SISU: Sufficiency solutions for a resilient, green and just Finland

Contemporary societies are built on economic growth. Yet in the Global North, growth is likely to be limited in the future. In addition, decoupling growth from ecological harm has proven anything but easy. 

The SISU research project encourages the creation of a better future and thinking that extends beyond growth, complementing efficiency whilst mitigating its rebound effects. Sufficiency provides a framework for consumption, production and just allocation of resources that avoids deficiency and excess, realigning human actions within safe planetary boundaries. 

What are sufficiency solutions?

In a world where natural resources are finite and six planetary boundaries have already been exceeded, sufficiency solutions offer a way forward – a tool for integrating sustainability efforts, reassessing our quest for wealth and expanding our conception of prosperity beyond solely the accumulation of wealth to encompass mutual wellbeing.

Sufficiency solutions emphasise living well within the capacity of our planet by rethinking consumption, production and societal organisation. Sufficiency does not mean scarcity or giving up necessities, it represents a shift in priorities, focusing on just allocation of resources and securing a good life for all. It challenges us to envision public and private organisations that remain stable, flexible and human-oriented, pursuing value creation beyond economic growth. 

While current solutions for decoupling economic growth from environmental harms have been necessary–such as technological innovation and green growth–they have not been enough. The SISU project aims to tackle this by investigating and implementing the untapped potential of sufficiency solutions. For instance, on the EU level sufficiency solutions have already been recognized as the missing pillar for achieving climate and sustainability goals.

Our hypothesis is that sustainability rooted in sufficiency principles can transform businesses and the economy while improving many factors that contribute to our wellbeing. By creating solutions that address the needs of vulnerable groups, it can even result in a better quality of life for all. 

A path to a just and sustainable future

The SISU project takes a multidisciplinary approach to exploring how sufficiency solutions can support a sustainable future for Finland. By modelling the macroeconomic impacts of these solutions to help people recognise different future scenarios, the project seeks alternatives to growth-oriented policies. 

In addition, SISU provides heritage futures workshops as spaces where people can create heritage futures–meanings, practices, and skills based on sufficiency, which will leave future generations a sustainable world where people can thrive. Heritage Futures represents a form of heritage that enables individuals to actively participate in society’s cultural sustainability transformation. The Heritage Futures Workshop serves as a valuable tool for futures-oriented thinking, empowering museums to co-create new heritage futures with and for individuals and their communities. By reimagining social priorities, sufficiency solutions pave the way for a resilient, equitable and green future.

The success of any large-scale societal transformation depends on citizens’ confidence in institutions to deliver equitable and effective policies. If trust erodes for any reason, it becomes difficult to manage societal change in an orderly manner. In addition to the solutions themselves, the SISU project pays particular attention to fairness and justice in its exploration of sufficiency. 

How SISU drives change:

The SISU project employs different methods of research and engagement to explore and implement sufficiency solutions in practice:

• Ecological macroeconomic modelling: Developing a new ecological macroeconomic model (FINGREEN) to simulate resilient green transition and sufficiency scenarios.

• Focus on vulnerable groups: Examining attitudes of the people in vulnerable positions (e.g. prisoners, elderly people living in remote areas) towards the future using register data and interviews. 

• Exploring trust in institutions: Identifying ways to maintain citizens’ trust in societal institutions during a green transition with comparative analysis and Delphi workshops.

• Heritage Futures Workshops: Understanding prevailing and co-creating new anticipatory beliefs to drive sufficiency through novel Heritage Futures Workshops.

• Building transition arenas: Bringing diverse societal stakeholders together to co-design, refine and develop sufficiency solutions, and their societal applications.

Our role in SISU: Building transition arenas

At Demos Helsinki, we lead transition arenas, collaborative spaces where groups of people from different organizational and sectoral backgrounds come together to co-create sufficiency solutions. Jointly we discuss questions such as what drivers, challenges or contingencies people see for transition to a sufficiency-oriented model of consumption and production, and how sufficiency relates to visions of the future.

Transition arenas provide a platform for collecting feedback on our ecological macroeconomic FINGREEN model and preliminary research results. The FINGREEN model opens up new ground for exploring sufficiency-based transitions as it offers dynamic simulation models to evaluate policies and scenarios in Finland. FINGREEN incorporates environmental feedback loops, enabling better assessments of resource limitations and sustainable pathways. 

At a later stage, the transition arena process will develop ways to utilise and apply sufficiency solutions in different areas of society throughout the SISU project.  Through an iterative approach, we ensure that solutions address requirements across the board—from the micro-level needs of specific groups to the macro-level needs of society at large.

Our partners in SISU

SISU is a broad, multidisciplinary consortium, bringing together ecological and industrial economics, sociology, pedagogy, ethnography, sustainability research, and futures studies. The project is a part of the Finnish Strategic Research Council’s six-year Societal Solutions in a Just Green Transition program. The SISU consortium consists of research teams from University of Eastern Finland, Demos Helsinki, LUT University, University of Turku and Xamk – South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences. 

You can find more information about our partners here.

The project will last until the end of 2029. 

Towards a resilient and just Finland

The SISU project contributes to the larger conversation of finding ways for societies to thrive within planetary boundaries. In a context where these boundaries are exceeded, a sufficiency approach assumes at least two things: common resources most likely will not grow (at least not by the same extent as before) and that those who can afford it will have to give up more. However, we believe that in a just sustainability transition no one should be left behind. Therefore, fairness and justice are a core focus of the project.

By addressing sustainability challenges through participatory methods and collaboration with the private, public, and third sectors, the SISU project will create sustainable partnerships, practices, and concepts that will continue to promote sufficiency solutions even after the project ends. By addressing sustainability challenges with a focus on fairness and wellbeing, Finland has the opportunity to lead the way toward a resilient, green and just future for all. 

Sufficiency as a societal, political or economic idea is still not well known, and post-growth futures often trigger polarised, politicised reactions. By the end of the project in 2029, our aim is to change this through robust interdisciplinary research, co-creation and translating our findings into proposals that are not only clear and actionable, but also inspiring for the future of society, economy, politics and everyday life.

For further information about the project, visit the official website or get in touch with the Demos Helsinki project lead:

Aleksi Neuvonen
Co-founder
SISU project’s interaction director
aleksi.neuvonen@demoshelsinki.fi