Paper at borderland conference
On 23 September 2021 Jørn Holm-Hansen (NIBR) presented the paper «Cross-border cooperation between Russian and Norwegian grassroot organizations: To what extent is it affected by changes in the geopolitical atmosphere?» written together with Aadne Aasland (NIBR) and Elena Dybtsyna (Nord University) at the conference «Relations in the Borderlands: Old and New Inhabitants» in Białystok, Poland.
Abstract: What impact do the changes in the geopolitical environment have on grassroot cross-border cooperation within the Barents Euro-Arctic Region? The Barents Secretariat’s grant programme is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in line with the overall aims of building trust and people-to-people cooperation in the Russian and Norwegian regions forming part of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. The programme’s thematic fields are culture and sports, education and competence, business and entrepreneurship, media and information, civil society, environmental protection, indigenous peoples, and children and youth.
Based on two evaluations of the grant programme carried out by this paper’s authors (2008 and 2021) the paper analyses the development over time of the cross-border cooperation in Russia’s Northwesternmost and Norway’s Northernmost regions. The context in which the programme is carried out today differs in significant ways from those in 2007-8. The 2014 events in Ukraine have led to a new geopolitical environment that poses a challenge to the idea of cross-border trust and people-to-people cooperation. Moreover, internal political developments in Russia have led to more centralized power structures and control, among others of civil society. This paper explores the effects of these changes on Russian-Norwegian cross-border cooperation.
