Governance networks under the Carpathian Convention

In 2003 seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe signed a treaty to safeguard and ensure sustainable development of the Carpathian Mountains. From its inception, the Framework Convention on the Protection and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians (Carpathian Convention) has been designed as a legal instrument that enables its parties and other stakeholders to act jointly: it brings together actors, catalyses actions, harmonizes policies and thus enhances cross-border cooperation in the region. During the decade since its entry into force the Carpathian Convention has enabled and driven many projects, activities and networks in the Carpathian region at local, regional and international levels, several of them crossing national boundaries. Although the Convention and its four protocols set out grand aims and specify concrete actions to be taken, the actual implementation and effectiveness of the treaty is not so clear. Does the Carpathian Convention lead to strategic action or is it only a project fair? Collaborative governance theory Ansell and Gash, 2008; Emerson et al., 2012) claims that in cases where socio-economical boundaries cut through ecosystem boundaries, such as the case of the Carpathian Mountains, successful conservation of natural resources will depend on international collaboration, and strong horizontal and vertical linkages among actors. This presentation examines the role that the Carpathian Convention has played during the last ten years in advancing collaborative governance of biological diversity in the region. The research will present the social network of actors under the Carpathian Convention. Different layers of the social network will be analysed, including information flow, cooperation and trust; as well as egonets of key actors. The analysis will not only focus on the characteristics of individual actors but also explore their structural network position, since this latter has been shown to be important to understand how individual actors shape the governance system. Preliminary findings indicate that the governance network of the Carpathian Convention is dominated by only a few actors, most importantly UNEP’s Regional Office for Europe which also acts as the Interim Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention and WWF’s Danube Carpathian Programme which has been one of the initiators of the Convention itself. Considering the troubled history of the region it is not surprising that two non-party actors have a dominant role in the network, since it can be assumed that significant amount of time is needed for mutual trust and a shared vision evolve among the parties. As we know from other cases, collaborative governance dynamics change over time and in the initial phases a few key central drivers are necessary to keep the processes going, the Carpathian Convention after ten years of existence is still likely to be in the early phases of its governance journey.