The Pasvik valley from the upper room of the 96-Høyden tower, Svanvik, Sør-Varanger. August 2026.
Photo and text copyright © 2026 CM Cordeiro
The Pasvik valley in Sør-Varanger, Finnmark, carries several administrative descriptions at once. It is a watercourse regulated under hydropower concession, a national park with an associated visitor centre, an international boundary between Norway, Finland and the Russian Federation, and an agricultural district supporting a small number of working farms. I spent three days at NIBIO Svanhovd in August 2026. The observation set out below is a modest one, drawn from a short visit and resting largely on material that the valley publishes about itself: much of the work of holding the district together as a coordinated bio-based economy appears to be performed by artefacts that the governance literature does not ordinarily treat as instruments. Interpretation panels, a heritage designation, a national park visitor centre and a farm shop price list are among them.
Research on transboundary environmental governance is conventionally conducted at the scale of the basin or the treaty, and there are sound reasons for the convention, since formal instruments are constituted at those scales. My contention in what follows is that the convention under-describes Pasvik. The arrangements that appear to be doing coordinating work in the valley operate at a considerably finer grain, and a number of them are physical objects placed in the landscape for the instruction of residents and visitors.
Continue reading ”One valley, three states: reading Pasvik as a border bioeconomy”
