Abstract: Why do sparsely populated regions innovate in green policies? In this article, we examine the drivers of public sector innovation in green policies in sparsely populated regions, using the empirical evidence from Finnish Lapland’s smart specialisation strategy in relation to promoting a forest-based bioeconomy. In a context where climate change has become a major global challenge, and sustainable development an additional responsibility for local and regional governments, this article contributes to understanding the rationales for innovating in green policies from a regional perspective. Drawing from institutional economic geography, we argue that top-down approaches (smart specialization) combined with scale and place-specificity (personal connections, environmental fragility, political will and natural resources endowments), play an important role in driving peripheral regions governments’ to innovate when translating and implementing green policies.

Abstract: This article highlights the role of organised rural communities in shaping local development processes. Based on the empirical evidence of a cooperative organisation from rural/central Chile, it is argued that local actors claim ownership of bottom-up economic processes and local development agendas, while negotiating between mainstream economic growth worldviews and alternative solutions to correct market distribute failures. This negotiation results in local scale solutions to uneven economic distribution, in this case, in benefit of a historically marginalised rural population, and in local economies that learn to utilise and reject neoliberal economies.

Abstract: Regional cooperation is a context-dependent process that is better understood using a geographical approach; this is, accounting for the region as part of the explanation for and not only as the container in which cooperative agreements operate. The case of the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia, a bottom-up regional cooperation process that resulted in a regional trademark, illustrates what roles are played by a diversity of local actors and how local socio-economic conditions influence cooperation agreements. The case highlights the inadequacy of inflexible jurisdictional boundaries and the limitations of pre-existing categories (such as inter-municipal cooperation or metropolitan areas). The empirical evidence includes the analysis of 19 semi-structured interviews.

The aim of this thesis is to conceptualise and explain the evolution of regional cooperation at a sub-national scale, and its influence in local and regional development. It contributes to the studies on regional cooperation and local and regional development, by understanding regional cooperation as an adaptable process shaped by its context, and introducing the otherwise neglected experiences from the Global South-Latin American urban and rural regions to the debate. The study addresses the gaps created by the predominant focus upon post-industrial, Global North experiences, emphasising in cities rather than regions integrated by urban and rural areas in research on regional cooperation and local and regional development. Examining the case studies of the Coffee Region (Colombia) and O’Higgins (Chile), this thesis argues that regional cooperation can be conceptualised as a context dependant process of voluntary and concerted work amongst diverse regional actors. Regional cooperation plays a crucial role in reshaping local and regional development models at the local scale, while local actors involved in regional cooperation adapt to the regional context and institutional environment. Regional cooperation appears not just as an alternative to improve local and regional development, but also as a mechanism that interacts with wider local institutional processes. This research identifies the different kinds and forms of regional cooperation, and how these are created and adapted to each context. It explains the relationship between regional cooperation and local institutions, and the relationship between regional cooperation and local and regional development, emphasising the role that regional cooperation plays in shaping bottom-up approaches to development, while helping regions to adapt and contest top-down neoliberal economic policies.

Abstract: One of the strengths of our Constitutional Court is the capability to produce institutional changes. This affirmation obeys to the analysis of the consequences generated by the sentence number T-025/2004, which transformed the Public Policy of Displaced Population unto a new stage: the recognition of a crisis and the pressing need to overcome it. Courts, in a strict sense, are not created to evaluate and design public policy; nevertheless, facing a human rights crisis, a situation of stagnation of public policy, facing an ineffective state and the low attention of the Congress, Courts can assume new roles highlighting government neglect and the need to take immediate action.

The policy brief gathers the most relevant empirical findings from the research project ‘Forests as resources and opportunities in regional development’. https://www.kau.se/files/2020-02/Policy%20Brief%201-2020%20eng.pdf

This policy brief provides an overview of public sector innovation, its relationship with the smart specialisation program, and the place specificities of Värmland and Finnish Lapland that enhance it.