Month: May 2020

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Mistä ruoka pöytään ja energia piuhaan? YHYS Politiikkadialogi 2020

Today our Doctoral candidate Sakari Höysniemi participated in the event titled “Mistä ruoka pöytään ja energia piuhaan? YHYS Politiikkadialogi 2020” (Where do the food on the table and energy in cords come from? YHYS Policy dialogue 2020) on the 25th of May. The event was organised by the Forum for Environmental Information and was held online. Sakari participated in the second discussion of the event, where the participants talked about their perspectives on energy security and sustainable models of local economies.

More information on the event can be found from Ympäristötiedon foorumi.

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A book review on Sanna Kopra’s book “China and great power responsibility for climate change” has been published this week

A book review by Sebastian Losacker on Sanna Kopra’s book “China and great power responsibility for climate change” has been published this week in Eurasian Geography and Economics.

China is playing an increasingly important role in global politics and value chains. Against this background, it is not only the country’s power that is changing, but also its responsibility. This is particularly true for international climate policy, as China is not only the largest emitter of CO2, but an influential international player. At the same time, other nations such as the USA are currently assuming less and less responsibility. However, China continues to be an emerging economy in many areas and must reconcile this global responsibility with other goals such as poverty reduction and economic catching up. In her book China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate Change, which is based on her dissertation project, Sanna Kopra discusses the understanding of great powers and climate responsibility in the context of China’s current international climate policy engagement.

Losacker, in conclusion, states that “Altogether, Kopra manages not only to deepen the theoretical understanding of great power responsibility, she also provides important empirical insights on China’s international climate policy, marking the book as an important read for academics and policy practitioners alike“. The full version of the review can be read on the journal’s webpage.

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The Privatization of Rosneft: An Unintended Consequence of the Coronavirus Pandemic and the 2020 Oil Crisis

Nadezhda Stepanova, invited researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, affiliated with our research group, co-wrote a text about the oil crisis 2020 and privatization of Rosneft as an unintended consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analytical essay is part of the Politics&Pandemics special series and is published at the ElMaRB project blog.

Some day in the future, economic historians will likely consider the dramatic decline of international oil prices, which occurred in March 2020, as a turning point in the development of the global petroleum industry. This collapse puts the end to the era of expansive oil, which began after the Iraq war of 2003. That era is over now as the global economy seems to return to a period of low oil prices, similar to the one at the end of the 20th century after 1986.

There are a lot of explanations for the collapse of oil prices in the business and academic literature. Some experts think that the coronavirus pandemic undermines the global demand for petroleum, while other economists suppose that the dissolution of the coalition of OPEC countries and Russia in March 2020 was responsible for the destruction of the previous oil price equilibrium at the international oil market. However, the question of why this collapse of the oil price equilibrium happened is no longer relevant. The questions scholars should focus on now are how the decrease in oil prices will impact the economies of oil-exporting countries in the world after the pandemic? What reaction to this crisis can we expect from the governments of oil-producing countries? Finally, what will happen to the Russian economy?

The oil crisis and the escalating oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia of 2020 might open intellectual debate on what is the best way of the organization of the petroleum industry in the conditions of low oil prices. What model of petroleum ownership is optimal for the economy in the new age of cheap oil prices? What will the reaction of the state to this problem be? Could we expect the mass privatizations of state-owned oil companies around the world? This essay is an attempt at addressing the problem.