Foreign Assistance as a Policy Instrument: Swedish Environmental Support to the Baltic States, 1991-96

Foreign assistance is often characterized by a mix of altruistic and selfinterested considerations of the donor country. Swedish environmental support to the Baltic States during the 1991-96 period was designed primarily to promote Swedish interests. Based on a classification of the different supported issue-areas according to collective good content, it is clear that areas with large trans-boundary effects were favoured. The most important targets for Swedish assistance were wastewater treatment facilities, measures to decrease emissions from point sources and increased nuclear safety, while for example handling of solid waste and nature protection received scant attention. Since Sweden, like most other donors, required the recipient country to cover a significant proportion of the cost of every joint project with local funding, domestic financial resources were furthermore drawn to the areas preferred by the donors. Depending on the scarcity of investment funds as well as of administrative capacity in the Baltic States, other domestically prioritized environmental issue-areas were thus largely neglected.