OECD governance indicators for a resilient Baltic Sea Action Plan 2021

Savitri Jetoo,
PhD, Adjunct Professor,
Åbo Akademi University,
Turku, Finland

The word ‘resilient’ has been at the forefront of the recently concluded COP26 negotiations and has been widely used in environmental conservation as a means of adapting to stressors, crisis, disasters and more widely, the impacts of climate change. It is also a word used frequency by the Baltic Sea Marine Environmental Protection Commission (HELCOM) in its recently released and updated Baltic Sea Action Plan 2021. This update comes with the goals of a Baltic Sea unaffected by eutrophication, hazardous substances and litter and supporting environmentally sustainable sea-based activities, which will all lead to a healthy and resilient Baltic Sea. What does the word resilient mean in relation to the Baltic Sea? This does not refer to the traditional engineering resilience that sees a system rebounding to its original state after withstanding the maximum disturbance. This is indeed useful in the design of suspension bridges that links the archipelago in the Baltic Sea, flexing with the disturbance of high winds and returning to their original shape without breaking. A resilient Baltic Sea is more referring to the concept of ecological resilience, where the system bounces forward under stressors whilst retaining its core function and purpose. As defined in the Baltic Sea Action Plan update 2021, ‘a healthy and resilient ecosystem is one which can maintain its species and communities over time, despite external stress’. This is consistent with the original definition coined by Holling in 1973, with resilience being a measure of the ability of the system to persist after disturbances and still maintain the same relationships between populations. Inherent in this definition is the idea that a resilient system may adapt and be different due to stressors but core relationships should persist.

This concept holds widespread appeal as it addresses the concern that Baltic Sea governance is challenged by entrenched policy regimes and rules that are not flexible to change and adaptive to new stressors. In order to bridge the shortcomings of the previous Baltic Sea Action Plan, the architects of the updated plan have positioned resilience and adaptive management as a way to achieve the overarching goal of good environmental status. As a solution, adaptive governance calls for regimes that stimulate learning in the face of uncertainty and complexity, and that engage and connect stakeholders in a coordinated and flexible manger. Alongside this discussion of more adaptive governance, international organizations such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have called for diagnostic tools such as ‘governance indicators’ that can assess the presence of attributes of adaptive water governance. The OECD have consulted water governance experts, stakeholders and water practitioners to develop twelve principles focused on the three dimensions of effectiveness, efficiency and trust and engagement in water governance. The effectiveness driver relates to the contribution of governance to define, implement and meet set goals and includes the principles of capacity, policy coherence, appropriate scales and clear roles and responsibility. The efficiency driver looks at governance that maximizes the benefits of sustainability with the least cost and includes the principles of data and information, financing, regulatory frameworks and innovative governance. The trust and engagement driver examines the contribution of governance to building public confidence through the inclusion of stakeholders and include principles of monitoring and evaluation, tradeoffs, stakeholder engagement and integrity and transparency. These principles represent key policy issues highlighted in the academic literature as underpinning the governance of transboundary water systems. The OECD developed three indicators for each of these twelve principles to assist in their implementation. These indicators are based on voluntary self-assessment and stakeholder dialogue in order to assess how water governance systems are performing at a given moment in time.

This OECD water governance indicators can be a useful tool for the implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan 2021. Governance indicators can be seen as aggregation of variables that describe the system or process in such a way that it has more significance than the face value of its components. In the Baltic Sea context, governance indicators are not outcome indicators, as these focus on monitoring the state of the Baltic Sea. They can be useful in the implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan 2021 as they can provide knowledge on the transboundary capacity to support the aims and objectives for the Baltic Sea ecosystem. They can be used as tools for continuous diagnosis, reflection and improvement, as they provide a way of isolating and assessing specific aspects of governance. The scholarly literature on the Baltic Sea governance has agreed that there is a highly developed multilevel governance framework but that stakeholder engagement is a key weakness. As an illustrative example, the OECD governance principle 10, promote stakeholder engagement for informed and outcome oriented contributions to water policy design and implementation is measured by three indicators. These are. i. the presence of transboundary legal frameworks to engage stakeholders, ii. Structures to engage stakeholders and iii. Mechanisms to diagnose/review stakeholder engagement. These assessments can be done by twinning countries, where they take turns at assessing the other and then discussing the results in an open and transparent manner. They can bring more objectivity to the self reporting of progress under the BSAP 2021. These indicators can shed light on e.g. the engagement of farmers in nutrient abatement measures in each case and then comparatively, at one point in time and then at another later time. They can be a valuable point of departure for generating policy dialogue and for diagnosis and assessment of the current state of stakeholder engagement and adaptive governance in the Baltic Sea Region. There is need for more research to be done on the use of these indicators in transboundary regime. This does not reduce the overall value of the governance indicators as a tool to motivate transparency, openness and forward looking dialogue across countries and with stakeholders on best practices and governance gaps. These indicators can be useful in the Baltic Sea region to trigger BSAP 2021 implementation actions which can bridge Baltic Sea governance gaps for a more resilient ecosystem. More empirical studies are needed on how they can be most effectively applied, but these studies can be done through partnerships with scholars and practitioners which the OECD governance indictors framework support.

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