Since the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, incidents of damage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea region (BSR) have received increasing attention. Pipelines, interconnectors, and communications cables have all been damaged under suspicious circumstances, raising concerns about resilience and security in a shared maritime space both with busy sea-lanes and intensely criss-crossed with vital infrastructure arteries.
The proposed one-day workshop will bring together expertise from a variety of fields, including economics, security, and international relations, to discuss the challenges of maintaining robust, sustainable infrastructure upon which the increasingly interconnected societies of the BSR rely, while taking into account the new realities of a world of growing instability, both in terms of climate and international security. The goal would be to not only identify the scope of the problems BSR societies face now and in the foreseeable future, but also to suggest areas where sustainable solutions could potentially be found. Interested students will also be able to attend.
A lasting outcome would be to stimulate greater dialogue and collaboration between the various member institutions of the Baltic Geopolitics Network (BGN, founded on the initiative of Cambridge University), thereby making the network less top-down and more member-driven, and producing greater value added for both researchers and students at participating BGN institutions.