Periodic Reporting for period 4 - LORAX (The Lorax Project: Understanding Ecosystemic Politics)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-07-01 bis 2024-11-30
The Lorax project is a comparative effort to expand scholarly understanding of hitherto largely overlooked sites of politics – those located between global and national politics and built up around mutually acknowledged ‘shared ecosystems.’ The core question is: Do regional politics around border-crossing ecosystems share important resemblances and differ in significant ways from global politics? To address this question, the Lorax project analyzes the networks of participation, hierarchies of actors and diplomatic norms of the governance fields that have grown up around efforts to ‘speak for’ border-crossing ecosystems in three locations – the Arctic, the Amazon Basin, and the Caspian Sea.
Our broad scale review of how ecoregions/mega-ecosystems are governed has shown that anchoring multi-issue/broader governance efforts in border-crossing ecosystems is a reasonably widespread but not ubiquitous way of governing shared nature. In other words, not every large-scale ecosystem ends up with a multi-issue effort anchored specifically in that ecosystem - some remain ungoverned or others are governed in different ways (such as through broader multilateral regional cooperation or specific treaties). This makes it especially important and interesting to understand the power political effects of building institutions around shared ecosystems (or what adjacent actors come to view as shared ecosystems). In the Arctic and Caspian cases, our research found a common marginalization of the diplomatic stature of non-adjacent/non-regional actors over time, as in-group identity of states and actors adjacent to the ecosystem itself were enhanced. In the Amazon case, findings are highlighted how Amazon states work as a network in global environmental politics, even if the actual institution of Amazon governance (ACTO) is largely seen as a zombie institution. These findings suggest that consequences for extra-regional/global actors – their influence over and access to globally significant ecoregions – is an important and still poorly understood consequence of adjacent states anchoring cooperation in shared ecosystems.
Globally, we face pressing environmental challenges and we also look to the natural world to provide for more of our needs in pursuit of a more equitable and safe world. Consequently, our focus on these ecosystem-anchored regional cooperative efforts, their dynamics and how they function to structure world order has been timely and important. We are better situated to use the sub-global level effectively in policy, when we have a better understanding of the power political consequences at stake.
Our broad scale review of how ecoregions/mega-ecosystems are governed has shown that anchoring multi-issue/broader governance efforts in border-crossing ecosystems is a reasonably widespread but not ubiquitous way of governing shared nature. In other words, not every large-scale ecosystem ends up with a multi-issue effort anchored specifically in that ecosystem - some remain ungoverned or others are governed in different ways (such as through broader multilateral regional cooperation or specific treaties). This makes it especially important and interesting to understand the power political effects of building institutions around shared ecosystems (or what adjacent actors come to view as shared ecosystems). In the Arctic and Caspian cases, our research found a common marginalization of the diplomatic stature of non-adjacent/non-regional actors over time, as in-group identity of states and actors adjacent to the ecosystem itself were enhanced. In the Amazon case, findings are highlighted how Amazon states work as a network in global environmental politics, even if the actual institution of Amazon governance (ACTO) is largely seen as a zombie institution. These findings suggest that consequences for extra-regional/global actors – their influence over and access to globally significant ecoregions – is an important and still poorly understood consequence of adjacent states anchoring cooperation in shared ecosystems.
Globally, we face pressing environmental challenges and we also look to the natural world to provide for more of our needs in pursuit of a more equitable and safe world. Consequently, our focus on these ecosystem-anchored regional cooperative efforts, their dynamics and how they function to structure world order has been timely and important. We are better situated to use the sub-global level effectively in policy, when we have a better understanding of the power political consequences at stake.
The ERC-funded Lorax project has conducted groundbreaking, comparative research on politics enacted around three meta-ecosystems: the Arctic (WP1), the Caspian Sea (WP2) and the Amazon (WP3). The three case studies and rigorous case-crossing scholarship (WP4) have resulted in the major research achievements (#numbers below refer to the publication list in the final report).
The primary scholarly achievement has been on the high-risk/high-gain aspect of the project – working to understand if cooperation in such diverse meta-ecosystems as the Arctic, Caspian and Amazon had similar internal dynamics and broader effects. The project has developed a novel conceptual framework called ‘ecosystemic politics’ designed to help us appreciate and assess the practices and consequences of governing from ecosystems (if not always for ecosystems). The major achievements of this framework are presented in a book-length manuscript.
WP1, on the Arctic, provided unique insights into how networks around the Arctic as a policy field have changed over time. The WP1 network analysis showed how agency within and access to decision making in Arctic cooperation had become more limited – and more focused on Arctic actors, including states – over the course of thirty years of post-Cold War cooperation. Output is 2 articles, one of which is in a high impact journal. The results of this research into Arctic politics has been widely shared by the PI in a variety of high-impact venues, including Parliamentary testimony and key events, as Arctic actors have sought to navigate difficult political times following Russia's re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Caspian case (WP2) highlighted that anchoring cooperation in meta-ecosystems is also a technique of organization that is utilized by non-democratic/authoritarian states. In the Caspian Sea, this brings together states that otherwise do not meet in any other regional constellation or multilateral setting, excluding universal membership settings like the UN. A notable contrast here to the Arctic and the Amazon is that non-state actors are not elevated through the cooperation, despite significant efforts being made at building a Caspian identity that also encompassed communities living along and expert actors relevant to the Caspian Sea. In this sense, the identity building project – constructing an ’ecosystem in-group’ as contrast to the global – mobilized mostly at the inter-state/international governmental organization level. This suggests that anchoring cooperation in adjacent ecosystems can also have impacts on or be vehicles for correcting broader existing hierarchies as well, such as the West vs. non-Western. Output is 1 high impact article, 1 book chapter, and 1 data report.
The Amazon case was notable in that it highlighted how Amazon states also enact their regional boundary not only through regional bodies themselves but by acting as a networked ‘block’ at the international level. While regional studies would typically emphasize the ties that connect a region from within, the Amazon case study has highlighted that a region is also perhaps more of a boundary, enacted to mitigate or steward pressures from outside the region. Output in this WP is 3 articles (2 of which are in high-impact journals) and one forthcoming book.
WP4 focused on case-crossing work. We built a data set that included all global meta-ecosystems as identified by natural science with four or more adjacent states. The database also serves to provide a set of cases for further study, a research achievement, as it supplements databases that tend to start with the governance of ecosystems (environmental treaties and so on) and also provides us with a number of zero cases of no cooperation. A final, additional output of WP4, is a forthcoming edited book that puts the Lorax project in its wider context in IR, calling for a 4th debate in the discipline about how nature – and its crises – require that we revisit our conceptual framings of how nature matters for global order more generally. Output in this WP is 2 peer-reviewed articles, 1 edited book, and 2 book chapters.
The primary scholarly achievement has been on the high-risk/high-gain aspect of the project – working to understand if cooperation in such diverse meta-ecosystems as the Arctic, Caspian and Amazon had similar internal dynamics and broader effects. The project has developed a novel conceptual framework called ‘ecosystemic politics’ designed to help us appreciate and assess the practices and consequences of governing from ecosystems (if not always for ecosystems). The major achievements of this framework are presented in a book-length manuscript.
WP1, on the Arctic, provided unique insights into how networks around the Arctic as a policy field have changed over time. The WP1 network analysis showed how agency within and access to decision making in Arctic cooperation had become more limited – and more focused on Arctic actors, including states – over the course of thirty years of post-Cold War cooperation. Output is 2 articles, one of which is in a high impact journal. The results of this research into Arctic politics has been widely shared by the PI in a variety of high-impact venues, including Parliamentary testimony and key events, as Arctic actors have sought to navigate difficult political times following Russia's re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Caspian case (WP2) highlighted that anchoring cooperation in meta-ecosystems is also a technique of organization that is utilized by non-democratic/authoritarian states. In the Caspian Sea, this brings together states that otherwise do not meet in any other regional constellation or multilateral setting, excluding universal membership settings like the UN. A notable contrast here to the Arctic and the Amazon is that non-state actors are not elevated through the cooperation, despite significant efforts being made at building a Caspian identity that also encompassed communities living along and expert actors relevant to the Caspian Sea. In this sense, the identity building project – constructing an ’ecosystem in-group’ as contrast to the global – mobilized mostly at the inter-state/international governmental organization level. This suggests that anchoring cooperation in adjacent ecosystems can also have impacts on or be vehicles for correcting broader existing hierarchies as well, such as the West vs. non-Western. Output is 1 high impact article, 1 book chapter, and 1 data report.
The Amazon case was notable in that it highlighted how Amazon states also enact their regional boundary not only through regional bodies themselves but by acting as a networked ‘block’ at the international level. While regional studies would typically emphasize the ties that connect a region from within, the Amazon case study has highlighted that a region is also perhaps more of a boundary, enacted to mitigate or steward pressures from outside the region. Output in this WP is 3 articles (2 of which are in high-impact journals) and one forthcoming book.
WP4 focused on case-crossing work. We built a data set that included all global meta-ecosystems as identified by natural science with four or more adjacent states. The database also serves to provide a set of cases for further study, a research achievement, as it supplements databases that tend to start with the governance of ecosystems (environmental treaties and so on) and also provides us with a number of zero cases of no cooperation. A final, additional output of WP4, is a forthcoming edited book that puts the Lorax project in its wider context in IR, calling for a 4th debate in the discipline about how nature – and its crises – require that we revisit our conceptual framings of how nature matters for global order more generally. Output in this WP is 2 peer-reviewed articles, 1 edited book, and 2 book chapters.
The research facilitated by the Lorax project has contributed much-needed knowledge about how cooperation anchored in ecosystems has broader power political effects. Improving our understanding of how ecosystem-anchored cooperation shapes world order is essential, as such forms of political organization are likely to become more significant as we face the dual and interlinked crises of nature and climate. The project has resulted in in-depth and novel knowledge about how politics is organized around the Amazon rainforest, the Arctic and the Caspian Sea, providing much-needed insights on these important ecosystem-anchored cooperative efforts.