Rozprawy doktorskie na temat „Baltin”

The Baltic Sea is a sensitive and unique ecosystem that has been strongly affected by human activity in the area. It is an important cultural and natural resource that contributes with several economic benefits. Among the many documents aiming to protect the Baltic Sea, this thesis concerns two of the action plans; An Agenda for the Baltic Sea Region – Baltic 21 and HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan, which are two of the most recognised documents aiming at protecting the Baltic Sea area. The two documents was analysed using three different types of text analysis.

As the main goal in all environmental protection is to urge preventive action in protecting the environment, the two documents will be analysed with the aim of investigating whether preventive action is advocated in the protection of the Baltic Sea, even though the region is threatened and have many problems from an environmental point of view.

The two documents differ structurally as their approaches differ. The HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) has an ecosystem approach, whiles the Baltic 21 has sustainable development as its primarily approach. The results of the study further show that preventive action is advocated in both documents. However, the BSAP presents a cleared preventive approach and suggests more preventive action than Baltic 21. Baltic 21 lack a clear connection to the Baltic Sea and instead focus in the whole Baltic Sea area. There are few clearly preventive action presented in the protection of the actual Baltic Sea in Baltic 21. Instead the Baltic 21 shows a vague argumentation and few actions aiming at preventing environmental harm to the Baltic Sea.

The Baltic Sea is the one of the most studied seas area in the world and it is severely affected by human activities where eutrophication is the overall environmental problem. Although there is an international agreement that nutrient input to the Baltic should be reduced, the measures taken so far have not resulted in major reductions in nutrient inputs nor in environmental improvements. Sewage reduction is the most important factor for transparency improvement of the Baltic Proper and wetland restoration and change of N spreading time have no effective role in this aspect. Within the Baltic area, establishment of sewage treatment technology in Russia and Poland is more cost-effective than it would be in Sweden. Without this measure transparency improvement would be expensive. In Sweden NOx reduction is most cost-effective measure for transparency improvement in the Baltic Proper and without this measure the total cost would be ~ 58.5 million euro.

The increasing levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earths atmosphere, caused by human release of CO2, has made it desirable to understand the factors determining the CO2-variation because of CO2’s warming effect on the Earths temperature which will change the premises of all life on earth.

The purpose of this investigation is to understand the effects of the largest factors of influence on the CO2-concentration - like sea, vegetation and anthropogenic outlets - in the Baltic Sea region, and possible surprises from the results. To be able to do this only from CO2-measurements some assumptions have to be done as starting point. Such are that, besides from the yearly trend of the CO2-concentration and the variation of oceanic influence, monthly variation only is caused by vegetation and that the yearly offset in CO2-levels only is affected by anthropogenic outlets. These factors are together called the local season and will be used for evaluation of the CO2-values for each site. This analysis is done for eight sites surrounding the Baltic Sea region and is compared with results from the site of Östergarnsholm, an island in the Baltic Sea east of Gotland.

The results show that stations with high vegetational influence has high amplitudes for the local season compared to sites more influenced by sea. This also makes the amplitude to be connected with latitude since sites with longer growing season is surrounded by higher density of vegetation. The minimum for the local season is also dependent on the growing season, since it occurs when the vegetational consumption is largest. Peaks in the local season can be seen in connection with the maximum decay of the natural vegetation in the early winter months, and with the planting and harvest season for agricultural land. Considering the effect from anthropogenic influence a clear connection in the offset of the local season can be seen, with higher offsets for sites of higher anthropogenic influence and vice versa. Anthropogenic influence also seems to give raised values in summer for the local season, indicating that the variation of the local season cannot be simply connected to only vegetational influence. For variability, higher values in the summer months are seen for the anthropogenic sites, while in winter the variability is more similar for all sites. This might be connected with a higher degree of local influence during summers, which for anthropogenic stations leads to high variability due to inhomogenous surroundings.

For Östergarnsholm we get higher amplitude for the local season than expected, this is partly due to unrepresentatively high amplitudes for the seasons used, but also probably to some degree of underestimation of the vegetational influence. Due to correction of the offset it was not possible to draw any conclusions from this factor, but rather give suggestions of what the correction should be. When analysing the local season for different source areas by WD-classification we see the surprising property that the sector that should be most influenced by land, due to higher values in summer, has a lower amplitude than the sector most influenced by sea. Since it was suggested that anthropogenic influence gives raised values in summer this was suggested as an explanation.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.

Co-operation between states is a necessity to be able to handle environmental issues in the Baltic Sea area, since these are transboundary problems. Two organisations that deal with environmental issues in this region are HELCOM and Baltic 21. The aim has been to study how the problem of pollution from diffuse land-based sources, especially agriculture, has been dealt with through these organisations, to look upon the roles of and the relationship between HELCOM and Baltic 21 and to study the possibilities and the difficulties in the practical co-operation. The study holds a Swedish perspective, as Swedish representatives with connections to the HELCOM and Baltic 21 processes have been interviewed. The analysis shows that the EU is becoming increasingly important as an actor in the Baltic Sea co-operation, which makes the future roles of HELCOM and Baltic 21 uncertain. Concerning the difficulties of the work, aspects mentioned were cultural differences, group problems and lack of resources. To improve the work some proposals made by the interviewees were to use the experiences from different projects and to increase the resources.

The purpose with the essay is to point out how the main differences of the Helsinkicommission, Helcom and Baltic 21 can be explained from a general perspective and with a specific focus on two of their ongoing projects: Baltic 21 Lighthouse projects and The Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Plan. And to investigate how the organisations them selves formulates the purpose of the two projects. This will be an indication on why environmental problems are handled with in a traditional matter although the rhetoric of the environmental politics is permeated by the concept of Sustainable Development.

This dilemma is being treated from the theoretical approaches of Ecological Modernisation and Sustainable Development and linked to how these organisations actually carried out their work and how the historical heritage have a role to play in this complex of problems. The results of the essay shows that concrete differences exists in the way that the two organisations are constructed and how their ongoing projects are designed and formulated. These differences can be derived to the theoretical platforms Ecological Modernisation and Sustainable Development and be explained by in witch political context the organisations were created. Helcom and The Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Plan are operating within the framework of Ecological Modernisation and Baltic 21 and the Lighthouse projects within Sustainable Development.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.

After regaining independence from Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania started transition process from centrally planned- to market economy and their rapid progress has claimed to be one of a kind. Baltic States experienced a long period of exceptional economic growth and earned nickname of Baltic Tigers. International economic integration was one their main agenda and the countries signed several Free Trade Agreements during the 1990’s. The integration process culminated in 2004 when the countries joined the European Union.

We were interested in to study how Baltic States trade patterns has evolved after they joined the union and research question was set out to ask:

What changes have Baltic States trade patterns undergone since their EU accession?

Complemented by sub-questions:

Has the trade with Russia changed for the Baltic States?

Have there been any changes in size of SITC sectors of export and import when comparing before and after EU accession.

The aim of this study was to investigate how the Baltic States EU membership has affected on their trade patterns and also to examine what kind of role Russia still has in their trade. In addition to general changes in the Baltic States trade we aimed to analyze trade patterns on a commodity level and studied trade flows in SITC (Standard International Trade Classification) sectors.

The study is conducted from the positivistic standpoint and by using a deductive approach. Theories of economic integration and international trade have been used to formulate the research problem. We have used a quantitative research strategy and data of the Baltic States trade flows are gathered from Eurostat, Statistical office of the European Communities. The time frame of this study was limited to cover years 1999-2007 and since our focus was to examine trade developments over time, we have computed annual changes of trade flows.

Our theoretical framework consists of theories about economic integration, and Customs Union theory which has been the basis for our analysis.

According to our findings intra-EU trade dominates both in exports and imports in all the Baltic Countries. We can see that EU accession has had impact on import patterns as imports from within the EU has increased and even more so after accession. Russia has continued to be a significant trading partner and exports to Russia have even increased after the countries joined the EU. Our findings suggest that joining the European Union has had effect on their trade patterns but we also argue that major change and specialization has already happened when they signed Free Trade Agreements.

The aim of the present study is to investigate a multilateral law enforcement cooperation, theBaltic Sea Task Force, and explain some of the factors that may be the reasons for itssuccessful implementation. Choosing to see the Baltic Sea Task Force framework similar toan attempt to create a cooperation forming one international epistemic community fromseveral national ones, I investigate how and to what extent knowledge has been transferredbetween the communities, and how this was planned for in the original mission mandate. Iinvestigate problems of knowledge transfer across the network of communities (national lawenforcement agencies). Since knowledge is context based, the specific context encodes theknowledge, reflecting the nature of the subject area and the community’s norms and values.Explicit knowledge needs embedded tacit understanding to fully work. In turn, embeddednessneeds trust, common processes, joint norms and values. Consequently, there must also be atransfer of these norms and values in order for the embeddedness to take place. I investigatehow this context-dependent knowledge is received, and how such decoding is assisted by theframework. Where decoding seems to have been slow, I examine possible reasons for this,and study how the framework has dynamically altered its modi operandi to achieve itspurpose. I conclude that the Baltic Sea Task Force framework’s enterprise policy contains abroad and holistic perspective, conforming to definitions of a holistic epistemic community.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify a general model to forecast GDP growth for the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. If the model provides reliable results for these states, then the model should be able to forecast GDP growth for other countries of interest. Forecasts are made by using a reduced vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The VAR models make use of past values of Gross Domestic Product-Inflation-Unemployment as explanatory variables.

The performed forecasts have provided good results for horizons up to t+8. The forecasts for 2009 (t+12) are in line with those of several other actors. It is reasonable to assume that some of the forecasts for t+16 have reliable results. The Lithuanian forecast show a fall in GDP with 12.51 per cent in 2009 and a GDP growth of 4.23 per cent in 2010. The forecast for Estonia show that the GDP will decrease with 1.49 per cent in 2009 and 12.72 per cent in 2010. Finally the forecast for Latvia show a fall in GDP of 3.1 per cent in 2009 and 18 per cent in 2010. From the findings it is possible to conclude that the model provided reliable estimates of future levels of GDP for the Baltic States and the benchmark countries. This indicates that the model should be applicable on other countries of interest.