Transitional Territories

Composition
The colonisation of the Barents Sea became a fact as soon as nations laid claim on its water. In 1635, John Seldon developed the doctrine Mare Clausum, the enclosed sea. In principle, Mare Clausum allowed nations to claim the right to resources and jurisdiction over their neighbouring waters up to 200 nautical miles  from the coastline. These borders are still applied today to enclose the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ). Where the EEZ overlap, the position of the border needs to be discussed and agreed upon by the nations in question. In the Barents Sea, the border between norwegian and russian ownership remained an area of dispute up until 2014. Before that, both countries maintained their preferred border seeking rights to the precious gas and oil underneath.

Claim always starts by drawing borders on the map. Whatever lies within these borders becomes owned land or sea. In drawing borders you claim both rights and responsibility of the sea. In line with this belief, the Marine Spatial Planning policy for the Barents Sea, composed and maintained by the Norwegian government, only addresses marine space with the norwegian borders not without.


Alteration
More so than land, the ocean is dynamic and ever changing. Maps and planning documents falsely represent the ocean as a static surface, obscuring the constant movement of the water itself (Gee 2019), the people that cross it, and the matter that it carries. In terms of ownership this provides some difficulties, as no particle of water nor anything carried by water stays ever in the same place. Due to its mobility, water cannot be bound by administrative borders and can thus not truly belong to a nation. According to Hugo Grotius, a dutch jurist and philosopher, private or public ownership of the sea is thus impossible if not immoral. A free ocean, Mare Liberum(Theutenberg 1984), is an ocean that owns itself (“Embassy of the North Sea'' 2020). This attitude creates some difficulties for marine planning. How can we represent the constant movement of the ocean in planning, how can we locate anything on sea, and how do we plan for an ocean that we do not own?

Limit
Because of the fluid nature of water and air, the way we approach claim in these domains should be fundamentally different than on land. Of the three domains, soil is the only one where borders of ownership outline both the area of claimed rights and responsibilities.

For both water and air, borders of ownership merely outline the right to the space and the resources in, above and below it. The area of responsibility extends far beyond these borders. Lines drawn on a map cannot contain the water; nor fish populations, or spilled oil. There is but one continuous ocean, which we all share (Santoro et al. 2017). Because of this, offshore urbanism should look beyond national borders, and claim not just rights, but responsibility for the ocean as an entity.

Conventional mapping is based on borders of claim. Take for example a simple map of Europe. This map would barely contain more than national borders and names of the countries that own the space within them. Since conventional maps are predominantly based on borders of claim, this is also how we see and remember the world. If we are to use mapping as a means of representing the Barents Sea and as a means of designing marine space, an alternative form of cartography is needed.

Composition
France as a territory has been fully operationalized to respond to anthropogenic demand. As a result of that, landscapes have been drastically transformed by humans over time and have restructured ecological dynamics. This fact has led scholars such as Jean Jacob to describe France as the ‘land of artifice’1. The claim to a territory – the territorialization of space – implies a superposition of control on the landscape through various actions and spatial markers: the creation of boundaries, borders, measurements, land-use changes, resource appropriation... These acts are political as they are met with a clear intention. In France, they allow the possibility to govern a territory through a centralized state and to polarize energy and resources towards the primary spaces of political and economic production: the urban area of Paris. Artificially applied landscape dynamics – counteracting embedded processes - are only possible through an elaborate infrastructural system that allows for the control of movement that goes beyond geographic realities to sustain economic and political rationale.

Alteration
The Grand Paris, as a productive urban space, is sustained by the larger territory it borrows from. A territory such as the Seine River basin has few geographic limitations. Its relatively even terrain and absence of topographic obstacles makes it a rather attractivelandscape to claim and occupy – exemplifying the effects of western territorialization when physically unrestrained. The concentration of power and population in the capital has generated a point of gravity towards which resources lead to and where wealth is produced. This results in an extremely uneven distribution of access, resources, and investments. This power dynamic has long been present on this territory. Major infrastructural works started in the 18th century, in the name of modernization, to provide for the artificial urban landscape of Paris (most notably waterworks, and sewage systems attributed to Baron Haussmann). In our current fossil fuel-powered economies, this centralization has particularly accentuated externalities such as CO2 emissions, heavy industrial production, truck traffic, and other fluxes which are themselves redistributed unevenly as they infiltrate water systems and are spread through the air.

Limit
Spatial development, rearrangements, extensions, and connectivity are processes that most often derive from infrastructure projects (mobility, energy...). These systems are intended to facilitate usage, boost economies and competitivity, and sustain high-density areas. Urban developments, much like infrastructure projects, are political acts of territorialization. These processes are dictated by intentions (economic, social, ecological… ) and pose claims (ownership) on urban space (buildings, public space…) by the very idea that they can and should be changed. These actions are done to gain control over communities and spaces, deciding where one may live, where one may work - and dictating a path towards productivity. The Grand Paris redevelopment projects follow the same structure. The restructuring of space through the creation of a new mobility infrastructure is intended to project a growing urban area into a continued age of productivity. While no judgment is placed on the intentions of the project, urban development as a geo-political act raises some questions. Are there limits to resolving climatic, environmental, and social issues through the act of building? Is a new climatic regime one that solidifies anthropogenic territorialization and control over the landscape with an alternative intent? And can population and economic growth be coupled with ecological rationale within the urban frameworks that are already in place?

Composition
The selected three geopolitical representations of production-, nature- and energy landscape have been overlaid on the composition map. The geopolitical regimes have resulted in specific cultural landscapes. In relation to the production landscape, three generations of re-allotment typologies are recognizable in the landscape. Through the years, increasing attention has been paid to the ‘original’ cultural landscape, thereby decreasing the distance taken from the natural landscape (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, 2015).

With the establishment of the Vogelrichtlijn in 1979 and the Habitatrichtlijn in 1992, which were combined into the Natura2000 protection areas, the trajectory of the river was appointed a nature zone (Vogelbescherming Nederland, n.d.). This natural landscape however also influences the surrounding territories, as for example farmers are being bought out within a 3 km radius due to nitrogen emissions which might degrade biodiversity in the natural environment.

Next to the patches of production landscape, bordering the ongoing natural landscape around the river, recently they are interfered by the upcoming energy landscapes of windmills and solar plants, adding a third generation to the patchwork of fundamentally different geopolitical representations.


Alteration
The alterations posed by the geopolitical views on the riverscape have been made visible in the sections to the right. First, the production landscape of re-allotments, shows mainly interference in the existing network of waterways and ditches. In order to maximize productivity, an optimal groundwater level has to be determined and maintained. For higher grounds with predominately dry sandy soils, this has led to a segmentation of the former water network, in order to regulate water levels across different heights. For the lower meadows, located in former floodplains on clay, integration of smaller networks has been established, in order to extract water.

The bio-diverse landscape, or nature landscape, is set by regulations mostly, limiting interference in these areas and therefore preserving (and sometimes building) a network of calm areas for wildlife. Although this geopolitical view is less focussed on alterations in the physical landscape, it poses limitations to use of the neighbouring territory for miles through legislation. The upcoming energy landscape is mostly placed in locations that are 1) suitable in relation to wind and sun, but first and foremost located in 2) areas where they do not interfere with inhabitants of the built environment. This can be recognized by the relation to other ‘locally unwanted’uses such as landfills.

In general it can be said that all of the geopolitical representations in the riverine landscape interfere with the former and more natural network, however the politics are evolving from direct interference in the physical territory, towards regulation of use and behaviour of inhabitants in the territory.


Limit
The spatio-temporal diagram to the right indicates the landscape proximity, i.e. a measurement of how close the current landscape is to the natural substratum. It becomes clear that although the landscape became more and more detached in the mid-20th century, the nature landscape has brought it (partially) closer.

What also becomes clear is the relation between the separate geopolitical representations, and the fact that they are dispersing into different directions when looking at the landscape proximity. An increasing gap is starting to appear between the natural landscapes for example, and the energy landscape. Where the natural landscape is posing limits outwards across other representation fields, the energy landscape is doing the same in exactly the opposite direction, causing ridges and creases of misalignment in the landscape flows.

The physical interference of geopolitics, most directly visible in the production landscape re-allignment plots, shows the processes have mostly been executed throughout the second and third phases of re-allotments. The second generation (195401984) and later the current generation (1985-now) pay more attention to the existing pre-re-allotment structures, interfering on a smaller scale with more attention to existing landscape structures.

The proposition put forward in the diagram is the movement of man over time, away from the natural substratum towards a completely organized, engineered and controlled system. Contemporary geopolitical pressure is forcing ‘us’ even further away, should we fight this, or accept and plan for a future in which we can set ourselves up to move back after continuing the necessary anthropogenic works?

Composition
Spatial Implications as a result of Geopolitical Agreements

In relation to geopolitics in the southeast of England, different conflicts arise. Between the anthropogenic landscape that includes urban environment and infrastructural objects, great areas of protected natural landscapes can be found. Areas of Outstanding Beauty, but also Environmentally Sensitive Areas and Heritage Coasts enclose the anthropogenic landscape and natural landscape and create geopolitical boundaries, conflicts and limits for the possibility of anthropogenic changes in the English landscape.

In the sea, protected areas also create boundaries. The Natura 2000 areas and the special protected areas both have purposes in preserving the biodiversity of the natural environment. The special protected areas have a special function in bird protection, whereas Natura 2000 focuses on more species.

In the coastal zone of the UK, and in particular southeast England, many shipwrecks can be found. Most of these shipwrecks origin from the world wars in the early 20th century. Some of these shipwrecks are marked as protected due to their archeological, historic or artistic value.

Other areas that cause geopolitical boundaries, conflicts and limitations at sea are areas identified as waste disposal areas, wind farms, oil fields, pipelines and cables of which some can be found in close distance to the shoreline of the southeast English coast along the North Sea.


Alteration
Regional and Local borders of Geopolitics

The combination of different types of protected areas in relation to the built environment can cause conflicts within different adaptive strategies.

The coastline is in many cases the boundary between different habitats and topos in the case of the coastal cliffs. The different combinations of use of water and land and protected areas that can be found in the areas near the coastline can be the cause of the choice between different strategies. When an urban environment is included in the section and near the coastline, a different strategy should and could be used than for a section where an urban environment is not present.

In case of protected areas on one or either sides of the urban environment the available options for adaptive strategies can be limited due to the limited space for strategies such as retreat or advance. For these cases, a strategy such as embrace would be a more efficient strategy.

Another boundary that should be taken into account when thinking of urban developments in combination with erosion management, is the territorial zone of England within the North Sea with the limits of 12 nautical miles, which can be translated to 22 kilometers from the coastline of the British land (Marine Management Organisation, 2019). This territorial sea is regarded as a sovereign territory where ships from other countries are only allowed to pass through. For air and the seabed, this sovereignty should also be taken into account as a geopolitical boundary.


Limit
Conflicts between Built Environment and Natural Environment

In the next 10 years, the protected areas are expected to grow by 4%. Since the 1950s, these protected areas have increased from 0% to 26% of the total surface of England, and southeast England (JNCC, 2020) . This means that this trend of increasing the protected areas every 10 years with nearly 4% has been going on for over 60 years. If this trend of growth continues, this percentage will rise above 50% in about 50 years.

In the meantime, the built environment is increasing as the population is rising in southeast England. At one point in time, around 2056, the built environment and the protected areas will be competing with one another and will be able to limit development in both areas. The expanding protected area in combination with the increasing population and, therefore, the built environment, conflicts will arise between these geopolitical boundaries. This also raises questions about the issue of social justice that includes environmental justice. The importance of either the built environment or the protected areas should be prioritised to create a just environment. This prioritisation should be included in plans and strategies that are formulated for coastal zones including these conflicting areas.

Composition
The pressure on the Baltic Sea ecosystems is exerted not only by the anthropogenic activities within the drainage area but also by activities on the sea, namely shipping and dredging. The expansion of global maritime trade triggers an increase in shipping and port activities, which strongly influence the levels of water and air pollution within the sea basin and coastal areas due to oil leakage, leaching of toxic paint and exhaust emissions1. In addition to that, ports, as inter-modal trade hubs which allow for the transfer of cargo between ships and inland means of transport, are highly prone to contamination of soil2. The use of inland waterways for shipping constitutes an additional environmental stressor for the riverine network, water edges and eventually for the sea ecosystems3.

Today the share of Polish rivers in total freight transport is negligible and accounts for around 0.1%4, despite their historical legacy of international waterways5. However, the current Polish government has the ambition to restore the international importance of Polish inland waterways. Together with the governments of Belarus and Ukraine, it initiated a project of a waterway linking the Baltic Sea in Gdańsk with the Black Sea in Kherson by connecting five rivers including the Vistula. The project would require dredging and widening the rivers and building cascade dams as well as a channel connecting the Vistula with the Mukhavets River in Belarus6.


Alteration
Plans to make the Vistula River suitable for navigation emerged after Poland regained its independence in 1918, they were later interrupted by the Second World War, and after that continued until the mid-twentieth century1. In 1957 the Committee for Water Management established at the Polish Academy of Sciences developed a concept of regulation of the Lower Vistula course which provided for construction of hydropower barrages along the river2. Several variants of the cascade were proposed, the one with ten dams is illustrated in the section. Nonetheless, only one dam was built in Wloclawek and further development of the project did not take place due to economic issues2.

The proposal of the development of the Lower Vistula Cascade was reintroduced by the Polish government in 20163. Moreover, in 2017 the Polish president ratified the European Agreement on Main Inland Waterways of International Importance (AGN, 1996) which requires the development of inland water infrastructure.

In order to meet the requirements, the Polish rivers will need to be narrowed to reach the necessary depth for navigation4. That process might severely affect the environmental conditions of the river edges5.



Limit
The growing interest in the environmental issues in the 1990s was, next to the economic issues, another reason which led to a rejection of the proposals to regulate and use the Vistula River for the commercial purposes in order to preserve its current condition and convert the landscapes to parks and protected areas (Natura 2000)1.

Nonetheless, the environmental consequences of the built Włocławek Dam and Reservoir are catastrophic and constructing the rest of the Lower Vistula Cascade may aggravate the problems2. The mortality of fish increased and some migrating species disappeared due to pollution, reduced river flow velocity and constraints of migration through the dam2. The Vistula River is also partly regulated by perpendicular and longitudinal dams, which look natural, however, they cause greater environmental uniformity by eliminating temporary and permanent river islands3. Channelization of a river to make it suitable for navigation requires changing the width of the river and its edge4. That consequently affects islands and sandbanks in the riverbed, which constitute habitat for some bird species5.

Next to that, the sediment and pollutants carried by the river accumulate in the reservoirs and reduce the water retention capacity of the river valley simultaneously increasing the risk of flooding4.

Composition

The Territories
Toba Lake Area is determined by following the delineation of Toba Lake Catchment Area Treatment (CAT), which is located at the coordinates of 2 ° 10’3 ° 00 “North Latitude and 98 ° 24” East Longitude.

Referring to this regulation, the Lake Toba Area covers 8 (eight) districts in North Sumatra Province, consisting of Karo, Simalungun, Toba Samosir, North Tapanuli, Humbang Hasundutan, Samosir, Pakpak Bharat, and Dairi districts.

In addition, Lake Toba area is further defined administratively by 31 Districts in 7 Regencies surrounding the lake area.

Lastly, the intangible territory is based on the Batak family clan which is important to be considered due to address the potential synergy between family clans.


Alteration

The Drivers
How can we understand the politics from external to the internal? And how does time also play a role in this situation?

Past
Community of Batak Family Clan plays a big role in determining land and water use. Major alteration happened during the colonization era, which centralization governance setting was gradually injected to the social system.

Present
The projection of tourism development plans widen up the spectrum of drivers in multiple scales and multi institutions. While in a parallel, cultural system of family clans of Batak still rooting within the social system.

Future
In the future, the synergies of stakeholders need to be aligned in order to be able to face future external uncertainties such as the development of information technology and climate change. Besides, the potential alteration of identity, meaning, and values also need to be continuously assessed in order to project what kind of future Toba Lake Area will be.


Limit

The Conflicts
Considerations for future development are classified into three different spatial characters: forestry, non-forestry land, and water.

Composition
Patchwork of Territorial Claims

The Amazon has a complex land use arrangement given the various institutional entities and agencies which coordinate the development and demarcation of the region. In many instances, these zones overlap not only in space but in intent. This institutional patchwork can facilitate land transformation and even exacerbate conflicts on the local level. The complexity of managing this region is further enhanced because of lacking clarity regaridng land claims which favours illegal activities and complicates surveillance and auditing from regulation agencies. The lack of coordination between agencies and ministries can vary depending on political arrangements and who are the interested parties. Historically the state has also implemented policies and programs which incentivized individuals to occupy land which would them be legalized with colonization programs form the 60ies and 70ies.


Alteration
Political Ecology

Each institution has a claim on the various surfaces of the amazon depending on what their intent and jurisdiction lies. In this way, it is important to read these institutions according to the depth of their reach and how this can mean conflict of interests between them. This also indicates which are state priorities on the territory which informs the process of territorialization by the state and other sectors of society. This inevitably is a determining variable to the legal and jurisdiction power dispute of certain entities which can exert direct pressure on institutions and agencies within the state and government. This poses difficulties for people and organizations which have been historically excluded from the decision table, and which must now engage in political action to assert their desires and voices to propose their interests. Throughout the amazon, indigenous people have mobilized and demanded from institutions their legal rights in relation to their ways of life and territories.
  

Limit
Institutional Reaches and Influence

Most institutional entities from governmental spheres overlap in their range from local to global and vertical accessibility for decision from local actors. It is apparent that there is a lack of articulation that functions horizontally and at a local scale. Although these community organizations exist, they have little or no jurisdiction and institutional underpinning. This space in decision and planning has been occupied my many NGOs active in the region, from national or international backgrounds and attempt to bridge local decisions and pleads to the institutions capable of action.