘functions’, drawn from political science on the one hand, and from geography and planning on the other. On this basis, it applies a multi-disciplinary perspective to the analysis of the role environmental issues have played in the emergence and adoption of macro-regional strategies. This allows for a comprehensive assessment of the role of environmental issues in the adoption of macro-regional strategies, as well as some of their inherent weaknesses.
ISSN:1462-9011
1873-6416
DOI:10.1016/j.envsci.2019.04.002