PATH2030 – An Evaluation of Finland’s Sustainable Development Policy

What path should Finland take to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030?

The PATH2030 project has produced an evaluation of Finland’s sustainable development policy and formulated concrete recommendations for the future. The evaluation is based on multidisciplinary methods and broad and diverse material in the form of indicators, documents, and expert views gathered through surveys, interviews and workshops. The evaluation focused particularly on the time after the 2030 Agenda entered into force in 2016.

No country has yet presented a credible plan for how to reach the goals of the 2030 Agenda. Finland has various national targets and programmes that point in the right direction, but the policy could be more transformative and coherent. Finland’s sustainable development policy has succeeded in being inclusive, which shows that sustainable development has become a broadly accepted aim in society.

Finland’s biggest challenges in sustainable development policy are related to climate change, consumption, the state of the environment, and growing societal inequality.

Reaching the 2030 goals requires, however, many system-level changes and the mediation of conflicts of interest. The evaluation shows that sustainable development policy should focus on climate change, environmental questions, consumption and increasing inequality. It is recommended that sustainable development should become the basis of future Government Programmes, that a roadmap for how to reach the goals should be created and that, for example, the indicators and the Expert Panel on Sustainable Development should be revised.

The Path2030 is co-produced by Demos Helsinki, Finnish Environment Institute SYKE and Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science HELSUS. It is part of the publication series of the Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities 23/2019. 

Content

Publication: PATH2030 – An Evaluation of Finland’s Sustainable Development Policy

Policy Brief: Path2030 – Evaluation of Finland’s Sustainable Development Policy

Press release: Sustainable development goals to the heart of policy-making