This research area includes the impact of globalisation on regional life opportunities in the far north. Issues of this kind are strongly related to basic questions of political democracy and the dynamics of the global market economy. In this context it is interesting to look at the results of contemporary Barents Cooperation, people-to-people collaboration and its future potential. General methodological approaches to region-building projects are part of the research scope.
Regional development in sparsely inhabited regions depends on the extent of regional by-pass of revenue as raw materials flows from the local utilisation of natural and human resources to the consumers and control centres of national administrations and international enterprises. Among the important regional issues are also various strategies of infrastructure development and the conditions for local economic growth. Regional studies focus the choices and opportunities that are open to individuals within the Barents region, as well as the availability of various community services, developments in democracy, and the political influence of the area in a national and global context.
This theme is addressed in the following research programmes at the Barents Institute:
It has been discussed by BAI researchers and others in these publications intended for debate and outreach:
It has been the main theme of the 2007 Calotte Academy, a Finnish-Norwegian-Russian series travelling of workshops focussing the New Northern Dimension EU policy. Regional development was the main theme also of the 2007 Thorvald Stoltenberg Symposium, the 2007 BAI international minisymposium “Global Knowledge, Local Consequences” and the Symposium "The Twin Towns of Kirkenes and Nikel: Visions and Reality" on synergetic regional development. Several of these meetings of course also discussed cross-border issues. Proceedings are under way from most of these, for some further info see: "previous BAI events." Matters of regional development will also be addressed in the joint BAI and Tromsø University PhD candidate programme now under elaboration "Mining, Society and Development in the Barents Region." BAI scholars are developing a proposals for one outreach programme in particular that squarely addressing issues of regional development in the Barents Region in a unique multilateral collaboration Norway-Sweden-Finland-Russia:
- Encyclopaedia of the Barents Region
The BAI is leading a project, in collaboration with Luleå University of Technology and the University of Tromsø, to produce an Encyclopaedia of the Barents Region. Major external funding has been forthcoming during 2007, rewarded so far from the Swedish and the Norwegian Research Councils, from the Swedish Institute, County Authority of Lapland, County Authority of Finnmark, Interreg IIIA Kola Arctic in Finland and Norway. The total budget now planned is 4,5 million SEK.
Bridge across Severnaya Dvina, Arkhangelsk. Photo: Urban Wråkberg
