4-5 December 2013

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• ESPON Internal Seminar 2013
• Territorial Evidence for Cohesion Policy
  2014-2020
• and Territorial Agenda 2020

• 4-5 December 2013
• Vilnius, Lithuania
• ESPON BSR TeMo
• Gunnar Lindberg, Nordregio

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TPG

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Purpose of TeMo
BSR TeMo sets the background for identification
of regional problems, territorial challenges and
patterns of economic and social
developments.   Monitoring data assists decision
makers in defining new objectives, specifying
priorities in the area of potential intervention
within the framework of cohesion policy and
generally helps to develop evidence-based policy.
  BSR TeMo provides relevant indicators for the
entire BSR area necessary for measuring progress
and achievement of objectives of territorial
cohesion policy.   Information supplied by BSR
TeMo offers decision makers an opportunity to
carry out dynamic analysis of indicators and,
thus, provides framework for policy evaluation.
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Geographical coverage
NUTS-3 and NUTS-2 levels are the main
geographical scales in ESPON TeMo. The task for
BSR TeMo was to generate seamless layers of
administrative boundaries (NUTS3, NUTS2 and
NUTS0) for the study area including Belarus and
Russia. The project attempts to find additional
data at the LAU-2 level.
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Thematic content and indicators
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Structure of TeMo

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10 Analytical / Complex indicators
(1.) The Gini Concentration Ratio   (2.) The
Atkinson index   (3.) The 80/20 ratio   (4.)
Sigma-convergence   (5.) Beta-convergence
  (6.) The east/west ratio   (7.) The
south/north ratio   (8.) The urban/rural ratio
  (9.) The non-border/border ratio   (10.) The
coast/inland ratio
Distribution
Convergence
Targeted/Territorial
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Data
Data needed for the project has been collected in
the form of variables rather than indicators.
The time frame for data to be collected was set
to start in 2005, up to latest available
data. Ease of updating the monitoring system has
been a focus. Three main sources, which provide
easily accessible data and to a certain extent
data on a yearly basis are Eurostat (BSR EU
countries and Norway), ROSSTAT (Russia) and
BELSTAT (Belarus). Coherence regarding
methodology and availability for data covering
the BSR countries has been considered crucial.  
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Main questions

• Which functional regions require more attention
  from policy makers to improve competitiveness and
  reduce economic, social and ecological
  fragmentation?
• What are the opportunities and challenges for
  better territorial integration in cross-boarder
  and functional regions? Where are there unused
  potentials in this respect?
• What additional territorial evidence do policy
  makers need in this context?
• We have some results from our monitoring to bring
  into this discussion,
• TeMo was commissioned to build a monitoring
  system for existing policy rather than providing
  regional analysis per se. We have studied the
  transnational BSR macro region. We have studied
  the territorial aspects of common policy goals.

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Application of the System
Testing of the monitoring system allowed to
establish the functionality of the system by
pushing its analytical capacity in a selection of
real life situations.

• Investigative areas (topics)
• ability to handle cross-cutting issues
  (territorial cohesion)
• functionality within a pronounced thematic focus
  (migration)
• functionality to depict a particular geographic
  scope (border regions)
• overall benchmarking ability (BSR benchmarked
  against the Alpine Space and the North Sea
  transnational regions).

Example of results on territorial cohesion
Population with tertiary education
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The Principal Divides (1) East-West
Between more and less affluent countries the
sharpest divide today can be found within the
social spheres of development. In terms of for
instance poverty or health, the BSR displays a
substantial variation.
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The Principal Divides (2) North-South
Between countries with low and high population
density sparse regions are in general the most
disadvantaged types of territories and are
largely lagging behind in most aspects of
socioeconomic development, particularly when
examined in a national context.
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The Principal Divides (3) UrbanRural
Between rural and urban areas with very few
exceptions the rural areas generally occupy the
bottom positions regarding most aspects of
socio-economic development. The financial crisis
also appears to have affected rural migration
harder than any other type of regions.
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Migration trends 2005-2010
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The Principal Divides (3) UrbanRural
Between rural and urban areas Although there
is still a divide between East and West, - Some
of the most pronounced disparities in GDP/capita
can be found between urban/rural (adjacent) areas
rather than between countries.

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What we have learnt

• Which functional regions require more attention
  from policy makers to improve competitiveness and
  reduce economic, social and ecological
  fragmentation?
• Urban/rural divides is perhaps the most important
  territorial aspect to focus on in the BSR.
• The east-west gap is partially closing, butit
  has now changed into a far more multifaceted
  divide, where social differences are the most
  pronounced ones.
• Focus on social, poverty and health aspects
  across the BSR in order to boost long run
  development in the region.

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What we have learnt

• What are the opportunities and challenges for
  better territorial integration in cross-border
  and functional regions? Where are there unused
  potentials in this respect?
• Challenge of BSR Increasing spatial
  polarisation, further aggravating already
  existing unbalanced regional structures
• Territorial disparities between adjacent regions
  have in the past 15 years exploded
• 10 urban regions swallow 47 of all migration
  surplus in the BSR
• Border regions are often remote and sparse hence
  the challenges are more about these factors than
  something to do with the border.

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What we have learnt

• What additional territorial evidence do policy
  makers need in this context?
• Monitoring as it is conducted right now is
  focusing mainly on mega-trends or end-game
  results of (current) policy. It is not as
  efficient per se at monitoring/understanding
  results in the context of the new CSF and its 11
  objectives. It is more backwards compatible
  with the priorities of the ESDP and TA2020.
• How to make the analysis of 11 thematic
  objectives territorial?
• Evidence and themes for monitoring has to be
  updated all the time, and it has to be based on
  up-to-date data!
• We only measure what is in the policy today are
  we missing trends which are not in our current
  view?

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Territorial Monitoring Tool

• Presentation Tool (http//bsr.espon.eu/) an
  easy-to-use browser application (i.e. the
  territorial monitoring system), providing
• domain and subdomain descriptions
• indicator descriptions
• results for each single indicator
• map templates
• tables
• Excel files
• data sets and metadata
• reports and manuals.

Starting page of the Presentation Tool / Gateway
to the Monitoring system
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Thank you!