The Baltic: An Endangered Sea
Will the Baltic be sick or healthy in 2030? The World Wildlife Fund addressed the future of the sea in a seminar at this year’s Baltic Sea Festival.
A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Will the Baltic be sick or healthy in 2030? The World Wildlife Fund addressed the future of the sea in a seminar at this year’s Baltic Sea Festival.
Stockholm – Ministers and high level government officials, scientists, chief economists, heads of UN bodies and participants from over 200 convening organizations and 100 nations met at the World Water Week in Stockholm in August 2012. They debated and showcased solutions to ensure that the planet’s limited water resources are efficiently used to meet the basic needs of growing populations.
The critical review of cosmopolitanism as a historical, philosophical, and moral concept was afforded a special place on the agenda, but presentations oriented towards practical policy applications of cosmopolitan ideas were also represented, at the conference arranged by CBEES at Södertörn University November 24—26 "Cosmopolitanism in a Wider Context: Conceptualizing Past and Present".
“Market Reform and Socio-Economic Change in Russia” was the subject of an ambitious full-day seminar held October 6, focusing on the period since the fall of the Soviet Union.
At a meeting on the topic of the Northern Dimension partnerships on October 17 at the Finnish embassy in Stockholm, the many ambassadors and other dignitaries present in the audience proved to be inspired partners in dialogue, providing both critical questions and analytical overviews of policy and funding instruments in the northern part of Europe.
Baltic Worlds was one of the organizers of the seminar on the breakup of the Soviet Union during the “Global Week” at the University of Gothenburg in November. Here a report from the seminar 2Armageddon Averted: Insiders’ Reports from the Dissolution of the Soviet Union".
This fall, it was Helsinki’s turn to host this year's Yuri Lotman Symposium, whose theme was “The Writer and Power.” About forty Slavists from seven countries – Finland, Estonia, Russia, Sweden, Germany, the United States, and Israel – met over the space of three days to discuss this utterly inexhaustible topic. A number of fascinating cross-pollinations were among the most interesting outcomes.
Trying to understand where post-Soviet Russia is going seems to be a matter of understanding how the society is redefining itself: contradictory pictures are circulating of what precisely Russia and “Russianness” are. The official picture of a united and multicultural Russia is being challenged from several directions.
On June 15–17, 2011, the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS) organized its biennial conference, this year dedicated to “Current Issues in European Cultural Studies”. This report highlights some of the issues that were discussed at the panel session “East European Cultural Studies: The ‘New’ Europe”, chaired by Professor Irina Sandomirskaya of CBEES.
Privatizations in states with no actual market economy obviously become legislative matters. For instance, matters related to property rights may need to be re-regulated. The role of EU law in privatization was brought up at the conference. The law does not regulate privatizations, but contains a great deal on liberalization, which in turn affects privatization. Matters related to the alignment of legislation have made law more interesting for all of us who usually categorize legislation among the restrictions.