Space, nature and hierarchy

The ecosystemic politics of the Caspian Sea

Bibliographic Data

ID6060600
AuthorsPaul Beaumont (0000-0002-7556-1289, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, corresponding author), Elana Wilson Rowe (0000-0003-0390-4577, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs)
Year2023
Volume29
Issue2
Pages449-475
Publication date2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of International Relations (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1354-0661 • E-ISSN: 1460-3713
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/13540661221142179
OpenAlexW4313324604
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited48

The Anthropocene has given rise to growing efforts to govern the world’s ecosystems. There is a hitch, however, ecosystems do not respect sovereign borders; hundreds traverse more three states and thus require complex international cooperation. This article critically examines the political and social consequences of the growing but understudied trend towards transboundary ecosystem cooperation. Matchmaking the new hierarchy scholarship in International Relations (IR) and political geography, the article theorises how ecosystem discourse embodies a latent spatially exclusive logic that can bind together and bound from outside unusual bedfellows in otherwise politically awkward spaces. We contend that such ‘ecosystemic politics’ can generate spatialised ‘broad hierarchies’ that cut across both Westphalian renderings of space and the latent post-colonial and/or material inequalities that have hitherto been the focus of most of the new hierarchies scholarship. We illustrate our argument by conducting a multilevel longitudinal analysis of how Caspian Sea environmental cooperation has produced a broad hierarchy demarking and sharpening the boundaries of the region, become symbolic of Caspian in-group competence and neighbourliness, and used as a rationale for future Caspian-shaped cooperation. We reason that if ecosystemic politics can generate new renderings of space amid an otherwise heavily contested space as the Caspian, further research is warranted to explore systemic hierarchical consequences elsewhere

Anthropocene · Environmental ethics · Hierarchy · International relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Sovereignty · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · Global Energy Security and Policy · Law · Transboundary Water Resource Management

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access