Luhtaorvokki ja luonnon geopolitiikka

We analyze EU biodiversity policy as a way of building a coherent Europe, using the contextual conservation problems of an endangered species of violet Viola uliginosa as a proxy for scalar practices. The material consists of an extensive review of the literature on the existence, ecology and conservation of the species on both sides of the EU eastern border as well as biological field data gathered where it occurs in Finland. The case study shows that the scalar practices exercised in conservation create two geopolitical spaces over Europe through which the EU defines its geo-power over member and non-member states. The case also brings out the importance of human-non-human constellations in the geopolitics of nature emerging from field inventories, data gathering, site management and genetic analyses with separate violet populations. Altogether, the paper emphasizes the crucial role of practices and political processes in understanding the influence of scales in biodiversity policy.