Summary report: "Bridge-Building in a Divided High North: Perceived socio-political outcomes of the intraregional and ‘people-to-people’ initiative, the Barents Cooperation"

• Main Author: Medby, Ingrid A.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Barents; Arctic; The Barents Cooperation; Norway; barents region; Kirkenes
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.24384/v242-nt59; https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/file/f3741375-7988-4174-bfb1-13c86ba01d5f/1/Summary Report - Bridge Building in a Divided High North 2021.pdf

In light of recently escalating tensions between Russia and Western Europe, this project examines successes and challenges of a long-running bridge-building initiative in the Arctic, the Barents Cooperation. The intraregional initiative was established in the wake of the Cold War with the aim of facilitating both political and social interaction between Russia and Nordic European states; today, the Barents region is a unique example of interconnected decision-making across local, regional, national, and international levels. And with an emphasis on so-called “people-to-people” exchanges, it is an example of how political relations are also social relations. The project focuses specifically on North Norwegian involvement, asking how local and regional policymakers and organisers directly involved with the Barents Cooperation perceive its socio-political effects in the region. In so doing, the project aims to assess not only past successes and challenges but also potentially transferable lessons for the present. Based on 13 interviews with key actors involved in the Cooperation, it is clear that successes include the building of friendships, knowledge, contact, and ‘normalising relations’. In contrast, remaining challenges include wider participation across the region and generations, communicating the Cooperation elsewhere, and specifically fostering business cooperation. The transferable lessons identified by respondents are: the need to invest time, energy, and funding; that it is a generational project; and that the key to success is identifying common ground and shared interests – in spite of other potential differences.