Reviewing Member States’ Commitment to the European External Action Service. EPIN Working Paper No. 34, 20 November 2012

Based on interviews with diplomats from a representative cross-section of nine member states and members of the EEAS itself, the research findings of this EPIN Working Paper confirm long-standing traditions and member state perceptions of cooperation with European institutions. The paper also reveals new aspects of the intergovernmental method of foreign policy shaping and making in the European Union; in particular how different national positions can positively or negatively affect the consolidation of the EEAS and the role of the EU as an international actor. As such, the Working Paper makes an original contribution to the existing literature on one of most discussed actors in the European Union’s post-Lisbon architecture in the domain of EU external action.

EEAS reloaded: recommendations for the 2013 review. CEPS Commentary, 12 December 2012

The original Council Decision establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS) in 2010, called for a review of the organisation and functioning of the EEAS by mid-2013. This CEPS Commentary argues that the review process will offer a formal opportunity to address some of the Service's weaknesses and to give a new impetus to its further development. In particular, it urges stakeholders to go beyond a review of organisational matters and also look into the Service’s overall contribution to attaining the objectives of the EU’s foreign policy, into its cooperation with the member states’ diplomatic services, the services of the European Commission, the Council General Secretariat and the European Parliament. Four sets of recommendations are put forward.

Towards a Eurasian Economic Union: the challenge of integration and unity. CEPS Special Report No. 75/December 2012

In the lead-up to the creation of a Eurasian Economic Union in 2015, the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan represent two elements of the most ambitious regional integration project launched in the post-Soviet era since 1991. This CEPS Special Report examines both the potential and the limits of Eurasian economic integration. For the purpose of assessing the Eurasian integration process, CEPS applied a modified version of a framework first developed by Ernest B. Haas and Philippe C. Schmitter in 1964 to project whether economic integration of a group of countries automatically engenders political unity. Taking the data available for the early stages of the European integration process as a benchmark, the results for the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space point to a rather unfavourable outlook for Eurasian economic integration.

The EU's External Action towards the Middle East: Resolution required. CEPS Commentary, 7 January 2012

Among the many foreign policy challenges the EU will have to address this year, such as cultivating workable ties with Ukraine, Russia and other neighbours in the east, reviving the transatlantic partnership in trade, rebalancing alliances with Asian countries, and pooling and sharing defence capabilities, the number one challenge that will take up most of the Foreign Affairs Council’s time is the Middle East. After months of half-baked unilateral attempts at resolving the foreign policy challenges posed by this troubled region, the moment has now come for the EU to take bold and concrete action, argues CEPS Senior Fellow Steven Blockmans in this new Commentary.

Linking Canadian Harvested Juvenile American Black Ducks to Their Natal Areas Using Stable Isotope (δD, δ13C, and δ15N) Methods

Understanding source-sink dynamics of game birds is essential to harvest and habitat management but acquiring this information is often logistically and financially challenging using traditional methods of population surveys and banding studies. This is especially true for species such as the American Black Duck (Anas rubripes), which have low breeding densities and extensive breeding ranges that necessitate extensive surveys and banding programs across eastern North America. Despite this effort, the contribution of birds fledged from various landscapes and habitat types within specific breeding ranges to regional harvest is largely unknown but remains an important consideration in adaptive harvest management and targeted habitat conservation strategies. We investigated if stable isotope (δD, δ13C, δ15N) could augment our present understanding of connectivity between breeding and harvest areas and so provide information relevant to the two main management strategies for black ducks, harvest and habitat management. We obtained specimens from 200 hatch-year Black Duck wings submitted to the Canadian Wildlife Service Species Composition Survey. Samples were obtained from birds harvested in Western, Central, and Eastern breeding/harvest subregions to provide a sample representative of the range and harvest rate of birds harvested in Canada. We sampled only hatch-year birds to provide an unambiguous and direct link between production and harvest areas. Marine origins were assigned to 12%, 7%, and 5% of birds harvested in the Eastern, Central, and Western subregions, respectively. In contrast, 32%, 9%, and 5% of birds were assigned, respectively, to agricultural origins. All remaining birds were assigned to nonagricultural origins. We portrayed probability of origin using a combination of Bayesian statistical and GIS methods. Placement of most eastern birds was western Nova Scotia, eastern New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and southern Newfoundland. Agricultural birds from the Central region were consistent with the Saguenay region of Québec and the eastern claybelt with nonagricultural birds originating in the boreal. Western nonagricultural birds were associated with broad boreal origins from southern James Bay to Lake of the Woods and east to Cochrane, Ontario. Our work shows that the geographic origins, landscape, and habitat associations of hatch-year Black Ducks can be inferred using this technique and we recommend that a broad-scale isotopic study using a large sample of Canadian and US harvested birds be implemented to provide a continental perspective of source-sink population dynamics.

An Estimate of Nest Loss in Canada Due to Industrial Forestry Operations

Annual loss of nests by industrial (nonwoodlot) forest harvesting in Canada was estimated using two avian point-count data sources: (1) the Boreal Avian Monitoring Project (BAM) dataset for provinces operating in this biome and (2) available data summarized for the major (nonboreal) forest regions of British Columbia. Accounting for uncertainty in the proportion of harvest occurring during the breeding season and in avian nesting densities, our estimate ranges from 616 thousand to 2.09 million nests. Estimates of the impact on numbers of individuals recruited into the adult breeding population were made based on the application of survivorship estimates at various stages of the life cycle. Future improvements to this estimate are expected as better and more extensive avian breeding pair density estimates become available and as provincial forestry statistics become more refined, spatially and temporally. The effect of incidental take due to forestry is not uniform and is disproportionately centered in the southern boreal. Those species whose ranges occur primarily in these regions are most at risk for industrial forestry in general and for incidental take in particular. Refinements to the nest loss estimate for industrial forestry in Canada will be achieved primarily through the provision of more accurate estimates of the area of forest harvested annually during the breeding season stratified by forest type and Bird Conservation Region (BCR). A better understanding of survivorship among life-history stages for forest birds would also allow for better modeling of the effect of nest loss on adult recruitment. Finally, models are needed to project legacy effects of forest harvesting on avian populations that take into account forest succession and accompanying cumulative effects of landscape change.