Eeva Furman, the director of the Environmental Policy Centre at Finnish Environment Institute, gave a presentation on systemic transformations at the ORSI research project event "What is an Eco-welfare State?" on January 21st 2020.

1. Eeva Furman
SYKE, Orsi
21.1.2020 Helsinki
When global challenges become operationalised, the
political goals evolve to systemic transformations

2. Evolution to SD:
Three pillars, compromises, emergent in space and time
The transformative power of the 2030 Agenda
Transformations to SD:
Indivisible, hard choices, intentional, time-bound
- Rising inequality
- Climate change
- Production of waste
- Biodiversity loss

3. • Progress slow
• Partly no progress at all, partly
change to negative direction
2
How have the
targets been reached?

4. A Success Story?
Rosling, 2018. Factfulness

5. Four alarming trends, which threaten the progress of the
entire 2030Agenda;
4
Rising
inequalites
Climate
change
Biodiversity
loss
Growing
amount of
waste
-> systemic challenges require systemic transformation

6. How to translate a political agenda into concrete action
in the society?
5

7. 1. Interlinkages
between goals:
foreseeing the
potentials and the
needs to act
6

8. 2. Hyper-connectedness of the world:
Benefits and losses of global flows are divided inequally
7

9. 3. Power structures:
Both challenges as
well as sustainability
transformations are
in the hands of
several actors

10. The way forward

11. 10
1) Human well-being and capabilities
2) Sustainable and just economies
3) Sustainable food systems and healthy nutrition
4) Energy decarbonization with universal access
5) Sustainable urban and periurban development
6) Securing global environmental commons
Six key areas for transformation

12. 11
How to do it?
Four levers to be coherently deployed for each entry
point:
● Governance
● Economy and finance
● Individual and collective action
● Science and technology
Context-dependent combinations of the levers form
integrative pathways to transformation

13. ENTRY POINTS FOR
TRANSFORMATION
LEVERS
Governance
Economy
andFinance
Individual and
CollectiveAction
Scienceand
Technology
Human
wellbeing and
capabilities
Sustainable
and just
economies
Energy
decarbonisation
and access
Food systems
and nutrition
patterns
Urban and
peri-urban
development
Global
environmental
commons
Pathways to Transformation as context-specific configurations of levers to achieve transformation in each entry point
An operational roadmap:
Context-specific pathways to transformation for
sustainability

14. Food and nutrition
13
• Global food systems to deliver just and
environmentally sustainable food to the
growing populations
– Transformation of agriculture
– Small farms with forest farming
• Healthier and more sustainable eating habits.
• Reduction of foodwaste
EEVA FURMAN, SYKE, 29.5.2019
KUVAT: OPENNESS.EU JA MINNA KALJONEN/SYKE
9 billion
people

15. Building sustainable food systems and nutrition patterns
Food systems
and nutrition
patterns
• Social protection floors
• Integrating social & env. externalities
• Governing value and supply chains
• Insurances against shocks
• Improved trade agreements
• Market access
• Reducing food waste
• Changing dietary habits
• Lower environmental impacts
• Access to information and data
• Infrastructure and transportation
Levers
Photo Credit: Xun Wang and Xin Zhang, University of Maryland
Pathways

16. Sustainable economies
15
• Environmental
footprint
• Equal division of
benefits and losses
• Governance of global
flows

17. Energy de-carbonisation and access
16
➢ Transformation of the
global energy system
to align with the Paris
Agreement
● 840 milj. people without
electricity
Sustainable technologies exist
-> the challenge within
application and distribution

18. Urban and peri-urban development
17
• Evidence based planning and
governance of cities
– nature based solutions
– polycentrism
• Citizens and other actors as
developers
KUVAT: PAT KRUPA, JORGE VIDAL
unsustainable
use of natural
resources
pollution
inequalities

19. Human wellbeing and capabilities
18
• Multi-dimensional
inequality
• Importance of early
childhood
• Life long learning for
sustainable
development;
• Rebuilding the human-
nature connectedness

20. Global environmental commons
19
➢ The balance of nature and humans
➢ Earth systems rely on biodiversity
EEVA FURMAN, SYKE, 29.5.2019
KUVAT: EEVA FURMAN
BIODIVERSITY ♥ AIR ♥ OCEANS ♥ LAND

21. The role of science in knowledge-based
transformations to sustainable development
20

22. A ‘moon-shot’ mission for Sustainability Science
• Rapid increase of mission-oriented
research guided by the 2030 Agenda
• Scientific assessment of existing
transformation knowledge including non-
academic sources
• Adapt funding schemes to programme
structures supporting inter- and
transdisciplinary research
• Expand incentive- and evaluation
schemes
• Create experimental spaces and
transformation labs for next generation
science-policy interfaces

23. Thank you
www.syke.fi