The ecomodernist environmental discourses of regional planning in North Karelia

Abstract

This article explores environmental discourses in land-use planning in North Karelia, Eastern Finland. I will especially focus on the regional responses to the global targets for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. The research is based on content and discourse analyses, and it covers the regional strategy, development programmes and the regional land-use plan together with environmental assessments all drafted by the Regional Council.The theoretical framework applied is informed by a critical environmental politics approach leaning on evolutionary governance theory. The study reveals the main political-administrative reasons for the weak responses to global environmental targets in regional land-use planning in North Karelia. The article claims that this is due to the path dependencies on regional development and the ecomodernist environmental policy models adopted in the regional planning and broadly practiced by EU.