Emerging cross-border regions as a step towards sustainable development? Experiences and Considerations from Examples in Europe and North America.

• Author: Blatter, Joachim

Abstract

Do processes of territorial integration facilitate or hinder the search for sustainable development? This article examines this question using empirical examples of cross-border regions on a sub-national level in Europe and North America. It will be shown that the processes of cross-border cooperation have proceeded extensively. It is therefore permissible to speak about "cross-border region building" and "territorial integration processes." The essay then analyzes what interterritorial integration means for the search for sustainability, defined as cross-sectoral integration of environmental, social and economic goals and interests. It will be shown that cross-border cooperation fosters antagonistic communities and therefore must be seen primarily as an obstacle in the search for sustainability. However, the empirical evidence does indicate that some cross-border regions may provide innovative platforms for multidimensional integration processes, which are needed for more sustainable ways of living.

1. Introduction and Overview (1)

   Much has been written about the question of whether free trade provides more opportunities or more risks for the environment. In this article it will be argued that this discussion is too narrowly focused. It does not provide an adequate description of the transforming processes we can observe and it is not state of the art in terms of defining good policy. Therefore, the question will be expanded towards a more comprehensive discussion: Do processes of territorial integration facilitate or hinder the search for sustainable development?

   While expanding the basic concepts of the question from the free flow of goods to the overall reduction of boundaries between territorial units, and from environmental policies to sustainable development, the political level or the territorial span from which the empirical material is drawn to address the question will be reduced. Instead of looking at the continental or global level, the focus will be on sub-national cross-border regions. Cross-border region building processes have gained momentum since the end of the eighties but they are still almost totally neglected in mainstream discourses in the social sciences.

   To provide an answer to the postulated question the article pursues the following line of argument. First, the cooperative activities in two cross-border regions will be presented, with one example from Europe, and one example from North America. By describing the institutions and by providing some examples of policy accomplishments it becomes clear that cross-border activities extend far beyond free trade policies and encompass almost all policy areas. Therefore, the observed activities can be labeled "cross-border region building" and "territorial integration processes".

   After having shown that territorial integration processes are occurring on a regional level, the paper turns to the question of what this means for the search for better policies. The opportunities that are opened up by cross-border cooperation will be highlighted. Drawing on examples from the field of environmental policy, four different functions that can be served by transboundary cooperation will be identified.

   Next, the paper turns to the downside. A definition of sustainable development will be introduced, which is based on the insight that this "holistic approach" is a reaction to the problems created by the functional and sectoral differentiation of modern societies, organizations and administrations. Therefore, sustainable development is defined as a process of integrating environmental, social and economic goals. The search for sustainable development, then, depends strongly on institutions that are able to coordinate and integrate different sectoral goals and interests and bring together the actors who represent those goals and interests. Against the background of such an expanded notion of the preconditions for the formulation of good policies, the cross-border linkages will be evaluated again. It will be shown that cross-border or interterritorial cooperation fosters antagonistic communities and makes it more difficult to bridge intersectoral boundaries. Therefore, processes of territorial integration have to be seen as inimical to the search for sustainability.

   Nevertheless, the paper ends by presenting a vision and the empirical evidence that some cross-border regions do have the potential to serve as platforms for the kind of multidimensional integration processes that are necessary to find more peaceful and sustainable ways of living.

2. The Neglected Layer Of Regional Integration: Emerging Cross-Border Regions On A Subnational Level

   Until recently, cross-border co-operation on a subnational level has not gained much attention in major social science discourses. However, around the beginning of the 1990s scholars of federalism and of regional science started to trace the growing international activities of sub-national political units in Europe and North America (Michelmann & Soldatos 1990, Brown & Fry 1993, Hocking 1993a, Groen 1994 and 1995). Whereas much attention was given the "para-diplomatic" (Soldatos 1990, 1993) or "interregional" (Raich 1995) activities of provinces, states, Laender, Cantons and cities, the longest tradition and the most enhanced features of international activities of these units are "micro-diplomatic" or cross-border activities (Cohn & Smith 1996, Martinez 1986, Swanson 1976). Developments in some border regions have advanced to the point that the older notion of micro-diplomacy should be replaced by one of "cross-border institution building," even though most of these cross-border institutions are rather "soft", not very formalized and mostly network-like institutions.

   Many reasons are offered to explain this outcome: Global economic, technological, ecological and social developments contribute to a rapid increase of interdependence across territorial boundaries and to a political process Brian Hocking (1993b) called "localizing foreign policy." In addition, factors within the political system, including trends toward decentralization in most western countries and, most importantly, the political processes of continental integration have created opportunities for increasingly professionalized subnational units to pursue. In Europe, the Single European Act (1987) initiated the European Internal Market. The Maastricht Treaty (1992) then set the framework for the Monetary Union. In North America, these processes were fostered by the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the U.S. (FTA 1988) and by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA 1994) between the USA, Canada and Mexico. These highly visible signs of political integration can be seen as catalysts that stimulated and facilitated new cross-border activities on a sub-national level during the last eight years.

   Both Europe and North America have witnessed a mushrooming in the development of cross-border region-building since the end of the 1980s. The new momentum in continental integration processes had a strong "spill over"-effect in the borderlands towards a new motivation for "Micro-Integration". Older cross-border linkages were reinvigorated and for the first time received enough political and financial strength to fulfill some of their long proposed goals. Even more significantly, many new initiatives grew in almost every border region. Even in regions where cross-border cooperation had never been a real issue (and where there was limited sozioeconomic (2) or environmental interdependence), the "idea" (3) of a common region became a salient topic at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, changing perceptions about both borders and "neighbors". A European and a North American example will show this in greater detail.

   A European example: the Lake Constance region

   The first case outlines the developments in the Lake Constance (Bodensee) region. Lake Constance is the second largest lake in Central Europe and forms part of the border between Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

   Cross-border co-operation in the Lake Constance region involves a variety of geographic definitions, but there is an evolving consensus that the "Euro-region" or "Euregio Bodensee" includes the German counties of Konstanz, Singen, Sigmaringen and Bodensee in the Land of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Bavarian county of Lindau, the Austrian Land Vorarlberg, the Swiss Cantons of St. Gallen, Thurgau, Appenzell-Innerrhoden, Appenzell-Ausserrhoden, Schaffhausen and the Fuerstentum Liechtenstein and has about 2 million inhabitants (Leuenberger & Walker 1992).

   Cross-border co-operation has a long tradition in this region, with a first "wave" of extensive institution building, focused mainly on water and environmental issues, emerging in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Since the 60s, environmental groups around the lake have worked together closely. In fact, the beginning of the environmental movement in Germany was very strongly connected with a cross-border issue, namely the (unsuccessful) plan to turn the River Rhine into a navigable waterway from Basle to Lake Constance (Drexler 1980, Scherer/Mueller 1994).

   Until the 1960s the fisheries commission (Internationale Bevollmachtigtenkonferenz fur die Bodenseefischerei--IBKF), created through a treaty in 1893, was the only intergovernmental institution in the region (Mueller-Schnegg 1994: pp. 122/ 123). In 1960, the International Commission for the Protection of Lake Constance (Internationale Gewaesserschutzkommission fuer den Bodensee--IGKB) was established as the result of an international agreement between the German Laender Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bayern, the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft, the Swiss Cantons of St. Gallen and Thurgau and the Republic of Austria. This international agreement has provided a strong legal basis for a common environmental regime and has institutionalized cross-border co-operation through a...