168
boundaries. A precondition for such transgression is that a variety of actors can take
part in the debate and search for solutions.
The EAM concept has potential to facilitate such type of refl ection, but only if
social sustainability issues such as participation , justice, quality of life and social
coherence are more pronounced (see Boström 2012 for a discussion regarding
social sustainability). Innovative concepts such as EAM may not induce quick
changes but could still have an important role to play in the long run. New concepts
bring new ways to frame problems and solutions and can open up new spaces for
interaction and dialogue among actors and consequently for mutual learning among
them. Thus, we should not be too hasty in assessing or neglecting the potential of
EAM to bring about change. EAM does, indeed, bring refl exive potential to criticise
traditional risk assessment and management (such as the TAC machine) and can
open up doors at the cognitive level. EAM helps actors to look for new
‘pathways’.
However, concepts such as EAM are not suffi cient to accomplish such tasks on
their own. Institutional and organisational structures that provide interactive space
and remove obstacles for such refl exivity also need to be in place. This is only
beginning to happen in regional governance of the Baltic Sea. Institutional structures appear even more inert than cognitive structures. While many interviewees
used the rhetoric of sustainability, ecosystems, uncertainty, precaution , holism,
cocktail effects and so on, they were unable to translate new ideas into feasible
operations. On the institutional level, a welcome development is, however, the
increasing cross-border interaction and capacity building that have emerged from
both above and below. Tighter interaction and capacity building among non-state
actors, for instance, provide better conditions for constructive input to policy at this
cross-border regional level. It should be remembered that input from non-state
actors is crucial not only in the more instrumentalist/functionalist way (for the service of current governance) but also in the more refl exive/critical way (social refl exivity). The latter is so because the incessant push for change is arguably needed to
prevent the current governance system from relapsing into business as usual while
only rhetorically committing to EAM.
Acknowledgements This chapter draws on results from the research programme ‘Environmental
Risk Governance of the Baltic Sea’ (2009–2015; Michael Gilek, programme coordinator) and
involved research teams from Södertörn University in Sweden, Åbo Akademi University in
Finland, Dialogik/Stuttgart University in Germany and Gdansk University in Poland. The funding
came from the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies and the European Community’s
Seventh Framework Programme (2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 217246 made with the
joint Baltic Sea research and development programme BONUS, as well as from the German
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Swedish Environmental Protection
Agency, the Swedish Research Council FORMAS, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher
Education and the Academy of Finland. We wish to express our warmest thanks to these institutions for enabling us to conduct this research, to all participants in the research programme that
directly or indirectly provided useful input, to all informants who shared their experiences and to
the two reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the chapter.
M. Boström et al.
boundaries. A precondition for such transgression is that a variety of actors can take
part in the debate and search for solutions.
The EAM concept has potential to facilitate such type of refl ection, but only if
social sustainability issues such as participation , justice, quality of life and social
coherence are more pronounced (see Boström 2012 for a discussion regarding
social sustainability). Innovative concepts such as EAM may not induce quick
changes but could still have an important role to play in the long run. New concepts
bring new ways to frame problems and solutions and can open up new spaces for
interaction and dialogue among actors and consequently for mutual learning among
them. Thus, we should not be too hasty in assessing or neglecting the potential of
EAM to bring about change. EAM does, indeed, bring refl exive potential to criticise
traditional risk assessment and management (such as the TAC machine) and can
open up doors at the cognitive level. EAM helps actors to look for new
‘pathways’.
However, concepts such as EAM are not suffi cient to accomplish such tasks on
their own. Institutional and organisational structures that provide interactive space
and remove obstacles for such refl exivity also need to be in place. This is only
beginning to happen in regional governance of the Baltic Sea. Institutional structures appear even more inert than cognitive structures. While many interviewees
used the rhetoric of sustainability, ecosystems, uncertainty, precaution , holism,
cocktail effects and so on, they were unable to translate new ideas into feasible
operations. On the institutional level, a welcome development is, however, the
increasing cross-border interaction and capacity building that have emerged from
both above and below. Tighter interaction and capacity building among non-state
actors, for instance, provide better conditions for constructive input to policy at this
cross-border regional level. It should be remembered that input from non-state
actors is crucial not only in the more instrumentalist/functionalist way (for the service of current governance) but also in the more refl exive/critical way (social refl exivity). The latter is so because the incessant push for change is arguably needed to
prevent the current governance system from relapsing into business as usual while
only rhetorically committing to EAM.
Acknowledgements This chapter draws on results from the research programme ‘Environmental
Risk Governance of the Baltic Sea’ (2009–2015; Michael Gilek, programme coordinator) and
involved research teams from Södertörn University in Sweden, Åbo Akademi University in
Finland, Dialogik/Stuttgart University in Germany and Gdansk University in Poland. The funding
came from the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies and the European Community’s
Seventh Framework Programme (2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 217246 made with the
joint Baltic Sea research and development programme BONUS, as well as from the German
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Swedish Environmental Protection
Agency, the Swedish Research Council FORMAS, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher
Education and the Academy of Finland. We wish to express our warmest thanks to these institutions for enabling us to conduct this research, to all participants in the research programme that
directly or indirectly provided useful input, to all informants who shared their experiences and to
the two reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the chapter.
M. Boström et al.